The New York Democrat Who Opposed Spend-Happy, Careerist Hypocrites

I’ve frequently criticized our current political class as a collection of spend-happy, careerist hypocrites. And they are. But not every pol America has produced has been a character lesson in duplicity and mendacity. Some have stood on principle even when it was politically unwise, and career suicide, to do so.

One of them was Grover Cleveland, the only person elected to two, non-consecutive presidential terms. A New York Democrat who most New York Democrats wouldn’t dare to be seen with today, Cleveland believed in fiscal restraint and constitutional fidelity. As FEE’s Lawrence Reed writes, Cleveland penned a series of articles for the Saturday Evening Post after the end of his second presidential term to issue a warning to the people about their tolerance and support for profligate politicians:

Probably no one will have the hardihood to deny that the cost of our Government is excessive and wasteful, and that for this condition the heedless neglect and indifference of our people are in some degree responsible…If the aggregate mass of our people are at all blameworthy on account of the present advanced stage of public prodigality, it is largely because they overlooked and tolerated its small beginnings, when at all times they should have been vigilant and uncompromising. A self-ruling people…should constantly remember that nothing multiplies itself more abundantly than national extravagance, and that neither an individual nor a popular government can easily correct or check habits of waste.

It’s a lesson the public has heard many times over many decades. And yet, here we are, with a national debt and federal deficit that would have boggled Cleveland’s mind (and should do so to anyone today).

Cleveland urged people to come to their senses:

The lessons of extravagance and paternalism must be unlearned; economy and frugality must be reinstated; and the people must exact from their representatives a watchful care for the general welfare and a stern resistance to the demands of selfish interests, if our Government is to be an enduring and beneficent protection to a patriotic and virtuous people.

We have even more to “unlearn” today. We have the option of educating ourselves…or waiting for markets to enforce harsh, unavoidable lessons of their own.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.

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