Some men see things as they are and ask why, others dream things that never were and ask why not.
George Bernard Shaw quoted by
by Robert F. Kennedy at J.F.K’s funeral.
I have long maintained that the key to understanding American history and politics is to understand the differences between liberals and conservatives.
My purpose here is to offer definitions of these two divergent philosophies and to cite exemplars of each.
First, I will present the Liberal position and in a subsequent letter, the conservative philosophy. I state my bias at the outset.
As the title of this piece suggests, I assert that liberals ask “why not?” while conservatives are more likely to accept the status quo.
I note, parenthetically, that when I was a youth, liberalism was the predominant mode of thinking and conservatives did not exist in numbers comparable to today.
Among the early conservative spokespersons were Sen. Robert Taft of Ohio, and later, Sen. Barry Goldwater of Arizona and Gov. Ronald Reagan of California.
This leads to the conclusion that if there is one truth to which we can all subscribe, it’s that the political pendulum constantly swings back and forth.
One way to differentiate between liberals and conservatives is to examine the role of government.
For liberals, government is a countervailing force which keeps corporations and individuals from using their power for self-aggrandizement.
It restrains these entities by creating a level playing field. Conservatives might argue that the field is already level, but as Anatole France pointed out: “The law in all its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets and to steal bread.”
So much for that false equivalency. The fear of conservatives is, as stated in the Federal Observer, the government “can control your behavior, your habits and your life…simply by passing laws or promulgating bureaucratic rules.”
Let us now turn to an early leader of the liberal movement — Louis Brandeis.
Graduating from the Harvard Law School at the age of 20, he had the highest grade point average in the school’s history.
President Wilson appointed him to the Supreme Court where he served with distinction from 1916 to 1939.
He came to be known as “the people’s lawyer” and the “Robin Hood of the law.” He was noted for fighting railroad monopolies, being a crusader for social justice and helping to create the Federal Reserve Board which is the “central bank” for the U.S. and works to alleviate financial crises.
He was also the first Jew to serve on the Supreme Court.
His best-known book was titled “Other People’s Money and How the Bankers Use It.”
He took on J.P. Morgan and other economic royalists who accumulated more wealth than had any previous group in America’s history.
He railed against the crushing of small businesses and against “interlocking directorates” (when an individual served on more than one corporate board of directors.) Brandeis saw government as a tool to combat the pernicious influence of the “robber barons.”
In 1929, the U.S. experienced the worst depression in its history.
Speculators lost millions, banks failed and workers lost their jobs in droves.
In 1932, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected president.
His opponent, Herbert Hoover, the incumbent, urged patience and asked Americans to view the crisis as a passing event.
With at least one-quarter of the workforce unemployed, Hoover favored a “wait and see” attitude. He viewed the economic “boom and bust” as an inevitable cycle.
Roosevelt, on the other hand, like Brandeis, was determined to use government as a means of countering the economic calamity which had befallen the nation.
He inaugurated a program called “the New Deal” which created many regulatory agencies (the “alphabet agencies”) to reform the economy. While there were many of these, I will discuss a few of them in next week’s letter.
Dr. Hal Sobel
Great Neck
