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Insatiable Government and Other Old-Right Commentaries, 1923-1950
Insatiable Government and Other Old-Right Commentaries 1923-1950 Author:Garet Garrett "Radicalism was the sword of liberty." — --Garet Garrett. Old Right libertarian Garet Garrett (1878-1954) practiced journalism as it's practiced too rarely these days -- weaving an intimate knowledge of present affairs, the past that paved the way, and the ethical and economic principles that illuminate these. — In previous volumes, Bruce Ramsey b... more »rought together Garrett's Salvos Against The New Deal and his critiques of FDR's push to bring America into the Second World War in the years before Pearl Harbor (Defend America First). This expansive new anthology offers more than two dozen articles on matters foreign and domestic from the rest of his work, ranging the entire span of Garrett's 27-year career as journalist and critic.
Many of the pieces evocatively limn the receding of an America in which citizens expected to make their own way... and the emergence of an America in which we often expect others to make our way for us (and not just during catastrophes). The two poles are aptly represented in "The Dawn of Steel" and "The Desert Reclaimed." The first article recalls how steel-makers hammered out their industry by dint of sheer will and ingenuity. The second shows how, as early as the 1920s, the government's subsidizing of frontier-conquest (!) encouraged settlers to become ever more irresponsible and dependent. Garrett thus illustrates that there is only one way to learn self-reliance... by being self-reliant.
Ramsey notes that although much that was bad in the New Deal has "washed away," Garrett reminds us that "we didn't have to accept those things" which did become absorbed into the American system. Perhaps these recovered writings will also show us how to recover what we have lost.« less