So who is the worst president we've ever had? Is it Bush?
Is it Obama? Well sorry as I am to disappoint you,
It's neither. Obama's tendency to murder Americans without judicial process,
and Bush's disastrous choice to invade Iraq with a gang of
ignorant morons are of course horrifying. But these terrible choices wouldn't have
been possible
without the framework of the Imperial Presidency which was built
almost exactly a century ago. The worst president ever
would have to be Woodrow Wilson. -Well that hardly seems fair!
Oh yeah? Pay attention... Wilson was a university president who
was utterly convinced that if you applied the smartest people to the world's problems
you could solve those problems. As the epitome of the good progressive president he was there to
help everybody worldwide... -Just as long as they happen to be white!
Oh yeah, he was also a huge racist. Wilson's eight years as president
led to a complete reshaping of US foreign and domestic policy. Depending on your
politics, you may enjoy some of his domestic legacies,
which included the Federal Reserve, a strengthening of anti-monopoly laws,
and the income tax. Despite promising to use new tax revenue
for reform, it was quickly being used for a massive
foreign war. In nineteen fourteen (1914) European society decided to kill itself.
For four years millions of men were ground up in
a pointless apocalyptic mess. If you think there is a good guy somewhere in here
you are fooling yourself. Or perhaps you are being fooled by US or British propaganda,
a disturbing amount of which has made its way into the history books.
We were making the world safe for democracy!
Sure! By teaming up with the world's three biggest empires.
Despite being reelected in nineteen sixteen ( 1916 ) on his record of keeping us out,
Wilson declared war in April of
1917. At this point the European combatants were beginning to fall apart.
After the fall of Russia, Germany was probably going to win,
but all combatants were so exhausted that the results were unlikely to
be too one sided. Though they would definitely have been bad for Europe's
international empires. Instead Woodrow Wilson decided to go in and pick a winner.
Wilson's choice puts 1917
up there with 1776 and 1860 as momentous dates in US history.
Other presidents talked about empire,
but Wilson was the guy who committed us to long-term involvement with the
outside world.
Everything since has stemmed from Wilson's decision. People have tried
but nobody's really been able to take back Wilson's commitment. [BOOM] Wilson broke it
and we continue to buy it.
Wilson said a lot of inspiring things.
tell me what is right and I will fight for it! -But what did that actually lead to?
What did we win by giving the French and British empires an undeserved victory
in World War One?
Wilson's War was supposed to help bring about the end of empire.
Instead he was tricked into letting his allies carve up the Middle East.
We continue to see the effects of that brilliant choice in our
daily headlines. Wilson's War was supposed to be the
war to end all wars. His actions guaranteed that it would not be that.
By robbing Germany of the victory in World War One that it had earned,
Wilson created the resentful, pathological culture that brought Hitler to
power.
And by giving legitimacy to nationalism Wilson gave Hitler a platform.
Wilson's guiding light was national self-determination.
To this end he divided Eastern Europe in to countries based on single or
multiple nationalities.
The borders weren't complex enough though. The new states all included large
unrepresented minorities. One of the central goals of Wilson's League of Nations
was to protect these minorities and settle any disputes.
It was an early example of the ¨Responsibility to Protect¨.
So how'd that go? The protection of the German minorities was the excuse that
Hitler used to start World
War Two ( WWII ). That war led to the displacement or
extermination of all of Eastern Europe's minorities,
German, Jewish and otherwise. There have been a lot of
terrible presidents, but Woodrow Wilson comes in first.
As terrible legacies go, it's kind of hard to beat Adolf
Hitler and the income tax. Thanks for watching.
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