Narrator: Today, while the earth shakes beneath the heels of marching troops, while a great portion of the world trembles before the threats of acquisitive power-mad men, we of America have little time to remember an astounding era in our own recent history. An era which will grow more and more incredible with each passing generation until someday people will say it never could have happened at all. April, 1918. Almost a million American young men are engaged in a struggle which, they have been told, will make the world safe for democracy.
--The Roaring Twenties (1939)
Interesting missive by Ralph Raico (Hayek was his dissertation adviser) on Woodrow Wilson and his craving for 'glorious' power. Given his academic background (the only US president to possess a PhD), Wilson is often portrayed as a peace-loving idealist.
As the Raico demonstrates, his presidential record is anything but pacifist in nature.
Raico also shares tidbits on Edward Mandell House who, from 1911 until Wilson's death, was WW's right (left?) hand man. House was never elected to public office, yet served as Wilson's confidante. This arrangement certainly rhymes with the FDR/Harry 'The Hop' Hopkins arrangement.
Finally, Raico discusses the role of English propaganda in nudging the US into WWI. In the summer of 1914, England cut cables connecting the US with Europe. News from Europe to America was channeled thru London, where censors shaped reports to English benefit. This was brand new info for me.
I find articles like this quite useful. Over the past few years, I've focused considerable self-study on the Depression era. While my ignorance here has been alleviated to some degree, I know much less about the preceding era that laid the foundation for the Depression. Articles like this help fill in the blanks and suggests that more study of the Progressive period might be a worthy next step.
Perhaps Raico's book from which this article was excerpted, Great Wars and Great Leaders: A Libertarian Rebuttal, would be a good start.
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When war was declared in 1914, one of Britain's first acts was to cut the undersea telegraph cables that connected Germany with North America; this made it much harder for German propaganda to reach the United States. Britain and France, meanwhile, used their undersea cables to transmit large amounts of propaganda to the United States.
~PBS.org
We who live in free market societies believe that growth, prosperity and ultimately human fulfillment, are created from the bottom up, not the government down. Only when the human spirit is allowed to invent and create, only when individuals are given a personal stake in deciding economic policies and benefiting from their success -- only then can societies remain economically alive, dynamic, progressive, and free. Trust the people. This is the one irrefutable lesson of the entire postwar period contradicting the notion that rigid government controls are essential to economic development.
~Ronald Reagan
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