Recarving Rushmore

Last updated
Recarving Rushmore
Recarving Rushmore.jpg
Author Ivan Eland
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Subject History of the U.S.
Politics of the U.S.
U.S. economy
U.S. presidential rankings
Published2009
Publisher Independent Institute
Pages484
ISBN 9781598130225
973.09/9

Recarving Rushmore: Ranking the Presidents on Peace, Prosperity, And Liberty is a non-fiction book authored by American socio-political commentator Ivan Eland. Published in 2009 by the Independent Institute, [1] the book reviews the history of the United States with a particular emphasis on that of the presidents who have led the nation. Taking issue with previous accounts in which historians have ranked the officials, the author applies his libertarian approach in terms of using different criteria to judge each president. [2]

Contents

LewRockwell.com published a supportive review of the book. [2] The official website of the U.S. Libertarian Party praised Recarving Rushmore as well in a blog post about the book, with Eland's writing lauded as being "direct and fair". [3]

A revised version of the book came out in 2014. [2]

The title alludes to the famous American monument Mount Rushmore, also known as the Shrine of Democracy.

Background and contents

President Woodrow Wilson was the worst individual to hold the high office, in Eland's opinion, due to actions such as Wilson's repressive domestic conduct undertaken during World War I and the enacting of costly, expansive economic programs. President Woodrow Wilson (1913).jpg
President Woodrow Wilson was the worst individual to hold the high office, in Eland's opinion, due to actions such as Wilson's repressive domestic conduct undertaken during World War I and the enacting of costly, expansive economic programs.

Eland has served as a senior fellow at the Independent Institute. In terms of public service, he has spent fifteen years working for the U.S. Congress on foreign affairs, particularly focusing on national security issues. [3] As a libertarian commentator, his writings have appeared within multiple publications.[ citation needed ]

Starting with George Washington, Eland expresses his willingness to criticize individuals who have otherwise received high praise from historians. He condemns Washington's conduct during the Whiskey Rebellion in particular, for example. The author describes the first president's actions as inherently reckless. Later serving leaders who attract particular scorn and who receive low rankings in Eland's analysis include Andrew Jackson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Franklin D. Roosevelt. In contrast to other, conservative-based takes on history, Eland additionally considers Jimmy Carter to have been a better president than Carter's immediate successor, Ronald Reagan, [2] and he goes so far as to label Carter as the best modern president in U.S. history. [1]

In some cases, the author agrees with past criticisms of particular presidents undertaken by more conventional historians. For instance, Eland condemns Zachary Taylor for the leader's lack of a response to the "shameful murder" of indigenous American tribes during the California Gold Rush. The author additionally blames Franklin Pierce for pushing policies that benefited slavery and ultimately led to the American Civil War in Eland's opinion. [2]

Using the tripartite model of evaluating leaders based on promoting peace, advancing the U.S. economy, and proliferating liberty, the author ultimately concludes that John Tyler was the greatest American president. Grover Cleveland and Martin Van Buren take the second and third ranks on the list, respectively. Woodrow Wilson, in Eland's opinion, was the worst president in U.S. history.[ citation needed ] In sum, Eland writes that Wilson "made the world safe for war, autocracy, and colonialism". [1]

In terms of the previous president (when the book was initially published, in 2009), the author expresses a dim view of George W. Bush. He asserts that the leader implemented "aggressive foreign policies" that "undermined the republic at home". [1]

Reception

LewRockwell.com published a supportive review by Brion McClanahan of the Abbeville Institute. Although finding fault with Eland's approach at times, with McClanahan remarking that Constitutional "restraint sometimes means doing nothing even if doing nothing is politically incorrect or out of step with modern libertarian ideology", McClanahan considered Eland's willingness to slaughter "several sacred cows in the process" of making broader arguments laudable in contrast to "establishment groupthink". McClanahan also stated that Eland's "breezy writing and short chapters allow for a quick and punchy read." [2]

The official website of the U.S. Libertarian Party published a supportive blog post about the book in February 2009, with Eland's writing praised as being "direct and fair". [3]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Murray Rothbard</span> American economist (1926–1995)

Murray Newton Rothbard was an American economist of the Austrian School, economic historian, political theorist, and activist. Rothbard was a central figure in the 20th-century American libertarian movement, particularly its right-wing strands, and was a founder and leading theoretician of anarcho-capitalism. He wrote over twenty books on political theory, history, economics, and other subjects.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ron Paul</span> American politician (born 1935)

Ronald Ernest Paul is an American author, activist, physician and retired politician who served as the U.S. representative for Texas's 22nd congressional district from 1976 to 1977 and again from 1979 to 1985, as well as for Texas's 14th congressional district from 1997 to 2013. On three occasions, he sought the presidency of the United States: as the Libertarian Party nominee in 1988 and as a candidate for the Republican Party in 2008 and 2012.

The Ludwig von Mises Institute for Austrian Economics, or Mises Institute, is a nonprofit think tank headquartered in Auburn, Alabama, that is a center for radical libertarian thought and the right-wing paleolibertarian and anarcho-capitalist movements in the United States. It is named after the economist Ludwig von Mises (1881–1973) and promotes heterodox Misesian Austrian economics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lew Rockwell</span> American libertarian author, editor, and political consultant (born 1944)

Llewellyn Harrison Rockwell Jr. is an American author, editor, and political consultant. A libertarian and a self-professed anarcho-capitalist, he founded and is the chairman of the Mises Institute, a non-profit promoting the Austrian School of economics.

Libertarian perspectives on foreign intervention started as a reaction to the Cold War mentality of military interventionism promoted by American conservatives like William F. Buckley Jr. which had supplanted Old Right non-interventionism. The Vietnam War split the uneasy alliance between growing numbers of self-identified libertarians and the Cold War conservatives. Libertarians opposed to the war joined the draft resistance and peace movements and created organizations such as Students for a Democratic Society. The split was aggravated at the 1969 Young Americans for Freedom convention where the burning of a draft card sparked physical confrontations among convention attendees, a walkout by many libertarians, and the creation of antiwar libertarian organizations. Left-libertarians generally oppose foreign military intervention on anti-imperialist grounds, while right-libertarians also generally oppose foreign military intervention and generally oppose all government foreign aid as well. In the United States, the Libertarian Party opposes strategic alliances between the United States and foreign nations.

Paleolibertarianism is a libertarian political activism strategy aimed at uniting libertarians and paleoconservatives. It was developed by American anarcho-capitalist theorists Murray Rothbard and Lew Rockwell in the American political context after the end of the Cold War. From 1989 to 1995, they sought to communicate libertarian notions of opposition to government intervention using messages accessible to working and middle-class people of the time, and combining libertarian free market views with the cultural conservatism of Paleoconservatism, while also opposing protectionism. The strategy also embraced the paleoconservative reverence for tradition and religion. This approach, usually identified as right-wing populism, was intended to radicalize citizens against the state. The name they chose for this style of activism evoked the roots of modern libertarianism, hence the prefix paleo. That founding movement was American classical liberalism, which shared the anti-war and anti-New Deal sentiments of the Old Right in the first half of the 20th century. Paleolibertarianism is generally seen as a right-wing ideology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Karen Kwiatkowski</span> Retired military officer and author

Karen U. Kwiatkowski, née Unger, is an American activist and commentator. She is a retired U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel whose assignments included duties as a Pentagon desk officer and a variety of roles for the National Security Agency. Since retiring, she has become a noted critic of the U.S. government's involvement in Iraq. Kwiatkowski is primarily known for her insider essays which denounce a corrupting political influence on the course of military intelligence leading up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. In 2012, she challenged incumbent Bob Goodlatte, in the Republican primary for Virginia's 6th congressional district seat in the United States House of Representatives and garnered 34% of the Republican vote on a constitutional and limited government platform.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ivan Eland</span> American defense analyst and author

Ivan Eland is an American defense analyst and writer. He is a Senior Fellow and Director of the Center on Peace and Liberty at the Independent Institute. Eland's writings generally propose libertarian and non-interventionist policies. Books that he has authored include Recarving Rushmore.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Historical rankings of presidents of the United States</span>

In political studies, surveys have been conducted in order to construct historical rankings of the success of the presidents of the United States. Ranking systems are usually based on surveys of academic historians and political scientists or popular opinion. The scholarly rankings focus on presidential achievements, leadership qualities, failures and faults. Popular-opinion polls typically focus on recent or well-known presidents.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jeffrey Tucker</span> American libertarian writer and advocate

Jeffrey Albert Tucker is an American libertarian writer, publisher, entrepreneur and advocate of anarcho-capitalism and Bitcoin.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Libertarianism in the United States</span> Origin, history and development of libertarianism in the United States

In the United States, libertarianism is a political philosophy promoting individual liberty. According to common meanings of conservatism and liberalism in the United States, libertarianism has been described as conservative on economic issues and liberal on personal freedom, often associated with a foreign policy of non-interventionism. Broadly, there are four principal traditions within libertarianism, namely the libertarianism that developed in the mid-20th century out of the revival tradition of classical liberalism in the United States after liberalism associated with the New Deal; the libertarianism developed in the 1950s by anarcho-capitalist author Murray Rothbard, who based it on the anti-New Deal Old Right and 19th-century libertarianism and American individualist anarchists such as Benjamin Tucker and Lysander Spooner while rejecting the labor theory of value in favor of Austrian School economics and the subjective theory of value; the libertarianism developed in the 1970s by Robert Nozick and founded in American and European classical liberal traditions; and the libertarianism associated with the Libertarian Party, which was founded in 1971, including politicians such as David Nolan and Ron Paul.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Higgs</span> American economic historian (born 1944)

Robert Higgs is an American economic historian and economist combining material from Public Choice, the New institutional economics, and the Austrian school of economics; and describes himself as a "libertarian anarchist" in political and legal theory and public policy. His writings in economics and economic history have most often focused on the causes, means, and effects of government power and growth.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Burton Blumert</span> American writer, publisher, and coin dealer (1929–2009)

Burton S. Blumert was the president of the Center for Libertarian Studies in Burlingame, California, co-founder and chairman of the Mises Institute, and the publisher of LewRockwell.com. In a career that spanned almost 50 years until his retirement in 2008, he bought and sold precious metals as the proprietor of Camino Coin Company.

Right-libertarianism, also known as libertarian capitalism, right-wing libertarianism, or colloquially as libright, is a libertarian political philosophy that supports capitalist property rights and defends market distribution of natural resources and private property. The term right-libertarianism is used to distinguish this class of views on the nature of property and capital from left-libertarianism, a type of libertarianism that combines self-ownership with an egalitarian approach to natural resources. In contrast to socialist libertarianism, right-libertarianism supports free-market capitalism. Like most forms of libertarianism, it supports civil liberties, especially natural law, negative rights, the non-aggression principle, and a major reversal of the modern welfare state.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Libertarian conservatism</span> Ideology combining conservatism with libertarianism

Libertarian conservatism, also referred to as conservative libertarianism and conservatarianism, is a political and social philosophy that combines conservatism and libertarianism, representing the libertarian wing of conservatism and vice versa.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Walter Block</span> Austrian School economist and anarcho-capitalist

Walter Edward Block is an American Austrian School economist and anarcho-capitalist theorist. He currently holds the Harold E. Wirth Eminent Scholar Endowed Chair in Economics at the School of Business at Loyola University New Orleans and is a senior fellow of the non-profit think-tank Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama.

This is a bibliography of books and other works written by U.S. Congressman Ron Paul.

The Libertarian Party in the United States is composed of various factions, sometimes described as left and right, although many libertarians reject use of these terms to describe the political philosophy.

<i>The Leaders We Deserved</i> 2008 nonfiction book

The Leaders We Deserved, also known as The Leaders We Deserved (and a Few We Didn't), is a non-fiction book written by historian Alvin S. Felzenberg. Published by Basic Books in 2008, the work chronicles United States history with a specific focus on the relative performances of different national leaders, the author contrasting his categorized approach with what he views as the sloppier record of past rankings. Presidents receive distinct analysis based on multiple factors including economic wisdom, ideal-based foresight, personal character, and more in the book.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Butler D. Shaffer</span> American author and law professor (1935–2019)

Butler D. Shaffer was an American author, law professor and speaker, known for his numerous libertarian books and blog articles for LewRockwell.com. He was a professor of Law Emeritus at the Los Angeles-based Southwestern University School of Law.

References