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Slowpoke_Rodrigo
April 13, 2000, 06:13 AM
COMMENTARY (http://www.spintechmag.com/0004/vs0400.htm)

Spintech: April 12, 2000


Who Was America's Greatest President?
by Vin Suprynowicz

My article on America's greatest mass murderer, Abraham Lincoln, launched a welcome dialogue with historian Jeff Hummel (from whose great and recent book on the tyrant, Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men, I quoted) on the topic of just how freedom-loving Americans should rank our 40-odd chief executives, to date.

Jeff referred me to his article in the Fall, 1999 edition of The Independent Review (published by the Independent Institute), titled "Martin Van Buren, The Greatest American President."

While conceding Van Buren's continuation of Jackson's ruthless program of Indian removal, culminating in 1838's Cherokee "Trail of Tears," Hummel details the dedication with which Van Buren otherwise rejected opportunities to expand the size and authority of the central government, especially the numerous "opportunities" to field an army to annex Canada, meantime courageously resisting the endless badgering of Whigs like Henry Clay and Daniel Webster to use federal power and funds to create a federally controlled and subsidized, credit-expanding and inflationary banking system.

Hummel credits Van Buren's rigorous refusal to meddle in the economy as the major factor that prevented the panic and deflation of 1839-1843 from becoming the same kind of national tragedy that busy meddlers like Hoover and Roosevelt managed to make of the startlingly similar slump of 1929-1933, when federal interventions scorched the earth by preventing wages and prices from falling.

American schoolchildren today are routinely fed a diet of the Great Emancipator claiming he fought the Civil War to protect "government by the people" (in fact, in an 1848 speech, Congressman Lincoln had included secession among the inalienable rights of any people.) Imagine if instead our children were encouraged to memorize Van Buren's message to the special congressional session of 1837, in which he warned:

"All communities are apt to look to government for too much. Even in our own country, where its powers and duties are so strictly limited, we are prone to do so, especially at periods of sudden embarrassment and distress."

But to yield to such temptation would be a mistake, Van Buren reminded the Congress, pointing out that "All former attempts on the part of government" to "assume the management of domestic or foreign exchange" had "proved injurious."

Instead, what Van Buren called for was a "system founded on private interest, enterprise, and competition, without the aid of legislative grants or regulations by law," one that embodied the Jeffersonian tenet "that the less government interferes with private pursuits the better for the general prosperity."

What a sharp contrast to the "Let's track and control every dollar in every bank account" approach of our current crop of heavy-handed puppet-masters.

"Though traditional historians have subjected this era of relatively unregulated banking to trumped-up charges of financial instability," Hummel concludes, "many economists are coming to agree that it was probably the best monetary system the United States ever had."

In private correspondence, Hummel volunteers "I would put Grover Cleveland a close second" among the great leaders of a free America, while "tied for third and fourth place would be Calvin Coolidge and Warren G. Harding, who "with the brilliant fiscal policies of Andrew Mellon, did roll back tax rates significantly from the highs of Wilson and World War One, and very few presidents can claim even that. ...

"As for George Washington, the country would have gotten along fine without his two terms, although the counter-revolutionary Constitution may not have survived. Which is why, along with suppression of the Whiskey Rebellion, setting up the first tariffs, approving of the First National Bank, appointing Alexander Hamilton as Secretary of the Treasury, going along with Hamilton's excise taxes, plus Washington's aggressive militarism in the west, the first president definitely belongs toward the bottom (though maybe not quite among the worst ten).

Jeff Hummel's list of our 10 greatest presidents?

Martin Van Buren, Grover Cleveland, Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, James Garfield, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, and Dwight D. Eisenhower.

The 10 worst at obeying their oath of office and preserving our precious liberties?

Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, Harry Truman, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Lyndon B. Johnson, Theodore Roosevelt, George Bush, Herbert Hoover, John Adams, and William McKinley ... just edging out James Madison.

History taught from this perspective would surely be a lot truer to America's founding principles than what the little inmates of our unionized government propaganda camps receive today, though I did feel obliged to challenge the estimable Mr. Hummel on one inclusion in his list of "best" presidents: Dwight Eisenhower.



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Slowpoke Rodrigo...he pack a gon...

Vote for the Neal Knox 13

Bob Locke
April 13, 2000, 07:57 AM
How did Clinton not make the 10 Worst list?!?

And I'd like to toss in a vote for Cal Coolidge. I'll bet you can't find another president in the 20th century who vetoed bills on the basis that there is no Constitutional authority for the government to undertake a certain course of action. Coolidge did, and regularly.

Slowpoke_Rodrigo
April 13, 2000, 08:36 AM
Bob Locke:

Hi, I agree with you about Coolidge. I think he was the best president of this century - understood his limited constitutional role.

As to the current POTUS, perhaps that human should be classified as the first anti-president, rather than one of the ten worst.

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Slowpoke Rodrigo...he pack a gon...

Vote for the Neal Knox 13

denfoote
April 13, 2000, 08:42 AM
With out a doubt, Ronald Wilson Reagan! :)

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BOYCOTT SMITH AND WESSON!!!
Defend the Constitution from the foreign threat!!!!

Gunslinger
April 13, 2000, 08:58 AM
Place my vote for Jefferson Davis.

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Gunslinger

We live in a time in which attitudes and deeds once respected as courageous and honorable are now scorned as being antiquated and subversive.

hoosierboy
April 13, 2000, 08:32 PM
Best president would be Ronald Reagan.

Worst would have to be, and this is my opinion, would be FDR. He created social security, which created the social security number, which is very orwellian in that we are not a person but a number. The main thing is its a huge entitlment program and only made on wasteful government even bigger.

Thanks FDR!

Sword
April 14, 2000, 04:05 AM
Millard Fillmore. He didn't do anything.

Bob Locke
April 14, 2000, 07:27 AM
"Millard Fillmore. He didn't do anything."

That's to his CREDIT! :)

More of those, please!

jeffer
April 14, 2000, 07:31 AM
:Djeffer-son :D

Long Path
April 14, 2000, 07:42 AM
This is a fun topic, and I have major disagreements with some of the points made by the author in the original post (which just means that the piece was inciteful, if not, in my very personal opinion insightful ( :)), but I'm gonna pass the buck here and declare this topic:

MOVED TO LEGAL AND POLITICAL!

Enjoy!

(*grumble, grumble... how the HECK can some yahoo come in and say that Ronald Reagan was one of the best presidents when in the same breath they say Teddy Roosevelt was one of the worst?!?! grumble, grumble*...)