Sounds familiar to me. A politically motivated Federal Reserve strategy of easy money and artificially created low interest rates producing a booming highly-leveraged stock market, a land speculation bubble, and a national desire for wealth without effort. Then that which is to go on forever doesn’t—the bust.
That was "Black Tuesday" and the brutal stock market crash of Oct. 22, 1929. Near year end, the tide seemed to turn and investors stopped jumping out of windows. Waves of optimism swept across the investing public. The Dow Jones Industrial Average and the declining Bond Market began to recover. At first all seemed well. A year later, however, the worldwide recession of 1931 was underway. The natural law of economics began to rectify the monetary magic of easy money and artificially created low interest rates.
Trying to undo what they had done, the Federal Reserve reversed its easy money and credit policy, collapsing the U.S. Bond and Stock Market. President Hoover's easy money recession of 1931 became President Roosevelt’s tight-money depression of the late1930's.
The new President called for massive government stimulus and public work programs. President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared the problem too big for anyone except the federal government. F.D.R. got his wish and the public got a substantially bigger, more expensive, and intrusive federal government. The despair, insecurity, and economic woes of the 1930’s, however, continued. That was then.
In spite of today’s doomsday news headlines, the stock market crash, real estate bust, and financial break down is nowhere the social and financial slaughter of 1929 and depression of the1930s—at least not yet, and hopefully not at all.
America's post-World War One leaders engineered the 1920's prosperity. America's financial engineers'—President Hoover was known as the "Great Engineer"—sought to keep the world prosperous with monetary magic. Hoover and the progresive wing of the Republican party rejected a sound money policy and kept interest rates artificially low. This made possible easy money, cheap loans, and a highly leveraged stock market. This monetary magic generated a false prosperity bubble, then the1929 crash.
Like today’s financial turmoil, the 1929 crash and depression set loose a spirit of fear and despair. And like today, one America turned to God and the Gospel to sustain them. The other America looked to government and embraced a modern nineteenth century socialism—the social gospel.
Protestantism’s socialist movement was underway even before America entered World War One. Norman Thomas, a Presbyterian minister, embraced a "social gospel" to rectify America’s social and financial injustice. While Fundamentalist ministers committed their lives to preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ, Thomas committed his life to preaching a socialist gospel and becoming America’s ongoing socialist presidential candidate.
Thomas came from a Calvinistic family and his wife Frances from an aristocratic-minded banking family. Together they worked with the big city poverty-stricken. To rectify economic needs and social injustice they experienced, Norman and Frances preached socialism, the avant-garde movement of pre-World War I Protestantism.
Although he remained a Presbyterian minister for twenty-one years, Thomas moved from the pulpit to the political soapbox. He moved from preaching the "City of God" to building a socialistic man-made utopia.
Thomas and other social gospel preachers rejected individual salvation and preached the collective brotherhood of man. Faith in science and government replaced orthodox religious beliefs. That was then and so it is now.
While Thomas preached one gospel, Billy Sunday preached "the" Gospel. Prior to World War One, Billy Sunday was already America's greatest evangelist. Thousands flocked to hear the former baseball player call for spiritual renewal.
Like Norman Thomas, Billy Sunday was an ordained Presbyterian. Unlike Thomas, Sunday believed spiritual renewal, not government, was the answer to America's social problems. His message was simple, "With Christ you are saved; without Him you are lost." Billy's was a fundamental theology with middle-class appeal.
Billy believed God and hard work was the answer to America's economic problems, not socialism. He preached honesty and hard work for the working man, and castigated the dishonest boss and crooked businessman. A message needed today.
But, it was not Billy’s preaching that set Thomas and the socialist movement back. It was the return of financial prosperity following the 1920-21 recession—a Golden Age of business expansion and abundance. Mass production provided automobiles for middle-America. Movies provided entertainment and diversion. The birth of broadcasting provided music, sports, and amusement for the American masses. America was on the move, physically and financially.
The 1920's prosperity was not prosperous for either gospel, church attendance dropped and interest in the socialist movement faded. In 1920, a time of recession and hard economic times, socialist candidate Eugene Debs campaigned from a penitentiary cell. Debs received more than 900,000 votes. In 1928, a time of prosperity, socialist candidate Norman Thomas made his first bid for the Presidency. He received less than 275,000 votes.
The 1929 crash and resulting depression let loose a spirit of fear and despair. America also experienced spiritual renewal. In 1936, the United States Religious Census reveled that for the first time there were more church members than not. A flood of Americans poured into mainstream Christianity, more Americans than ever looked to God and the Gospel to sustain them. Others turned to government for their daily bread and to heal the country’s economic ills and rectify its social problems. That was then and so it is now.
Although Norman Thomas severed ties with his church in 1931, he continued to preach the socialist party gospel until his death in 1968. He also continued to be their Presidential candidate. But Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Democrat Party stole his platform for their own. It took Republicans a few more decades to turn from the Gospel preached by the Billy Sundays and embrace the social gospel of Norman Thomas and the Democrat Party.
By the second term of President Bush’s administration, federal programs and debt were growing at their fastest rate. With the 2007-08 financial melt down, Republican leadership questioned competitive capitalism—the market-oriented system that made America prosperous, powerful, and free. And in its place championed a bureaucratic restructure of economy and society, and a welfare state stimulus and bailout package—more debt and bigger government.
"Unfortunately, economic income and wealth do not flow from a mountain of debt; they spring from savings and investments."
"It is self-evident that an excess of national spending over saving tends to impoverish society, just as the excess of individual spending over savings tends to drain an individual."
______ Dr. Hans F. Sennholz
The bailouts and vote-buying welfare state stimulus packages President Obama and congressional leaders’ advocate are the same ideas that caused the problem in the first place—only on a more massive scale. The cure is the disease. A bigger expensive government borrowing money to bailout an ailing economy caused by excessive borrowing—debt. Similar to using one credit card to pay the minium payment on another maxed out credit card. It does not work for individuals nor will it work for governments.
Bigger government and more debt will not fix economic injustices and establish the social gospel’s perfect society. It will, however, be another giant step to a regulated collectivist welfare state.
Governments or societies built on the collectivist idea that public interest takes precedence over private profit for the well-being and advancement of all goes against human nature.
It is human nature to act in one’s own interest not the public or group’s interest. The social gospel goes against that nature. Being insensitive to human behavior all fail, be it the early American utopian experiment of Robert Own’s at New Harmony, Indiana, or the social gospel experiment and resulting Jim Jones Town tragedy. These, however, were groups not a whole nation.
"All animals are equal. But some animals are more equal than others."
______ George Orwell, Animal Farm
In a collectivist society all are equal. To make it work, however, some become more equal than others. Group or public (government) ownership, operation, and equal distribution of goods and services goes against human nature. Therefore, utopian societies or collectivist governments end up using force to restrict freedom of action and thought.
Which gospel will guide our future, the social gospel of Norman Thomas or "the" Gospel of Billy Sunday?
Be Informed Be Involved _________ Michael E. Odell
There are many areas of involvement available. First, become informed. Then, what can you do?
Go to Blog Archive at upper right, click on May-11-08, "But What Can I Do?"
