Words of Warning from 1940

Guinevere Nell / May 16, 2009

Herbert Hoover was no laissez-faire president like Calvin Coolidge, however he did respect the constitution, and he never was willing to go as far as Franklin Roosevelt. He made a speech just before Roosevelt’s election to a third term, in which he made some salient points—ones we would still be wise to consider today.

With Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin in power, and with a myriad of other dictators and authoritarian powers sprinkled across Europe, it was critical that the free citizens of America see the danger of handing over the reigns of industry to government—that economic power is so much more than just economic. As Hayek said a few years later, “Economic control is not merely control of a sector of human life which can be separated from the rest; it is the control of the means for all our ends.” (more…)