Downhill from the Great Depression

Following in the subject of which I posted yesterday, that FDR wasn't the economic savior that dominant history says he was, Ben Shapiro writes today on "The big lie about the Great Depression."

He references Amity Shlaes new book "The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression":

This, as Shlaes convincingly shows, is hogwash. The Depression lasted nearly a decade longer than it should have, due almost entirely to governmental meddling under both Herbert Hoover and FDR. High tariffs and government-sponsored deflation followed by enormous taxation and unthinkable government expenditures turned a stock market stumble into a decade-long nightmare. Only the devastation of World War II lifted America out of the mire, solving the drastic unemployment problem and providing a legitimate medium for FDR's pre-war wartime policies.

My folks, who came through the Depression as dirt-poor farmers, worshipped FDR as some kind of demi-god like most people, even though they believed in self-reliance in the face of adversity. That was what the intelligentsia told them they should do, and back then, average people still had faith that their leaders were basically decent people like themselves. It was hard for them to fathom that a national leader might intentionally subvert the United States Constitution. They also couldn't conceive of how his give-away programs might have actually made the Depression worse.

I searched my bookshelves last night for a couple of books I've read several years ago that goes into this in more detail, but couldn't find them. My book collection has years ago overgrown my book shelves, and they are certainly somewhere buried in the bowels of this house.

But I did find a book I read just a couple of years ago by the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist called "The Supreme Court." It's a history of the Supreme Court written by Rehnquist, somewhat in biographical format covering each of the chief justices who have shaped the court.

Rehnquist points out that FDR and his Democrat cohorts in Congress were passing many laws for their New Deal (aka the Raw Deal) that were blatantly unconstitutional. In fact, the Court's ruling against FDR and the Frazier-Lemke Act was one of the decisions that led FDR to try packing the court with socialist stooges like himself that would rubber stamp his New Deal whether its provisions were constitutional or not. Having 12 years in the White House helped him to do this.

FDR and the New Deal is where Big Government truly came to life in free America. It's where socialism got its foothold in our free country. It's where America began to move away from a Constitutional government of the people to one of government authority and oligarchy. And its where America began to move away from depending on God to depending on government, from a Christian nation to a secular one.

There are many reasons--big reasons--why the Founders wrote so much about the perils and evils of government, and so little about business (and yes, there were big businesses back then, too). I won't list them here, but go back and read the writings of the Founders: you'll find that over and over again, they warned of the damage government can do when unrestrained. That is why they set up the free and limited government they did, with a system of checks and balances to help keep a leash on government. Even then, they knew that our form of government, as good as it is, depends on an informed and active citizenry, and certainly a moral citizenry, to stay healthy and in check.

Business may commit immoral acts and business may abuse its power. But government has authority over even business, making it the ultimate power in the land. And when government takes a notion to hammer you, you have no higher authority--except God through prayer--to appeal to.

That is why government above all other organizations must be restrained.