fbpx

The New Deal & Modern American Conservatism

with Gordon Lloyd

This next Liberty Law Talk is with Gordon Lloyd of the School of Public Policy at Pepperdine on his new book, co-authored with David Davenport, The New Deal & Modern American Conservatism (Hoover Press, 2013). Much has been made, and rightly so, of the example set by Calvin Coolidge in his confrontation with the forces of taxing and spending and nascent regulatory attempts to cartelize certain markets, among other challenges he faced. However, might it be that Herbert Hoover and his “American System” articulated in the 1932 campaign, along with his subsequent attempts to repeal the New Deal, offers the better teaching moment? After all, as Lloyd stresses in this conversation, Hoover confronted dead-on the revolutionary moment urged by Progressives in the form of the New Deal. He lost, but the principles he articulated remain latent within our Constitution and civil society. As the authors state on the first page, “Go back to come back.” This conversation focuses on Hoover, his defense of the American constitutional order, and what this might mean for our contemporary challenges.