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Vol. 15 No. 2…Dedicated to the Dialogue on
Race…January 12, 2011
Bit of History
Herbert Clark Hoover
(1874 -1964)
"Economic
depression cannot be cured by legislative action or executive pronouncement.
Economic wounds must be healed by the action of the cells of the economic body
- the producers and consumers themselves." Herbert Hoover
Born
August 10, 1874, in West Branch,
After brief stays
with various relatives,
A mining engineer,
By 1914, Hoover was
a millionaire, securing his wealth from high-salaried positions, ownership of
Burmese silver mines, royalties from textbooks on mining engineering, including
Principles of Mining (1909), and the Zinc Corporation, which he founded after
devising a method to recapture zinc tailings; the company eventually became
part of the Rio Tinto Group.
World War I brought
His platform
rejected farm subsidies, supported prohibition, pledged lower taxes, and promised
more prosperity.
Within eight months
of his inauguration, the stock market crashed, signifying the beginning of the
Great Depression, the most severe economic crisis the
However, the Depression's
high unemployment, low economic growth and financial instability sapped the
American people's confidence and will and proved too difficult to manage with
volunteer efforts, public works projects such as the Hoover Dam, tariffs such
as the Smoot-Hawley Tariff, an increase in the top tax bracket from 25% to 63%,
and increases in corporate taxes.
In the public eye,
"Rugged Individualism Speech" (October 22, 1928)
By Herbert Hoover
I intend... to discuss some of those more fundamental principles upon which
I believe the government of the United States should be conducted....
During
one hundred and fifty years we have builded up a form of self government and a
social system which is peculiarly our own. It differs essentially from all
others in the world. It is the American system.... It is founded upon the
conception that only through ordered liberty, freedom and equal opportunity to
the individual will his initiative and enterprise spur on the march of
progress. And in our insistence upon equality of opportunity has our system
advanced beyond all the world.
During [World War I] we necessarily turned to the government to solve every
difficult economic problem. The government having absorbed every energy of our
people for war, there was no other solution. For the preservation of the state
the Federal Government became a centralized despotism which undertook unprecedented
responsibilities, assumed autocratic powers, and took over the business of
citizens. To a large degree, we regimented our whole people temporally into a
socialistic state. However justified in war time, if continued in peace-time it
would destroy not only our American system but with it our progress and freedom
as well.
When the war closed, the most vital of issues both in our own country and
around the world was whether government should continue their wartime ownership
and operation of many [instruments] of production and distribution. We were
challenged with a... choice between the American system of rugged individualism
and a European philosophy of diametrically opposed doctrines - doctrines of
paternalism and state socialism. The acceptance of these ideas would have meant
the destruction of self-government through centralization... [and] the
undermining of the individual initiative and enterprise through which our
people have grown to unparalleled greatness.
The Republican Party [in the years after the war] resolutely turned its face
away from these ideas and war practices.... When the Republican Party came into
full power it went at once resolutely back to our fundamental conception of the
state and the rights and responsibility of the individual. Thereby it restored
confidence and hope in the American people, it freed and stimulated enterprise;
it restored the government to a position as an umpire instead of a player in
the economic game. For these reasons the American people have gone forward in
progress....
There is [in this election]... submitted to the American people a question
of fundamental principle. That is: shall we depart from the principles of our
American political and economic system, upon which we have advanced beyond all
the rest of the world....
I would like to state to you the effect that... [an interference] of
government in business would have upon our system of self-government and our
economic system. That effect would reach to the daily life of every man and woman.
It would impair the very basis of liberty and freedom.
Let us first see the effect on self-government. When the Federal Government
undertakes to go into commercial business it must at once set up the
organization and administration of that business, and it immediately finds
itself in a labyrinth.... Commercial business requires a concentration of
responsibility. Our government to succeed in business would need to become in
effect a despotism. There at once begins the destruction of self-government....
It is a false liberalism that interprets itself into the government
operation of commercial business. Every step of bureaucratizing of the business
of our country poisons the very roots of liberalism - that is political
equality, free speech, free assembly, free press and equality of opportunity.
It is not the road to more liberty, but to less liberty. Liberalism should not
be striving to spread bureaucracy but striving to set bounds to it....
Liberalism is a force truly of the spirit, a force proceeding from the deep
realization that economic freedom cannot be sacrificed if political freedom is
to be preserved. [An expansion of the government's role in the business world]
would cramp and cripple the mental and spiritual energies of our people. It
would extinguish equality and opportunity. It would dry up the spirit of
liberty and progress... For a hundred and fifty years liberalism has found its
true spirit in the American system, not in the European systems.
I do not wish to be misunderstood. I am defining general policy. I have
already stated that where the government is engaged in public works for
purposes of flood control, of navigation, of irrigation, of scientific research
or national defense... it will at times necessarily produce power or
commodities as a by-product.
Nor do I wish to be misinterpreted as believing that the
I have witnessed not only at home but abroad the many failures of government
in business. I have seen its tyrannies, its injustices, its destructions of self-government,
its undermining of the very instincts which carry our people forward to
progress. I have witnessed the lack of advance, the lowered standards of
living, the depressed spirits of people working under such a system.
And what has been the result of the American system? Our country has become
the land of opportunity to those born without inheritance, not merely because
of the wealth of its resources and industry but because of this freedom of
initiative and enterprise.
By adherence to the principles of decentralized self-government, ordered
liberty, equal opportunity, and freedom to the individual, our American
experiment in human welfare has yielded a degree of well-being unparalleled in
the world. It has come nearer to the abolition of poverty, to the abolition of
fear of want, than humanity has ever reached before. Progress of the past seven
years is proof of it....
The greatness of
About Me:
On Free Enterprise
By Dot
I adore the
romanticism of the free enterprise system coupled with the idea of rugged
individualism. It fits quite nicely with
Like other
theoretical economic arrangements, there are laws and flaws accompanying free
enterprise. To insure the laws of supply and demand function properly to
establish market clearing prices, there must be numerous producers/sellers and
buyers. Once the number of either is significantly reduced, the laws cease to
apply. For instance, free enterprise does not exist when markets are controlled
by monopolies, i.e., single producers, and oligarches, i.e., a few producers.
A flaw that I have
commented on as a student of economics is the fact that free enterprise in
theory hinges on the idea that we start with a level playing field and equal
opportunity. In the United States of America where free enterprise, i.e.,
market capitalism, has enjoyed its greatest support as an economic arrangement
and been credited with creating the wealth of the nation, there did not exist
equal opportunity for every individual or group to work, save and invest in
order to maximize their profits, i.e., satisfaction. Indeed, slaves were forced
to work for free; they were not allowed to own property, because they were
essentially property. Slaves were neither allowed to tap into that rugged
individualism to exploit their god-given talents nor were they allowed to
utilize their creative abilities to perhaps amass fortunes. Any income earned
and wealth created as a result of slave labor accrued to their owners, leaving
slaves with nothing with which to compete in a dog eat dog society.
Since slavery made
the ability to effectively compete in a free enterprise system impossible for
those trapped in bondage, it rendered the notion moot for the nation that made
it legal to own humans. It made possible the accumulation of vast sums of
income and wealth by certain groups to the detriment of others, thereby skewing
the playing field in favor of slave masters and their enablers.
White Americans and
ignorant blacks wallow in denial, pretending slavery and the ensuing centuries
of deprivation, discrimination and disparate treatment suffered by black
people, which supposedly ended at the end of the twentieth century with passage
of the Civil Rights Acts, had no lingering or significant impact on the
socioeconomic and political condition of contemporary black life. Americans
ignore the disadvantage imposed on black people by the sin of slavery and the
unfair advantage gained by those who accumulated the wealth made possible by
"free" black labor. With slavery having so drastically skewed the
economic playing field in favor of whites, no amount of pretending that because
the system now supposedly affords every individual an equal opportunity to rise
and/or fall based solely on his/her merit, work ethics and resources can make
the USA a free enterprise system. Only a few own the wealth of the nation and
wield the power it affords.
Today, far from
being a free enterprise system, the
Ron Paul Is Lone GOP Voice on Unequal Justice
By DeWayne Wickham
Ron Paul must have
known the question was coming. For weeks, he had been dogged by charges that 
newsletters
published in his name in the 1980s and 1990s contained racist content.
So he probably
wasn't surprised when ABC News' George Stephanopoulos asked him during a
televised debate days before the New Hampshire primary how that could have
happened without his knowledge. But no one on the stage with the
Dwelling on
something he didn't write but has assumed responsibility for and apologized,
Paul said, diverts attention away from the "true racism" in this
nation's judicial system that disproportionately imprisons blacks for their
involvement in drug crimes.
And when Paul
finished what the Associated Press later called "a positively leftist
rant," there were no follow-up questions, no clamoring from the other
candidates to have their say on the issue. There was just a moment of uneasy
silence -- and then a commercial break. When the debate resumed, there was no
return to Paul's charge of unequal justice, an indifference that is a haunting
metaphor for the nation's failure to address an issue that is even worse than
Paul suggests.
In 2010, 69% of all
people arrested in this country for committing crimes were white. Blacks were
just 28%, according to the FBI. These percentages have remained steady every
year of the past decade. During this same period, roughly twice as many whites
as blacks were arrested each year for drug crimes, according to the FBI annual
Crime in the
Despite this, nearly
half of all persons incarcerated throughout the first decade of this century
were black. More than a liberal rant, that's the ugly reality of a criminal
justice system that, as Paul correctly noted, prosecutes and imprisons blacks
in disproportionate numbers.
That none of the
other Republicans -- who are champing at the bit for the right to challenge
President Obama's re-election -- would align themselves with Paul on this issue
doesn't surprise me. The GOP's strategy for winning back the White House is
devoid of any serious appeal to black voters and lacks any real concern about
the lingering vestiges of racism inflicted upon blacks, who are overwhelmingly
Democrats.
Forget all their
pious talk about being Americans first. Paul's unanswered "rant"
exposed them all --Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, Jon Huntsman and
Rick Perry-- as crass partisans who won't risk upending the conventional wisdom
about crime and punishment in this country when their political butts are on
the line. They don't want to derail their campaigns by giving any credence 
to
an issue that many right-wing voters they are courting would likely discount.
"If we truly
want to be concerned about racism, you ought to look at a few of those issues
and look at the drug laws, which are being so unfairly enforced," Paul
said as the network cut to commercials, and all the presidential wannabes on
stage with him undoubtedly heaved a big sigh of relief.
Note: This article appeared in the USA Today
and can be accessed at www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/forum/story/2012-01-10/ron-paul-racism-crimes/52483788/1.
If you missed the ABC New Hampshire 2012 debate and would just like to see Ron
Paul's "positively leftist rant" on racism in the
Fleecing the Angry Whites (Excerpts)
By Robert Parry
Since the days of
Richard Nixon's "Southern strategy," the Republican Party has wooed
angry whites with coded messages designed to play to racial prejudices - and
that pattern has come back strong in Campaign 2012 as the GOP seeks to rid the
White House of a black Democrat.
Usually,
the dog whistle comes in appeals to "states' rights" and allusions to
"welfare queens," but sometimes the implicit becomes explicit, as
occurred when former Sen. Rick Santorum blurted out, "I don't want to make
black people's lives better by giving them somebody else's money. I want to
give them the opportunity to go out and earn the money."
This comment was
directed to white Republicans in
However, Santorum
quickly came to regret his caught-on-video frankness, realizing that many
Americans find such blatant appeals to racial prejudice offensive. So, he
proceeded to lie about what he actually said, claiming absurdly that he never
said "black people" - that he "started to say a word" and
then "sort of mumbled it and changed my thought."
The word, in
Santorum's revisionist tale, had come out something like "blah," not
"black." Yet why the government would be so determined to give
"other people's money" to "blah people" was not explained.
Perhaps so the "blah people" could buy snazzier wardrobes or snappier
cars to make them less "blah."
Thus, Santorum hoped
he could have it both ways. The white racist voters in Iowa and in other states
could hear that the ex-Pennsylvania senator wasn't going to use government
programs "to make black people's lives better," while non-racists
were supposed to believe that he simply stammered out a word that sounded like
"black," but was really "blah."
Not to be outdone,
former House Speaker Newt Gingrich went beyond his usual disparaging of
"food stamps" by adding a reference to the NAACP, in case some
slow-witted whites didn't get the racially tinged "food stamps"
message. After all, many struggling whites also rely on food-assistance
programs, indeed a much higher number than blacks.
These crude appeals
to racial bigotry - often framed as a well-meaning desire to help blacks by
ending their "dependency" on government help - fits, too, into the
broader right-wing narrative, that the federal government and its do-gooder
programs are what's holding
If only
This message
resonates with many Americans, especially whites, because it panders to their
rose-colored personal mythologies that they and their parents climbed the
economic ladder solely due to their hard work and grit. It's always an easy
sell for politicians to flatter people by saying "you made it on your
own."
Yet, for the vast
majority of Americans, the reality is quite different. Especially after the
Great Depression of the 1930s, the federal government took the lead in creating
the social and economic framework that undergirded the nation's later success.
Even right-wing icon
Dick Cheney has acknowledged that the New Deal lifted his family from economic
hardship into the middle-class - and contributed to his own renowned personal
confidence, which he ironically has put to use dismantling the New Deal.
The Founders' "originalist"
vision of a strong central government was vindicated in the 1930s when
President Franklin Roosevelt led a national effort to recover from the Great
Depression, which had been caused largely by lightly regulated
"free-market economics."
Indeed, it is fair
to say that the great American middle-class was largely the creation of the
federal government - from the New Deal, which guaranteed labor rights and
created Social Security, to the GI Bill which sent World War II veterans to
college, to more recent developments such as the creation of the Internet and
GPS devices.
It was not until
Ronald Reagan's presidency in the 1980s that the political dynamic shifted. As
Reagan declared that "government is the problem," the role of
The myth of
self-reliance proved seductive. The government was recast as an instrument for
helping the lazy at the expense of the productive. Through subtle and
not-so-subtle messaging, white Americans were told that the government was
hurting them to help undeserving blacks and other minorities.
Government
regulations were redefined as meaningless red tape that penalized important
innovations, such as the exotic "financial instruments" that Wall
Street was devising to "revolutionize" the banking industry. The
thinking was that the government just had to get out of the way and let
industry "self-regulate."
It followed, too,
that Reagan's economic theories, such as "supply-side economics,"
would evolve into gospel on the Right. Since the beloved Reagan more than
halved the top marginal tax rates on the rich - so they could invest in
"supply-side" production and thus create more jobs - many
conservatives embraced this notion with religious zeal.
Today, Gingrich
boasts about his role in helping to formulate and enact "supply-side
economics" - despite the fact that it has proved a crushing failure, as
the American super-rich do little to create American jobs with their extra
wealth. Indeed,
That lack of
consumer demand has resulted from the decline in the American middle-class over
the past few decades as Reaganomics has increasingly transformed
But the
now-undeniable damage to the American middle-class - inflicted largely by
right-wing ideology - creates a political problem for Republicans. Many voters
may be hesitant to double-down on a bad bet.
So, it is perhaps
not surprising that some of the current crop of GOP presidential candidates
have turned again to more and more blatant appeals to racial prejudice. After
all, racism is the primeval "wedge issue."
In this sour
economic climate, more racist messaging - like Santorum's opposition to giving
money to "blah people" and Gingrich's endless allusions to "food
stamps" - can be expected as the Republican primary season rolls on.
(Source: http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/robert-parry/40644/fleecing-the-angry-whites)
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www.alternet.org...Pat Buchanan Suspended From MSNBC for Views on Race and
America Latest on decline of white America ousts Nixon's speechwriter....By
Steven Rosenfeld...Anyone who has seen Pat Buchanan in person knows that as
strong a speaker as he is, he attacks a certain 'white power' constituency.
Apparently, those beliefs as expressed in his latest book and book tour have prompted
MSNBC to suspend him from the air and say they do not know when or if he's
coming back. Color of Change has called for his firing from MSNBC and deserves
credit for spot-lighting his latest fulminations on the decline of white