Posted on 05/20/2007 6:35:20 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
To use a term forbidden in modernity, I judge everyone based on what they do, and say.
“I know we are trying to divide ourselves from big government conservatives - I would just call them interventionists (coined by Von Mises).”
I think the term “big government conservative” is an oxymoron. They are liberals, but I’ll accept the term “interventionist” as more descriptive. Rand call interventionists “looters.” I won’t go quite that far. I’m sure some of them think they are restricting our freedom for our own good.
You don't mention that FDR, who you seem to like, failed miserably to get the U.S. out of the depression. The suffering continued on his watch for seven years! Of course, I am, like Ron Paul, an old fossil who still believes in limited government and free markets so don't mind us.
Also the NRA was not struck down because of "corruption" but because a unanimous Court (including liberals like Brandeis) found it to be an unconstitutional delegation of power to the executive branch. Again, please excuse the benighted "horse and buggy" Paulites who like a decision that limited the power of the budding imperial presidency (a concept much in fashion in this "modern" age).
I, too, am judgmental. And I judge a person by both what he says and does.
Not necessarily.
The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act and the spirit of protectionism that led up to its final signature by Herbert Hoover, caused the Great Depression to create even more damage and spread world wide. Many economist historians say that Smoot-Hawley caused the Depression. You may know that this act was pioneered by Utah Senator Reed Smoot and Oregon Congressman Willis C. Hawley, both Republicans.
CONCLUSION
So it was that a revolution took place within the form. Like the hagfish, the New Deal entered the old form and devoured its meaning from within. The revolutionaries were inside; the defenders were outside. A government that had been supported by the people and so controlled by the people became one that supported the people and so controlled them.
Much of it is irreversible. That is true because habits of dependence are much easier to form than to break. Once the government, on ground of public policy, has assumed the responsibility to provide people with buying power when they are in want of it, or when they are unable to provide themselves with enough of it, according to a minimum proclaimed by government, it will never be the same again.
All of this is said by one who believes that people have an absolute right to any form of government they like, even to an American Welfare state, with status in place of freedom, if that is what they want. The first of all objections to the New Deal is neither political nor economic. It is moral.
Revolution by scientific technic is above morality. It makes no distinction between means that are legal and means that are illegal. There was a legal and honest way to bring about a revolution, even to tear up the Constitution, abolish it, or write a new one in its place. Its own words and promises meant as little to the New Deal as its oath to support the Constitution. In a letter to a member of the House Ways and Means Committee, urging a new law he wanted, the President said: "I hope your committee will not permit doubt as to Constitutionality, however reasonable, to block the suggested legislation." Its cruel and cynical suspicion of any motive but its own was a reflection of something it knew about itself. Its voice was the voice of righteousness; its methods therefore were more dishonest than the simple ways of corruption.
"When we see a lot of framed timbers, different portions of which we know have been gotten out at different times and places, and by different workmen... and when we see those timbers joined together, and see that they exactly make the frame of a house or a mill, allthe tenons and mortises exactly fitting, and all the lengths and proportions of the different pieces exactly adapted to their respective places, and not a piece too many or too few... in such a case we find, it impossible not to believe that... all understood one another from the beginning, and all worked upon a common plan or draft, drawn up before the first blow was struck." —Abraham Lincoln, deducing from objective evidence the blueprint of a political plot to save the institution of slavery.
Ron Paul is a hero. Defines courage, common sense and principle in a country that sorely needs each of these.
I was listening to Air America last night on the drive home. (yes I will tune them in sometimes when I need a good laugh)
The subject was Ron Paul. The anti-war Lefties love the guy. I swear callers and the shows host seemed more on-fire for him than they are when the subject is Hillary or Obama. If he were to change parties and put a “D” after his name he would be their hero, their voice, the new Howard Dean.
Ron Paul’s followers are the Jonestown of politics. And you’ll see things their way...or else.
The true lessons of FDR’s New Deal are given a good examination. I have always thought FDR’s advance of government control over the people was a dangerous chapter in our history. What it shows is how easily government will co-opt our freedoms when it finds a weakness of the people. This is a good message for the Libertarians as well as the Left in our country.
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