Full-fledged communism failed first. The genuine, undiluted article sank the Soviet Union in 1991 and vindicated generations of capitalist, freedom-loving people who had hated communism from the start.
Still, it’s important to remember, capitalists were on the ropes for a long time.
Franklin Roosevelt, the original Obama Administration, confused our country greatly. FDR wrote the book on not letting a good crisis go to waste, a principle liberals after him have made the lifeblood of their power.
Commonly forgotten is the Depression of 1920 which started worse than the Great Depression in almost every measurable way. During the Depression of 1920 the American economy took it’s lumps, didn’t fight the consequences, rebounded quickly, and embarked on previously unknown prosperity.
After all, recessions and depressions are just life-lessons for a market economies, totally necessary and totally useful. To this day the decade known as “the roaring 20s” is a a testament to what happens when the market is allowed to learn and grow from a depression instead of fighting it with an invincible foolishness that says, “it’s not my fault!”.
The difference bewteen our handling of those two depressions is the difference between a person who accepts and learns from punishment and consequences and another who kicks against them at all costs.
Franklin D. Roosevelt convinced America that capitalism had caused the Great Depression and that the government could rescue it through huge spending, shrinking the private sector, growing unions, granting monopolies, and a host of other poisonous “cures” for the economy that lengthened the Great Depression by somewhere between 5 and 10 years, depending on which non-“Greek-system” (aka socialist) economist you talk to.
The common thread of the FDR fixes was increased government control and decreased individual freedom for Americans. He tried to turn a nation of kings back into the nation of children, once again dependent on “Daddy” government for permission and opportunity; the very situation our forbears sailed to the New World and fought a Revolution to end.
Here in Texas we have an Attorney General beating back union entrenchment and challenging ObamaCare. We should follow his lead and do our part to reverse the creep toward European socialism that has recently broken into a full run.
