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Einzige wrote:
EDIT: Of course, I forgot that we're talking about Pat Buchanan here - the same self-proclaimed "conservative" who sees nothing wrong at all with protectionism, and thinks the government perfectly within its limitations in jailing homosexuals.

General Mung Beans wrote:

Einzige wrote:
EDIT: Of course, I forgot that we're talking about Pat Buchanan here - the same self-proclaimed "conservative" who sees nothing wrong at all with protectionism, and thinks the government perfectly within its limitations in jailing homosexuals.

He's a paleonconservative (the Pre-Cambrian Age maybe ) who unlike most conservatives support protectionism and advocate extreme social conservatism.

Also there was almost a Maoist streak in both Jefferson and Jackson in their suspiscion of commercialism, industry, and banking and their support for an agarian society.

Samuel wrote:Of course he was against atomics and mobilized the religious elements in the country so his record is mixed.

Formless wrote:Wow, Iosef, you really are not painting the Brazilian school system in a good light if you think Reagan decreased the national debt and federal spending in this country.

Einzige wrote:Yeah, no



Debt decreased between 1980 and 2000, but it wasn't Reagan who did the decreasing.

Formless wrote:I'm no economist, but so far as I know, when you talk about national debt GDP is already factored in.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

Iosef Cross wrote:I was talking about spending in proportion to GDP, not debt!

See:

Well, I changed my mind, the best US president in the last 80 years was Clinton! Bush is currently the worst, but I fear that Obama might be even worse.

But Reagan turned the tide of increasing government spending. Bush turned it up again....

General Mung Beans wrote:

The British Empire abolished slavery before the United States did and England also gradually became a democracy. I think they went through the changes during the 1830s, about the same time the US also removed alot of the barriers to voting based on property.

Yes that's true but that was only because Britain than had outside of a few Caribbean colonies no area with significant slaveholding. And the British I believe retained minimal property requirements well through the Nineteenth Century.

Yeah, I've often heard them selectively quote Jefferson (i.e., the "Blood of Patriots" line), while ironically claiming that under Hamilton we'd be living in a dictatorship; and this comes from those who are rather reasonably well educated/read. Their level of cognitive dissidence is simply astounding.

Yeah, seeing how the general trends were going in the Anglosphere during the 19th century, I can see something along the lines of the Two Georges being a normative outcome in most cases, which would be great for the British Empire/Anglosphere, but not for the Francophonie/Russian Empire/others.

Also there was almost a Maoist streak in both Jefferson and Jackson in their suspiscion of commercialism, industry, and banking and their support for an agarian society.

Well, I changed my mind, the best US president in the last 80 years was Clinton!

Reagan cut taxes but didn't decrease spending at the same time and at the same magnitude, creating deficits and increasing debt. Republican presidents generally do things like that.

Samuel wrote:

Yeah, seeing how the general trends were going in the Anglosphere during the 19th century, I can see something along the lines of the Two Georges being a normative outcome in most cases, which would be great for the British Empire/Anglosphere, but not for the Francophonie/Russian Empire/others.

You mean a situation similar to right now where there is only one real world power? Would that be better or worse for the world?

Iosef Cross wrote:See:


Well, I changed my mind, the best US president in the last 80 years was Clinton! Bush is currently the worst, but I fear that Obama might be even worse.

But Reagan turned the tide of increasing government spending. Bush turned it up again....

Iosef Cross wrote: Actually, debt is not very important, see Ricardian equivalence. Or read this paper:
http://hussonet.free.fr/barro74.pdf

Iosef Cross wrote:What really matters is not how the government pays for it's spending, but how much it spends.

General Mung Beans wrote:I'm curious why you rate Bush Sr. so low. The First Gulf War acheived all it's goals with very few casualties, and he was willing to do unpopular things to keep the economy afloat.

TC Pilot wrote:I would say Teddy Roosevelt hardly fits into a "mean of mediocrity." No real "colossal fuckups" really spring to mind either.

Give a sissy a gun and he will kill everything in sight. TR's slaughter of the animals in the Badlands outdoes in spades the butcheries of that sissy of a later era, Ernest Hemingway. Elks, grizzly bears, blacktail bucks are killed joyously while a bear cub is shot, TR reports proudly, "clean through . . . from end to end" (the Teddy bear was yet to be invented). "By Godfrey, but this is fun!" TR was still very much the prig, at least in speech: "He immortalized himself along the Little Missouri by calling to one of his cowboys, 'Hasten forward quickly here!'" Years later he wrote: "There were all kinds of things of which I was afraid at first, ranging from grizzly bears to 'mean' horses and gunfighters; but by acting as if I was not afraid I gradually ceased to be afraid."

There is something strangely infantile in this obsession with dice-loaded physical courage when the only courage that matters in political or even "real" life is moral. Although TR was often reckless and always domineering in politics, he never showed much real courage, and despite some trust-busting, he never took on the great ring of corruption that ruled and rules in this republic. But then, he was born a part of it. At best, he was just a dude with the reform play. Fortunately, foreign affairs would bring him glory. As Lincoln was the Bismarck of the American states, Theodore Roosevelt was the Kaiser Wilhelm II, a more fortunate and intelligent figure than the Kaiser but every bit as bellicose and conceited. Edith Wharton described with what pride TR showed her a photograph of himself and the Kaiser with the Kaiser's inscription: "President Roosevelt shows the Emperor of Germany how to command an attack."


I once asked Alice Longworth just why her father was such a war-lover. She denied that he was. I quoted her father's dictum: "No triumph of peace is quite as great as the supreme triumph of war." A sentiment to be echoed by yet another sissy in the next generation: "Meglio un giorno da leone che cento anni da pecora." "Oh, well," she said, "that's the way they all sounded in those days." But they did not all sound that way. Certainly Theodore, Senior, would have been appalled, and I doubt if Eleanor really approved of Uncle Teddy's war-mongering.

As president, TR spoke loudly and carried a fair-sized stick. When Colombia wouldn't give him the land that he needed for a canal, he helped invent Panama out of a piece of Colombia; and got his canal. He also installed the United States as the policeman of the Western Hemisphere. In order to establish an American hegemony in the Pacific, TR presided over the tail-end of the slaughter of more than half a million Filipinos who had been under the illusion that after the Spanish-American War they would be free to set up an independent republic under the leadership of Emilio Aguinaldo. But TR had other plans for the Philippines. Nice Mr. Taft was made the governor-general and one thousand American teachers of English were sent to the islands to teach the natives the sovereign's language.

Meanwhile, in the aftermath of the Boxer Rebellion, TR's "open-door policy" to China had its ups and downs. In 1905 the Chinese boycotted American goods because of American immigration policies, but the United States was still able to establish the sort of beachhead on the mainland of Asia that was bound to lead to what TR would have regarded as a bully fine war with Japan. Those of us who were involved in that war did not like it all that much.

I'm also frankly surprised that Harding, of all people, would somehow be a president who didn't get the treatment he deserved.

General Schatten wrote:

General Mung Beans wrote:I'm curious why you rate Bush Sr. so low. The First Gulf War acheived all it's goals with very few casualties, and he was willing to do unpopular things to keep the economy afloat.

The pardoning of the criminals convicted in the Iran-Contra Affair and his confirmation that he was a religio-conservative bigot.

Elfdart wrote:One of the first acts of Warren Harding was the pardon and release of all the political prisoners who were locked up under Wilson, the most tyrannical head of state this country ever had.

Alphawolf55 wrote:I'm wondering about the consistent placement of FDR in the top 3. I mean I'd put him under the good list but the fact that he interned Japanese Americans, Tried to stack the Courts in his favor, got rid of some counts of free speech, broke previous accounts of what was considered good ettiquete by running for 4 terms, lied to the American people about his health should take alot of points off, or are people just putting him up there because of the New Deal?

Einzige wrote:

Debt decreased between 1980 and 2000, but it wasn't Reagan who did the decreasing.

Alphawolf55 wrote:That 200+ billion surplus is an act of accounting fraud btw.