All right, today we’re going to talk about Reassessing the Presidency: The Rise of the Executive State and the Decline of Freedom.
The first one I opened up to is the Louisiana Purchase. This is very important because this purchase right here defined a lot in United States history. You’re going to hear me say the Louisiana Purchase a lot if you follow me, if you join me on my journey of knowledge and everything, then the Louisiana Purchase is a very important purchase in the United States, and in the history of people of color in the United States. I doubt this book is going to go down that route, however, it’s just going to talk about the Louisiana Purchase, so let’s talk about what happened.
All right, it’s not a good way to start off, right? All right, “Arguably the greatest accomplishment of Jefferson’s presidency was the acquisition of Louisiana. Bought from France for $15 million, the province was enormous at 800,000 square miles, and it contained some of the richest farmland in the world. Louisiana was comprised of New Orleans, a bustling city, St. Louis, a small city, a few isolated French settlements along the Mississippi, and some scattered Indian tribes. Other than that, it was virtually uninhabited.”
“The story of its acquisition is a familiar one to most students of American history. After hearing of the Spanish retrocession of Louisiana to France, Jefferson instructed the American minister to France, Robert R. Livingston, to negotiate for West Florida and New Orleans. If that failed, he was to try to acquire some land on the lower Mississippi for an American port, and if that failed, he was to seek a French guarantee for free navigation of the Mississippi, and the right for a deposit at New Orleans. So we have to remember, in January 1803 Jefferson named James Monroe minister plenipotentiary to France, and sent him to Paris prepared to offer 10 million for New Orleans and West Florida. Just as Monroe was arriving to Paris, Talleyrand shocked Livingston by offering to sell not only New Orleans, but the whole Louisiana to United States.”
All right, so while we talk about this, we have to understand, if we look at a map, we’re talking basically middle of America. This is before the 1849, so this is before California, California at this time was Spanish, I’m pretty sure, so it wasn’t even America. So they explain that it is one of the most important purchases in Jefferson’s time, and also in the United States times, because the landmass that we purchased. We basically doubled the size of the United States at this point in time, and it kind of solidified the United States as a whole. And it also lead to more things, but we’ll just keep on going.
“With the news the Louisiana Treaty…” okay. All right, “Recognizing the advantage of such a purchase, Livingston negotiated a treaty. Both Livingston and Monroe signed the treaty and sent it to Jefferson. When news of the Louisiana Treaty reached Jefferson and Madison, they were excellent. Not only did the session obtain New Orleans, but it secured a free navigation of the Mississippi River, removed to potential hostile power from the west bank of Mississippi, and provided seemingly inexhaustible reserve of land for American settlement. It was fully in accord with Jefferson’s policy of making the country secure without resorting to war or funding an expensive military and Navy establishment. They also believed that it would help preserve the agrarian character of the American Confederation for generations to come.”
All right, I don’t want to just read the whole entire thing, but that’s going to be one, we’re going to be discussing the Louisiana Purchase, so I’m going to finish reading and then I’ll give more. But however, just because this is such a mammoth book, I don’t want to just talk about one person, we can go into something else too. So that was in the past, the Louisiana Purchase is very important for, like I said, in the future, if you keeps following me, and then let’s go, deposition loves company, the story of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin. That’s interesting. Or Franklin D. Roosevelt New Deal, from economic fascism to pork belly barrel politics. I like that one better, 425.
All right, so 15, let me show you where we are. That’s very clear right there. All right, from Murray N. Rothbard, America’s Great Depression. “Before the massive government intervention of the 1930s, all recessions were short lift. The severe depression of 1921 was over so rapidly, for example, the secretary of commerce, Herbert Hoover, despite his interventionist inclinations, was not able to convince President Harding to intervene rapidly enough. By the time Harding was persuaded to intervene, the depression was almost over. When the stock market crash arrived in October 29, Herbert Hoover, now the president, interfered so rapidly and so massively that the market adjustment process was paralyzed, and the Hoover-Roosevelt New Deal policies managed to bring about a permanent and massive depression.”
Whoa, that is the complete opposite of what we’ve always been told. Wow. The biggest economic myth of the 20th century is the notion that President D… excuse me, I was going a little too fast, “that President D Roosevelt unprecedented peace time economic interventions got us out of the great depression, and thereby saved capitalism from itself. This tale was repeated frequently during the 1990s by the former speaker of the house of representatives, Newt Gingrich, who said that FDR did bring us out of the depression, and was therefore the greatest figure of the 20th century. Virtually every US history book repeats this falsehood, despite readily available evidence to the contrary. In reality, FDR’s economic policies made the great depression much worse.” Wow, this is very interesting, “Caused it to last much longer than it otherwise would have, and established intervention precedents that have been a drag on economic prosperity and the threat to Liberty to this day.” Goodness gracious.
And this goes up to the forties, but if you look at this, just look. This is the unemployment, 1920s was 3%, 1940s was 14%. I’m almost out of time, but wow oh wow, I’m glad we took the little extra time to learn a little bit more. I mean, this is pretty hefty, but it’s going to give for great information later. “Despite a doubling of federal government expenditures from 1933, Roosevelt’s first year in office, to 1940, the creation of dozens of new federal programs and direct employment of some 10 million Americans in government relief jobs, the economy was basically no better off in ’38 than it was in ’33. Indeed, as will be discussed below, it was precisely because all of these programs and expenditures that the great depression dragged on until after World War II. Table one shows the official US unemployment rate from 1920, the year the stock market crashed, until 1940. As seen here unemployment remain extraordinarily high for the first three years of FDR’s term.” Yes, it did.
We’re looking at basically, starting at 1933, is 24%. ’34, 21%. ’35, 20%. So, I mean, in today’s standards, after three years, we would have kicked him out. Man, I’m already at 10 minutes, man. This is really interesting, we don’t have time to go anymore. But if you want to hear more, this is, I’m really glad that I didn’t just stop with the New Deal and we went a little bit further, because I’m very interested on that. Because we also know the New Deal, it was only for certain type of Americans, it wasn’t for all of Americans, it was for a specific type of American that they wanted to help out. It didn’t help out everybody. And then right here, saying that it didn’t really help anybody, that’s very interesting. All right, talk to you all later.