Keyword: warrenharding
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The raids constituted a horrific, shameful episode in American history, one of the lowest moments for liberty since King George III quartered troops in private homes. Friday, January 3, 2020 Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons | Public Domain (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en) Lawrence W. Reed Lawrence W. Reed Politics History Woodrow Wilson First Amendment Communism World War I Police State Exactly a hundred years ago this morning—on January 3, 1920—Americans woke up to discover just how little their own government regarded the cherished Bill of Rights. During the night, some 4,000 of their fellow citizens were rounded up and jailed for what amounted, in...
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After nearly 100 years of rumors and historical speculation, DNA testing has confirmed that President Warren Harding had a child out of wedlock – his only biological child – with mistress Nan Britton. Britton first came forward publically with the claim that her daughter, Elizabeth Ann, was Harding’s daughter in a 1927 autobiography “The President’s Daughter.” In her account, Britton detailed a steamy six-year-long affair with the 29th president, including one encounter in a White House closet, before his untimely death in 1923. At the time of its publishing, the book was met with public ridicule and widely discounted as...
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To combat the Great Recession and its long-lingering aftermath, leading central banks have pulled some $10 trillion out of thin air. Governments of the world’s principal economies have rung up almost $20 trillion in deficit spending. We often hear that the authorities have done too little. Perhaps they have done too much. Not so long ago, the authorities did hardly anything. In response to the severe, little-known economic slump of the early 1920s, they virtually sat on their hands. It is an often forgotten episode that suggests the potential for constructive federal inaction—and underscores the healing power of Adam Smith...
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Ninety years ago today, on August 2, 1923, President Warren G. Harding died at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco, California. It was sudden, shocking, and has been fodder for conspiracy theorists ever since. His wife, Florence—described derisively by some as “The Duchess”—didn’t allow an autopsy, so we’ll never know exactly what caused the demise of the 29th President of the United States. It might have been congestive heart failure, or food poisoning, or even something more sinister. Seen in retrospect, through the prism of the scandals associated with his White House tenure, Harding is usually ranked well toward the...
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There is one problem with the entirely justified if self-interested media squawking about the Justice Department snooping into the phone records of multiple Associated Press reporters and Fox News's James Rosen. The problem is that what the AP reporters and Rosen did arguably violates the letter of the law. The search warrant in the Rosen case cites Section 793(d) of Title 18 of the U.S. Code. Section 793(d) says that a person lawfully in possession of information that the government has classified as secret who turns it over to someone not lawfully entitled to posses it has committed a crime....
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The Panic of 1920 started out as a contender for the greatest depression of all time, with a drop in prices and production during its first twelve months that dwarfed those of any other economic crash, and she piled on an unemployment rate that skyrocketed from invisible to 12% in a flash. Ignoring calls to do something, anything, to "help", Washington, DC simply allowed the economy to adjust wherever it chose to go. In tandem, Federal Reserve officials looked upon the rapid deflation in prices not with horror but with a declaration of its necessity. Yet, despite the lack of...
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It is a cliché that if we do not study the past we are condemned to repeat it. Almost equally certain, however, is that if there are lessons to be learned from an historical episode, the political class will draw all the wrong ones – and often deliberately so. Far from viewing the past as a potential source of wisdom and insight, political regimes have a habit of employing history as an ideological weapon, to be distorted and manipulated in the service of present-day ambitions. That’s what Winston Churchill meant when he described the history of the Soviet Union as...
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The real Woodrow Wilson, it turns out, was a far less admirable character than the cardboard hero we learned about in school. In fact, in some ways the boring Midwesterner who succeeded him looks better than him when one compares what the two actually accomplished. Harding famously said he wanted to restore “normalcy” to a nation on the verge of a breakdown at the end of the Great War and set about working to heal the wounds that divided the nation. During the war, Wilson attacked those he called “hyphenated Americans” as disloyal and set about systematically using his power...
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It is a cliché that if we do not study the past we are condemned to repeat it. Almost equally certain, however, is that if there are lessons to be learned from an historical episode, the political class will draw all the wrong ones — and often deliberately so. Far from viewing the past as a potential source of wisdom and insight, political regimes have a habit of employing history as an ideological weapon, to be distorted and manipulated in the service of present-day ambitions. That’s what Winston Churchill meant when he described the history of the Soviet Union as...
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Never heard of it? That's not surprising - it didn't last long. The 20's were roaring, not greatly depressing. Yet virtually none of the American population knows that the nation's economy actually took a worse hit in 1920 than it did at any point during the Great Depression. Federal spending was cut from $6.3 billion in 1920 to $5 billion in 1921 and $3.2 billion in 1922. Federal taxes fell from $6.6 billion in 1920 to $5.5 billion in 1921 and $4 billion in 1922. Harding's policies started a trend. The low point for federal taxes was reached in 1924;...
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