Forgotten Lessons Selected Essays of John T. Flynn
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Forgotten Lessons Selected Essays of John T. Flynn Edited by Gregory P. Pavlik The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc. Irvington-on-Hudson, New York Forgotten Lessons: Selected Essays of John T. Flynn Copyright © 1996 by the Foundation for Economic Education, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or trans mittedin any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval systems without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc. 30 South Broadway Irvington-on-Hudson, NY 10533 (914) 591-7230 Publishers Cataloging in Publication (Prepared by Quality Books Inc.) Flynn, John T. (John Thomas), 1882-1964. Forgotten.lessons: selected essays / of John T. Flynn; edited by Gregory P. Pavlik. - Irvington, N.Y.: Foundation for Economic Education, 1995. p.cm. Includes index. ISBN: 1-57246-015-6 1. United States-Politics and government-20th century. 2. United States-Economic Policy. 3. New Deal, 1933-1939. I. Pavlik, Gregory P. II. Title. E806.F59 1995 973.917 QBI95-20332 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 95-61370 First edition, October 1995 Cover design by Beth Bowlby Manufactured in the United States of America Table of Contents Foreword by Thomas D. Flynn v Introduction by Gregory P. Pavlik 1 I. MACHINATIONS AND MANIPULATIONS OF THE STATE Whose Child is the NRA? 9 Forgive Us Our Debts 23 Mr. Hopkins and Mr. Roosevelt 37 The Case Against Deficit Spending 47 The New Deal: An Old Racket 54 The Experiment: "Noble in Purpose" 60 The Hand in Your Pocket 66 II. THE MENACE OF MILITARISM The War Boom Begins 83 Can Hitler Beat American Business? 98 Our Phoney War on Communism 110 Militarism: The New Slavery for America 115 A Rejected Manuscript 129 III. FREEDOM AND THE FUTURE Coming: A Totalitarian America 137 Eggheads through History 144 Communists and the New Deal 151 What is Senator McCarthy Really Trying to Do? 157 The Dark Alliance 161 Two Rackets of the UN 167 The Road Ahead 173 Index 193 Foreword I am pleased and honored to write a preface for the publication of selected papers of my father, John T. Flynn, Which provide us with many "Forgotten Lessons." These essays also tell us much about my father's character and his penetrating understanding of the principles of political economy. My father was a strong and vocal supporter of the free enterprise system, and equally opposed to government-planned and -controlled economies. Communism and Fascism are the best examples of such economies, but mixed economies have many of the same characteris tics. My father was a true liberal as it was defined prior to World War II. He was also a highly regarded and respected liberal, in the forefront of his profession of journalism. Back at the end of the First World War, I clearly remember standing on the steps of the courthouse in New Haven to help celebrate Armistice Day on November 11, 1918. At the time, my father was Managing Editor of the New Haven Register, the principal newspaper in that city. On that day of celebration, as an editor he was truly on top of the news since he was flying overhead in an open cockpit in a small single engine plane. It was a thrill for me to know that he was there. A few months later, we moved to New York City, and in the early twenties he became Managing Editor of the New York Globe, one of the top newspapers in New York City. Not too long after that, he was elected president of the Dutch Treat Club, where the top editors and reporters got together for lunch and to hear politicians, businessmen, and others speak on pertinent subjects and to answer their questions. At that time, most of those in the newspaper field were staunch supporters of the Constitution as originally adopted; that is, they be lieved that the role of the federal government was quite limited. And they also believed in the free enterprise system. There were few leftists in their midst. Since then, the term "liberal" has undergone a radical change in meaning, and now means almost the reverse of what it meant when my father was practicing his profession before World War II. Under the present-day meaning of the word "liberal," my father would now be called a conservative. In addition to his strong views about the v vi / Thomas D. Flynn superior qualities of the free enterprise system and the need for a diminished role for the federal government, he was a firm believer in high standards of morality for the family, and for the communities in which the families lived and raised their children. In his later years he was subject to heavy criticism, much of it slanderous, but I never heard anyone questioning his personal integrity. In his search for the truth as a journalist, he had great respect for all obtainable facts and information required for reaching judgmental decisions. The passage in 1913 of the Constitutional Amendment to tax in come greatly increased the power of the federal government to control and regulate the economy, but the exercise of this power was quite modest until the New Deal and World War II. This power, together with the gigantic demands of the war, resulted in an enormous in volvement of the federal government in the total economy of the na tion. And with it came much more sympathy by the general public and the media for socialistic and planned government programs. Sup port for these programs also prospered in colleges, universities, and religious groups. The Welfare State was beginning to get a firm foot hold on our shores. Before World War II, my father was much opposed to our entry I into that war for the reasons set forth in the second section of the series of selected papers under the heading "The Menace of Militarism." He believed that it was beyond dispute that we need sufficient military preparation and power to defend against any invasion of our country, but he was strongly opposed to sending our military forces to distant places in the world. History had taught him that such wars almost invariably resulted in great damage to the economies of the countries which conducted those wars, that they resulted in inflation of the currency, heavy deficits, and crushing burdens of debt. In the case of Germany after World War I, their debt was eliminated by superinfla tion. Their postwar marks-the rentenmark-was equal to one trillion prewar marks. Our present deficits are out of control. Many political leaders talk of reducing our deficits. But they really only plan on reducing the rate of increase-and by very little at that. My father's opposition to the Welfare State was based in part on the use of deficit financing to support our many "humanitarian" programs. As we all know, the professional study of economies has made considerable and commendable progress but it is still far from an exact science. It is much more complicated than most scientific studies which rely on mathematics to solve their problems. The principal reason is that few of the assumptions for the mathematical formulas are homo- Foreword / vii geneous and complete. Therefore, intelligent and reasonable people can arrive at different answers. However, it seems clear to me, as it did to my father, that the free enterprise system has clearly proved over an adequate period of time its superiority over Communism, Social ism, and other planned economies. Before you begin the reading of my father's papers, I hope you will read Greg Pavlik's excellent Introduction which gives much needed background information. THOMAS D. FLYNN May 8, 1995 Introduction From the time of the founding of the American republic, a tension has existed between the proponents of centralization and political con trol and the advocates of freedom and limited public power. This conflict manifested itself during the ratification debates as the Federal ists and Anti-Federalists contested over the proper role of the central government. The ratification of the Constitution rested on a compro mise that incorporated the Bill of Rights as a formal re-affirmation of the limited authority of the new government. These ten amendments made explicit the limitations on the government's reach. The last two preserved all non-delegated functions to the states and to the people. In the early decades of our national history, this tension existed within the confines of constitutional authority. The Jeffersonians laid strong emphasis on the restrictive nature of the document that de scribed the limits of national government, conflicting with advocates of a strong central state who followed in the footsteps of Alexander Hamilton. Yet, even proponents of the extreme Hamiltonian position would have been at odds with the arbitrary and unconstitutional edicts issuing from Washington today. The Hamiltonians were conser vatives of a staunch stripe who would have scoffed at the notion of a redistributive state. Much less would they have tolerated the destruc tive social engineering and egalitarianism that is the hallmark of the U.S. federal government today. This raises an important question: how did this metamorphosis of the role of the federal government come about in a country marked by its legacy of freedom? Perhaps no one incident can rightly be pin pointed as the defining event at which we ceased to understand our relationship to Washington in the manner of our forefathers. Our his- ,tory of participation in wars of one form or another had accustomed the citizenry to accept political controls, if only for the duration of the conflict.