Title: The Big Government Sponge: Part 3
Original CoS Document (slug): the-big-government-sponge-part-3
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Created: 2023-09-03 15:05:59
Updated: 2023-09-19 03:00:00
Published: 2023-09-12 00:00:00
Converted: 2025-04-14T21:26:52.546761878
The Big Government Sponge: Part 3
We Americans love our Freedom and Liberty! Why, then are we willing to give it away to a central government that absorbs power like a sponge?
In times of crisis, we have proven to be a people who prefer security to freedom – a sad truth of human nature, but a lesson to be kept at the front of our minds, especially when crises become convenient opportunities for the sponge to absorb power. Rom Emanual’s famous tagline, “Never let a crisis go to waste,” comes to mind.
Last time we discussed the War Between the States and the Rise of Marxism (Progressive Era) and how the Big Government train is now picking up steam. If the Progressive Era was born of Marxism, it matured into the New Deal, and our country would never be the same! The Great Depression was the birthmother of the New Deal.
The Great Depression and the New Deal:
Down and out! My parents were young adults during the Great Depression, so I heard the history firsthand. Times were hard, confidence in the capitalist system had vanished, and people were grasping for answers.
In 1933 they heard: “All we have to fear is fear itself,” and those were golden words. The enthusiasm with which the population in huge numbers were willing to trust “Big Government” to solve their problems is frightening in hindsight, but understandable for those who experienced it. The New Deal promised recovery and security in exchange for the expansion of central government power and “enlightened socialism.” It kind of worked, except when it didn’t.
The expansion of the Executive Branch with the “alphabet soup” of new agencies, “make-work projects” and the promise of Social Security, gave the appearance of a government that was doing big things to address big problems. In an era when the value of a man was work that he accomplished with the sweat of his brow, the government provided work for him to do. The Civilian Conservation Corps gave young men jobs doing hard work outdoors in National Parks, where they could get three hots and a cot and “do something.” The Works Progress Administration built schools, libraries, and public works projects. We were active if not productive.
Congress was impotent, as it is today, so the Executive Branch had free reign to take up the slack. And they did! (Sound familiar?) When challenged by the Judicial Branch, Franklin Roosevelt threatened to “pack” the Supreme Court and cowed the judges to rule the “right” way.
Social Security would provide old age income. Relief would provide food and income to the unemployed. Cradle-to-grave safety nets were off to the races.
Farmers were in trouble as agricultural prices were in free fall. The government stepped in to limit the production of certain commodities in order to artificially control market prices. The result was the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) and the “plow ‘em under” mandates that required farmers to destroy crops, dump milk, and take wasteful measures in the face of a hungry population. It all seemed perverse – and it was.
Enter Wickard v Filburn; the Supreme Court decision that forever expanded the Commerce Clause into a vast gold mine of government overreach. Filburn, a small farmer, had exceeded the government-mandated production of wheat and was fined by the Department of Commerce. He filed suit because the wheat was for his own consumption and never entered the market, thus was not “commerce.” He won in US District court and on appeal, but lost in the famous Supreme Court case with the current docile justices (eight of whom were Roosevelt appointees), ruling that his actions affected commerce because his excess production kept him from purchasing the wheat he would have otherwise needed.
Now everything that affects commerce IS commerce. Think about that! And the people have never responded to this day.
Entitlement programs are now a way of life and the “third rail” of politics. Notice that our sponge is stingier now about giving back powers that were absorbed during “emergencies.”
Our final segment will explore the consequences of two emergencies that occurred on our watch – both freedom-sucking crises – The War on Terror and COVID-19. Join us next time.