Autobiography - The Galindo Group

Ram Galindo THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN Page 52
after World War II started, there may not have been other way to face as massive an
enterprise as arming the Free World.
The worst, most pervasive, and most regrettable after-effect of FDR’s administration
was, in my opinion, the alliance that he made with the Supreme Court. By packing it
with his adherents, he subjugated the Court to his opinions. In practice, he diminished
the all-important checks and balances of the division of powers between the Executive,
Legislative and Judicial branches inherent in our system. Fanned by the president and
un-opposed by Congress, in 1937 the Supreme Court essentially began doing his
bidding. Since then it has seldom declared anything unconstitutional. As a result of
penumbral interpretations of what some Justices have guessed was the thinking of the
Founders, very few new amendments to the Constitution were necessary.
Since FDR’s days, all that is needed to make almost anything constitutional is
congressional legislation signed by the president. Under his newly found power,
Roosevelt was able to start the expensive cycle of entitlements that raised our taxes
and ruined national budgets generation after generation. His Keynesian pump priming
radically affected the character of the limited government envisioned by our Founders. It
added many new features to the “concept America.” President Roosevelt may have
made it easier for everyone to find a bit more security, but he went a long ways toward
reducing our ability to fully decide by ourselves how we want to enjoy the benefits of
individual dreams we choose to pursue.
On the wake of FDR’s example, only magnified, Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society
programs and Peace with Butter policies culminated with new laws that soon became
very intrusive and expensive. Continuing the pattern from the New Deal’s time, a
sympathetic Supreme Court didn’t raise any objections. The most worrisome
congressional acts that have passed into law on Johnson’s watch have accelerated the
rate of government growth above the rate of growth of the private sector. For example,
acts presented as tools for saving the environment, improving safety in the work place
or at home or protecting the consumer were also very threatening to private property
and therefore blunted a person’s drive for self-reliance. In time, compromises on their
application are making them useful.
Some of Lyndon Johnson’s initiatives were motivated by festering inequities revealed by
the Los Angeles Watt’s riots and other racial disturbances around the country in the mid
1960s. While I am the first to agree that the movements led by the Rev. Martin Luther
King were well conceived and produced positive results, I am not sure that President
Johnson’s programs were as well conceived. He created huge bureaucracies that in
time have made his programs inefficient, unwielding and prone to corruption. However,
in his Civil Rights laws, President Johnson embodied remedial controls needed over
state and local governments to guarantee equal rights for all. He obviously averted the
all-out racial war so feared by Dr. King.
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