U.S. History

With a Republican president running sky-high debts, unleashing wars, imposing protectionist trade edicts, and risking the nation’s financial future, sometimes it feels like the 19th century all over again, specifically the year 1861 and following. The 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln sparked a secession movement in the southern states. In December, South Carolina seceded, and other Deep South states soon followed. Interstate commerce was disrupted, and many northeastern banks suspended specie payments. The atmosphere was one of grave political and economic crisis. Many feared war; many feared the unknown.

Gary Galles on Booker T. Washington: He encouraged business, industry and entrepreneurship, rather than political agitation.

Recorded at Mises University 2001.

Recorded at the Reassessing the Presidency seminar; March 2004. (30:28)

Jeffersonian States Rights Doctrine until the Civil War was grounded in three freedom documents: The Declaration of Independence, The Articles of Confederation, and The Treaty of Paris of 1783. Those documents emphasized independent states, not a single nation or union.

Certain themes that relate to the New Deal between 1933 and 1938 ended in 1938 when FDR moved on to repair all the problems of the world, not just the country. The Congress and the people were receptive to all proposals that they thought would benefit them directly. Agencies that were created in the first 100 days were from a mind-boggling assortment of enactments.

Recorded at the Mises Institute, May 1994.

Recorded at the Reassessing the Presidency seminar; March 2004.

Thomas Sowell’s book, Civil Rights, lays bare many of the myths of the Great Society. What did ordinary people do before an advanced welfare state? Anti-poverty programs like the 1965 Job Corps did not turn out well. There was less poverty before the programs. Federal aid to education, like Head Start, did not stop any cycle of poverty. There was no difference in performance.

One of the problems of the American Empire is that there is a lot of empire denial going around. You cannot want to rule the world and yet say that what you value is laissez-faire economics (like National Review does).