Will the voters listen? And are we prepared to go on?

A columnist on Nolanchart (Logical Premise) asks essentially this question and makes a s trong and valid case that the voters, pursuing their self-Interest will not. But his conclusion that reisistence is futile is not correct.
by rtbohan
(libertarian)
Tuesday, February 5, 2008

I agree that in spite of a tremendous and some respects successful campaign it is extremely unlikely that Ron Paul will win the Republican nomination this year.  The reason is that most American voters have lived their entire lives in a system where the government plays an ever incrasing role in the economy and in their personal lives.  The idea of leaving this perceived security to take a chance on the freedom they have never known is neither surprising nor reprehensible.

Eighty years ago President Calvin Coolidge gave a state of the union address in which he praised the prosperity Americans were then enjoying and said that he saw no reason it should not go on.  The voters of America agreed with him, and agreed with his explanation that the prosperity was the result of "The American Plan" which the Harding and Coolidge administrations had pursued.

This plan called for laissez faire economics, opposition to labor unions, a high protective tariff for American manufacturers and limited and inexpensive government.  To prevent inflation, the government "sterilized" the gold which it took in through the high tariff by not issuing currency based on it into the economy.  Employment was stable and, while the workers' wages did not rise during the twenties prices did not rise either.

The economists agreed with the President that we had reached a permanent plateau of prosperity, and hailed Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon as the greatest secretary since Aleaxander Hamilton.  Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover was regarded as an economic genius and a great humanitarian. 

The Democrats as well as the Republicans agreed with the American plan and the economic benefit it had brought.  John J. Raskob, the Democratic National Chairman, said that it was not only possible for a working man to become a millionaire under this system, he would guarantee that result for any working man who invested with him, and would match the investment as well.

Of course there were some problems with the system.  The farmers were in trouble because they had to buy goods in a protected market and sell what they produced in an open market, since they had to export their products to keep the domestic price high enough to survive.  During the twenties the McNary-Haugen Act, a rather timid agricultural subsidy, was regularly introduced and just as regurlarly rejected.

There were also critics, veterans of the Progressive movement of the first decade of the twentieth century, who argued for greater government regulation of insuarey.  There was also an actibe Socialist movement.

In the election of 1924 President Coolidge faced opposition from the Democrat John W. Davis  and from a Republican Progressive, Senator Robert M. LaFollette who ran as the candidate of his own Progressive Party and the Socialist Party.  Coolidge won with 54% of the popular vote to 28.8% for Davis.  Coolidge carried thirty-five of the forty=eight states to twelve for Davis.  LaFollette carried only his home state of Wisconsin and won 16.6 percent of the popular vote and thirteen electoral votes.

At the close of Coolidge's Presidency the Republicans nominated Herbert Hoover for President to face the mildly progressive Al Smith, the Democratic nominee.  In November, Hoover carried forty states with 58.2% of the popular vote.  Besides Smith, Hoover was running against two candidates who were making broader and more revolutionary recemmendations for changes.  Norman Thomas, the Socialist candidate won 0.7% of the vote, William Z. Foster, the Communist candidate won 0.1% of the total.  The voters were not prepared, in 1928, to vote for those who opposed the Republicans' American system and did not even want to hear what the more radical critics were saying.

Less than a year later, the stock market crashed. The fall  in stock prices led to the collapse of the investment trusts (the twenties' version of mutual funds) and several brokerage houses.  This led to the insolvency of a great many banks and a massive reduction in consumer spending, which led to unemployment  and corporate bankruptcies.  For the next three years the economy was in a fairly steady downward spiral.  In 1932, President Hoover, who had increased goernment involvement in the economy slightly in an effort to control the depression, was defeated by Franklin D. Roosevelt.

The election showed that the voters no longer had confidence in Hoover or the Republican Party, but it also showed that they had not given up on the system the Republicans had instituted.  Roosevelt campaigned against Hoover on the grounds that the budget should bebalanced and that the government was interfering in the economy too much and spending too much money.  Roosevelt was, first of all, a pragmatic politician but there is no reason to believe that he was not sincere in his campaign speeches.

Throughout the depression Hoover had said "The only thing we need is a return of confidence"  In his inaugural address Roosevelt told the nation "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."  This is simply the Hoover mantra in a more felicitous phrase.But the day of his inauguration, Roosevelt ordered every bank in the United States closed.  All of the banks were audited and a great many were never allowed to reopen. He took the step at the urging of the nation's bankers because the operations of the banks thoughout the country were so entertwined that a wave of failures would lead to the collapse of the banking system and the currency.

During his first administration, Roosevelt instituted some relief programs for the unemployed.  This was done on the grounds that the states, which had always provide the relief for the poor, did not have the money available and were prevented either by their constitutions of by poor credit ratings from providing the relief.  He also tried to shore up the agricultural sector of the economy, which had never fully shared in the prosperity of the twenties and appeared on the brink of complete disaster.  With regard to the wider economy, he provided some safeguards for business, such as the FD.I.C  and attempted to stablilize the market through the National Industrial Recovery Act.  He was re=e;ected in a landslide in 1936.

But the Supreme Court declared the N.I.R.A. unconstituional before the end of Roosevelt's first term in office, and he was not satisfied in any case with the speed or strength of the economic recovery.  During his second administration, he abandoned the attempt to improve the economy by price fixing and limitation of competition for the large corporations and turned to consumerism and government public works projects through the Civilian Consrvation Corps and the Works Progress Administration.  The economy improved during his second administration, but it took World War II to end the depression.

The massive effort to fight a total war brought the economy completely under the control of the government.  The government set price controls, rationed food and goods, controlled the price and distribution of raw materials.  Big government truly arrived during World War II, and it has never left.  Roosevelt, no longer as popular as during his first administration, was nevertheless elected to two more terms as President and died early in his fourth term.

In 1948, the Republicans were sure that they would return to power.  Harry Truman, Roosevelt's successor, had very low approval ratings in the national polls.  The Republicans had returned to control of Congress in 1946.  The Republicans entered the 1948 campaign with a massive advantage in contributions, the backing of most of the mayor newspaper, and a huge lead in the polls.

But this was not the party of Coolidge, Hoover, and the American system.  Norman Thomas, still the leader of the Socialist Party took some glee in pointing out that many of the things in the Republican platform of 1948 were taken almost word for word from the platform on whieh he had run twenty years earlier.In spite of their apparent advantages, or because the people were more upset by the actions of the Republican Congress than those of the Democratic President, the Republicans managed to lose the election of 1948.

When the Republicans did regain control of the government they did it because of the personal popularity of Dwight Eisenhower., who ran as a "Modern Republican.  While Eisenhower was personally conservative, his administration, on  the whole, was not.  He did point out that the Social Security System and its beneficiaries would be better off investing in industrial bonds rather than government bonds, but he never attempted to bring about this change.  Instead, he expanded the social security system and most other government agencies.  He did suggest privatizing the Tennessee Valley Authority, but at the first appearance of opposition he retreated.  And he initiated aid to education and started a public works program, the Inter-state highway system, which dwarfed anything that Roosevelt of Truman had dared to propose.  And at the end of his administration the people returned the Democrats to power.

Under Kennedy and Johnson, the role of the government expanded and the government reaced further into areas which, even during the most heady days of the New Deal had been regarded as off limits.  Duriing this time we went from big government to the Nanny State.  The neo-conservative administration of Nixon changed the major beneficiaries of the overgrown government but did nothing to control its growth.

When Ronald Reagan was elected President, it seemed that there was an opportunity to return to conservative principles.  The problem was that Reagan ran on the basis of doing three things:  He would cut taxes, he would increase spending for the Armed Forces and he would lower the national debt.  He achieved the first two goals, but the achievement of all three was impossible without cutting government programs, all of which had some popularity.  When opposition to cutting programs arose, Reagan, like Eisenhower before him, decided not to risk his personal popularity or political credit by fighting and the debt continued to spiral upward. Reagan and  the Republicans apparently decided that two out of three is good enough.

And so the Nanny State has gone on.  And what is the result?  The President has proposed  a three trillion dollar budget for the coming fiscal year, and the Democrats say that is not enough.  The national debt is past the stratosphere and  into outer space.  The primary entitlement programs, Medicare and Medicaid are on the verge of collapse and the doctors feel they are underpaid.  For the second time during the Bush administration a ficticious tax rebate is being proposed to give a jolt  to the economy.  The value of the dollar continues to decline.  Foreign couintries are investing in American financial corporations because they think U.S. government bonds are worthless.  The family farm, which the government spent billions of dollars trying to save is dead or dying in all regions of the country.  American workers have seen their "real wages" constantly decrease in spite of efferts to raise wages.  Our housing industry is in collapse, as is the industrial sector.

This is why the Paul campaign is important.  Logical Premise is correct. The voters do not want to hear what Ron Paul is telling them.  He does not have the support of the majority of the voters in the Republican primaries and he probably will not get the nomination.  But he is getting his message out.  He may be slighted in the media, but he is being heard by more people than heard him when he ran as a Libertarian--probably by more than have heard all of the Libertain camdidates for President in the history of the party.  This campaign is at last and at least getting the libertarian message into the public discourse, discounted theough it may be.

And most voters do not want to hear the message.  The idea of freedom sounds messy.  The necessity of making your own choices is a responsibility the voters find onerous. For most voters, the Federal Government is seen as the all-wise, all-seeing provider of all good things.  In other words, for most Americans it has replaced God as an object of worship.  No wonder they are not willing to listen to criticism of the government or any of its works.  As the politicians have discovered, the only way to criticize the government is to say "bad men" are misinterpreting the message.

But I believe the campaign this year, even if it fails in its imediate object is important.  Because I believe that the Nanny State is heading for a crash as monumental and as transforming as that of Coolidge's American system.  When it comes, the results will be as traumatic as logical premise imagines.  But it will be smashed beyond repair.  If the nation is to recover and go on, something new must be devised, and the people must at least see freedom as an option.  This campaign is important in that regard, and even more important is keeping the movement alive

I do not expect the crash to come within a year, as it did for Coolidge's system, but I expect it to come during the next administration, regardless of who wins the election.  The system is set to collapse and the current problems will continue with increasing taxes and higher debt and an increasingly totalitarian cast to the government programs. It cannot continue.

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©2008 rtbohan, all rights reserved. You must have written permission from the author in order to republish this work.
Published: Tuesday, February 5, 2008
Last modified: Wednesday, February 6, 2008

The views expressed in this article are those of rtbohan only and do not represent the views of Nolan Chart, LLC or its affiliates. rtbohan is solely responsible for the contents of this article and is not an employee or otherwise affiliated with Nolan Chart, LLC in his/her role as a columnist.

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