When retiring from politics in 1908, Teddy Roosevelt had turned the reins of power over to his Secretary of War, William Howard Taft.
During the next four years, however, Roosevelt became increasingly dissatisfied with Taft's non-Progressive policies, and in 1912, as nominee of his own Bull Moose Party, Roosevelt challenged Taft for the Presidency, effectively splitting the Republican vote and giving the Presidency to Democrat Woodrow Wilson.
That was probably the worst thing Roosevelt ever did to this country.
Wilson was a Hamiltonian, who, despite his endless blathering about "democracy," believed that the Republic would be best served by being made subservient to the superior intellect of philosopher king Woodrow Wilson.
To lead the benighted United States into the land of milk and honey, Wilson greatly expanded the influence of the federal government in U.
S.
life, even initiating an income tax to pay for his profligate spending.
At the end of eight years of emperor Wilson's enlightened efforts to transform America into a modern utopia, the United States had lost 117,000 men in an unpopular foreign war, tens of thousands of people had been incarcerated without due process for no other offense than having German names or for exercising their First Amendment rights, income taxes had increased by 1200% since their inception in 1913, and the United States was writhing in the depths of the depression of 1920.
One of the last things Wilson accomplished as President was the 1919 ratification of the 18th Amendment, which authorized the federal government to dictate the drinking habits of Americans.
The major selling points of the Prohibitionists was that the outlawing of alcohol would improve the health of Americans and would significantly decrease crime and corruption.
The result, of course, was the greatest scourge of drunkenness, crime, and local government corruption in the history of the United States or of any other modern nation.
By the time this government effort to enforce a narrow definition of morality was finally regurgitated by the American people in 1933, the crime it spawned had resulted in an estimated 21,000 homicides, the death rate had quadrupled due to cirrhosis and deaths from contaminated alcohol, and patterns of corruption had been instituted that 75 years later would befoul the very White House itself.
America thrived throughout the 1920s under Harding and Coolidge's low taxes and zero government interference in the private sector.
Then, in 1930 President Hoover reinstituted government interference in the private sector in an effort to stimulate the economy.
By 1932, Hoover's government economic stimulation had resulted in 5,000 bank failures, industrial production being down by half, the Federal debt doubling from 20% to 40% of GDP, income taxes having more than doubled, and unemployment standing at 25%.
In 1965, after becoming President in his own right, Lyndon Johnson launched his "Great Society," a massive infusion of taxpayer money into a plethora of government programs that, we were told, would end poverty in the United States forever.
By 1968, four years later, when Johnson essentially resigned the Presidency in disgrace, the poverty rate had been reduced from 18% to only 13%.
The deficit, meanwhile, had risen from 5 billion to 25 billion (the highest since 1945 at the end of WWII), the Social Security System was - and still is - broke (Johnson had stolen the money to fund his government programs), the nation was saddled with a massive wealth transfer program called Medicare/Medicaid that today devours one fourth of all federal spending, and the only society Johnson had created was the welfare society, a subculture of parasites trained to be chronically dependent on the redistribution of taxpayer dollars.
Thus the ":war on poverty" in fact impoverished Americans for generations to come.
It is no accident that government efforts toward any goal invariably result in the attainment of the opposite results.
We are all familiar with the fact that governments are by nature inefficient and corrupt, but they are also by nature counterproductive.
As Milton Friedman said, "If you put the government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in five years you'd have a shortage of sand.
" Why is this? First, of course, governments attract inferior people.
Politics is frequently the employment of last resort for those who are incapable of making a living in the private sector, and nepotism and the spoils system assure that those who fill the ranks of government employees are at least unqualified if not incompetent.
Secondly, the primary motivation of all governments is self-preservation - the actual attainment of goals, if considered at all, is always secondary to that objective.
Nor is that motivation to be subjugated to an interest in - or even an awareness of - the will of the people.
Thirdly, all governments suffer from the Midas effect, the delusion that it is the government that creates wealth by simply decreeing it into existence.
Ted Kennedy went so far as to insist that all money was actually the property of the federal government (It says "United States of America" right there on the face of it, doesn't it?) and that the government magnanimously allows the people to use it.
Now, if you put a group of mentally challenged people together, insulate them from what's going on in the real world, and inculcate them with the myth of their omnipotence, what will you get? Rampant, raving, narcissistic, and insidious paranoia! And recent paranoiacs from Hitler and Mussolini to Richard Nixon have demonstrated the reverse effect of paranoia, an effect that has been enshrined in literature from Oedipus Rex to Macbeth.
Paranoia, in ignoring reality and in convincing its victims of their superiority and infallibility, invariably yields results opposite to the patient's intent.
If you are conceited enough to believe that by government fiat you can force 70 million first and second generation Europeans to give up their beer and wine, you'll succeed only in unleashing the biggest drinking binge ever to sweep a nation; and if you are egotistical enough to believe that you can spend lazy people into affluence, you will inevitably succeed in spending the entire country into poverty.
During the next four years, however, Roosevelt became increasingly dissatisfied with Taft's non-Progressive policies, and in 1912, as nominee of his own Bull Moose Party, Roosevelt challenged Taft for the Presidency, effectively splitting the Republican vote and giving the Presidency to Democrat Woodrow Wilson.
That was probably the worst thing Roosevelt ever did to this country.
Wilson was a Hamiltonian, who, despite his endless blathering about "democracy," believed that the Republic would be best served by being made subservient to the superior intellect of philosopher king Woodrow Wilson.
To lead the benighted United States into the land of milk and honey, Wilson greatly expanded the influence of the federal government in U.
S.
life, even initiating an income tax to pay for his profligate spending.
At the end of eight years of emperor Wilson's enlightened efforts to transform America into a modern utopia, the United States had lost 117,000 men in an unpopular foreign war, tens of thousands of people had been incarcerated without due process for no other offense than having German names or for exercising their First Amendment rights, income taxes had increased by 1200% since their inception in 1913, and the United States was writhing in the depths of the depression of 1920.
One of the last things Wilson accomplished as President was the 1919 ratification of the 18th Amendment, which authorized the federal government to dictate the drinking habits of Americans.
The major selling points of the Prohibitionists was that the outlawing of alcohol would improve the health of Americans and would significantly decrease crime and corruption.
The result, of course, was the greatest scourge of drunkenness, crime, and local government corruption in the history of the United States or of any other modern nation.
By the time this government effort to enforce a narrow definition of morality was finally regurgitated by the American people in 1933, the crime it spawned had resulted in an estimated 21,000 homicides, the death rate had quadrupled due to cirrhosis and deaths from contaminated alcohol, and patterns of corruption had been instituted that 75 years later would befoul the very White House itself.
America thrived throughout the 1920s under Harding and Coolidge's low taxes and zero government interference in the private sector.
Then, in 1930 President Hoover reinstituted government interference in the private sector in an effort to stimulate the economy.
By 1932, Hoover's government economic stimulation had resulted in 5,000 bank failures, industrial production being down by half, the Federal debt doubling from 20% to 40% of GDP, income taxes having more than doubled, and unemployment standing at 25%.
In 1965, after becoming President in his own right, Lyndon Johnson launched his "Great Society," a massive infusion of taxpayer money into a plethora of government programs that, we were told, would end poverty in the United States forever.
By 1968, four years later, when Johnson essentially resigned the Presidency in disgrace, the poverty rate had been reduced from 18% to only 13%.
The deficit, meanwhile, had risen from 5 billion to 25 billion (the highest since 1945 at the end of WWII), the Social Security System was - and still is - broke (Johnson had stolen the money to fund his government programs), the nation was saddled with a massive wealth transfer program called Medicare/Medicaid that today devours one fourth of all federal spending, and the only society Johnson had created was the welfare society, a subculture of parasites trained to be chronically dependent on the redistribution of taxpayer dollars.
Thus the ":war on poverty" in fact impoverished Americans for generations to come.
It is no accident that government efforts toward any goal invariably result in the attainment of the opposite results.
We are all familiar with the fact that governments are by nature inefficient and corrupt, but they are also by nature counterproductive.
As Milton Friedman said, "If you put the government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in five years you'd have a shortage of sand.
" Why is this? First, of course, governments attract inferior people.
Politics is frequently the employment of last resort for those who are incapable of making a living in the private sector, and nepotism and the spoils system assure that those who fill the ranks of government employees are at least unqualified if not incompetent.
Secondly, the primary motivation of all governments is self-preservation - the actual attainment of goals, if considered at all, is always secondary to that objective.
Nor is that motivation to be subjugated to an interest in - or even an awareness of - the will of the people.
Thirdly, all governments suffer from the Midas effect, the delusion that it is the government that creates wealth by simply decreeing it into existence.
Ted Kennedy went so far as to insist that all money was actually the property of the federal government (It says "United States of America" right there on the face of it, doesn't it?) and that the government magnanimously allows the people to use it.
Now, if you put a group of mentally challenged people together, insulate them from what's going on in the real world, and inculcate them with the myth of their omnipotence, what will you get? Rampant, raving, narcissistic, and insidious paranoia! And recent paranoiacs from Hitler and Mussolini to Richard Nixon have demonstrated the reverse effect of paranoia, an effect that has been enshrined in literature from Oedipus Rex to Macbeth.
Paranoia, in ignoring reality and in convincing its victims of their superiority and infallibility, invariably yields results opposite to the patient's intent.
If you are conceited enough to believe that by government fiat you can force 70 million first and second generation Europeans to give up their beer and wine, you'll succeed only in unleashing the biggest drinking binge ever to sweep a nation; and if you are egotistical enough to believe that you can spend lazy people into affluence, you will inevitably succeed in spending the entire country into poverty.
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