re: #161 HappyWarrior

The thing I have to honestly ask of people who think the Dems have moved too far to the right on economics is what about when the New Deal was proposed and that the only way it could get passed Congress is FDR allowed Southern states to make it so only whites could benefit from the programs? What about FDR’s honest to God cowardice on lynching prohibition and his signing of the EO that interned the Japanese?

And let’s talk for a moment about FDR and refugees.

There was a 1924 law that established immigration quotas by country-of-origin. Starting in 1934, the number of German Jews trying to get into the US was way, way more than the quotas (28,000/year for Germany and Austria combined) and FDR was not the least bit sympathetic. The law, the law. Illegal immigration. They’ll take our jobs. OMG how do we know they’re not terrorists, Nazi agents, etc.

Then of course the ship St Louis. Desperate people fleeing for their lives, sent back, more than half of them died in the Holocaust. Sending that ship back, refusing them entry, was used by Hitler as a propaganda victory — “see, nobody else wants them either. We’d have let them go, but since we have nowhere to send them we have to kill them.”