New Deal Revisionism

Submitted by Conceptual Guerilla on Wed, 2007-06-13 22:54.

As George Orwell once explained, whoever controls the past, controls the present. This accounts for a number conservative proclivities, which would appear to be contradictory. On the one hand, conservatives are big defenders of mythological George-Washington-and-the-cherry-tree history. Except of course, for when they aren't. That would be whenever history -- even well accepted, well documented history -- conflicts with their ideology.

So it is with the New Deal. Even before it was "history," while the New Deal was in full swing, cheap labor conservatives had no use for it. They claimed that the depression would cure itself, and anyway, it wasn't the government's business to concern itself with millions of unemployed. Just the other day, right on the pages of the Wall Street Journal -- where else? -- appeared an article entitled How To Think About The 1930's.