This remarkable volume is the first full-scale revision of the official history of the U.S. executive state. It traces the progression of power exercised by American presidents from the early American Republican up to the eventual reality of the power-hungry Caesars which later appear as president in American history.

Contributors examine the usual judgments of the historical profession to show the ugly side of supposed presidential greatness.

The mission inherent in this undertaking is to determine how the presidency degenerated into the office of American Caesar. Did the character of the man who held the office corrupt it, or did the power of the office, as it evolved, corrupt the man? Or was it a combination of the two? Was there too much latent power in the original creation of the office as the Anti-Federalists claimed? Or was the power externally created and added to the position by corrupt or misguided men?

Contributors include George Bittlingmayer, John V. Denson, Marshall L. DeRosa, Thomas J. DiLorenzo, Lowell Gallaway, Richard M. Gamble, David Gordon, Paul Gottfried, Randall G. Holcombe, Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Jeffrey Rogers Hummel, Michael Levin, Yuri N. Maltsev, William Marina, Joseph Salerno, Barry Simpson, Joseph Stromberg, H. Arthur Scott Trask, Richard Vedder, and Clyde Wilson.

CONTENTS:

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JOHN V. DENSON, ED.
Copyright © 2001 by the Ludwig von Mises Institute.
ISBN-10: 0945466293
ISBN-13: 978-0945466291

INTRODUCTION
JOHN V DENSON

There are already many books analyzing the American presidency that unique political institution created by our eighteenth-century Founders. Two of the most popular books on this subject are The Imperial Presidency, by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.,1 and The American Presidency, by Forrest McDonald.

These books are well-researched, and both authors are competent scholars who express their ideas through  excellent prose. So why another book on this subject? The main reason is to express various viewpoints in the long tradition of classical liberalism which are not contained in any other books on the presidency with which I am familiar. Schlesinger essentially states the viewpoint of modern liberals, and McDonald states basically that of the conservatives.

Also, the viewpoints expressed in this volume are very different from the perspectives of most of the professional historians whose polls are studied in the first essay herein by professors Richard Vedder and Lowell Gallaway In every published poll taken of selected groups of professional historians since 1948, Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt have been rated as two of the three "greatest," compared with the judgment expressed in this book which rates them as the two "worst" presidents. Therefore, we need to begin with an explanation of the term classical liberalism and distinguish it from conservatism and modern liberalism.

Ralph Raico, a classical liberal and a professional historian who has an excellent chapter on President Truman in this volume, has correctly stated that, "Classical liberalism—or simply liberalism, as it was called until around the turn of the century—is the signature political philosophy of Western civilization." He is referring to the political philosophy of a limited, constitutional government which follows an economic policy of the free market and a foreign policy of noninterventionism, all ideas which were very popular and influential in America in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. He is not praising the philosophy of big government associated with the term "liberal—" which today signifies a belief in a central government designed to promote egalitarianism, with a regulated, highly taxed economy and an interventionist foreign policy appropriately described, in my opinion, as "globaloney."

These modern liberals, who were calling themselves "progressives" or "socialists" in the early part of the twentieth century, later adopted the term "liberal" for the same reasons that the American Whig Party adopted the venerable term "Whig" from the British in the nineteenth century. American Whigs believed in big government and the British Whigs believed in limited government. The adoption of the terms "liberal" and "Whig" were done to confuse the American people about the true intentions of the advocates of big government. Felix Morley described this shell game of labels in 1951 as follows:

Those who urge the progressive intervention of government in business were once accurately and dispassionately known as "Socialists." But most American Socialists now describe themselves as "liberals," although that designation for a believer in State planning is directly opposite to the historic meaning of the word. There is no doubt that this type of semantic duplicity, or double-talk, has been politically influential.

However, today the political label "liberal" has become such an opprobrious word of political baggage to a significant number of the general public that many modern liberals have retreated to their previous label of "progressives." The modern liberal wants to bring about his plan of the welfare state through the democratic process, or "social democracy," a term born during the French Revolution.

The egalitarian ideas of the French Revolution inspired the socialist movement in the nineteenth century, which filtered into the American political system at the end of that century through the "progressive" movement. As progressives became the dominant political force in the early part of the twentieth century they changed their label to "liberals." ...

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