The American Declaration Presents
Dr. Jerome Huyler
To speak on:
The Tragedy of Our History
How the Patriots' America Became the Progressives' America
On the occasion of her birth, America (1) declared that all men are created equal and free to gain, KEEP, use, trade or otherwise dispose of their freely-acquired possessions, and (2) established a government of strictly limited powers to ensure that those freedoms would endure. See Locke.
Before long those limited powers began expanding in all directions, until today where a government virtually UNLIMITED in its capacity to take from some and give to others has become a burden to us all.
It all begs two questions
When did public policy first go amiss, and how did we get from that day to this?
A revolutionary retelling of the founding era and its aftermath
1. Because the "self-evident" truths enshrined in Jefferson's Declaration turned up missing in the U. S. Constitution, the founding principles would not survive the founding era.
2. The origins of the American welfare state can be traced to the second bill signed by our first president. The Tariff Act of 1789 allowed for the "encouragement and protection of manufactures." Protective tariff bills could do that but only at the expense of farmers, planters, ship-builders, seaport merchants, thousands employed in the maritime trades and near every consumer in the country..
3. All men might be created equal, but they would no longer be treated as such by Congress. Here's the rub:
4. Once the nation decided that some of its citizens had a right not to go out and get,l but to lobby Congress and be given, it faced two questions: Who else should be given and how much should everybody get? There was only one answer: Politics (cronyism and corruption followed).
5. The periodic panics, deep economic plunges, and accompanying hardship caused not by free market activity, but by CORPORATE welfare policies, created the "need," the DEMAND, and the excuse for SOCIAL welfare reforms from the Progressive Era, to the New Deal, and beyond
About the Speaker
Jerome Huyler has a PhD. in political science and is a former assistant professor from Seton Hall University. His doctoral dissertation on the ideology of the American Revolution was published as Locke In America: The Moral Philosophy of the Founding Era in the distinguished American Political Thought series of the University Press of Kansas
.Dr. Huyler blogs at www.jeromehuyler.com and occasionally speaks on historical, patriotic, and contemporary political topics. He offers a perspective like no other.
By Jerome Huyler
