That's the catholic in him.

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The problem with Big Government is that it often makes matters worse.  During The Great Depression, for example, the FDR administration decided to regulate the economy very aggressively in the hope of getting it going again.  It went after a family of "small fry chicken pluckers" in New York City and convicted them of violating the government's new economic rules.  Luckily in this case, the U.S. Supreme overturned the conviction and threw out one of the bad programs.

The Forgotten Man by Amity Shlaes

Throughout this volume, Shlaes makes a brief not for those on the receiving end of government programs, to whom FDR constantly appealed, but rather for the Americans who received no such benefits but had to pay for them with taxes and the erosion of their freedom. Such “forgotten” men and women, as Willkie said, wanted not just benefits from government but the liberty “to take part in our great American adventure.”

Shlaes’s keenest example of this phenomenon is the Schechter family of Brooklyn, who ran a kosher-chicken business. The Schechters were prosecuted by the Roosevelt administration for selling “sick” chickens in violation of the National Recovery Act (NRA). The aim of the law was to boost wages and hold down prices by regulating various competitive practices that the New Dealers blamed for overproduction. The bureaucrats tasked with enforcing the NRA targeted “middle men” like the Schechters, who facilitated the exchange between producers and consumers—in this case, by buying chickens and preparing them for sale. The agents investigating their business did not understand or did not care that, in accusing them of selling below-standard chickens, they were also implying that the Schechters did not maintain a kosher slaughterhouse and therefore were not good Jews—a doubly offensive suggestion to these Orthodox businessmen.

The trial record includes some hilarious exchanges between the Schecters and the clumsy New Deal agents who, the defendants said, “don’t know from a chicken.” Though convicted at trial, the Schechters pressed on with appeals, eventually winning vindication when the Supreme Court not only threw out their conviction but also voided the NRA as an unconstitutional delegation of power from Congress to the executive. Theirs was an unlikely victory against one of the New Deal’s most aggressive initiatives.

What's interesting about The New Deal (i.e., the belief that collectivism is better than individualism) is how it came about.  Many of the government bureaucrats in charge of these programs had gone to the Soviet Union in the early 1920s and heard Stalin's pitch about the advantages of collectivism.  Stalin may have been a commie, but he was also a very good snake oil salesman.  He snowed the young Americans and they left believing the propaganda.  (The book names names and gives examples.)

I want to believe the United States has learned from this disastrous experience, but I can never be too sure anymore.  The news never seems to change; just the names, dates, and locations change over the decades, but the underlying problems remain for new generations to discover and handle.

The kids look posed. Especially the one with the doll.