Autobiography - The Galindo Group

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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. Autobiography.doc 52 of 239
Ram Galindo THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN Page 53 I support with glee a government apparatus large and strong enough to enforce the rule of law as it is written in the Declaration of Independence and the amended Constitution and to carry out the purposes therein stated. Some historical interpretations by the Supreme Court based on penumbral assumptions convenient to isolated interest groups may be of dubious value. Yet, as I believe most Americans are, I am willing to accept and support rulings with which I may disagree but that in my own and sole judgment are not terminally injurious to the underlying principles of our basic documents. After the FDR take-over of the Supreme Court, it began to act more as an adjunct, rather than a controller of the executive power. Consequently it lost much of its previous weight on the broad-stroke direction of America. After Lyndon Johnson, successive presidents have made the weight of unnecessarily big government even more suffocating. As a result, now Congress at times reacts by investing itself with more power than I think the Constitution gives it continuing to oppress the Supreme Court. Weakened as its original powers are, I am nevertheless very glad for the Supreme Court’s remaining willingness and leftover clout to rectify missteps from Congress. I believe the understanding that the genius of America is to provide the environment where individual dreams come true is still implicit in the Court’s role. I still see it, perhaps too optimistically, as a check to a dictatorial executive or legislative power. The preceding is an encapsulation of how I see the growth and development of the “concept America” and how we acquired its ownership rights that now enable us to export it. My narratives, theses, propositions and anecdotes are intended to paint a picture of the conception, gestation, growth, re-orientation and evolution of our social system. As I state in the preface, it is by no means a scholarly treatise, but it sets the framework for the story of my life. Throughout the remainder of this book I will attempt to weave more detailed actions of my personal experience within the envelope of individual growth that emanated from the American concept. The thread of my experience woven into the American socio-economic fabric formed my views and continues to do so even as I write this book. No doubt it is a replica of millions of other American lives. I began publicly sharing my views shortly I moved back to Texas in 1974. Although I was still in the process of informing myself about the historical groundings of my beliefs, I wrote down my thoughts on freedom, enterprise and government in a document that I gave away, well framed, to a few friends and acquaintances. It was picked up and printed by my new hometown newspaper, the Bryan Daily Eagle, on July 13, 1977. It read: MY CREED I choose to be a free man, I believe opportunity breeds success, therefore I seek opportunity, not security. Autobiography.doc 53 of 239
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Bernard Bailyn, THE IDEOLOGICAL ORI
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George Fuermann, HOUSTON LAND OF TH
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Council for Natural Cooperation in
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Autobiography - The Galindo Group

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