The Tao of Warren Gamaliel Harding

Thomas E. Woods Jr. on the president who "knew that cutting government was the best way to end a depression" — The Harding Way. He cites "the depression of 1920-21, which most people have never heard of, [a]s an example of the resumption of prosperity in the absence of government stimulus, indeed in the face of its very opposite." (Wu wei was, and is, the way.)

Prof. Woods argues that this man "routinely portrayed as a bumbling fool who stumbled into the presidency... understood the fundamentals of boom, bust, and recovery better than any 20th-century president." Said the first black (see below) and greatest XX^th Century president (seconded by his running mate and successor Calvin Coolidge) at the time: "I would be blind to the responsibilities that mark this fateful hour if I did not caution the wage-earners of America that mounting wages and decreased production can lead only to industrial and economic ruin."

It is worth remembering that this same Warren G. Harding not only pardoned the antiwar socialist Eugene V. Debs, who had been locked up by the interventionist (at home and abroad) Woodrow Wilson, but also invited him to a personal dinner at the White House! Bill Kauffman said of this moment that it "suggest[ed] an era when America writ large still had certain of the qualities of a small town" in his book, Look Homeward America: In Search of Reactionary Radicals and Front-Porch Anarchists.

Listen in rapt awe as I have just done to this great American man of peace:


Noting that "we never before sent so many to battle under the flag in a foreign land," he says:

I find a hundred thousand sorrows touching my heart, and there is ringing in my ears, like an admonition eternal, an insistent call, "It must not be again! It must not be again!" God grant that it will not be. And let a practical people join in cooperation with God to the end that it shall not be.

I would not wish a nation for which men are not willing to fight and, if need be, to die, but I do wish for a nation where it is not necessary to ask that sacrifice. I do not pretend that millenial days have come, but I can, believe in the possibility of a nation being so righteous as never to make a war of conquest and a nation so powerful in righteousness that none will dare invoke her wrath. I wish for us such an America.

Further suggested reading:

• Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. on the president who "reduced taxes, deregulated, and generally calmed down the country after a culture-wrecking, budget-busting war, and assured a time of great prosperity" — Missing Warren G. Harding.
• John MacMurray tells his fellow progressives "that it’s already been done — over 80 years ago, by the Republicans; and, Conservative Republicans, at that" — The First Black President.
• Ilya Somin on the president who "made a well-known speech advocating full legal equality for southern blacks in 1921" and "is also notable for reversing the severe violations of civil and economic liberties that had proliferated under his predecessor Woodrow Wilson" — Our Most Underrated President?