This blog post in response to the chapter of “The Suburbanization of the United States” brought up a point which peaked my interest in such a way that I had to physically stop reading and think.

I find it mind-blowing how opposed to the idea of government intervention in private affairs people were prior to the late 1920’s. Key pillars within the foundation of the American Dream was self-sufficiency, private enterprise, and private home ownership. These were the ideas upholding American democracy until the moment the Great Depression hit, when the shit hit the fan and all three principles began a rapid tailspin downward. Life savings disappeared, unemployment rates skyrocketed, and at it peaks 1,000 mortgages defaulted per day. And then suddenly the idea of government intervention for the purpose of aiding the American Populace was no longer Marxist propaganda, but was the work of the great president FDR who could understand the hardships of his people and was willing to work with them toward the eventual betterment of a faulty system long in place.

 

I shudder to think what these people who so vehemently disagreed with such policy points as the government stepping in to aid with mortgage rates would think of the state of our government now. Not to say we are a socialist state by any means, but one can take such programs as social security, publicly provided health care, rent control, federal natural disaster aid, as well as government buyouts of companies and bailouts of banks throughout this last recession as examples. Political moderates from this time preaching self-dependce, private responsibility, and a minimal role for government in such social issues would today sound like libertarians!