Customer Reviews

Salvos Against the New Deal

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Bruce Ramsey does an excellent job of resurrecting writings that were quite well known at the time, but have become obscure by virtue of the New Deal's political conquest over the Constitution and all of America. What we now accept blindly from our "leaders" was once highly controversial and didn't need to happen. We ignore the writings of Garet Garrett at our own peril.

How wonderful it is to find this hefty volume of writings by the heroic Garet Garrett! For some 30 years, I've read about Garrett and his polemical battles against FDR and his statist New Deal, but all you could find by him was THE PEOPLE'S POTTAGE (an excellent book, but just a smidgen of Garrett's work). Now Bruce Ramsey has assembled this 300-page sampling of some of Garrett's best political writing from the Saturday Evening Post. Three cheers for Garet Garrett, and another three cheers for Ramsey! This lone, inexpensive volume will give you a very different view of just how "compassionate" a president Roosevelt was.

This is a great collection of essays against the entire New Deal program and philosophy which lives on today. Ramsey includes very useful notes placing each article in context and background information. History is written by the winners, but many lessons can be learned from the losers. Garrett is a powerful dissident. He shows what lost when the New Deal won, and that explains much of our present economic and social predicament. Although there is discussion of economic issues, it should be easily comprehensible to a non-economist, since Garrett comes from a classical economics (no formulas) background.

This book is one of many written by Garet Garrett.. Absolute must read for today.
They say he died a sad man because of what our country has become, unless things change and fast I fear that is my fate also.
I now have almost all of the books he has written I love this man style of writing very different from todays writers.

Historically speaking, very few Presidents are as immune to criticism or question than FDR. Yet, that premise is unacceptable for American historians, generally, and inconsistent with American domestic and foreign policy with regard to nearly everyone. There is always dissenting opinion because there are always healthy views that comprise the possibility of different options. FDR is so popular a President that most consider him off limits when viewing his administrations. There do appear to be areas where his choices, or those of Eleanor's might have been different however, and whether they might have been better choices, who knows? The case is rarely made, however, just as it is rarely made in the case of Washington or Lincoln. Being American means to question the outcome of nearly everything in order to evaluate the best possible option to use in any given circumstance. This is learning that Americans prize, and need not be an affront to the person scrutinized. Intellectual analysis produces considerable beneficial opportunities for discussion, and surely, if FDR was the kind of person he is portrayed as being, he would be the last to suggest that his decisions could not bear up under a healthy, and respectful scrutiny. For a period so heavily rooted in foreign relations, and world strife, it would be more ignorant not to evaluate the period, the persons associated with decisions made at the time, and what assumptions went into making those decisions appropriate. This is good patriotic inquiry, not intentional discrediting of anyone. Witch hunts appear by using devisive information to harm, not by using legitimate facts to evaluate circumstances present when decisions are made, and then condoned and supported. Americans are the most self-scrutinizing government on the planet, and it is that patriotic spirit that justifies confidence in a free government, requiring criticism from both perspectives of for and against current issues. This is the approach that helps to "balance" democracy and help America stay free (or so we used to think) before the Patriot Act.