26/05/2005 4:59:33 pm
"The New Deal in One Lesson." Today′s Daily Article from The Mises Institute describes the biggest step the US has ever taken towards big government and thus economic failure; the New Deal:

"Back in the Dixie of the 1930s, when a few Civil War veterans still lived (and even more who suffered through Reconstruction), most everyone was a Democrat. Notwithstanding the Wilson Administration, the party back then still stood for limited government and state′s rights, as guaranteed under the Constitution. The Republicans were the party of large federal government, northern economic interests, war, and bad manners. ...

FDR would change all that. Roosevelt was the first triangulator, the first significant politician to embrace the policies of the other party and to claim them as his own. ...

FDR embraced policies that aimed to stop prices and wages from correcting and embarked on the boldest federal intrusion of the private sector in the history of the U.S.?all justified by a crisis made worse by previous attempts to stop prices and wages from correcting. And when his policies didn′t cause the promised happy days to return again, the golden tongued-FDR could be counted on to shift the blame?to Hoover, the Republicans, greedy businessmen, flaws in the free enterprise system.

He was good at it too, but when the excuses grew tired, Roosevelt dependably grew the state."

Read the entire article - >