General Douglas MacArthur's Tactical Support for FDR's New Deal

One of the most interesting facts to emerge from Mark Perry's fine new autobiography of General Douglas MacArthur (The Most Dangerous Man in America - The Making of Douglas MacArthur, Basic Books, 2014) is that the conservative Republican General propped up FDR's Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) as a way of maintaining the structure of the US Army's officer corps.

General Douglas MacArthur

As a way of putting young men to work during the depths of the great depression, FDR's New Dealers conjured up the CCC as a scheme for enlisting them to perform a variety of public work in the nation's forests and open lands.

They would be housed in camps and paid for their efforts.

The enabling legislation for this was passed by Congress in April 1933 but the roll out shortly thereafter was almost as big a bomb as Obama's registry for Obamacare.

Only 100,000 young men signed up during the first two months. (p.8)

Consequently, the New Deal liberals called on the War Department and the Army Chief of Staff, Douglas MacArthur, to straighten out the mess.

CCC workers in Florida

The left-wingers in FDR's administration had been pushing for ever deeper cuts in US military spending, even to the point of discharging members of the rather small officer corps (this at the time when Adolf Hitler was assuming power in Germany and the Japanese Imperialists were occupying China.)

MacArthur jumped at the chance to manage the CCC. Despite his philosophic contempt for FDR's socialist measures, he saw this as a chance to keep his officers employed and active, until the day that their skills would be required on the battlefield.

In less than a month, MacArthur implemented a program to supply and transport 275,000 new CCC recruits. His officer corps conducted the logistics and training for this little army of conservation workers.

MacArthur rightly viewed his officers as the "seed corn" of national defense. A seed corn, which the shortsighted New Deal leftists had been prepared to consume.(p.9)

Roosevelt's budget planners, grudgingly conceded MacArthur's success with the CCC and refrained from further cutting of the army officer corps, because such cuts would mean cutting their beloved CCC social engineering scheme.

MacArthur's young aide, Col. Dwight D. Eisenhower, was among the first to comprehend the significance of MacArthur's tactical support for the New Deal CCC and acknowledge its brilliance:

"Gen. MacA. finally won the most important phases in his fight against drastic cutting of National Defense," Eisenhower wrote in June 1933, "We will lose no officers or men (at least at this time)and this concession was won because of the great numbers we are using on the Civilian Conservation Corps work and Gen. MacA's skill and determination in the fight." (p.10)

So with war clouds emerging from the European and Asian horizons, the left-wing New Dealer's schemes to gut the American military were thwarted by the perspicacious General Douglas MacArthur.

Ironically, at the time, FDR's New Dealer's were disparaging MacArthur as a "war monger," and tried to cut the military budget at every turn.

After the December 7, 1941 Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor and Adolf Hitler's subsequent December 11th declaration of war on the USA, in solidarity with his axis ally, these same lefty New Dealers, would criticize MacArthur for a lack of military preparedness (pps. 16-19)

The Most Dangerous Man in America: Mark Perry's New Biography of General Douglas MacArthur

The recently released biography of General Douglas MacArthur by popular historian, Mark Perry (The Most Dangerous Man in America - The Making of Douglas MacArthur, 380 pps., Basic Books, 2014) is wonderfully insightful, but also troubling for two reasons.

First, in his afterword, Perry cites an "informal internet poll" that ranked MacArthur the worst American commander ever. Even Benedict Arnold came in only 2nd.

Aside from the shaky value of the cited source, it's possibly a troubling sign of the all-pervasive leftist orthodoxy that has been exerting a stranglehold on American higher education.

That the brilliant architect of the lifesaving WWII "Operation Cartwheel" in the Southwest Pacific, the liberation of the Philippines and the masterstroke Korean War, Inchon invasion, should be considered anything other than the greatest American military commander of  the second half of our nation's existence, would be laughable if it weren't so terribly dangerous.

One can only think that neo-Marxists in academia are still smarting over MacArthur's authoritative and unilateral expulsion of Stalin's subversive Red Army operatives from occupied Japan in 1946.

Second, the book is also a bit troubling for its non-germaine, obviously commercially-driven title.

"The Most Dangerous Man in America" as a description of Douglas MacArthur, was an utterance made by Franklin D. Roosevelt at an informal luncheon in 1932.

The then Democrat presidential nominee was expressing his fear that MacArthur, a celebrated World War I officer, US Army Chief of Staff and well-connected Republican might be the only American on the political landscape able to thwart his electoral ambitions.

MacArthur (L) and FDR (C) had
a love-hate working relationship

The title really has little to do with the autobiographical nature of Perry's wonderfully lucid book. One can only surmise that one of the marketing geniuses at Basic Books figured it was a catchy title that would help books fly off bookstore shelves or Amazon on-line book sites.

This account of MacArthur's life basically takes us from the 1930s prelude to World War II through the September 2, 1945 unconditional surrender of the Imperial Japanese to MacArthur aboard the USS Missouri.

It's by no means as comprehensive as William Manchester's celebrated 1978 biography, American Caesar, which takes us in great detail from the great General's birth in Milwaukee in 1880 to his 1964 death at West Point.

Consequently, it stops short of several of the signal events in MacArthur's life - his role as Supreme Commander of the occupying forces in Japan (where he, in fact, wrote the Constitution under which Japan still operates), his brilliant Inchon invasion, which saved South Korea from communism and his 1964 deathbed warning to President Lyndon Johnson to avoid a land war in Viet Nam.

But as a riveting account of the intricacies of the Army-Navy rivalries that both plagued and strengthened the US war effort in the Pacific, Perry's account is unrivalled.

And the detailed account of the ambivalent love-hate working relationship between FDR and MacArthur, most of which is derived from first hand accounts of those who were there, is unavailable anywhere else.

In today's toxic Obamaite climate, American exceptionalism is constantly under assault from the elementary school to the university post-graduate level by the thinly-veiled neo-Marxist doctrines of multiculturalism, diversity and critical race theory.

Mark Perry's "The Most Dangerous Man in America - The Making of Douglas MacArthur," is a very welcome antidote to that and a reminder of American exceptionalism as embodied in one of our greatest American heroes.

Wheaton CUSD 200 Prosecutes 8th Graders for "Obscenity" - Teachers Salaries Listed

(Ed. Note: The complete list of names and salaries for all  teachers and administrators  at all of the schools in the Wheaton CUSD 200 appears at the end of this article.)

There's something kind of fishy about the recent report that Wheaton's Community School District 200 called in the cops to arrest two 14 year old boys for "harassment by electronic communication, transmitting an obscene message and obscenity."

Neophyte Schoolmarm Rachel Fieber-Bednar

First, it's odd that a grammar school principal should call in armed government agents to arrest kids who were not engaged in violent activity.

And second, it's very odd that the government prosecutor, one State's Attorney Robert Berlin wouldn't say what it was all about, because the kids are juveniles.

It's one thing to withhold their names -- but not reveal the particulars of what they are charged with?

He would only say that they weren't taking lewd photos of themselves or other students -- so called "sexting."

The new chief Edison school marm, a former school librarian in her first year as top Edison educrat, one Rachel Bednar, sent a note to parents alleging that some of her wards had posted "inappropriate images involving students and staff" on social media sites."

Bednar then wrote that she worked "diligently, with the authorities and appropriate disciplinary action was taken."

She didn't say that she worked diligently with the parents and the students themselves - just said she dropped a dime to the cops.

Could it be that neophyte Principal Fieber-Bednar didn't know how to handle the "Wheaton Facebook fiasco," herself, so she found it easier to just call in the cops and have the 8th grade kids taken off in irons to the Wheaton hoosegow?

And no one is talking. There's something very fishy about that. There's something very strange going on at CUSD 200's Edison Middle School and until the veil of secrecy is lifted, civil libertarians ought be quite concerned and quite vigilant.

Posted below are the latest available names and salaries for teachers and administrators of the 13 elementary schools, 4 middle schools and 2 high schools of Wheaton Community Unit School District 200.

They were obtained via a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the Family Taxpayers' Foundation.

Most of the salaries are for 9 months of work. For particulars on the individual government employee (years of employment, specialty, etc.), click on the individual's name and the data will appear:

CUSD 200 2012 - Download data
NAME	SALARY
Aagaard, Annie	$42,300
Abdoo, Virginia	$104,482
Abshire, Phillip	$70,957
Adam, Sara	$55,843
Adams, Heather	$81,200
Adkins, Holly	$82,487
Ahrenholz, Nancy	$49,430
Alrich, Cristine	$77,857
Alvis, Katherine	$50,171
Amacher, Kathryn	$81,850
Ambrosio, Trish	$48,878
Anderson, Barbara	$60,762
Anderson, Marc	$85,028
Anderson, Peter	$75,362
Anderson, Rachel	$58,341
Anderson, Timothy	$103,070

Alderman Wants Gang Bangers To Become Bond Traders

There's never been a shortage of inane ideas emanating from Chicago's 50 aldermen, but the 17th Ward's Latasha Thomas has just put herself in the running for a Gold Medal in the Aldermanic Idiot Olympics.

Chicago Alderman Latasha Thomas

On page 10 of the 6/5 edition of the Chicago Reader, the longtime solon from the Auburn-Gresham-Englewood area, said she is worried about all the killings in her ward.

Ms. Thomas says the lack of job opportunities is what's driving young black men to become gun-wielding gang bangers.

So she has vowed to get to the root of the problem -- JOBS.

"My ward desperately needs jobs for these young people," she

So Alderman Latasha Thomas has come up with the solution.

(We are not making this up.)

She has proposed an ordinance to give more work to black firms on city bond deals. "We need to make sure we're giving experience to the next generation of professionals," she blurted.

Ald. Thomas' Future Municipal Bond Traders

Even the Reader's usually forgiving, lefty correspondent, Mike Dumke, was incredulous.

"Is the kid on the corner in Englewood going to get in on the next bond sale, even if your measure passes?" he queried.

"It's something," Thomas said.

We can just hear it now. Gangbanger buddies Jamal and Tyrone walking down an Englewood street discussing the latest city bond offering.

JAMAL: "Did you hear those motherf----ers at Moody's downgraded those new short term offerings to P-3?"

TYRONE: "Aight, deys comin' at us crooked so we goan down there wid oah bangas and check them Moody mofos."

That's right, Alderman Latasha Thompson,

It's something.