A curious thing is happening in this extraordinary election year. The liberals are beginning to adjust to Ronald Reagan. After all, they claim, he's getting more moderate, he'll have to shift to the center to win the election, and he was a moderate and "flexible" governor of California for eight years. Maybe he won't be that bad, certainly not as erratic as Carter.
Long before interventionism became a fixed policy of the government, American students went to Europe to complete their education, and immigrants introduced their exotic foods to the American table. But these were voluntary adoptions.
You must know basic economics in order to understand historic events. Human Action is the basic book. Economic laws determine the way people cooperate by exchanging property rights, by dividing their labor, and by subjectively calculating prices.
Richard Henry Lee is best known for the June 7, 1776, motion calling for the colonies' independence from Great Britain, which led to the Declaration of Independence. As a consistent advocate of liberty, he also opposed the Constitution.
Hoover's interventionist policies focused on labor markets with the goal of keeping wages and employment high. Bush's interventionist policies focused on capital markets with the goal of keeping financial markets functioning.
Historians who are ostensibly concerned about "the little guy" revere US presidents in almost exact proportion to how many people were killed by their subordinates. Beyond Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson's wars, however, is their dismal record of economic interventionism.
Prohibition and the New Deal are alike in their professed intention. Both assumed the guise of disinterested benevolence towards the body politic.
