Reason Writers Around Town: Damon Root on Liberal Opposition to the New Deal

September 11, 2009

In the September/October issue of the Cato Policy Report, Associate Editor Damon W. Root remembers the principled liberals of the 1930s who stood athwart the New Deal yelling stop. As Root writes, for the sin of believing that big business and big government should be kept as far apart as possible, they were dubbed heartless reactionaries and "economic royalists." Yet thanks to their brave opposition, some of the New Deal's worst excesses were brought to light or kept at least partially in check.

Read all about it here.

Comments

|9.11.09 @ 11:02AM|#

Not a bad article. You could also put Walter Lippmann in that category.

J D|9.11.09 @ 11:18AM|#

What? You mean labels like "liberal" haven't always meant the same thing throughout American history? No way!

jtuf|9.11.09 @ 11:37AM|#

Thanks for the link.

|9.11.09 @ 11:48AM|#

Thomas Gore, the blind Democratic senator from Oklahoma, also accused FDR to his face of acting unconstitutionally.

Michael Ejercito|9.11.09 @ 12:15PM|#

Great history lesson.

I wonder why this is not more widely known.

Jordan|9.11.09 @ 12:37PM|#

I wonder why this is not more widely known.

Given our public education system, you really wonder?

|9.11.09 @ 2:44PM|#

I wonder why this is not more widely known.

Actually, it's mostly got to do with the fact that the Democrats have won often enough to get to write the history books.