Paul Harvey

Paul Harvey runs the blog Religion in American History and teaches history at the University of Colorado.

The Great Recovery for an economy stalled with lingering high unemployment and stagnant income growth starts with acknowledging the Great Mistake of the New Deal, Christian megastar financial advisor Dave Ramsey told a rapt audience last Thursday evening in Nashville. “Socialists” mistakenly believe FDR got us out of the Depression while “capitalists” know it was actually World War Two, he explained in a synopsis ripped from the Tea Party/Beck/Barton school of historical interpretation.

FDR, Ramsey continued, had listened to John Maynard Keynes instead of Adam Smith, or God, and from that point...