Sometimes dark clouds have a sliver lining. When Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941, there was a catastrophic loss of life; and Japan launched itself on an imperial campaign for which it is still feeling negative effects in some quarters, seventy years later.

But perhaps a couple of good things came out of the event. The first and most obvious was that the US was convinced at that point to actively enter the war on the side of the democracies, and thus drastically changed the outcome.

The second benefit was a little more obscure, but still important. The spending on armaments that took off from that date finally ended the Great Depression. It also silenced, for the time being anyway, the critics of FDR who were opposed to government spending, and hoped to cut it short as much as possible. These critics generally consisted of the affluent, the comfortable, the privileged, and the business elite, who knew larger government meant a better deal for the middle class and poor, and not so good a deal for themselves.

They were silenced because they had it pointed out, in a very stark fashion, that if a problem was considered dire enough, it could be dealt with through government effectively. People did not have to wait for the “free market” to decide their fate; they could decide it themselves. And if this could be done to fight a war, why not utilize this method to solve economic problems? Going back to depression after seeing another way was just not on. It was the start of what we consider a modern, developed economy, with a large middle class that had discretionary spending.

The decades of the ‘50s and ‘60s will be looked back on as relatively good times economically, and the root of that lay in the New Deal and later the wartime spending of the FDR administration. Government in the US transcended its role of just being a support for business, and some of the last opposition to this thwarted by, in a manner of speaking, Japanese pilots. History can be odd.

But perhaps a couple of good things came out of the event. The first and most obvious was that the US was convinced at that point to actively enter the war on the side of the democracies, and thus drastically changed the outcome.

Less "convinced", more forced, a side question, we all know that the US were actively economically and semi-militarily supporting Britian pre-war declaration but the populace wasn't wanting war, do you think that the US would have made a push for Germany without Hitler's war delaration? The pacific was very important to the Americans...

Read a few of the ~2,000 speeches here: http://www.ibiblio.org/pha/policy/index.html

You'll see that it's largely business as usual for the anti-FDR boys. SSDD

I think that Germany and the US would have eventually come into conflict, one way or another. Certainly if the Soviets had crumbled, the US would have been stuck with a major problem: a ‘40s version of a superpower, and one with quite different values and ethics. Pearl Harbor just hurried things along.

And if you mean, gawdzilla, by “business as usual” that the far right remained against FDR type reforms, and progressive legislation in general, and is if anything more vocal today, then I agree with you. The same tired arguments against social justice are still thrown around today, and sadly, there are people that believe them.

Gawdzilla wrote:Read a few of the ~2,000 speeches here: http://www.ibiblio.org/pha/policy/index.html

You'll see that it's largely business as usual for the anti-FDR boys. SSDD

Hehe. Turf war!

CJ wrote:

Gawdzilla wrote:Read a few of the ~2,000 speeches here: http://www.ibiblio.org/pha/policy/index.html

You'll see that it's largely business as usual for the anti-FDR boys. SSDD

Hehe. Turf war!

They never change their tune, they just use different buzz words. I swear Glenn Beck is the reincarnation of Gerald Nye.