Donald Trump is Striking at the Heart of the Left's Central Belief

[John Smyth]

Looks like the left is having a coronary.
Hopefully it's fatal.

'Donald Trump is Striking at the Heart of the Left's Central Belief'

<https://pjmedia.com/robert-spencer/2025/02/08/as-trump-slashes-government-spending-its-useful-to-recall-why-we-have-so-much-of-it-n4936822>

'Donald Trump is striking at the heart of the left’s mythology. No
wonder leftists are panicking.

One of the reasons why Democrats are reacting with such fury to Trump’s
efforts to end wasteful government spending is because this has simply
never happened before. Republicans and even some Democrats — remember
Bill Clinton proclaiming that “The era of big government is over” — have
railed against the out-of-control growth of the federal government, but
even the strictest fiscal conservatives only managed to slow down that
growth, not reverse it.

And even worse for leftists, in reducing the size of government, Trump
is directly challenging the left’s core dogma that government can and
should fix all the problems of human beings. This idea dates back to the
Great Depression, when the Democrats first formed the coalition that
made them the majority party for decades. The disparate groups that
originally made up that coalition, including ethnic minorities in the
North and segregationists who largely despised those minorities in the
South, were held together by a shared assumption that whatever was
wrong, government could solve it.

This was and is the fundamental myth of the American left. Born in the
Great Depression that began in Oct. 1929, this myth claims that Herbert
Hoover, the Republican who was president when the Depression hit, did
nothing, leaving the American people in misery rather than expand the
size of the government and tackle the problem head-on. After the
electorate decisively rejected Hoover in 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt
saved the nation, creating a dizzying array of federal programs that
pulled the American people back from the abyss.

And so, you see, in our complex and multifaceted society, we need big
government. That’s why Trump and Elon Musk are so irresponsible, you
see, to take the pruning shears to government spending. Nancy Pelosi
even recently claimed that Trump was suffering from a “lack of
sophistication in terms of intelligence” that prevented him from seeing
the damage that his efforts to control government waste was causing.

This central leftist myth, however, is wholly false, from beginning to
end. Hoover’s inaction didn’t exacerbate the Great Depression. Big
government didn’t end it. And we don’t need it today.

As “Rating America’s Presidents” shows, Hoover wasn’t inactive at all.
He actually oversaw the massive expansion of the federal government in
response to the Great Depression. Government intervention didn’t end the
Depression; it prolonged it. Hoover’s programs only added to the burden
ordinary Americans had to carry, especially when he increased taxes in
1932. The tax increases were unavoidable, however: contrary to the
assumptions of many Americans today, big government programs don’t
magically pay for themselves.

Hoover’s programs didn’t accomplish anything. They didn’t prevent banks
from going out of business: over five thousand closed between 1929 and
1932. Hoover’s programs didn’t put Americans back to work: unemployment
rose from 3.3 percent in 1929 to nearly 25 percent in 1933.

The popular perception that Hoover was responsible for the Depression
was largely correct, but his failure was in doing too much, not in not
doing enough. Yet after resoundingly defeating Hoover in 1932, Roosevelt
didn’t reverse his predecessor’s policies; he continued and expanded
them.

Raymond Moley, a charter member of FDR’s “Brain Trust” of key advisors
aiding him to develop the New Deal, recounted that “when we all burst
into Washington after the inauguration, we found every essential idea
enacted in the 100-day Congress [the Roosevelt administration’s first
flurry of activity to end the Depression] in the Hoover Administration
itself.” Another member of the “Brain Trust,” Rexford Tugwell, noted
that, in his policies, Roosevelt bore an “amazing resemblance to Hoover”
and observed that “practically the whole New Deal was extrapolated from
programs that Hoover started.”

Related: After Time Mag Puts ‘President Elon Musk’ on Cover, Trump
Has an Epic Response

In February 1939, nearly six years after leaving office, Hoover boasted
that the Republicans, not the Democrats, pioneered big government: “It
was the Republican Party that first established the concept that
business must be regulated by government if the freedom of men was to be
preserved. Indeed, it was the Republican Party that first initiated
regulation against monopoly and business abuse in the states. Over the
last fifty years it created seven out of the ten great Federal
regulating agencies of today. It was Republicans who created the income
and estate taxes that fortunes might not accumulate so as to oppress the
nation and that there might be relief of tax burdens upon the poor.”

See? Hoover just wanted the rich to “pay their fair share.” The
political debate has hardly since Hoover’s day. We do, however, have the
benefit of nearly a century of experience to show that big government
doesn’t work, and stifles human freedom. Good thing Trump and Musk have,
at long last, started the cutting'

[pothead]

Post by John Smyth
Looks like the left is having a coronary.
Hopefully it's fatal.
'Donald Trump is Striking at the Heart of the Left's Central Belief'
<https://pjmedia.com/robert-spencer/2025/02/08/as-trump-slashes-government-spending-its-useful-to-recall-why-we-have-so-much-of-it-n4936822>
'Donald Trump is striking at the heart of the left’s mythology. No
wonder leftists are panicking.
One of the reasons why Democrats are reacting with such fury to Trump’s
efforts to end wasteful government spending is because this has simply
never happened before. Republicans and even some Democrats — remember
Bill Clinton proclaiming that “The era of big government is over” — have
railed against the out-of-control growth of the federal government, but
even the strictest fiscal conservatives only managed to slow down that
growth, not reverse it.
And even worse for leftists, in reducing the size of government, Trump
is directly challenging the left’s core dogma that government can and
should fix all the problems of human beings. This idea dates back to the
Great Depression, when the Democrats first formed the coalition that
made them the majority party for decades. The disparate groups that
originally made up that coalition, including ethnic minorities in the
North and segregationists who largely despised those minorities in the
South, were held together by a shared assumption that whatever was
wrong, government could solve it.
This was and is the fundamental myth of the American left. Born in the
Great Depression that began in Oct. 1929, this myth claims that Herbert
Hoover, the Republican who was president when the Depression hit, did
nothing, leaving the American people in misery rather than expand the
size of the government and tackle the problem head-on. After the
electorate decisively rejected Hoover in 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt
saved the nation, creating a dizzying array of federal programs that
pulled the American people back from the abyss.
And so, you see, in our complex and multifaceted society, we need big
government. That’s why Trump and Elon Musk are so irresponsible, you
see, to take the pruning shears to government spending. Nancy Pelosi
even recently claimed that Trump was suffering from a “lack of
sophistication in terms of intelligence” that prevented him from seeing
the damage that his efforts to control government waste was causing.
This central leftist myth, however, is wholly false, from beginning to
end. Hoover’s inaction didn’t exacerbate the Great Depression. Big
government didn’t end it. And we don’t need it today.
As “Rating America’s Presidents” shows, Hoover wasn’t inactive at all.
He actually oversaw the massive expansion of the federal government in
response to the Great Depression. Government intervention didn’t end the
Depression; it prolonged it. Hoover’s programs only added to the burden
ordinary Americans had to carry, especially when he increased taxes in
1932. The tax increases were unavoidable, however: contrary to the
assumptions of many Americans today, big government programs don’t
magically pay for themselves.
Hoover’s programs didn’t accomplish anything. They didn’t prevent banks
from going out of business: over five thousand closed between 1929 and
1932. Hoover’s programs didn’t put Americans back to work: unemployment
rose from 3.3 percent in 1929 to nearly 25 percent in 1933.
The popular perception that Hoover was responsible for the Depression
was largely correct, but his failure was in doing too much, not in not
doing enough. Yet after resoundingly defeating Hoover in 1932, Roosevelt
didn’t reverse his predecessor’s policies; he continued and expanded
them.
Raymond Moley, a charter member of FDR’s “Brain Trust” of key advisors
aiding him to develop the New Deal, recounted that “when we all burst
into Washington after the inauguration, we found every essential idea
enacted in the 100-day Congress [the Roosevelt administration’s first
flurry of activity to end the Depression] in the Hoover Administration
itself.” Another member of the “Brain Trust,” Rexford Tugwell, noted
that, in his policies, Roosevelt bore an “amazing resemblance to Hoover”
and observed that “practically the whole New Deal was extrapolated from
programs that Hoover started.”
Related: After Time Mag Puts ‘President Elon Musk’ on Cover, Trump
Has an Epic Response
In February 1939, nearly six years after leaving office, Hoover boasted
that the Republicans, not the Democrats, pioneered big government: “It
was the Republican Party that first established the concept that
business must be regulated by government if the freedom of men was to be
preserved. Indeed, it was the Republican Party that first initiated
regulation against monopoly and business abuse in the states. Over the
last fifty years it created seven out of the ten great Federal
regulating agencies of today. It was Republicans who created the income
and estate taxes that fortunes might not accumulate so as to oppress the
nation and that there might be relief of tax burdens upon the poor.”
See? Hoover just wanted the rich to “pay their fair share.” The
political debate has hardly since Hoover’s day. We do, however, have the
benefit of nearly a century of experience to show that big government
doesn’t work, and stifles human freedom. Good thing Trump and Musk have,
at long last, started the cutting'

Good article. Some things never change and as the saying goes "history repeats itself".
The lazy left wing libbys will never get this concept though because they
are interested in freebies and the government taking care of them 100% if possible.