Guess who said the following: “We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work.” Was it Sarah Palin? Rush Limbaugh? Karl Rove?

Not even close. It was Henry Morgenthau, Secretary of the Treasury under Franklin D. Roosevelt and one of FDR’s closest advisers. He added, “after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started. . . And an enormous debt to boot!”

This is just one of the remarkable and eye-opening facts in a must-read book titled “New Deal or Raw Deal?” by Professor Burton W. Folsom, Jr., of Hillsdale College.

Ordinarily, what happened in the 1930s might be something to be left for historians to be concerned about. But the very same kinds of policies that were tried— and failed— during the 1930s are being carried out in Washington today, with the advocates of such policies often invoking FDR’s New Deal as a model.

Franklin D. Roosevelt blamed the country’s woes on the problems he inherited from his predecessor, much as Barack Obama does today. But unemployment was 20 percent in the spring of 1939, six long years after Herbert Hoover had left the White House.

Whole generations have been “educated” to believe that the Roosevelt administration is what got this country out of the Great Depression. History text books by famous scholars like Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., of Harvard and Henry Steele Commager of Columbia have enshrined FDR as a historic savior of this country, and lesser lights in the media and elsewhere have perpetuated the legend.

Although Professor Schlesinger admitted that he had little interest in economics, that did not stop him from making sweeping statements about what a great economic achievement the New Deal was.

Professors Commager and Morris of Columbia likewise declared: “The character of the Republican ascendancy of the twenties had been pervasively negative; the character of the New Deal was overwhelmingly positive.” Anyone unfamiliar with the history of that era might never suspect from such statements that the 1920s were a decade of unprecedented prosperity and the 1930s were a decade of the deepest and longest-lasting depression in American history.

It was yet another jihad plot against targets in the United States: the bombs, sent from Yemen via UPS, were powerful enough to bring down a cargo airplane. They were addressed to a synagogue in Chicago. Yemeni authorities arrested a twenty-two-year-old female computer engineering student, Hanan al-Samawi, whose telephone number appeared on one of the UPS forms, and then released her without charge after other students protested her arrest. Further investigations centered on language schools in Yemen, but as of Sunday evening there were no further arrests. That’s essentially all we know so far, but the plot in itself reveals a great deal about the nature of the jihad we’re facing.

First, the target: Rabbi Michael R. Zedek of Emanuel Congregation in Chicago said that he had been told that four bombs had been sent to synagogues in Chicago. Zedek had the impression that his Emanuel Congregation was not the jihadists’ specific target, but rather that they had meant to bomb Congregation Or Chadash, a gay-and-lesbian oriented synagogue sharing an address with Emanuel.

Rabbi Larry Edwards of Congregation Or Chadash was mystified as to how his synagogue ended up being targeted by Islamic jihadists in Yemen and, apparently, Egypt: someone there recently visited Emanuel Congregation’s website 83 times in a single day. “We’re rather puzzled,� Edwards said, “at how a little congregation like ours would get on the radar as a target for somebody. I’m hoping for more information.� Noting the numerous and suspicious website visits from Egypt, Zedek said: “I think we’re interesting, but not that interesting.�

Ah, but they are that interesting to Islamic jihadists. It is important in this connection to recall that the primary target in the November 2008 jihad attacks in Mumbai, in which jihadists murdered 173 people, the primary target was not Mumbai’s Taj Mahal Palace & Tower hotel or the Cama Hospital, where some of the attacks occurred. Rather, it was Nariman House, a small Jewish center in Mumbai. Journalist Somendra Sharma of India’s DNA (Daily News & Analysis) reported in January 2009 that “the terrorists themselves were in no doubt that Nariman House was the prime focus.� Jihad terrorist Mohammed Amir Iman Ajmal (a.k.a. Kasab), noted Sharma, “reportedly told the police they wanted to sent a message to Jews across the world by attacking the synagogue.�

The Mumbai jihad plotters spent most of their planning time making sure that the murders at Nariman House would go off without a hitch. “The Nariman House operation has to be a success,� said Ajmal. Sharma added that according to Ajmal’s statements, “as far as Nariman House was concerned, there should not be even a minimal glitch in finding it and capturing it.� Another jihadist involved in this attack explained that he had been warned by operatives of the Pakistani jihadist group Lashkar-e-Taiba (Army of the Righteous) “that Nariman House was their most secret operation and must not be compromised at any cost.�

Whether people identify with the Left or the Right, most ordinary folks in America want to achieve the same goals — they just disagree on the best way to get there. When it comes to peace, prosperity, security, equality, etc., most of us readily acknowledge the good intentions of our ideological opponents. All too often, however, we lose sight of this basic insight, and the comity of the political landscape suffers tremendously as a result. How refreshing it was, therefore, to hear a hero of the left say this: “We work together to get things done every damn day. The only place we don’t is here”—meaning Washington D.C.—”or on cable TV. But Americans don’t live here or on cable TV. Where we live, our values and principles form the foundation that sustains us while we get things done, not the barriers that prevent us from getting things done.”  That was Jon Stewart, host of the Daily Show, speaking at the “Rally to Restore Sanityâ€� that he co-hosted with fellow Comedy Central comic Stephen Colbert on Saturday.

In his own peculiar way, Stewart honestly appeared to be trying to reach beyond politics and ideology, just as Glenn Beck did a few weeks ago, in order to find common ground. Stewart being Stewart, his more serious point noted above was delivered at the end of an event that was full of satire and showmanship. The crowd at the Mall expected to be entertained and Stewart didn’t disappoint. Yet, Stewart’s more earnest message, in sharp distinction to to his usual comedic persona, was obviously the point of the exercise. In Stewart’s world, conservatives and liberals ought to dispense with all the rhetoric and political nonsense. Instead, we’d should all go out for a couple of beers, figure everything out, and tell the politicians and pundits to find something better to do.

There’s nothing wrong with Stewart’s vision, no matter how naïve it may be. Indeed, if equally applied across the political spectrum, reasoned, respectful discussion would be a marvelous thing. The problem is that his audience doesn’t see rhetoric and scare-tactics as being a problem on their side. The Left flocks to Stewart, perhaps more than anyone else, which says much about the state of leadership on the Left today. Though the “Rally to Restore Sanity� was billed as an apolitical event, and while that was likely Stewart’s intention, the comic’s audience could not help but display their true colors. The Left was out in force, using the rally as another excuse to hit back at what they call right-wing extremism. They mocked Republican candidates like Christine O’Donnell, called for the legalization of marijuana and, above all, belittled the Tea Party movement.

It’s a very odd, unfamiliar world that leftists live in. They have an obsession with dissecting the supposedly hidden meanings behind conservatives’ words, insisting that we speak precisely and carefully about any topic. Sarah Palin cannot, in their world, use the word “reloadâ€� in a speech because her unstable, dangerous followers will interpret that as a call for armed insurrection. Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar stormed off the set of The View because Bill O’Reilly didn’t qualify “Muslimâ€� with the word “extremistâ€� when he discussed 9-11. Yet, despite their insistence that conservatives use painfully precise language to avoid the slightest possibility of offense, leftists don’t hesitate to label and smear huge swathes of their fellow citizens with whom they happen to disagree — not even to achieve our common goals.

There are two ways to actually restore sanity when it comes to politics in America. One way is for everyone to recognize that the vast majority of ordinary Americans want what’s right for the nation we love and to thus have a respectful, informed discussion about the best way to achieve our common goals. The alternate view, the view that so many of Stewart’s supporters on the Mall on Saturday plainly espouse, is that the other side is morally reprehensible and has nefarious motives. This is not the message that Jon Stewart intended to deliver when he started planning the rally, but that’s the message that many of his followers took away. The problem for the Left is that if we actually had a respectful, informed discussion about the pressing issues of our day – the economy, Islamic extremists, the environment, etc. – they’d lose every time.

Unfortunately, the conversation cannot even begin because Left can’t abide a respectful, informed discussion. Instead, leftists play their most reliable trump cards: the twin specters of corporate robber barons and ignorant, bigoted backwoods America. Neither stereotype has much meaning in 2010, but that’s all they have. I suspect that Jon Stewart would really like to see sanity restored to American discourse – he did, after all, come to the defense of South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone when the cartoonists satirized Islam – but Stewart is a talented comic, not a gifted thinker. He is grasping for an ideal that has never existed in American politics and, worse for him, an ideal that the people who flock to his message cannot abide.

On October 27, the Washington Post ran an article with quotes from anonymous officials questioning the optimistic tone of General Petraeus towards the surge in Afghanistan. Major obstacles to victory undoubtedly remain, but the piece overlooks signs of progress and practically declares the surge a failure less than two months after all of the additional forces arrived.

The article, titled “U.S. Military Campaign to Topple Resilient Taliban Hasn’t Succeeded,� describes recent gains as “fleeting setbacks� for the Taliban that haven’t forced the group to the peace table. This judgment comes before the offensive into Kandahar has even been completed and far before a credible assessment can be made. It describes the military effort as falling short of forcing the Taliban to discuss a peace agreement, but that isn’t even the objective of the surge. Although the article does state that U.S. official caution that the strategy is in its beginning stages, this clarification comes on the second page and will be missed by many readers.

Measuring success by the willingness of the so-called “moderate Taliban� to embrace peace and democracy dooms the strategy to failure. Instead, any effort to reach out to the radical Islamic forces should be done with the goal of making them defect, rather than achieve their aims politically. The Afghan government and NATO forces are expanding the effort to enlist local tribes in their fight against the Taliban. No evaluation of the strategy in Afghanistan can take place until this outreach is completed.

The governor of Kandahar has just met with 350 elders in local communities under Taliban control until recently. General Petraeus has begun a new program to set up local security forces, which he calls “community watch with AK-47s,� that is being implemented in 68 districts. This closely resembles the Sons of Iraq that successfully turned that country around. U.S. forces are also moving out of large bases and into smaller outposts among the communities, as was also done in Iraq.

A report published recently in the respected publication, Asia Times, states that Qari Hussain Mehsud, a high ranking al Qaeda deputy who helped organize the murder of seven American CIA operatives last year, was killed earlier this month in a drone attack in Pakistan’s rugged tribal area. Syed Saleem Shahzad, author of the account, writes that Mehsud’s specialty in the al Qaeda organization was “training suicide bombers�, one of whom carried out a horrific suicide attack against CIA personnel at Forward Operating Base Chapman in Khost, Afghanistan, last December.

Mehsud’s messenger of death, a Jordanian doctor posing as a double agent with important information, was welcomed at the base where he detonated a suicide vest before he could be searched. The resulting loss of seven CIA operatives, including the station chief, made it “the deadliest attack� against the intelligence agency since the 1983 Beirut bombing.

“But the damage done to the CIA in this attack cannot be overestimated,� claimed one intelligence analyst. “At least one of the agency’s top analysts on al Qaeda was killed. In an intelligence war, this is the equivalent of sinking an aircraft carrier.�

Americans may also be familiar with the Pakistani terrorist’s most recent attempt to kill Americans. Mehsud was the one who recruited in Pakistan American citizen Faisal Shahzad, the Times Square bomber, and the eight members of his cell, sending them to one of his “suicide training camps� in North Waziristan. But Shahzad must not have been a good student, since he failed to set off a bomb-rigged vehicle at the famous New York venue last May, for which he received life in prison without parole.

Mehsud’s unlamented demise is the result of the CIA’s highly successful “decapitation� campaign, in which drones target high-level terrorist operatives hiding in Pakistan. Starting in 2008, an estimated 700 al Qaeda and Taliban terrorists have been killed by the drone’s Hellfire missile. Particularly painful for al Qaeda and their allies, according to military observers, is the fact that about two dozen top-level leaders, like Mehsud, and 100 mid-level ones are among the dead. The loss of mid-level cadres is apparently hurting the two terrorist organizations the most, since these are the experienced field commanders who translate their leaders’ plans into reality.