Failed Ideas; Tired Criticisms

In your interview with Molly Ivins and Louis Dubose ["The Powerful Odor of Mendacity," Oct. 3], Ms. Ivins remarks that the current presidential administration wants "to completely undo the Great Society and the New Deal." If only it were true! Most of today's social and economic ills can be traced directly back to those two programs and the ideologies under which they were established: Reliance on big brother and the dole instead of self-reliance, the idea that only government intervention can ease social ills, the concept that most people are incapable of handling themselves or their own affairs, and the belief that anyone who is successful must have gotten there by standing on the backs of the "common" men – therefore it is only just that the government take their money away from them and give it to those who really deserve it. As to the idea that either of these programs saved us from the Great Depression? On the contrary. The socializing of the American society and Keynesian economics extended the effects of the Great Depression – the last gasps of a dying agrarian economic structure – by an additional five years, at least. What truly turned our economic situation around was World War II, and the massive ramp-up of manufacturing that came with it. Sadly, those educated by our wonderful public educational system have never heard the truth about the cause of the Great Depression or what brought the nation out of it. Sadder still is that persons like Ms. Ivins and Mr. Dubose take advantage of this to push for more and more of these same failed ideas.