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September 29, 2008
Rebirth of the Hoover Republicans
So, is the House Republican opposition to the bailout package a resurgence of Hoover Republicans, the Great Depression era ideologues whose anti-government policies no doubt led to the economic chaos of the 1930s—and whose hostility to The New Deal posed the most serious political threat to economic recovery of Roosevelt’s first term?
Yes, and the connection is a bit too close for comfort.
As FDR ramped up his New Deal reforms in 1934 a group of radical, laissez-faire writers, politicians, and business leaders formed the American Liberty League. For a short time it became the intellectual brain trust of the Republican opposition in congress. As summarized by a sympathetic historian, David Pietrusza (cribbing from “liberal” historian George Wolfskill), the league advanced,
a remarkably coherent libertarian position. They believed, he said, that the New Deal was a threat to the Constitution and represented a danger of tyranny via centralization; that it was based on coercion, deceit, and false economic principles: that recovery was in fact retarded by government intervention; that government agricultural controls were “a cure worse than the disease”; that the New Deal combined aspects of socialist and fascist economic systems; that private enterprise was being damaged; that deficit financing and high spending threatened the nation with inflation; and that the banking community was now under the political control of the federal government.Statements by American Liberty League spokesmen were of a solid anti-statist cast. Howard Pew lashed into planned economies, charging that they lead to “lower living standards, national decay and the sacrifice of liberty... whether the dictator is a usurper by force or is elected under the forms of popular government.” Journalist Neil Carothers charged: “The materials for a disastrous inflation have been built up, and no one knows when these inflammable materials will be set ablaze. Our currency measures have disorganized foreign trade, cruelly embarrassed the gold standard countries of Europe, deepened the misery of China, and retarded recovery the world over.”
In their view, Roosevelt was a democratically elected dictator—an authoritarian whose “socialist” policies would ultimately destroy American capitalism. Of course, as most historians agree, the New Deal actually propped up American capitalism (a point once made disparagingly by numerous New Left historians of the 1960 such as Howard Zinn).
So, what ever happened to the American Liberty League? Though they disbanded after a short life, they still became the intellectual grandfather of and prototype for the business sponsored conservative think tank, the most notable current example of which is The American Enterprise Institute. The brain stust of the class of Reagan Republicans who today brought the world economy close to the brink of collapse.
Posted by stevemack at September 29, 2008 06:06 PM
