A fresh perspective on The New Deal

Well, ye socks, I have to admit that I did NOT stay up to watch the presidential debate last night.

I figured, why bother getting all riled-up when you've already made up your mind who you're going to vote for?!

Instead, I turned to a book for my evening entertainment. Though it was an economic history of the Great Depression, I was surprised to see how many lessons could be applied to current events.

If you want to go out and get a copy at your local bookstore or library, here's the bibliographical info:

The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression, by Amity Shlaes, ISBN 9780060936426.

Ms. Shlaes is an economist by training and uses her egg-shaped head to pick apart one of the biggest icons of big government: Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Her indictment against FDR contains the following charges:

1. That his socialist economic policies actually prolonged the country's depression.

2. That his expansion of welfare programs created "indebted constituencies" and led to class warfare.

3. That his attacks on the free market led to the rise of special interest groups and their lobbyists.

I sincerely doubt that the junior senator from Illinois, or any of his ilk for that matter, would bother to crack a book that criticizes the godfather of big government taxing and spending.

I just hope the electorate hasn't been dumbed down to the level where pretty words and pompoms can make them overlook the warnings from Shlaes and other economists.

Reagan was right (again). Big government isn't the solution. Big government is the problem.