Word: hooverism
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...time Herbert Hoover's Challenge to Liberty appeared in 1934, intellectuals by & large dismissed it as little more than an ex-President's attempt to defend his administration. That it incorporated Herbert Hoover's articulation of an intelligible theory of government, that his theory was deeply rooted in U. S. traditions, made little difference. Unlike other theoreticians and politicians who balked at this or that aspect of the New Deal, criticized methods, personalities, mistakes, costs, the ex-President made a flat issue of the New Deal's fundamental philosophy. It was not merely mistaken, said...
...Said Hoover of quick remedies: "I have no word of criticism but rather great sympathy for those who honestly search human experience and human thought for some easy way out, where human selfishness has no opportunities, where freedom requires no safeguards, where justice requires no striving. . . . Such dreams are not without value and one could join in them with satisfaction but for the mind troubled by recollection of human frailty, the painful human advance through history, the long road which humanity still has to travel to economic and social perfections...
...Deal's emergency measures for recovery he would not quarrel. But because a nation's greatest moral, spiritual, economic and governmental change is involved in a shift in its fundamental social ideas, the big question remained: Does the New Deal represent such a shift? Said Herbert Hoover: "This is solely an issue. Honest men will treat it as such." Analyzing New Deal policies in currency, in finance, in agriculture he found such a change; a similar change in its insistence that the U. S. social system is outworn and in its tendency to increasing regimentation, towards delegation...
Personality. After the Hoover legends of the past ten years, Republicans meeting him for the first time are surprised to discover that he is a very able man and promptly conclude that he is badly maligned. He does not do the things that politicians are supposed to do: he cannot tell a joke, seldom even laughs at a good one and cannot go through the complicated ritual-throwing back the head, slapping the thigh-which immemorial tradition holds is the proper U. S. politician's response to a bad one. His handshake is no heartier than the usual political...
...records are at Stanford University in the Hoover Library of War, Revolution and Peace...