Herbert Hoover’s Lessons

[Valin]

NRO

A challenge to think afresh about our interests and how to protect them.

Clifford D. May

9/6/12

 

It was Herbert Hoover’s misfortune to be president when the stock market crashed in 1929. Three years later, Franklin Roosevelt would blame him for the Great Depression and defeat him at the ballot box. Historians ranking American presidents have placed Hoover near the bottom of their lists ever since.

 

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Freedom Betrayed: Herbert Hoover’s Secret History of the Second World War and Its Aftermath was completed almost half a century ago but published only last year following a herculean editing job by historian George H. Nash. According to Nash, Hoover’s 900-page tome should be read “as an argument that challenges us to think afresh about our past.” It should be read also, I would suggest, as an argument that challenges us to think afresh about our present and future.

 

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[b*]What we should know — and what Hoover’s magnum opus reinforces — is that vigorous debate is essential. Those who call themselves our enemies have ideologies, strategies, and goals. We need to understand them. If we refuse to seriously attempt that — because we want to be “politically correct” and multiculturally sensitive, or because it is comforting to believe we are only confronting “extremism” and grievances that can be addressed through diplomacy — we will contribute to our own decline and downfall.[/b]

 

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*Something we to little of....imo