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Robert S. McElvaine (1947-)

Robert S. McElvaine  (1947-) Robert S. McElvaine is Elizabeth Chisholm Professor of Arts and Letters and Chair of the Department of History at Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi, where he has taught for thirty-five years. He is the author of seven books and the editor of three.

He is considered one of the world's leading historians of the Great Depression. His first two books on the Depression era have become standards in the field. The Great Depression: America, 1929-1941, which came out in a new edition in 1993 and again in 2009, has been called "the best one-volume overview of the Great Depression." Two of his books have been named among the "Notable Books of the Year" by the New York Times Book Review, and three have been listed among the Editor's Choice "Bear in Mind" books in that publication.

Most liberals never lost sight of the potential for evil in big government. They have consistently opposed government power in matters of personal and political belief. Liberals are not unconcerned with economic liberty, but they have come to believe that the common good requires that social justice be given a higher priority than absolute economic freedom. Conservatives are--and always have been--on the other side of both questions. They are much more prone than liberals to limiting personal and political liberties, but they place the freedom of an individual to do as he pleases in the economic realm at the top of their concerns. Social justice has held a lower priority for conservatives, from the days of Alexander Hamilton when they favored strong government as a means of protecting their economic privileges to the days of Ronald Reagan when they see government as an instrument of social justice and therefore a threat to their economic position.