Vol. 31, No. 02
January 19, 2015
Libel: Warren Harding Was Our Worst President
President Warren Harding is often condemned by historians as a corrupt, incompetent president — odd for a man who was respected and praised for honesty while alive. ...
“All human ills are not curable by legislation.”
With those words, Warren Gamaliel Harding bluntly rejected the progressive era, which his election as president in 1920 brought to an abrupt end. Perhaps that in and of itself can explain the tendency by many professional historians to rank Harding, as if not our worst president, certainly among the worst of American presidents.
The progressive era was, at its core, a rejection of the vision of the Founding Fathers, who saw government as necessary in order to protect our natural, God-given rights, but something to be held in check, lest it become tyrannical. George Washington reputedly described government as a “dangerous servant and a fearful master.”
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