Writes Ralph Raico:

I enjoyed your article on Warren Harding and the Forgotten Depression. It’s typical of establishment historians that they always name poor Harding as one of the worst presidents whenever they’re called on to furnish a list. As Bob Higgs has documented, what they’re doing is simply showing their statist bias. Another point in Harding’s favor: Other Allied governments amnestied their dissidents at the end of the war. But the vindictive Woodrow Wilson refused to pardon American war resisters, including the head of the Socialist Party, Eugene Debs, who’d been sentenced to ten years in prison and was ill and thought to be close to death. What the “Near-Great” Wilson rejected, the “presidential failure” Harding achieved. On Christmas Day, 1921, Debs and twenty-three other jailed dissidents were freed. To those who praised him for his clemency, Harding replied, “I couldn’t do anything else. Those fellows didn’t mean any harm. It was a cruel punishment.”

The Best of Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.