1. RECONCILING JEFFERSONIAN PRINCIPLES WITH THE NEW DEALS.
- Author
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Gooch, Robert K.
- Subjects
- *
NEW Deal, 1933-1939 , *ECONOMIC development projects , *RURAL industries ,UNITED States economy, 1918-1945 ,UNITED States economic policy, 1933-1945 - Abstract
The article presents the author's views on former U.S. President Thomas Jefferson's principles with the New Deal. The coming of the New Deal was almost immediately followed by a decidedly curious situation. Though many people, apparently, have seen in the epoch-making events of the last two or three years only a formidable effort to rehabilitate industry and to restore agriculture, not a few others have conceived things in a very different way. In the past, long before the New Deal was urged upon our attention, a voice was from time to time raised proclaiming that if Jefferson were on earth today, he could not be elected to the office of constable. Now, if this means anything, it is apparently meant to be an unfavorable judgment concerning the body of electors. It is apparently suggested that they are possessed of so little wisdom that they have abandoned the principles of Jefferson and would consequently refuse to elect to an insignificant office that great man, if he were on earth advocating those principles today. Thomas Jefferson well knew what most people apparently for- get, that individualism or liberalism is not so much a theory as a kind of tendency, that it is not so much a fixed doctrine as a particular emphasis, that it is not so much an ultimate principle as a point of view, that it is not absolute but relative.
- Published
- 1935