Garrett said the book “is a good read” that details, among other things, “how FDR engaged in vitriolic demonizing of Wall Street and Big Business to advance his agenda.”
Also, he jokes, “it had good pictures when you get to the middle.”
“The Forgotten Man” is currently out of stock at The Trover Shop, the bookstore closest to the House side of the Capitol. Co-owner Al Schuman said sales haven’t been off the charts but added: “If all my books sold that well, I’d be a rich man.”
It’s not hard to see what Republicans find compelling about the book. Shlaes, a columnist at Bloomberg, a senior fellow in economic history at the Council on Foreign Relations and a former editorial board member at The Wall Street Journal, presents a vision of the Great Depression that challenges the conventional wisdom that casts Herbert Hoover as a goat, FDR as a hero and the New Deal as the country’s salvation.
It also looks at the Great Depression with particular sympathy upon the plight of those who were burdened with supporting the “weak members of society” during the New Deal and endeavors to give a voice to those “forgotten men.”
I guess the cliché, "better late than never" applies here. If the Republicans had studied history, rather than simply accepting the conventional wisdom about the atrocities of FDR's New Deal, perhaps we wouldn't be in the mess we're in today.
FDR was a democrat and democrats always screw things up under the pretense of fixing something (they broke).
Government intervention and spending beyond essentials for domestic security is always a recipe for disaster. Empirical evidence abounds, but you have to read it for it to be useful.
"Education consists mainly of what we have unlearned."- Mark Twain
The Laffer Curve will not be denied.
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