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As regular listeners will know, Lucretia and I have debated "the FDR question" a lot, amidst a flurry of new reconsiderations among a few thinkers and places on the right who think we should hold FDR in higher esteem. But over and over again in this running argument we keep coming back to Conrad Black's magisterial biography, Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom .
While there have been several serious right-leaning thinkers over the years who have offered favorable views of FDR, Black's is the most capacious and also the most curious. And so we thought, why not go to the source himself, and hash it out with the best. To our great delight, Lord Black accepted our invitation (though insisting we call him Conrad), and hence, this episode's wide ranging conversation, which is as much about how political life is to be understood as it as about FDR.
Though Lucretia is a yuuuuge Conrad Black fan (as am I), she isn't entirely convinced by his argument, and we're going to go mano-a-mano next week about the subject.
We also wander off into several other issues on the minds of everyone, such as whether Conrad thinks Trump should run again in 2024, and also whether he thinks American conservatives overestimate Winston Churchill.
It was a splendid conversation, worthy of the best single-malt you can lay your hands on.
Discussion (22)
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I’ve listened to the first 30 minutes and think that Black is way too easy on Roosevelt. He used the IRS to attack political foes which is despicable. https://www.hillsdale.edu/educational-outreach/free-market-forum/2006-archive/fdr-and-the-irs/
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I was going to bring up the IRS point (because Black does in his book) among many others, but there wasn't time.
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I don't understand how Conrad Black can be so even-tempered when reflecting on the US justice system that treated him so unjustly. He should be bitter and contemptuous of the entire United States federal government.
He does go so far as to suggest - in measured tones - that certain unsavory elements (my Lord Blackism, not his words), e.g., the FBI ought to be disbanded. Yet he soon overlooks that when he recommends that Trump not run for President in 2024. From where I sit, only Trump has the testicular fortitude to take such drastic and necessary steps.
Abolish the FBI, the DoJ, the IRS, the EPA - for starters. Make America Great Again!
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If I remember correctly, I read in the "The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression" that the Roosevelt administration realized sometime in the late 1930's that they would have been more successful getting money into the common people's hands simply by dropping a pallet containing one million dollars every mile across the country.
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Extremely interesting. Lord Black is a very considerate raconteur and is rarely rattled by converse positions. It’s a pleasure listening to his points of view in conversation with Steve and Lucretia.
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