Edit: I should correct myself. It wasn’t Woodrow Wilson, but Ambassador Wilson. My point still stands.
As an American, educated in the American public school system, it’s been nauseating finding out how utterly villainous the US has always been, at home but especially abroad. I am in my mid 30s and began learning, strictly on my own, about foreign fuckery for about 20 years. I thought I could no longer be disgusted, but am constantly pissed at each new event I hear/read about.
Edit to add: out of sheer curiosity, do you think we’ll ever find out even 25% if the shit America was responsible for in other countries, other than what is already known? There’s absolutely AT LEAST a dozen monstrous, huge, horrendous, covert and unknown atrocities happening as I type this.
First of all, I consider myself a liberal and an internationalist.
Something I've noticed when I joined this subreddit is that most of the tier lists posted here show Wilson as being F Tier, and some rare D Tier placements. Most of the sentiments from people who comment here seems to be that Woodrow Wilson is one of our worst presidents. I very much disagree with this. Woodrow Wilson has done a large amount of positive things that at the very least, make up for whatever bad things he's done. Now, I don't consider Woodrow Wilson a good president. He did some very bad things, but in this post, I acknowledge these, but I also intend to put these bad things in context, and explain some of the good aspects of these dismal policies that often gets overlooked. I also intend to show the massive amount of positive things that came from his presidency, and why I think these vastly outweigh the bad things. I will start with laying out the bad parts of Wilson's administration.
Civil Rights and Race Relations:
This is where Wilson gets especially low marks, and rightfully so. As most of you probably know, Woodrow Wilson actively segregated the Federal Government, more so than any post Civil War president. He even segregated parts that had never been segregated before. I will not be defending this.
Wilson ignored race riots in 1919, which will also not be defended.
Woodrow Wilson also played the racist movie, The Birth of a Nation in the White House, which was the first movie aired in the White House. It's important to mention that it's disputed whether or not Wilson endorsed the movie. He is quoted to have said on the movie: "It is like writing history with lightning, and my only regret is that it is all so terribly true". Wilson, however, denied the quote, and said he never showed approbation of it(need a jstor account to see link). Whether or not Wilson endorsed the movie, Wilson didn't wave his magic wand, and revive the Ku Klux Klan like many people here like to think. Really, his only role in the Klan's revival was a likely inaccurate claim of endorsement of the film that led to their revival. Either way, I would concede that Wilson screening the film in the White House, and his history of being an apologist of the Ku Klux Klan as a historian was very harmful.
There are also some positive parts of the W
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"I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men."
Comparing the policies of the two presidents who got America involved in world wars, both Wilson and FDR initially made assurances that American would stay out, but both eventually did join. But FDR was always in favor of joining the Allies in WWII, with things like lend-lease and cash and carry making him an Allied nation in all but name, he just couldn't do so without the political justification of Pearl Harbor.
But to what extent was Wilson actually against joining WWI, and how much was political grandstanding to garner support from anti-intervention Americans? Wilson campaigned in 1916 on an anti-war platform, and yet a year later America declared war. I'm hazy on the details, but people often talk about the financial relationship between American banks and business with the war before America's involvement, and Lusitania was carrying weapons to the UK.
So was Wilson truly opposed to joining the war and only did so reluctantly, or did he, like FDR, hide his true feelings behind anti-war rhetoric in order to garner support, and wanted to join the war all along?
Some of his accomplishments as president
- Pressured the Senate to pass woman suffrage
- Opposed Child Labor
- Supported an 8 hour work day for railroad workers, which ended a major strike
- Expanded Anti-Trust legislation
- Supported the Federal Reserve
- Helped Create the League of Nations
- Helped give the Philippines gradually independence
- Created an Income Tax
