The Return to Enumerated Powers America

April 10, 2023 By Adam Vicari

It probably isn’t lost on most readers that conservatives aren’t always the best at articulating grand visions for the future or for the course of the country.  Conservatives are very good at diagnosing problems and lobbying for the negation of those problems, but not always good at crafting an alternative solution or visionary agenda to counter these problems, the problems caused by leftists.  Woodrow Wilson had his “14 points” and the League of Nations, FDR had the New Deal, LBJ had The Great Society, and the World Economic Forum has the Great Reset. 

If America makes it to 2024 (and I say “if” because, at this point, it is not guaranteed that American civilization will survive until the next election, as it may collapse for any number of reasons before that time), it is clear to me that a grand vision that is equal to or exceeds the left wing grand visions mentioned previously is needed, as a conservative alternative vision in 2024 may be America’s last shot at saving itself from plunging into the abyss.  That is why I am proposing something like a return to Enumerated Powers America. .........

According to the Constitution, the federal government is only supposed to have 18 inherent powers.  These powers are reserved for the federal government because they are things only the federal government can do, with the idea that the individual states can do everything else on their own, without the federal government intruding on their daily business.........All the rest of the administrative state (the departments of education, energy, transportation, agriculture, commerce, labor, health and human services, housing and urban development, veterans affairs, and the interior) and the additional agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency, should be abolished, immediately.  ......To Read More....

Not so great

 On Great Society: A New History by Amity Shlaes. 

by William Voegeli

Great Society: A New History is enjoyable and enlightening. Selecting stories as ably as she tells them, Amity Shlaes makes sense of the tumultuous 1960s by relating some of its most significant figures’ quests and clashes. Among her accomplishments is the rescuing from obscurity of men who shaped America’s modern political history and discourse, such as the labor leader Walter Reuther, the economist Arthur Burns, and the banker William McChesney Martin.

To fully appreciate Great Society, however, one must read (or re-read) Shlaes’s 2007 bestseller, The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression. That the books form a two-volume set is appropriate: because Lyndon Johnson was obsessed with Franklin Roosevelt, he shaped the Great Society to resemble, complete, and surpass his hero’s New Deal.

The New Deal was born of an unprecedented economic contraction, the Great Society of an unprecedented expansion. One might suppose, then, that these two domestic policy crusades would end up being very different. Shlaes, however, makes clear that it’s the similarities between the New Deal and the Great Society that are striking and important, and the reason for this continuity is that the same restless ideology—progressivism—animated both.

Specifically, her two books show that progressives’ central principle is that activist government is the only mechanism able to solve a modern society’s problems. The corollary of this commitment to government intervention in the nation’s social and economic life is a belief that objections to such intervention are fundamentally baseless or cynical. There is no legitimate concern, in other words, that plenary government will compromise liberty or democracy. By the same token, there is no serious danger that the economy will be less productive when people must anticipate vigorous but unpredictable government redistribution and regulation than it will be when buyers and sellers of goods and services are concerned only with finding mutually acceptable terms of exchange.............To Read More.....

 

Amity Shlaes' Verdict on the Great Society: Not That Great

By Nicholas J. Kaster

Seldom in history has a program been undertaken with such lofty intentions and ended in such bitter disappointment as Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society.” In her latest book Great Society: A New History, Amity Shlaes provides a fresh appraisal of the idealistic policies that came to define the 1960s and a historical narrative that is especially timely now.

Shlaes’ book is a follow-up to The Forgotten Man, her excellent history of the Great Depression. This book is an apt sequel, since the Great Society was promoted as the completion of the “unfinished business” of the New Deal. However, there was a significant difference between the two programs. The New Deal originated in response to a severe economic crisis. In contrast, the Great Society was enacted at a time of economic prosperity, when poverty rates were dropping.

Indeed, as Shlaes makes clear, it was the very prosperity and confidence of the postwar years that made the Great Society possible. “Compared to overcoming a Great Depression or conquering Europe and Japan,” Shlaes writes, “eliminating poverty or racial discrimination had to be easy.

American society was already so good…This good society had to become, in the words of President Johnson, a Great Society.”...........To Read More