HERBERT HOOVER DENOUNCES THE NEW DEAL (1934)

 

[In 1933 and 1934 former president Herbert Hoover made a series of speeches in which he strongly criticized the policies of his successor.  These were later published as a book, entitled The Challenge to Liberty.]

 

One may disagree and keep silent as to the justification of some of these measures if they are to be limited to an "emer­gency," for in the march of a great people that is relatively unimportant if that is all of it. Then these dangers and stresses will disappear as an eddy in the stream of national life. The important thing is whether this drift from essential liberties is to be permanent. If not permanent, these emergency measures will have served the purpose of having exhausted the pent-up panaceas of a generation and broken them on the wheel of resistant hu­man behavior and the spirit of a people with a heritage of liberty.

 

The threat of the continuance of these "emergency" acts is a threat to join the Continental retreat of human progress backward through the long corridor of time. In the demands for continuance there lies a mixture of desperate seeking for justification of their adoption and subtle ambitions of those advocating other philosophies. Whatever the motive, the promise of permanence now stares the American people starkly in the face. It is not the mere evolution of an economic pro­cedure that this regimentation implies--it steps off the solid highways of true, American liberty into the dangerous quicksands of governmental dictation….

 

The unit of American life is the family and the home. Through it vibrates every hope of the future. It is the economic unit as well as the moral and spiritual unit. But it is more than this. It is the begin­ning of self-government. .. The purpose ofThe obligation of our generation to them is to pass on the heritage of liberty which was entrusted to us. To secure the bless­ings of liberty to ourselves and to our pos­terity was the purpose in sacrifice of our fathers. We have no right to load upon our children unnecessary debts from our follies or to force them to meet life in regimented forms which limit their self-expression, their opportunities, their achievements....

 

Our American system and its great pur­pose are builded upon by the positive con­ception that "men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness"; that the purpose and structure of government is to protect these rights; that upon them the govern­ment itself shall not encroach. From these liberties has come that unloosing of cre­ative instincts and aspirations which have builded this, the greatest nation of all time....

Yet today forces have come into action from ignorance, panic, or design which, either by subtle encroachment or by the breaking down of their safeguards, do en-danger their primary purpose. These lib­erties are of urgent practical importance. The very employment upon which millions depend for their bread is today delayed because of the disturbance of confidence in their security.

 

There are those who assert that revolu­tion has swept the United States. That is not true. But there are some who are try­ing to bring it about. At least they are following the vocal technique which has led elsewhere to the tragedy of liberty. Their slogans; their promise of Utopia; their denunciation of individual wicked­ness as if these were the wards of liberty; their misrepresentation of deep-seated causes; their will to destruction of confi­dence and consequent disorganization in order to justify action; their stirring of class feeling and hatred; their will to clip and atrophy the legislative arm; their re­sentment of criticism; their chatter of boy­ cott, of threat and of force-all are typical enough of the methods of more violent action....

 

Even partial regimentation cannot be made to work and still maintain live democratic institutions. Representative government will sooner or later be at con­flict with it along the whole front, both in the incidentals of daily working and in the whole field of free choice by the peo­ple. If it be continued the Congress must further surrender its checks and balances on administration and its free criticism since these, with intensified duties to its constituents, create interferences that will make efficient administration of this regi­mented machine impossible.

For any plan of regimentation to suc­ceed it must have not only powers of rigid discipline but adamant continuity. Does anyone believe that with the inter­ferences of the Congress and the storms of a free press any government can im­pose discipline and follow a consistent and undeviating course in directing the activi­ties of 125,000,000 highly diversified peo­ple? Because such a course is impossible Fascism and Sovietism have suppressed both free speech and representative gov­ernment….

 

We cannot extend the mastery of gov­ernment over the daily life of a people without somewhere making it master of people's souls and thoughts. That is going on today. It is part of all regimentation.

 

Even if the government conduct of business could give us the maximum of ef­ficiency instead of least efficiency, it would be purchased at the cost of freedom. It would increase rather than decrease abuse and corruption, stifle initiative and inven­tion, undermine the development of leadership, cripple the mental and spiritual en­ergies of our people, extinguish equality of opportunity, and dry up the spirit of liberty and the forces which make prog­ress.

 

It is a false liberalism that interprets itself into government dictation, or opera­tion of commerce, industry and agricul­ture. Every move in that direction poisons the very springs of true liberalism. It poisons political equality, free thought, free press, and equality of opportunity. It is the road not to liberty but to less lib­erty. True liberalism is found not in striving to spread bureaucracy, but in striving to set bounds to it. Liberalism is a force proceeding from the deep realiza­tion that economic freedom cannot be sacrificed if political freedom is to be preserved. True liberalism seeks all legiti­mate freedom first in the confident belief that without such freedom the pursuit of other blessings is in vain.

 

The nation seeks for solution of its many difficulties. These solutions can come alone through the constructive forces from the system built upon liberty. They cannot be achieved by the destructive forces of regimentation. The purification of liberty from abuses, the restoration of confidence in the rights of men, the release of the dynamic forces of initiative and enterprise are alone the methods by which these solutions can be found and the purpose of American life assured.