In this republican country, amid the fluctuating waves of our social life, somebody is always at the drowning-point. The tragedy is enacted with as continual a repetition as that of a popular drama on a holiday; and, nevertheless, is felt as deeply, perhaps, as when an hereditary noble sinks below his order. More deeply; since, with us, rank is the grosser substance of wealth and a splendid establishment, and has no spiritual existence after the death of these, but dies hopelessly along with them.

Is it? I have always tried to take the optimistic position that the American people are capable of waking up and reversing their moral and demographic decline, and could do so even after things have gotten much worse. But I must admit that ten years after 9/11, things are not looking good for any kind of total redemption. The engines of mass immigration have become so thoroughly locked in gear that there seems no chance of stopping it in the foreseeable future, unless some act of God or a total collapse of the economy radically changes the equation. And, looking at my fellow Heritage Americans, I see no sign of any mass change in thinking. So I am inclined to agree with those who believe that the only way to preserve traditional Western societies at this point is through some sort of physical separation and political secession on the part of the traditionalists. How this could happen, I have no idea, but I’m on the lookout for signs and clues.

On this point, though, I remain positive: the number of people who reject the prevailing liberal assumptions of our society is growing, and at some point this number will take on a critical mass and things will start to change. What degree of success might result, no one can say, but I am confident at least that the hellish monotony of constant decline will be broken up a bit.

Still, if one looks at the condition of, say, California, it seems clear that whatever we are able to salvage out of the wreckage of contemporary America will not be the same as the old America. Too much has been lost. I understand that intellectually, but in my heart, I still want California back! I want the landscape of my imagination, with Connecticut Yankees and Southern Belles and Texas ranchers and Minnesota farmers…I want it all back; I don’t accept the loss of a single square foot of land to the recent invaders – be they the “Hispanics” from south of the border, or the Indians and Muslims who seem to be starting to take over the present community in which I live. Such is the heart of this American.

Part of that landscape is the West, and though Hollywood has tried to make cowboys gay that is one part of our landscape that probably still exists in profusion, if only because the Old West is so sparsely populated in parts. Recently I’ve been listening to the old Western group The Sons of the Pioneers. I had never thought much about Western music, and hadn’t quite realized it was a genre in itself,  separate from “Country” before the two got lumped together by the music industry. And though I vaguely knew about “singing cowboys” who appeared in the movies, I didn’t quite get that the Western artists were serious musicians. Of course, Garrison Keillor (how I wish he were on our side) has always known this, and gives us a  dose of Western music on every episode of the Prairie Home Companion, albeit watered down by irony and joking.

But what a wonderful piece of music “Blue Prairie” is! There is nothing I’ve ever heard quite like it…as “blue” and soulful as any piece of blues.

I once went to a soul food diner in the Detroit area, one of those places that the locals cherish – it was renowned for its fried fish. It was staffed by some very pleasant young black women. On the wall by the counter was posted a dollar bill – the proverbial “first dollar earned,” maybe. Over the portrait of George Washington had been pasted a picture of Martin Luther King.

Another time, at a Mexican restaurant, my wife and I were taking care of the check with the cashier, and gave her the tip in cash. We told her the tip went to Pedro or whatever the waiter’s name was, and she took a pen and wrote his name on the bills themselves. 

I know regular Americans have been known to desecrate our currency too, but things like this tell you something, if you are willing to see it.

When I was in middle school we actually had, if memory serves me, Coretta Scott King come to speak once. At least, I think it was her, though it may have been another King relative. I can’t actually remember a word that was said. We kids all took for granted that King was a great man, a martyr for racial equality who helped make America a better place not only for blacks but for whites as well. And yet we never actually knew much about him or had a sense of what he was like as a man. My main impression, gathered from people like my parents, was that he was a “good” black leader, peaceful, as opposed to the “by any means necessary” Malcolm X. At some point, perhaps in the 1990s when Spike Lee’s movie came out, white America dropped their resistance to Malcolm, who since then has been much more popular among black people than MLK.

The unsavory aspects of King’s character – the plagiarism, the compulsive fornication – and the clear racial-socialistic tenor of his ideas have not prevented white Americans from going along with his elevation to the level of an American Founding Father. The particulars of his career do not matter; what matters is that in accepting him one is accepting the legitimacy of the post-1964 civil rights regime, with its aggressive transfers of power and wealth to blacks and other minorities, and its restrictions on free speech and freedom of association for whites. Nearly all Americans, “conservatives” included, do accept it.

I do not. I must admit, though, that I feel a little sad for those black people who are genuinely celebrating the opening of the MLK monument, like the members of the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity (King’s fraternity) who worked to have it built. There is no doubt that the end of Jim Crow opened up a black version of the middle-class American Dream to those who were capable of working for it, and there certainly were and are many blacks who have happily pursued this without excessive ill will toward whites. But if white society continues on its present course of degeneration, along with decreased opportunity for blacks will come increased hostility toward “Black Run America” on the part of whites. How will the MLK memorial stand the test of time? Not well, I fear.

Another reason Simms is no longer in favor is probably the ultra-refined verbosity and contrived elegance of his narrations and dialogues, which violate contemporary aesthetic norms. But this is really a matter of taste, of what you are reading for. 19th-century readers delighted in detailed description of people and scenes, in dramatic and romantic situations that took one away from ordinary life, in conversations and descriptions teeming with wit and color. These are the qualities that drew them to the writings of Walter Scott and James Fenimore Cooper.

I enjoyed the following scene from Chapter 3 of Guy Rivers. If only all robberies and ambushes were conducted like this.The scene finds the protagonist, Ralph Colleton, traveling alone in a wild area of Georgia, when he is accosted by a stranger:

The traveller himself looked forward at his own query, and soon discovered the occasion of his steed’s alarm. No occasion for alarm, either, judging by appearances; no panther, no wolf, certainly—a man only—looking innocent enough, were it not for the suspicious fact that he seemed to have put himself in waiting, and stood directly in the midst of the path that the horseman was pursuing.

Our traveller, as we have seen, was not wholly unprepared, as well to expect as to encounter hostilities. In addition to his pistols, which were well charged, and conveniently at hand, we may now add that he carried another weapon, for close quarters, concealed in his bosom. The appearance of the stranger was not, however, so decided a manifestation of hostility, as to justify his acting with any haste by the premature use of his defences. Besides, no man of sense, and such we take our traveller to be, will force a quarrel where he can make his way peacefully, like a Christian and a gentleman. Our young traveller very quietly observed as he approached the stranger—

“You scare my horse, sir. Will it please you to give us the road?”

“Give you the road?—Oh! yes! when you have paid the toll, young master!”

The manner of the man was full of insolence, and the blood, in a moment, rushed to the cheeks of the youth. He divined, by instinct, that there was some trouble in preparation for him, and his teeth were silently clenched together, and his soul nerved itself for anticipated conflict. He gazed calmly, however, though sternly, at the stranger, who appeared nothing daunted by the expression in the eyes of the traveller. His air was that of quiet indifference, bordering on contempt, as if he knew his duties, or his man, and was resolved upon the course he was appointed to pursue. When men meet thus, if they are persons of even ordinary intelligence, the instincts are quick to conceive and act, and the youth was now more assured than ever, that the contest awaited him which should try his strength. This called up all his resources, and we may infer that he possessed them in large degree, from his quiet forbearance and deliberation, even when he became fully sensible of the insolence of the person with whom he felt about to grapple.

As yet, however, judging from other appearances, there was no violence meditated by the stranger. He was simply insolent, and he was in the way. He carried no weapons—none which met the sight, at least, and there was nothing in his personal appearance calculated to occasion apprehension. His frame was small, his limbs slight, and they did not afford promise of much activity. His face wad not ill favored, though a quick, restless black eye, keen and searching, had in it a lurking malignity, like that of a snake, which impressed the spectator with suspicion at the first casual glance. His nose, long and sharp, was almost totally fleshless; the skin being drawn so tightly over the bones, as to provoke the fear that any violent effort would cause them to force their way through the frail integument. An untrimmed beard, run wild; and a pair of whiskers so huge, as to refuse all accordance with the thin diminutive cheeks which wore them; thin lips, and a sharp chin; — completed the outline of a very unprepossessing face, which a broad high forehead did not tend very much to improve or dignify.

Though the air of the stranger was insolent, and his manner rude, our young traveller was unwilling to decide unfavorably. At all events, his policy and mood equally inclined him to avoid any proceeding which should precipitate or compel violence.

“There are many good people in the world”—so he thought — “who are better than they promise; many good Christians, whose aspects would enable them to pass, in any crowd, as very tolerable and becoming ruffians. This fellow may be one of the unfortunate order of virtuous people, cursed with an unbecoming visage. We will see before we shoot.”

Thus thought our traveller, quickly, as became his situation. He determined accordingly, while foregoing none of his precautions, to see farther into the designs of the stranger, before he resorted to any desperate issues. He replied, accordingly, to the requisition of the speaker; the manner, rather than the matter of which, had proved offensive.

“Toll! You ask toll of me? By what right, sir, and for whom do you require it?”

“Look you, young fellow, I am better able to ask questions myself, than to answer those of other people. In respect to this matter of answering, my education has been wofully neglected.”

The reply betrayed some intelligence as well as insolence. Our traveller could not withhold the retort.

 “Ay, indeed! and in some other respects too, not less important, if I am to judge from your look and bearing. But you mistake your man, let me tell you. I am not the person whom you can play your pranks upon with safety, and unless you will be pleased to speak a little more respectfully, our parley will have a shorter life, and a rougher ending, than you fancy.”

 “It would scarcely be polite to contradict so promising a young gentleman as yourself,” was the response;  “but I am disposed to believe our intimacy likely to lengthen, rather than diminish. I hate to part over-soon with company that talks so well; particularly in these woods, where, unless such a chance come about as the present, the lungs of the heartiest youth in the land would not be often apt to find the echo they seek, though they cried for it at the uttermost pitch of the pipe.”

The look and the language of the speaker were alike significant, and the sinister meaning of the last sentence did not escape the notice of him to whom it was addressed. His reply was calm, however, and his mind grew more at ease, more collected, with his growing consciousness of annoyance and danger. He answered the stranger in a vein not unlike his own.

 “You are pleased to be eloquent, worthy sir—and, on any other occasion, I might not be unwilling to bestow my ear upon you; but as I have yet to find my way out of this labyrinth, for the use of which your facetiousness would have me pay a tax, I must forego that satisfaction, and leave the enjoyment for some better day.”

 “You are well bred, I see, young sir,” was the reply,  “and this forms an additional reason why I should not desire so soon to break our acquaintance. If you have mistaken your road, what do you on this?—why are you in this part of the country, which is many miles removed from any public thoroughfare?”

 “By what right do you ask the question?” was the hurried and unhesitating response.  “You are impertinent!”

 “Softly, softly, young sir. Be not rash, and let me recommend that you be more choice in the adoption of your epithets. Impertinent is an ugly word between gentlemen of our habit. Touching my right to ask this or that question of young men who lose the way, that’s neither here nor there, and is important in no way. But, I take it, I should have some right in this matter, seeing, young sir, that you are upon the turnpike and I am the gate-keeper who must take the toll.”

A sarcastic smile passed over the lips of the man as he uttered the sentence, which was as suddenly succeeded, however, by an expression of gravity, partaking of an air of the profoundest business. The traveller surveyed him for a moment before he replied, as if to ascertain in what point of view properly to understand his conduct.

 “Turnpike! this is something new. I never heard of a turnpike and a gate for toll, in a part of the world in which men, honest ones at least, are not yet commonly to be found. You think rather too lightly, my good sir, of my claim to that most vulgar commodity called common sense, if you suppose me likely to swallow this silly story.”

 “Oh, doubtless—you are a very sagacious young man, I make no question,” said the other, with a sneer—“but you’ll have to pay the turnpike for all that.”

 “You speak confidently on this point; but, if I am to pay this turnpike, at least, I may be permitted to know who is its proprietor.”

 “To be sure you may. I am always well pleased to satisfy the doubts and curiosity of young travellers who go abroad for information. I take you to be one of this class.”

 “Confine yourself, if you please, to the matter in hand—I grow weary of this chat,” said the youth with a haughty inclination, that seemed to have its effect even upon him with whom he spoke.

 “Your question is quickly answered. You have heard of the Pony Club—have you not?”

 “I must confess my utter ignorance of such an institution. I have never heard even the name before.”

 “You have not—then really it is high time to begin the work of enlightenment. You must know, then, that the Pony Club is the proprietor of everything and everybody, throughout the nation, and in and about this section. It is the king, without let or limitation of powers, for sixty miles around. Scarce a man in Georgia but pays in some sort to its support—and judge and jury alike contribute to its treasuries. Few dispute its authority, as you will have reason to discover, without suffering condign and certain punishment; and, unlike the tributaries and agents of other powers, its servitors, like myself, invested with jurisdiction over certain parts and interests, sleep not in the performance of our duties; but, day and night, obey its dictates, and perform the various, always laborious, and sometimes dangerous functions which it imposes upon us. It finds us in men, in money, in horses. It assesses the Cherokees, and they yield a tithe, and sometimes a greater proportion of their ponies, in obedience to its requisitions. Hence, indeed, the name of the club. It relieves young travellers, like yourself, of their small change—their sixpences; and when they happen to have a good patent lever, such a one as a smart young gentleman like yourself is very apt to carry about him, it is not scrupulous, but helps them of that too, merely by way of pas-time.”

And the ruffian chuckled in a half-covert manner at his own pun.

 “Truly, a well-conceived sort of sovereignty, and doubtless sufficiently well served, if I may infer from the representative before me. You must do a large business in this way, most worthy sir.”

 “Why, that we do, and your remark reminds me that I have quite as little time to lose as yourself. You now understand, young sir, the toll you have to pay, and the proprietor who claims it.”

 “Perfectly—perfectly. You will not suppose me dull again, most candid keeper of the Pony Turnpike. But have you made up your mind, in earnest, to relieve me of such trifling encumbrances as those you have just mentioned?”

 “I should be strangely neglectful of the duties of my station, not to speak of the discourtesy of such a neglect to yourself, were I to do otherwise; always supposing you burdened with such encumbrances. I put it to yourself, whether such would not be the effect of my omission.”

 “It most certainly would, most frank and candid of all the outlaws. Your punctiliousness on this point of honor entitles you, in my mind, to an elevation above and beyond all others of your profession. I admire the grace of your manner, in the commission of acts which the more tame and temperate of our kind are apt to look upon as irregular and unlovely. You, I see, have the true notion of the thing.”

The ruffian looked with some doubt upon the youth—inquiringly, as if to account in some way for the singular coolness, not to say contemptuous scornfulness, of his replies and manner. There was something, too, of a searching malignity in his glance, that seemed to recognise in his survey features which brought into activity a personal emotion in his own bosom, not at variance, indeed, with the craft he was pursuing, but fully above and utterly beyond it. Dismissing, however, the expression, he continued in the manner and tone so tacitly adopted between the parties.

 “I am heartily glad, most travelled young gentleman, that your opinion so completely coincides with my own, since it assures me I shall not be compelled, as is sometimes the case in the performance of my duties, to offer any rudeness to one seemingly so well taught as yourself. Knowing the relationship between us so fully, you can have no reasonable objection to conform quietly to all my requisitions, and yield the tollkeeper his dues.”

The concerns that led me to start the Heritage American are in no way diminished by this life event; I want more than ever to tap into the shared heritage of America and Western civilization and to help pass it on to the next generation – who will surely need it. Surely a civilization and culture are propagated, first of all, at the level of the family. In an ailing society such as our own, the family may be the only source of continuity for many individuals.

I have tried, as much as possible, to have every post bring in some voice or perspective from our past, usually drawn from literature or history, and to relate it in some way to present concerns. This is still the plan, but it has been rather difficult lately to do the heavy reading and writing needed to carry out the self-assignment as I’d like, certainly on a weekly basis. Consequently, I’m going to try from here on to go easier on myself, and write postings that may more spontaneous and less documented.

Current events continue to reach new levels of insanity, don’t they? Here’s hoping we all can stay grounded during hard times. There are better times ahead.

You have seen the scarlet trees
And the lions over seas;
You have eaten ostrich eggs,
And turned the turtle off their legs.

Such a life is very fine,
But it’s not so nice as mine:
You must often as you trod,
Have wearied NOT to be abroad.

You have curious things to eat,
I am fed on proper meat;
You must dwell upon the foam,
But I am safe and live at home.
Little Indian, Sioux or Crow,
Little frosty Eskimo,
Little Turk or Japanee,
Oh! don’t you wish that you were me?

Many of my online friends describe the American economy today as built upon fake money and empty credit, careening towards a disaster the likes of which we have never seen. I take their assessment very seriously, mainly because it seems obvious to me that we are hollowing out our productive capacities with a flood of unskilled immigrants, the transfer of much of our manufacturing to China and elsewhere, and a huge growth in government spending backed by unsound credit. Not having much to add to the theoretical discussion of such matters, though, I here think about the Great Depression more as a cultural event, without assuming a priori that certain liberal policies aimed at alleviating the situation had no reasonable justification.

I continued my reading on the Depression years with Albert Romasco’s The Politics of Recovery: Roosevelt’s New Deal (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), which forms a sort of sequel to Romasco’s book on Hoover, The Poverty of Abundance, discussed here last week. The Politics of Recovery, though, is a more difficult read, lacking the drama provided in the earlier work by Hoover’s determined, and tragic, defense of the “American Way.” Hoover’s ideals were “conservative” in the modern sense in that he understood American civilization to be founded on a system of free enterprise that rewarded productive achievement, marked by minimal governmental interference or relief policies. But his larger view was a liberal one which gave a central position to “equal opportunity,” provided by universal public education. Hoover was also liberal in seeing a strong Federal role in battling the depression, although he hoped this role would be mainly limited to helping the private sector solve the problems by itself. Far from being “inactive” in his response to the depression, Hoover fought long and hard to resist the clamor for massive federal intervention in the economy.

With Roosevelt, no clear ideology, either moral or economic, seems to have been at work. Romasco presents a bewildering array of sectors, interest groups, and experts who pressured the President and Congress to forward their various agendas; and a bewildering set of legislation debated over and passed under Roosevelt’s political leadership, the contents of which often involved contradictory economic aims. Roughly at work were two opposing approaches: “orthodox internationalism,” whose advocates called for currency stabilization, a balanced budget, and the removal of barriers to international trade (primarily with Europe), and “economic nationalism,” which called for America to get its own economy in order first, through such devices as protective tariffs and inflationary policies particularly intended to raise the prices of commodities produced by farmers – one of the groups whose displeasure FDR feared the most. One senses an America already heterogeneous, divided, and made politically unwieldy by its size.

Some of the details of the narrative are obscure to me, but Romasco’s basic conclusion is that the New Deal is best understood not as a coherent economic program, but as a political one. It was not an economic success, nor was it based on a consistent approach with predicted results that could be tested. Indeed, Romasco seems to feel that one of FDR’s biggest problems was in his acquiescence to economic nationalism, which he perhaps thinks was the less sensible position, as well as a factor in the dangerous buildup to war during the 1930s.

What the New Deal was, of course, was a massive expansion of the size and power of the federal government. And perhaps this was the true “ideology” and the main achievement of FDR. My grandparents, lifelong East coast liberals, adored him. Romasco is ambivalent about this legacy, accepting the general idea that “something needed to be done” and that such expansion was probably inevitable, but noting the destruction of personal autonomy and the negative effect of the creation of a patron-client relationship between government and the subjects of government largesse. He writes:

Under the acceptable symbol of an economic recovery program, Roosevelt concocted a splendid mélange of public gifts which were then distributed to those groups with the political leadership and the organized constituencies capable of making effective demands upon the government. The first beneficiaries of the New Deal’s cornucopia included bankers of all sorts, commercial farmers of staple crops, large businessmen, home owners, states, and cities. Others who benefited less from this first outpouring, such as industrial workers and the unemployed, or gained nothing, like the overlooked elderly and the tenant farmers, sharecroppers, and migrants, were later added to the public list of recipients in what is generally termed the Second New Deal of 1935 and thereafter. What is evident in this roll call of those who received public assistance is that it proceeded by a rough order of political preference. It exposes, therefore, Roosevelt’s priorities as well as his perception of relative political visibility. (p. 244)

Romasco certainly shows us an America going through profound changes. There was strong, principled opposition to the growth in the federal government, but there was a stronger desire for forces of authority to step in and produce concrete results, or at least to produce very concrete evidence that action was being taken. Business entities were unable to effectively organize themselves as Hoover tried to have them do, and so government stepped in to fill the vacuum. And as the government became more actively involved in providing relief for various economic woes, it seems to me that people came to see this as normal, and even to find it reassuring. Romasco writes:

[I]n the process of accepting and dealing with pressure group politics, the Roosevelt administration provided a remarkably ready access to the federal government to all who possessed the will and organization to seek assistance. This brought Washington close to the people and it familiarized the national government to its citizens as the last resort of appeal whenever all else failed. (p. 246)

I would love as much as anyone to downsize big government, but calling for “small government” or “balanced budgets” alone – which is about the most that conservatives and Tea Party activists are able to manage today – is not a sufficient response to the our problems as they stand today. The large role of government in directing many aspects of our national life has been long accepted by the majority of the American people. And why should they not accept it? Government does, after all, provide many services that most people are perfectly happy with. The public/private distinction is not always sufficient for judging the merits of an activity or institution – for example, a school. That judgment rests on more basic things, like its moral soundness or the intelligence with which it is managed.

Then again, phenomena like the Tea Party movement are not really just about balanced budgets. Looming in the background is the growing realization by a certain segment of the white population that the government no longer represents their interests. To me, this is the aspect of the system that seems unsustainable – far more important than the unsoundness of our financial system, although I suspect that the two types of unsoundness are inseparable. I hope that when the systematic failures occur, we as a people will take them as opportunities to restore moral soundness to our institutions. If this sounds like something Hoover would say, so be it….

For at least the past century, a broadly accepted ideal for American society has been equality of opportunity combined with the rewarding of individual initiative and talent. From small-government conservative to radical leftist, few people anywhere on the political spectrum would deny subscribing to some version of this platitude. This may suggest that there still exists an enduring American ideal. On the other hand, it may mean that the belief itself has come to lack substantial content, even if it does represent a distinctly American way of saying things.

President Herbert Hoover (1874-1964) was a tireless advocate of and firm believer in this ideal, and for him it had a concrete and substantive meaning. This is made very clear in Albert Romasco’s The Poverty of Abundance: Hoover, the Nation, the Depression, an older history that I have been reading. Well before Hoover’s assumption of the presidency, and for the remaining decades of his long life following his political fall, he defended his vision of the “American Way.” His world travels as a mining engineer had convinced him that America’s dramatic economic and cultural progress were the consequence of her unique social system. In one 1928 campaign speech, he described the virtues of this system as follows:

In the American system, through free and universal education, we train the runners, we strive to give to them an equal start, our government is the umpire of its fairness. The winner is he who shows the most conscientious training, the greatest ability, the strongest character. Socialism, or its violent brother, Bolshevism, would compel all the runners to end the race equally; it would hold the swiftest to the speed of the most backward. Anarchy would provide neither training nor umpire. Despotism or class government picks those who run and also those who win.

Nowadays a conservative might question the massive governmental apparatus that has been erected to secure that “free and universal” education, while a liberal might feel that Hoover was too rash in his blanket condemnation of leftwing movements; but both would broadly agree with Hoover in their desire for some form of the American system he describes. What was different in Hoover’s time is that opposition to governmental management of or interference with business was not a matter of lip service, but a manifestation of beliefs held strongly by a majority of leaders in government and business alike.

With the onset of the Great Depression, a severe economic crisis that built up during the 1920s, exploded with the stock market crash of 1929, and persisted until World War II, Hoover’s beliefs were put to the sternest test, and America was changed forever by the creation of a governmental regime that carried out public spending and manipulation of the economy on a massive scale. Not an economist, I am unable to give a verdict on Hoover’s policies, though most economists seem to think that a much more expansionary monetary policy should have been adopted. But despite Hoover’s association with laissez-faire economics, he did believe that the federal government had an essential role to play in directing the response to the depression; and by 1932 he was approving large-scale relief measures like the establishment of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, with a budget of $1.5 billion for public works. Interestingly, he is treated more kindly in the liberal college-level survey of American history, The Unfinished Nation, by Alan Brinkley, who notes deep structural factors leading to the depression and shows Hoover in a neutral light, then by the authors of the (conventionally) conservative A Patriot’s History of the United States, Larry Schweikart and Michael Allen, who excoriate him for his “activist policies” that they believe “deepened and prolonged the business downturn.”

That historians on the American right should so denounce a man who in a sense was the last of our presidents to make a genuine stand against government expansion does suggest that there was something fundamentally liberal about his approach. And in fact a broader view of his presidency in conjunction with that of his successor, Franklin Roosevelt, suggests a real, if unintended, continuity between the two.

Hoover passionately wished to check the growth of the federal government:

The true growth of the Nation is the growth of character in its citizens. The spread of government destroys initiative and thus destroys character. Character is made in the community as well as in the individual by assuming responsibilities, not by escape from them. (2)

Yet far from being passive about the economic disaster, Hoover tackled it with vigor, not through direct wielding of governmental power, but indirectly, applying the authority and prestige of the federal government to encourage and coordinate “voluntaryism.” This meant the mobilization of existing, voluntary organizations of businesses, farmers, banks, and other economic actors to act in concert to keep up production levels, stabilize employment, and expand credit, so as to restore public confidence in the economy. Hoover also approved a number of governmental programs, forerunners of the New Deal, but generally balked at funding them on a large scale, believing in the need for a balanced budget. As these measures failed to produce the hoped-for results, Hoover’s popularity plummeted, making his electoral loss to Roosevelt a foregone conclusion. This is the outline of Romasco’s narrative.

Other things equal, I would certainly like to live in an America with a vastly downsized government, and from that perspective, Hoover’s America, whatever its problems, seems like paradise of liberty, and Hoover himself a wonder and a miracle. What would it be like to actually have politicians who fought – and sacrificed their careers – to limit their own bailiwick? However, a survey of the Depression years also leaves a strong impression of inevitability – like it or not, strong, unified action was believed to be necessary, and there was no entity besides the federal government capable of directing such action. Theoretical objections to an expanded government role can seem beside the point, and certainly did to many Americans in the 1930s.

But also, we should note that even if Hoover might today be considered well to the right of Ronald Reagan – or at least a more principled opponent of Big Government – there was an underlying logic to his political approach that was fundamentally not conservative, but liberal. This can be seen in Hoover’s use of such slogans as “equal opportunity for all,” which a true, Burkean conservative would regard with suspicion. Romasco’s description of Hoover’s political philosophy shows it to be the standard early 20^th century American Progressivism that seems to have gripped most of the society during its heyday. The spokesmen for Progressivism, like Hoover or Theodore Roosevelt, were conservative in their instincts, but their political ideals strike me – aided by the hindsight of our post-1965 disaster – as showing a kind of hubris and overconfidence that I believe has been our national weakness, encouraged by the very splendor of our successes.

An important part of Hoover’s assessment of the American character was based on the fact of her phenomenal leap ahead of the European nations as the world economic superpower. This may have been reasonable as far as it went, but it seems to have led to mistaken ways of thinking, one of which was an exaggeration of the differences between European and American civilizations, and the presumption that American success had been due to American virtue and superior ways of thinking, rather than to a more complicated mixture of historical factors.

In contemporary Europe, Hoover claimed, the dominant ideas were the ideas of old: the class struggle between capital and labor, the practice of viewing and treating labor as a commodity, and the notion that the mass of laborers was ever destined to wallow helplessly near a level of bare subsistence. There the conception of “inevitable poverty” still commanded a general adherence. Europe provided a model of pitfalls to be avoided. (Romasco, p. 12)

Another error was to focus on the economic at the expense of the spiritual and cultural. By doing this, Hoover and the many men who thought like him may have been setting the stage for large-scale governmental control over the economy: if the essence of our way of life was rapid economic progress, than the need to keep that progress in motion would eventually override fears of the corrupting influence of government power.

And this tendency was reinforced by the American “ideal and practice of equal opportunity” – a slogan that later was used to justify limitless governmental coercion and transfer of wealth. Hoover himself started his presidency declaring that America was on the verge of wiping out poverty forever: the idea was not originated by Lyndon Johnson!

None of this is to deny the soundness of much of Hoover’s approach (I speak of his understanding of American culture; not of his abilities as an economist or politician): he did not see the American Way as an “ism” unconnected to the actual people who practiced it, but as “an expression of the spirit and environment of our people.” Traditionalists and conservatives can admire him as a man who fought to preserve what he saw to be the essential qualities of his nation, but they should be unsparing questioners of the Progressive views which did so much to shape the American 20^th century and which still dominate our thought about so many matters.

Notes

1. Albert U. Romasco, The Poverty of Abundance: Hoover, the Nation, the Depression, New York: Oxford University Press, 1965, p. 11.

2. Romasco, p. 17.

3. Romasco, p. 13.