The struggle to define the guiding principles of the American “experiment” has intensified in recent years.  The left’s attempt to degrade and sabotage the American experience has widened with each passing decade.  Beginning with concerns about monopolies and American greed in the years before and during the Progressive era (approximately 1900–1920), followed by a more pro-America backlash during the 1920s, and then, in the wake of the Great Depression, with widespread unemployment, bank deposit losses, stocks crashing, and dust bowl miseries in the agricultural sector, the FDR years promoted the pseudo-socialism of Keynesian economics.  Under Keynesian economics, government debt to boost the economy and federal regulatory agencies to bring order to the economy both expanded.  We went off the gold standard, which allowed for the printing of more paper money.

“At the height of the Depression in 1933, 24.9% of the nation's total work force, 12,830,000 people, were unemployed.  Wage income for workers who were lucky enough to have kept their jobs fell 42.5% between 1929 and 1933.”  Despite the vast expansion of government agencies (called the alphabet agencies) imposed by the FDR government under its Keynesian ideology, from 1937 to 1941, unemployment remained at 15–20%.  The government expanded its regulatory and employment role during the New Deal, but since it did not actually confiscate existing businesses, the New Deal is not considered by many economists socialistic or communistic.

However, with the New Deal’s dramatic increase in the extent of governmental involvement in the economy, we experienced a sea change in the proportion of economic activity by government in relation to the private sector.  Except for the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) where the government actually established itself as a supplier of electricity, other agencies under the New Deal were either regulatory or instruments for government employment of the unemployed.  This writer concludes that despite the vast expansion of government regulation and revaluation of our currency and governmental indebtedness, the New Deal was largely ineffectual, as shown by the continuing high unemployment and slow recovery prior to WWII.

Just as the last years of progressivism had ended with our involvement in WWI, the last years of the New Deal also ended with our involvement with a world war.  Intuitively, there seemed to be some connection between expanded government “regulation” and the expanded likelihood of our getting into war.

FDR’s personal charisma and the creation of so many new agencies to “protect” the people and the economy contributed to the illusion of significant progress.  Only the involvement in WWII after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor stimulated significant growth in the economy, and the charismatic charm of Roosevelt was further enhanced. 

The net effect of this expanded dependence on government under progressivism and then under the auspices of New Deal policy dramatically shifted the belief of the public in individual initiative, godly perseverance and godly reliance, and the Christian confidence in God as the Almighty first responder to the problems we faced as individuals and as a society.

The days of national responsiveness to biblical godly values as found in the Old and New Testaments had become less a part of the national consciousness.  Those biblical Jewish and Christian values had been sustained to some degree by the expansion of the land mass that composed the USA.  We gained the Northwest Territory after the Revolutionary War, then we more than doubled our size with the Louisiana Purchase by Thomas Jefferson, and the Mexican War added even more territory.  These expansions were believed by many to come under “Manifest Destiny.”  Almighty God under this vision had a great plan for a great country and was opening doors for expanded territory and the inevitable wealth and power that such expansion affords.

But after World War II, the godly vision of a moral society based on biblical principles of individual and governmental responsibility began to erode.  The thought that God had expanded our land mass and power in order to test our commitment to moral ideals and the enhancement of individual opportunities and individual responsibility began to wane.  The expansion of government under progressivism and New Deal Keynesian ideology began to put in play an egotistical overlay of America’s power and authority as fundamentally residing in money, politics, and military might — not on God’s will over a specially conceived and anointed country.

After 171 years without a doctrine of separation of church and state, the Supreme Court of the USA in 1947 by a mere 5-4 vote declared that this separation is necessary and sacrosanct.  And by 1962 and 1963, both Bible reading and prayer were declared by the Court forbidden in our public schools.  By 1973, a woman’s right to an abortion on demand was declared a constitutional right, and legitimate thereby in every state in the Union.  Only recently did the Supreme Court reverse itself, after 60 million–plus abortions, to allow each individual state to make its own abortion laws as its voters see fit.  Abortions are not inherently a national, constitutional right.

In 2005, in the significant Kelo v. New London case, the Court again voted 5-4 to expand the legitimate bases for government to confiscate private property under eminent domain laws.  This was a serious attack on private ownership of property.  And, lastly, in Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court asserted that marriage between two men or between two women is a constitutional right.  That vote also was a 5-4 vote, but this is now the law of the land.  However, our Constitution says clearly in its Tenth Amendment that all matters not addressed in the Constitution belong to the law-making authority of the states.  Prior to the Supreme Court decision in Obergefell, 36 states had voted against marriage for homosexual couples (with even blue-state California twice voting against it). 

Thus, the founders of our country believed that our existence as a nation-state and our Constitution are meant for a moral and God-fearing people, and even Manifest Destiny adherents, who were less interested in biblical morals than were the founders, still saw a God-based providential plan for our country.  Yet after Progressivism, the New Deal, and two world wars, we lost our way and the God-centeredness that was central to that “way.”

Now the forces of evil have gained momentum and want to turn our country over to the World Economic Forum, to the U.N.’s Agenda 2030 for world government, to cultural Marxist principles regarding race (whites are inherently racist), sexuality (non-binary sexuality is as normal as binary sexuality), elected authority (inherently undemocratic), the family (Marx and his cohorts hated the family), loss of property rights under so-called “green principles,” and violent, pro-terrorist protests under the rubric “peaceful assembly.” 

The disaster known as the twentieth century continues unabated — in fact, has accelerated — in our 21st century.  What new horror awaits us tomorrow?

E. Jeffrey Ludwig served as a teaching fellow in American history and literature at Harvard University and on the editorial board of the Harvard Educational Review.  He has taught philosophy at various colleges and was selected for four editions of Who’s Who Among America’s High School Teachers.  His book, The Catastrophic Decline of America’s Public High Schools, is available here.

Image: JSMed via Pixabay, Pixabay License.