Book Review: Politically Incorrect Guide to the Great Depression and the New Deal

If anyone is looking for a good book to read, I read a really good review for The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Great Depression and the New Deal by Robert P. Murphy (Regnery, 2009) (272 pages) over at the Campaign for Liberty. It is a good review of an excellent book:

Government of all kind depends on elaborate mythologies to keep the people complacent in the face of constant attacks on their liberty, their property, and even their lives. Kings used to proclaim that they were divine or at least that they ruled with divine approval, so disobedience to them was actually disobedience to God or the gods. That worked to keep most of the citizenry in line for a very long time.

As religion started losing its hold over people, rulers came up with new ideas. One was that the state was like a big, sheltering family where everyone had to cooperate for the common good -- as directed by the government. Another idea was that the alternative to control by the government, anarchy, was so terrifying that it must be opposed at every turn. Government, according to this notion, is our bulwark against many calamities, including economic implosion. If it weren't for the benevolent, far-seeing actions of politicians and their hired regulators, we would have to endure repeated and prolonged depressions. So even if you aren't crazy about everything the government does, you need to accept it because the alternative is so much worse.

Economist Robert Murphy (Ph.D. from New York University, formerly on the faculty of Hillsdale College and now an independent scholar) agrees that we can learn a lot by looking back at the Great Depression and New Deal, but maintains that the lessons to be learned are the exact opposite of those that our political establishment (including its many intellectual hangers-on) want us to learn. Far from proving any defect in capitalism, the Depression actually shows that politicians should refrain from political meddling with the economy, especially federal tampering with money and credit. Also, if we hunt for the truth about the New Deal, we discover that it was just a parade of endless folly and bungling that made things worse.

That is exactly what Murphy is trying to accomplish with a book that is aimed at the everyday reader, easy to read, and free of jargon. The political scoundrels would love to keep this book out of people's hands.

As a teacher, I have been fighting for years to make sure that in the districts that I teach in, the Great Depression is taught correctly. And by correctly, I mean that they will learn both the liberal version of the story of the cause of and recovery from the Great Depression and they will learn the conservative version of the story. I fight to make sure that in my school and others, teachers and students are knowledgeable about both versions, so that after being educated they can make their own decisions, informed of the bias on both sides. The reason why I do this is because once students become informed, once they become educated, once they are exposed to both sides, they almost always agree with the conservative interpretation of events- that the cause of the Great Depression was (mostly) government, and that the depth of the GD was caused by (mostly) government, and that the recovery from the GD was caused by less government (mostly).

The Great Depression has many important lesson to teach us today, and one of the most important is to understand the nature of the myths surrounding it, and we need to work to dispel those myths. By doing that, the world will become a better place.

UPDATE: I've found out through a Friend Who Must Not Be Named that the great Zach Crossen was a contributer to this fine book. Good work spreading the truth Zach!