
Letter from West Virginia - samclemens
http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2016/05/17/letter-from-west-virginia/
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fennecfoxen
Loving the color commentary our journalist slips in, just in passing...

> His politics were terrifying—he loathed the New Deal

A substantial minority of economists (45%ish) suggest that the New Deal helped
prolong the Great Depression... mostly through the National Industrial
Recovery Act (a nationwide central-planning/price fixing scheme which
established a network of government-endorsed cartels which made competition on
price illegal and was later declared unconstitutional) or the Agricultural
Adjustment Act (which to this day pays farmers to not-farm and is mostly
responsible for kickstarting America's modern big-Agribusiness complex which
we all love to hate in these parts). And even more economists admit that the
New Deal was _ineffective_.

But sure: ooooooh, he was against the New Deal. But since FDR is a _saint_ and
his gift of Social Security is delivered in turn from the grace of God
himself, this means that our West Virginian is not just wrong, he's a heretic
and a _monster_. Be afraid, be very afraid!!!!1

~~~
jackhack
Thank you for this thoughtful response - like a breath of fresh air! Among the
elite, steeped in Federalist politics, and Liberals (often one and the same),
it is almost unthinkable that one would question FDR and his big-government
socialist solutions (which some would argue have actually increased the
problems they claimed to address). Despair, dependency, and poverty are left
in the wake of this "solution."

The contradiction of the self-proclaimed "proud, fierce, independent
Mountaineer" archetype and the reality of the welfare-dependent and drug
addicted (especially Oxycontin) culture that exists there today is shocking to
behold. The state is a spectacle of wasted lives, like zoo animals pacing
their cage waiting for nothing more than the next scrap of food to be tossed
in, the population of the WV shuffles aimlessly to pass the time until the
next welfare check. How many lives were ruined by these "gifts"? Uncountable.

Indeed - the Federalist solution is often worse than the problem.

