Don’t forget The Forgotten Man
Note the following, from a 2007 (that is: pre-Obama, pre-financial meltdown) review of The Forgotten Man, the Amity Shlaes book on the Great Depression:
As Shlaes emphasizes, the New Dealers tended to see business as an institution to be squeezed rather than as a source of investment, invention, and growth. Their moves against private enterprise, and their threats to regulate large sectors of the economy, created a political climate hostile to investment.
Hmmm—sound familiar?
Also this:
Having seen at first hand the danger posed by federal intervention in the economy, Willkie won a large following with books, articles, and speeches challenging the anti-business premises of the New Deal and arguing that production and growth fit the needs and wishes of Americans far better than did redistribution. The idea of America, Willkie argued, was to encourage private enterprise, not to make war on it. So compelling was his case that he persuaded the Republican convention to nominate him in 1940 to run against Roosevelt on the issue of the government’s proper role in the economy…
Throughout this volume, Shlaes makes a brief not for those on the receiving end of government programs, to whom FDR constantly appealed, but rather for the Americans who received no such benefits but had to pay for them with taxes and the erosion of their freedom. Such “forgotten” men and women, as Willkie said, wanted not just benefits from government but the liberty “to take part in our great American adventure.”
History never repeats itself, but it does rhyme. Let’s just hope it diverges in 2012, when Obama— unlike FDR—is defeated.
Actually, that is discouraging. It is the best recent evidence in America that we will keep voting for people who promise to take care of us, even while they are making things worse.
Conservatives are fond of talking about the American spirit, and self-reliance, and industry, as if that were a constant throughout the two centuries of the republic. Not so. We’ve dipped several times. Fortunately, there have always been enough Americans with those qualities, even under brutally discouraging circumstances, to keep the engine going.
Do we still have that? We have a lot of such folks, but do we have enough?
I bought Amity Shlaes book on audio and listened to it on my commute. Very interesting.
I bet we all have a 1930’s twin. An American to closely match each of our age and profession that watched the same train wreck we’re watching with similar disgust.
Would be interesting to read a compilation of letters by regular conservative people from back then on the hell they went through. Blogs like this will hopefully get archived for reference when the 2060 trip down a rabbit hole occurs on cue.
I’ve read Amity Shlaes book and I thought it was most interesting.
Regarding FDR, I came away with the feeling that the person most responsible for American Democracy continuing as long as it has was Isokru Yamamoto
We may not get to 2012 given the money press, lack of business, lack of innovation, drop in education level compared to the rest of the world, and merit being antithetical to fair and equal…
It’s “Better Red than dead” all over again. But never, never, never surrender. Don’t anyone quit!
In reading the Shlaes book I was struck by the extreme animus FDR had for wealth and business and his disregard for any constitutional constraints on his behavior. On a number of occasions he targeted specific individuals and businesses. I fear Obama has much in common with FDR.
A lot of bad choices were made by a lot of people back in the 1930’s. Let’s hope things don’t rhyme too closely.
The worst thing for the country is for Obama to get reelected. For him the best thing that could happen is to face a Republican House and Senate this January 2011 to either blame or steal credit from in the run up to the election.
One thing he has not been so far is slick. And he seems too ideologically inflexible to find his own Dick Morris to help him appease the independents.
On the positive side, the larger world context is different in important ways from that of the 1930’s. Back then the world’s governments had discovered and were flexing the limits of top down centralized control ideologies. Probably what FDR gave us was the best possible in that environment when so many of the best and brightest were convinced that socialism was the future.
Now, there are probably more people worldwide reading Hayek (socialism is impossible due to the knowledge problem) than back in the 1930’s when Keynes pretty much took over and held the high ground. Also the major centers of socialist ideology have collapsed, the Cold War is over, and many of the old socialist empire colonies know very well that Keynesian/top down is a failure. Back in the 1930’s many thought it was a real option.
Today Germany is refusing to use the Keynesian stimulus. Eastern Europe has its problems, but by and large aren’t tempted to go that route either.
Japan has followed Keynesian doctrine for the last two decades and stands as a shining example of what not to do.
So the worldwide context is very different from what Americans faced back in the 1930’s, and will likely keep us from going too far along where Obama wants to take us.
Ms. Shlaes makes it very clear that FDR put the “Great” in the “Great Depression.” In 1937, as the economy sank into a state eerily similar to our current $3 trilllion-unused capital situation: “Businesses and investors did not want to buy money anymore because they did not want to use it.” My favorite quote, though, came from Treasury Secretary Morgenthau: “We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work… We have never made good on our promises.”
Timely message from President Reagan’s favorite president: Calvin Coolidge
http://www.archive.org/details/coolidge_1924
Let’s not forget that several of FDR’s senior advisors and departmental officials were communist agents–Harry Hopkins, Harry Dexter White, Lauchlin Currie, Alger Hiss, among others. Why wouldn’t FDR’s administration be hostile to business under those circumstances?
Neo said:
“History never repeats itself, but it does rhyme. Let’s just hope it diverges in 2012, when Obama– unlike FDR–is defeated.”
I think everyone is being too pessimistic. Theres a brighter side to this. The trend in U.S. society is not nearly as one-sided as it appears, and the future doesn’t look nearly so socialistic. Please read the entire following National Review article by James C. Bennett:
The Great U-Turn
Sometimes, history doesn’t just rhyme, sometime theres a full-blown U-turn, or at least enough smaller turns that lead us in a direction quite different than where we originally appeared to be headed.