Things We Read Today: You Said It, Brother Edition
“The people of a free nation have a right to ask their government, ‘Why has our employment been interrupted? What measures have been taken in our protection? What has been done to remove the obstacles from the return of our work to us?’ They not only have a right to ask these questions but to have an answer.”
– From a campaign speech given by President Herbert Hoover at Cleveland, OH on October 15, 1932. One thing that comes to mind when I see Dick Cheney on my TV set talking about how he kept us safe is that there is more than one kind of safety, and that even if he conceivably had a point on one kind of safety (which he doesn’t), he still wouldn’t have any defense on some of the others. The government has more than one function, and if it succeeds at one while failing at the others, it still didn’t earn anything like a passing grade.
Hoover went on at great length to talk about all the reasons that the Depression was happening, all of them out of his control. It’s all very familiar, and I’m just reading it for the first time:
“Our opponents demand to know why the governmental leaders or business men over the world did not foresee the approach of these disintegrating forces. That answer is simple. The whole world was striving to overcome them, but finally they accumulated until certain countries could no longer stand the strain, and their people, suddenly overtaken by fear and panic, through hoarding and exporting their capital for safety, brought down their own houses and these disasters spread like a prairie fire through the world. No man can foresee the coming fear or panic, or the extent of its effect.”
Yup, no one could have seen it coming. Or done more about it. Hoover does acknowledge that there is still much suffering, but it has nothing to do with the Federal government–it’s just disorganization somewhere down the line–so it’s not his department. It wasn’t Cheney’s either, nor anyone else associated with that “administration.” Actually, in wrapping up his speech, Hoover or his writer puts this rather well:
“This economic system has but one end to serve. That end is not the making of money. It is to create security in the millions of homes of our country, to produce increasing comfort, to open wider the windows of hope, to increase the moral and spiritual stature of our people, to give opportunity for that understanding upon which national ideals and national character may be more and more strengthened.”
I read that last to be about the value of education to a free system, linked to the way in which a flush economy opens opportunities for education. Education and economic stability lead to political stability… Did anyone think about this stuff in the last eight years, or was it all about securing the right to read your email and torture people? I do not ask facetiously.
