Day: August 1, 2013

The Growing Greatness Of Franklin D. Roosevelt, As His Renovated Presidential Library Enters Its Second Month!

Ronald Leave a comment

This author has spent his career, 41 years in college teaching, more intimate with President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal and World War II policies than with any other historical figure.

Exactly 43 years ago, this author spent time doing research at the FDR Library and Museum in Hyde Park, New York, just outside Poughkeepsie, for his doctoral dissertation, which was completed in 1975, and published in 1981 by The Johns Hopkins University Press under the title: TWILIGHT OF PROGRESSIVISM: THE WESTERN REPUBLICAN SENATORS AND THE NEW DEAL.

This coming fall term, the author will again teach a course on FDR, THE NEW DEAL, AND WORLD WAR II, at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, Florida.

This author has, therefore, spent his life dedicated to study of FDR, and he has always taught that FDR was the second greatest President to Abraham Lincoln!

This day of this posting, the author is with his younger son at the FDR Library and Museum for the first time in 43 years, and exactly one month after its first renovation since its opening in 1941!

The thrill, the excitement, of this return visit, now as a tourist, not a scholar, is overwhelming, and makes me ever more appreciate the greatness of this man, who did more to change America in domestic and foreign policy than ANY President has ever done, including Abraham Lincoln!

Sure, FDR had his faults and shortcomings, as all Presidents, and really all of us, have, but still he is the most transformational President in American history,and richly deserves constant study and interpretation, which I have, and will continue to do, throughout my life of teaching, scholarship, and blogging!

Eight States In The South Central US Lead Fight Against Abortion, Defying The Rest Of The Nation!

Ronald 4 Comments

A new Pew Research study demonstrates that the growing fight against abortion rights, guaranteed by Roe V. Wade forty years ago, but under constant attack in many Republican governed states and by evangelical right wing Christianity, is centered heavily in EIGHT South Central states heavily dominated by the Republican Party!

These states are Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Texas, where 52 percent in the poll wish to ban all abortions, except for the life of the mother, even making it illegal much earlier in the pregnancy, often before a woman is certain that she is pregnant in the first place!

The New England states are the highest percentage for abortion rights, at 75 percent; followed by 65 percent in the Pacific Coast states; 61 percent in the Mid Atlantic states; 59 percent in the Mountain West states; 50 percent in the Great Lakes states and in the South Atlantic states; and an even divide of 47-47 in the Midwest states of North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa, Missouri, and Minnesota. Only 40 percent support abortion rights in the South Central states, the only area to be negative!

The divide on abortion on support down to opposition used to be an 18 point gap, but now it is a whopping 35 points!

Once again, it is the GOP dominated parts of the nation, particularly the South and the Great Plains, which is, despite its small population overall, attempting to dominate and make social policy for the more educated, enlightened sections of the nation!

The question is why this is allowed to be so, as the other areas of the country are so far ahead socially, economically, educationally, and are in the 21st century, while in many ways, the GOP dominated states are living in the 19th century!