In 1955, John T. Flynn saw what few others journalist did: the welfare-warfare state conspired to bring down American liberty. The New Deal combined with World War Two had fastened leviathan control over a country born in liberty.
This early analysis of the causes of the Great Depression and the failure of the New Deal also notes a point later demonstrated in detail by Robert Higgs: the economic boom of WW2 was false in every way, an artifice created by misleading government data and inflationary finance.
Here we see the best of some of the last writings of the inter-war “Old Right,” a man whose opinions were deemed too libertarian for the likes of National Review.
![Decline of the American Republic by John T. Flynn](https://cdn.mises.org/styles/responsive_6_9_650w/s3/static-page/img/Decline%20of%20the%20American%20Republic_Flynn_20140430_bookstore.jpg.webp?itok=btR_skF2 650w,https://cdn.mises.org/styles/responsive_6_9_870w/s3/static-page/img/Decline%20of%20the%20American%20Republic_Flynn_20140430_bookstore.jpg.webp?itok=-hTm2FX5 870w,https://cdn.mises.org/styles/responsive_6_9_1090w/s3/static-page/img/Decline%20of%20the%20American%20Republic_Flynn_20140430_bookstore.jpg.webp?itok=EcUFvMrL 1090w,https://cdn.mises.org/styles/responsive_6_9_1310w/s3/static-page/img/Decline%20of%20the%20American%20Republic_Flynn_20140430_bookstore.jpg.webp?itok=mRlCoVjS 1310w,https://cdn.mises.org/styles/responsive_6_9_1530w/s3/static-page/img/Decline%20of%20the%20American%20Republic_Flynn_20140430_bookstore.jpg.webp?itok=gNz1LPMe 1530w)
![John T. Flynn](https://cdn.mises.org/styles/responsive_6_9_650w/s3/static-page/img/Flynn.jpg.webp?itok=gCrHHKiK 650w,https://cdn.mises.org/styles/responsive_6_9_870w/s3/static-page/img/Flynn.jpg.webp?itok=Fc5eExWJ 870w,https://cdn.mises.org/styles/responsive_6_9_1090w/s3/static-page/img/Flynn.jpg.webp?itok=2h_AeA3j 1090w,https://cdn.mises.org/styles/responsive_6_9_1310w/s3/static-page/img/Flynn.jpg.webp?itok=GGvsgJrz 1310w,https://cdn.mises.org/styles/responsive_6_9_1530w/s3/static-page/img/Flynn.jpg.webp?itok=IYSLzx66 1530w)
John T. Flynn was a journalist, author, and master polemicist of the Old Right. He started out as a liberal columnist for that flagship of American liberalism, the New Republic, and wound up on the Right, denouncing “creeping socialism.” What is unusual about Flynn is that instead of being seduced by the New Deal and the Popular Front into supporting the war, Flynn was led by his thoroughgoing antiwar stance to challenge the developing state worship of modern liberalism. Flynn’s essential insight — that the threat to America is not to be found in any foreign capitol, but in Washington, D.C.