Charles C. Johnson (2) (1988–)

This books should be read in conjunction with Shlaes's excellent biography. Shlaes provides the narrative biography, Johnson here provides a sort of in-depth political theory reader, with essays on Coolidge's thought (and Coolidge had a refined political philosophy, he wasn't a do nothing stand-patter) on various matters. Johnson's book here is full of hard-to-find Coolidge quotations and he has mined the memoirs of people around Coolidge very well too. Coolidge is the heir of Lincoln in the notion that every man has the right to the fruits of his own labor.

Lincoln said, for instance: "It is the same spirit that says, ‘You work and toil and earn bread, and I’ll eat it.’ No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle."

Coolidge echoes, in pith: "Our people reject the theory that the bread they earn should be eaten by others."

There are a million such gems in this book. Coolidge was a conservative thinker, not just a conservative president.

(If you really want to know about Coolidge, I'd say start with Shlaes's Coolidge, then this, Johnson's Why Coolidge Matters, then Silver's hard-to-find Coolidge and the Historians, then Sobel's Coolidge: An American Enigma.)… (altro)

Coolidge has been characterized as a "Puritan in Babylon" with regard to his presidency in 1920's America and now like then, the US communist left ("Progressives") have a fine collection of epithets prepared for him:

He could be described as anally-retentive, a proto-facist, racist, a reactionary, enemy of the working man, enemy of social justice, dead white male, male chauvinist, enemy of progress, oppressor etc. etc.

It's a fact that his actions were inimical to US and international communists and Charles Johnson has done Americans a great favour in writing this book about the personal quality of Coolidge and his defence of America based on the Declaration of Independence rather than the "Marxist dialectic".

The book brings out the basic fallacies of communism as articulated by Coolidge such as:

- The non-equivalence of the American and Russian revolutions. The American revolution was for democracy and personal freedom and bettered the lives of the American people. The Russian revolution (as hijacked by the Bolsheviks) was an extremely violent minority dictatorship that rejected personal freedom and went on to murder 15 million of their own citizens.

- The idea that if the government controls everything, everybody would be happy and successful as a result of legislation.

- When you deny the right to profit you deny the right of reward to thrift and industry.

- Communism denies the Golden Rule. They claim the right to do unto others as they would not have done unto themselves.

He particularly raised the ire of American communists when he opposed the 1919 Seattle General Strike with its attempt to form a revolutionary counter government based on workers communes (good book here is Ole Hanson's "Americanism versus Bolshevism").

The author usefully goes on to bring out the personal qualities of Coolidge that can be shown with some quotes:

"Our salvation lies in putting forward greater effort, in manfully assuming our own burdens rather than entertaining the pleasing delusion that they can be shifted to some other shoulders."

"See that the bills that you recommend from your committee are so worded that they will do just what they intend and not a great deal more that is undesirable. Most bills can't stand that test."

"Nine tenths of the callers at the White House want something they ought not to have."

"It is a great advantage to a President and a major source of safety to the country for him to know that he is not a great man. "

Coolidge always linked rights closely with duties which shows clearly throughout the text.

Johnson seems to have written the book in a hurry but with plenty of research (58 pages of notes) and has perhaps tried to include to much of it, producing a slightly cluttered and non-integrated result. The reader can also go from the first chapter, "In the Eye of the Nation" straight to the Afterword, "What Coolidge Still Has to Say" and still catch the basic ideas.

Altogether a very worthwhile book.… (altro)