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Political opinion seems to be largely inherited, or at least consistant within families and communities. Worth mentioning.

And it makes sense, doesn't it? Personal experience passed down from one generation to another is a powerful means for conveying history. If when the Depression struck and you were a child whose parents lost their jobs, as my parents both were, and when you looked around you to see families with nothing really not managing to scrape by, it would have been easy to see that the government programs literally saved lives.

My parents just laugh at some of the ideoologies being offered here: the notion that all of this was somehow wrong because it didn't fit someone's ideals for how government spending should be conducted. These are just theories. The government had the power to effect change both on a local and on a macro level, and it did. I'll buy that the macro level stuff didn't work out very well. However, to say that food subsidies and public service jobs that kept people working, or the program that got my mother her eye glasses so she could keep up in school were somehow evil and never should have been implemented -- that I refuse to acknowledge. No businesses were stepping forward to solve those problems. No individuals were. So it was a failure of Capitalism. (Yes I've heard all the stories about currency standards, etc...)

Are we spending too much now on entitlements and on corporate wellfare? You bet. I'm for slimming the government. Did my parents grow up not being wary enough of government power? Yes and no. They are patriots beyond compare in my opinion. My dad has a purple heart and gave many years of public service after the war, moving back and forth into the private sector and finally staying there.

Sure it's "in the family." But it's a family that saw the horrors of the Depression and survived it because the government rose to the challenge and did something about it.

I'm going to bet that most "zero government" advocates, even under the conditions of the depression, didn't have families who experienced the utter deprivations of the depression. Perhaps they owned land. Perhaps their families' businesses stayed solvent. Perhaps they lived on farms that weren't reposessed. But those of us who did survive because of the New Deal won't ever forget it. Capitalism needs certain conditions before it can work. Sometimes those conditions fail. When the failure is big enough, it sometimes takes government to smooth out the bumps and get a society back to work, at least until other forces straighten out things.

Today? I'm all for making government smaller.

Fine sentiments, but not neccssarily based in fact.

The "market failures" notion supposes, without any proof, that government can "help." There is much evidence that whenever the government tries to "help" it really only ever helps itself and never compentently. In other words, you have to believe that markets fail and government actions don't.

Many people here have offered solid evidence that "make work" programs were no help - that, in fact, they were counterproductive. This is not based on theories, but the historical facts. It sure sounded like FDR helped at the time, especially when, in wartime, he could use every propaganda tool to project that image.

As it turns out, he kept more people in poverty longer than had he literally done nothing.

And don't pooh-pooh "theories" about how the government should work: The Founders wanted to keep it small - something like one quarter the size it is today. Going back to a FedGov that size would cure a lot of real-world ills. Imagine all middle class mothers being able to affors to stay home and homeschool their kids. It ain't no theory that THAT would be a conservative revolution that Reagan would be proud to see happen.

Before you start calling people "Libertarians" (I'm not one) read up on what size government we had before FDR got hold of it. That's what Republicans were fighting to hold onto. That's what Republicans today should be fighting to return to.