The Challenge To Liberty

by Herbert Hoover

Very RARE edition!! UNIQUE offer!! Don’t wait to be OWNER of this special piece of HISTORY!!!

Genres: Politics, Philosophy, History

212 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1973

About the author

Herbert Clark Hoover, the 31st President of the United States (1929–1933), was a mining engineer and author. As the United States Secretary of Commerce in the 1920s under Presidents Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge, he promoted government intervention under the rubric "economic modernization". In the presidential election of 1928 Hoover easily won the Republican nomination. The nation was prosperous and optimistic, leading to a landslide for Hoover over the Democrat Al Smith, whom many voters distrusted on account of his Roman Catholicism. Hoover deeply believed in the Efficiency Movement (a major component of the Progressive Era), arguing that a technical solution existed for every social and economic problem. That position was challenged by the Great Depression, which began in 1929, the first year of his presidency. He tried to combat the Depression with volunteer efforts and government action, none of which produced economic recovery during his term. The consensus among historians is that Hoover's defeat in the 1932 election was caused primarily by failure to end the downward spiral into deep Depression, compounded by popular opposition to prohibition. Other electoral liabilities were Hoover's lack of charisma in relating to voters, and his poor skills in working with politicians.

Reviews

[Justin Rose · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is timeless. Almost everything in Challenge is applicable today. It also is a necessary source as part of a study showing that the blame for the Great Depression and World War 2 lay mostly on Roosevelt's New Deal (although the book itself predates much of the New Deal and all of the second World War).

[Oma Eagle · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have this 1934 edition

[Friedrich Haas · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is Hoover's first book after leaving office, and I feel it is a love letter to Liberty as the world marches toward Facism and Dictatorship. He calls it Liberalism, and that it is no more owned by a Democrat or a Republican as Christianity is, and in the light of todays politics you see how far we are falling.

He sees that after WW1 that everyone is surrendering their Liberty, so he will examine American Liberty vs the new ideas of governance such as Communism, Facism, Naziism, ... . At first I thought his Liberalism was more what we now call Libertarianism, but he decries the Laissey faire that modern libertarinas call liberty, that rugged individualism, sink or swim, and talks more of the wrongs of unrestrained Capitalism, and I believe his Liberalism is what we now call Democratic Socialism, that we truly don't have liberty unless we have a fair shot at it, that we are a society after all.

He talks of the OVERTHROW of Liberty in it's mild form being the breaking down of confidence in existing institutions by defamation (Government doesn't work ; R), and that the violent form is to overthrow them by seizure and suppression (Privitization and closings : R), unfullfilled promises (Lies), and the abolition of elections (Voter supression : R), that Liberties dies from the water of her own well - Free Speech - is poisoned by untruth. I can't help but see that he has predicted the campaign of the Republican Party to overthrow our Democracy, for they have done all these for decades, but he likely means the european states more than a prescient forecast.

All the many things that he lists as the virtues of our country derived from our Liberty are now gone, and denied to us by Trump. Hoover just came out of what everyone calls a failed Presidency, and the Great Depression, WW1 going straight into WW2, and he still is in love with our nation and our Liberty, and I'M JEALOUS OF HIM. I have no such optimism as we inexorably stumble into Facism, Oligarchy, Theocracy, and KAKISTOCRACY! I envy Hoover, who is very well spoken, that is how bad it is now.

I read this after Ron paul's Defining Liberty, after Sander's Two Years in the Resistance, and that is a good reading list to bounce off of each other. They should be a College reading list, nay, a HS reading list so those who go to trades are just as well versed in our obligations to understand governance. All fight for Liberty, all must understand and live it in their beating heart.

Hoover even mentions "Fake News", I tell ya, he needs a reading. On the negative it is verbose and the language has shifted so that it is starting to feel like reading Shakespeare.

[Jeremy Lucas · Rating 4 out of 5]

For a man whose brilliant legacy of humanitarianism and goodwill was tarnished, all at once, by the single, historical record of a crash and subsequent depression, Herbert Hoover, writing as a former president, two years after leaving office, as a man who ceased to be viewed by Americans as one who could bring us out of the hole, still manages to weave together a well argued theory that his approach was working, that by 1932, our nation was in the midst of an upturn, that our only hesitation, our only cause for such a slow recovery was the election of a different party, a different administration than his. What Hoover wrestles with is less a chip on his shoulder for having lost re-election in a landslide, but with the risks that a new direction may still have on liberty itself, should Franklin Roosevelt and his party begin adopting socialistic methods of instant recovery under the guise of temporary relief that will, inevitably, become a weight on American freedoms, making men more dependent than ever before on the welfare provided by the state.

To his credit, Hoover was a proficient academic whose studied knowledge of the circumstances surrounding the globe for twenty years prior to the crash are without compare, but he places too much weight for the crash on the effects of World War I, despite the boom of a roaring twenties economy. He seeks not to blame the economic system for fear that blaming it will mean a complete restructuring of it and, tragically, an end to liberty. The reality is that while yes, Roosevelt did upend a number of social constructs in order to boost the economy, he also put in place regulations on the system that were designed, like the stop lights that Hoover mentions toward the end of his treatise, to limit the excesses and the impacts of Wall Street on Main Street.

“The difficulties,” writes Hoover, “are in discovery of methods [for solving poverty with plenty] which will not deteriorate thrift, create a group of loafers, and will not undermine the responsibilities of state and local government, or lay unjust burdens upon agriculture.”

[Louis Picone · Rating 5 out of 5]

Probably the most passive aggressive book I've ever read as 2 years after being defeated, Hoover attacks FDR's policies without ever naming FDR. Five stars because its Hoover & highlights the challenges from the right and Hoover as a bitter man, but he also has some very intriguing things to say about how Authoritarians destroy Democracies from within such as (pages 15-16):

Breaking down confidence in existing institutions
Initial winning of elections through promises not intended of fulfillment & the direct postponement of abolition of elections
Secure the independence of legislative bodies by the delegation of their powers for “emergency’s sake”
Encroach by evasion & subtle intimidation of judicial independence or they suppress the courts
Combatting criticism manipulation of the agencies of public information & suppression of free speech & free press
Continue old government forms for appearances sake but they move forward to destruction of Liberty by the growth of disguised or open dictatorship
None of [this] can be imposed without play upon fear or intimidation