What did Huey Long do that was so bad?

[Classical_Liberal]

other than raise taxes on the rich and corrupt like W?

I ask this because I assume we have alot of Louisianians here tonight. I find him rather fasinating. He had political views that are positively illegal in the South today if you listen to people like Zell Miller and the the DLC.

[solinvictus]

1. Huey Long

Like George Wallace, he became too popular, was a Southerner, and a third party candidate outside the mainstream, so he had to be silenced.

[Classical_Liberal]

2. Interesting quote about Long.

http://www.moshplant.com/prob/prob01/long.html

He approved the right of labor to organize, and he condemned the use of injunctions in labor disputes, corporate influence on government, and concentrated wealth (the "bloated plutocracy" of two per cent owned sixty-five per cent of the wealth).... He had said what he stood for--an increased role for the state government in the economy--and if he decided to denounce in his own style the things he had said he was against, blood might indeed appear on the moon.

[0007]

3. I remember Huey Long very well....

to say more would fill volumns of pages and much time, I think google could help you more than I for mere conversation.

[Classical_Liberal]

5. actually google has very little about him

and what there is has no specifics.

[Maddy McCall]

4. He ran the state like a dictator...

He totally controlled LSU as if it were his college. He was utterly corrupt--he talked populist talk, while he built a mansion with taxpayers' money and lived like a king.

He was a dictator who used violent threats to intimidate his employees and state workers--and this is only the tip of the iceberg.

He was a demagogue the likes of Teddy Bilbo and James K. Vardaman. REally, there are some great texts out there on this subject--recent historical works that you should read before you start promoting him as the model Democrats should follow.

I'm no a Louisianian but am a Mississippian who had to study him as part of my grad work at USM, in Mississippi, and I came to the conclusion, after reading a wide array of articles and books and after watching films on him, that we don't need another Huey P. Long.

[Classical_Liberal]

7. can you give an specific incidences

I understand he more or less remodeled LSU and sent alot more students to it, like increased the enrollment by 90%. Give examples of his death threats please. All governer live in mansions at tax payer expense. How is Long any different? Were the preceding governers of Lousinana less corrupt? Any specifics about that? On the net, I only found criticism from Hodding Carter, who described poor people in Lousianna as slack jawed neaderthals and who appears to have been a segregationist and white supremicist at the time. In other words Hodding was a son of the southern aristocracy, and Huey was viewed as not knowing his place.

[Maddy McCall]

8. Look, I don't have the books here now, seeing as how I checked them

out from the library. I am telling you what I recall.

If you need information with citations, then why are you asking DUers for their opinions?

Go to the library and check out some books.

[Classical_Liberal]

9. My Library just had Sinclair Lewis's fictionalized account

based on Long called "It can't happen here". A play based on Long but not a historical account, called "All the Kings Men" and it had a Ken Burns video which didn't specify either and seemed unfinished.

[Maddy McCall]

11. Here is a partial list of the articles, books, and reviews I read about

him.

Do you have a college or university nearby where you can go check these journals out?

The reviews are of books I read about Long, and the reviews are just as insightful as the books.

Articles, books, and reviews you may want to read:

The Kingfish and His Realm: The Life and Times of Huey P. Long., Review author: Robert E. Snyder in The Journal of Southern History © 1993

Huey Pierce Long and Historical Speculation (in Huey P. Long Remembered) Edward F. Haas in The History Teacher, Vol. 27, No. 2. (Feb., 1994), pp. 125-131.

Huey Long and the Historians, by Glen Jeansonne in The History Teacher © 1994

Huey at 100: Centennial Essays on Huey P. Long., Review author: Robert E. Snyder in The Journal of Southern History © 1997

A 'Dog in the Nighttime' Problem: American Fascism in the 1930s, by Peter H. Amann in The History Teacher © 1986

Louisiana, Yesterday and Today: A Historical Guide to the State., Review author: Dorothy H. Brown
in The Journal of American History © 1997

The Louisiana Governors: From Iberville to Edwards., Review author: Homer E. Socolofsky in The Journal of American History © 1992

The Party of Fear: From Nativist Movements to the New Right in American History., Review author: Glen Jeansonne in The Journal of Southern History © 1989

The History of Haters, Review author: Robert Booth Fowler in Reviews in American History © 1989

The Oratory of Southern Demagogues., Review author: Robert G. Gunderson in The Journal of Southern History © 1982

[Classical_Liberal]

12. Well thanks

I'll have to look at Amazon, because the university library is more pathetic and less well funded than the public ones.

[Maddy McCall]

13. Happy hunting...

Present historians are of the consensus that he was a dictator who led a fascist state. These articles are diverse, though, and you can read a wide spectrum of opinions on him.

After reading about 30 articles and 5 books on him, I came to the dicator/fascist conclusion.

You may come to a different conclusion, though :-)

[kodi]

6. he was successful. one can not have that in politics

success in political goals leads one to expect it on a regular basis, political structures are not really meant to work on a regular basis. they are meant to dampen the public will and act a like dam with water, letting out a little at a time. too many accomplishments in politics releases a flood of expectations which disrupt business as usual.

huey was able to do a lot and people began to expect it. and we can't have that.

[barbaraann]

10. Here's some info

Long did more than just talk about the things he campaigned for. When he won the gubernatorial election on second try in 1928, he embarked upon a series of changes that went beyond reform to outright rebellion against the ruling class. He raised severance taxes on natural resource industries to pay for schoolbooks for every child, regardless of whether they went to public or private school. During his term as governor, the state built over 2,300 miles of paved roads, 111 bridges, and in 1931 employed ten percent of the men involved in road-building nationally. He moved to abolish the practices of strait-jacketing and chaining and to introduce dental care at mental institutions (at one, he claimed, dentists extracted seventeen hundred diseased teeth from inmates). Long's appointee as head of Angola, still considered one of the toughest prisons in the country, instituted the state's first prisoner-rehabilitation program. Long implemented an adult literacy program in Louisiana that largely served African-Americans, despite the racism of the overwhelming white majority. The list is extensive and surprisingly progressive for the time, the place, and most particularly the man he has been portrayed as. Many of his progressive policies were unthinkable to large sectors of his electorate, but the breadth of his programs drew in people who supported him in some areas and not others.

More
http://www.moshplant.com/prob/prob01/long.html

[priller]

14. Another book:

"Huey Long", by T. Harry Williams, won the Pulitzer Prize for biography, and one of the best political history books I've ever read.

I believe jchild's opinion is a bit too harsh. Yes, he was dictatorial and corrupt and a demogogue, but he also did more to bring progress to LA than anyone else in its history. For all his faults, he did an enormous amount of work to help people. No, I don't think he's any kind of model for Democrats, either, but I think "fascist" is not an accurate label. He was a complex, fascinating man.

[Maddy McCall]

15. Progress is expanding the train segregation laws to buses?

I am not trying to be argumentative, but I wouldn’t recommend Williams’ book for several reasons. First, it was first published almost a half decade ago (1969) and is hardly current scholarship. Second, it does not use many primary source documents, but is based on interviews of people on their opinion of Long. Even though Williams offers a sympathetic portrayal of Long, he also concludes that Long began by grabbing power to shock the corrupt system of Louisiana politics and ended by asserting power for power’s (and his own) sake.

There are more current works that were written by more recent scholars that consider Williams’ and other authors’ books in their syntheses of Long’s career. I would recommend a more objective historical work my a more recent historian; perhaps The Kingfish and His Realm: The Life and Times of Huey P. Long by William Ivy Hair, published, I think, in 1993.

[Classical_Liberal]

16. Here is the thing I don't get.

If you admit the system was corrupt to begin with, why is Long considered worse that what came before?

[Maddy McCall]

17. The system is still corrupt...

Does that excuse Huey Long's policies? Not at all--at least not in my book.

He not only perpetuated corruption--he expanded it. He dictated to all people involved in state and local politics what they were to do. Through his established network, he had people he didn't like arrested and thrown in jail. He fired people at state universities because they were critical of him. He widened Jim Crow laws in his state. I could go on and on--this is just what I can recall from my readings.

But if your argument is that since LA politics were already corrupt, he didn't do any worse, you are wrong. He intensified nepotic and despotic behaviour in state government and his tentacles reached all the way down to local councils.

I am not arguing about Long in relation to other corrupt officials. You posted an earlier thread saying that Long should be some kind of democratic model for winning over the south. I am arguing that he is not a good model. There are much better ones.

[Classical_Liberal]

20. Unless you assume he stole elections why not?

What is your evidence that he made it worse? If the majority now has kids in school that didn't beofore. If LSU has more members because more people can afford college? How is that worse, even if he criticized people who he probably thought were morons for criticizing him. These people apparently didn't think 90% of the state were worthy of being there? All I ask is for specifics for comparison. Why is he more corrupt and more worthy of imfamy that what came before?

[Maddy McCall]

21. My evidence is in the articles and books I have read written by

scholars who have looked at a diverse array of primary documents to come to the conclusions they have formed.

I have supplied quite a few specifics as I can remember. Now it is up to YOU to do a little reading so that you can ask INFORMED QUESTIONS or have INFORMED OPINIONS.

Going to bed--goodnight.

[Hippo_Tron]

25. I don't know if he stole elections...

But he did rig them so he could gets his friends into office.

[dae]

18. Until very recently, Longs were the Kennedys of Louisiana.

You either loved them or hated them. My father and grandfather were Long supporters because they did stand up for the poor.
He was many of the things jchild says but so were most of the politicians of the time. They stole from the poor and gave to the rich. He stole from the rich and gave some to the poor and kept a little for his troubles.
He was a major reason FDR came up with his "New Deal".
One thing he wasn't for was the status quo of the time. However. his son Russell Long was at the oil trough while in office.
Huey and his brother "Uncle Earl" weren't saints but they were an improvement over what Louisiana had before.

[Maddy McCall]

19. Glad you brought up FDR. He and FDR hated each other...

he wanted to create a third party in the presidential election of 1936, I believe, to split democratic vote to allow the Repuplican to win, and said that he would let people suffer under a Republican in the depression so that they would all vote for him when he ran for president 4 years later. He hated FDR and FDR hated him.

My opinion on Long is based on scholarly readings...many people here have personal opinions based on stories of people who lived under the Long administration. Everyone has their own opinions on Long and I will add that he is a complex man.

I still believe he coopted power for power's sake, the byproduct of which was a "share the wealth" policy that ALSO padded his own wallet and made him all powerful. No one challenged long in Louisiana--to do so could be awfully detrimental to one's freedom health, and that, to me, spells dictator.

Going to bed, now. Y'all enjoy discussing this topic. Discussions of the Kingfisher are never boring :-)

[Classical_Liberal]

22. I believe that maybe the real reason he was demonized even

by the left. I am wondering if he is a Nader. I believe even if a person seriously set out to destroy the electoral college and enact instant runoff voting that many partisan dems would bitch. He was also against WWII, so those sectors who wanted into the WWII demonized people that didn't as being Nazi sympathizers, even if they were just militantly antiwar. Though I believe Huey wrong on the War, I think WWI turned alot of stomachs in this country, and those who opposed WWII shouldn't have been labeled as Hitler lovers. I would like it if dems ran like nader as well. I think many of his issues would run great with the public if we could just shirk off the corporate funders. Dean has provided the model for doing that.

[area51]

23. Huey Long

In case you're interested, PBS ran a Ken Burns special on Huey Long.

[Classical_Liberal]

24. I saw it, but thanks for the suggestion

I didn't think it provided any specifics on the complaints against Long at all.