As validation he compares Pearl Harbor, and Franklin Roosevelt's subsequent speech detailing the personal sacrifices individuals needed to make in time of war crisis, to our current decade's "Pearl Harbor-like calamities" and the lack of call by our leaders for similar sacrifice to deal with those calamities.
Roosevelt's speech called for Americans to rise to the challenge by exercising self denial and sacrifice in the forms of imposing higher taxes, requiring lower profits, rationing, required wage freezes, rent controls, farm price controls, a wage ceiling, discouraging personal loans, and foregoing non-essentials. Sirota says this "remains the shining example of leadership".
In point of fact, the sacrifices were not voluntary. Roosevelt was attempting to impose the sacrifices by law on the American people at the time. Additionally, the speech contained elements seeming to threaten or intimidate those who would dissent or disagree with having the sacrifices imposed on them. (Relevant excerpt from speech)
By leaving those key points out of his piece, his accusation that we are now incapable and unwilling to rise to sacrifice is disingenuous, manipulative, and intellectually dishonest. (Ironically, the current administration has attempted to slip in some of Roosevelt's forced sacrifices on us without a Pearl Harbor in our midst).
Much of the remaining context and content Roosevelt's speech (who himself was a liberal and a Democrat) would be viewed in horror by modern day liberals, likely including David Sirota himself. It included verbal attacks on war dissenters, verbal attacks on a free press, and overt acknowledgment of America as a Christian nation ... all concepts that the liberals of this decade would view as hell on earth. If Sirota in fact read the speech, then he is cherry picking choice points to make his accusations towards you and your leaders, and hijacking Roosevelt's speech.
While it likely the the required sacrifices imposed by Roosevelt on Americans during World War Two were the right thing to do, and while likely many Americans participated in the sacrifices willingly and eagerly, it is important to remember they were forced to do so by law .... and not because of a a collective, cultural, self initiative to do so.
He suggests the current era of Americans would be unwilling to step up to the sacrificial plate in the event of a "Pearl Harbor-like calamity". Would any of the readers of this blog be unwilling to do so? Very doubtful. In simple point of fact, our recent 'Pearl Harbor-like' catastrophes of 9/11 and Katrina did not require sacrifice to remedy or recover from. Is Sirota suggesting we are incapable of sacrifice to remedy a problem which does not require sacrifice? Is he therefore suggesting we sacrifice simply for practice? Would rationing your bread, or tires, or milk have helped New York or New Orleans recover faster? Of course not.
Conveniently overlooked by Sirota is that we non-sacrificers raised hundreds of milions of dollars of our own money to help the victims of those disasters ... and did so without a Presidential order.
