To Barack Obama, it’s 1933 all over again.

John McCain seeks to deregulate our economy and embrace market-based reforms, while Obama proposes to re-regulate it by disinterring New Deal policies.

Practically all of the economic gains of the past 30 years can be credited to deregulation. Abandoning deregulation now, in the throes of the worst financial crisis of our generation, will grossly exacerbate our economic problems and diminish our freedoms.

During the first presidential debate on Sept. 26, Obama told viewers that deregulation caused the Wall Street meltdown and that conservatives, as devotees of deregulation, are to blame. He has never explained specifically how deregulation contributed to, much less caused, the collapse of financial markets. And the media has not pressed him for details.

He is short on specifics because the current crisis was caused by precisely the opposite—government intervention. Congress passed laws mandating approval of risky mortgage loans and enabled two government-created entities, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, to purchase billions of dollars of these junk mortgages.

Liberals like Obama will not allow these facts to keep them from reliving their Great Depression era heyday. Their not-so-hidden agenda is to resurrect the New Deal, with all of its expansive public works programs and controls.

Their manifesto was laid out by liberals Katrina vanden Heuvel and Eric Schlosser in a Sept. 27 op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, aptly titled, “America Needs a New New Deal.” It glorified FDR’s long-discredited economic nostrums, recommended that federal regulatory agencies be beefed up and called for revival of many New Deal programs. It suggested as well that the federal government socialize healthcare and develop renewable energy and infrastructure projects.

Apparently, liberals do not read history books. Joe Biden demonstrated as much when he told Katie Couric that FDR had appeared on television to reassure Americans after the stock market crash. As even most high school civics students recognize, Herbert Hoover was president in 1929, when nobody owned a TV.

If liberals did know their history, they would realize that the New Deal was not something we should want to recreate. Launched in 1933, it actually prolonged the Great Depression. Between 1934 and 1940, the median annual unemployment rate was 17.2 percent. These rates did not fall until America entered World War II in 1941, despite FDR’s doubling of federal spending between 1933 and 1940.

FDR also tripled taxes during the Great Depression, from 3.5 percent of GNP in 1933 to 6.9 percent in 1940. This constrained capital available for businesses to create jobs. High farm foreclosure rates persisted throughout the New Deal period. Before it was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court, FDR’s National Industrial Recovery Act even criminalized business men and women who increased output or cut prices. During a time when food was scarce, New Deal laws compelled farmers to plow under their crops.

Deregulation, on the other hand, has worked. Under the New Deal, airlines were fewer in number and competed only on the basis of in-flight menus and other negligible amenities. But deregulation in 1978 democratized flying for the average American, reduced fares, increased consumer choices and expanded services.

This inspired an equally triumphant deregulation of surface transportation, including rail freight under the Staggers Act in 1980. Deregulation gave railroads the freedom to negotiate contract rates, which allowed them to configure their services to shippers’ preferences. It liberated them from operating thousands of miles of uneconomic low-density lines and duplicate track. It also gave them an incentive to make technological improvements that have enhanced service, reduced costs, improved transit times and boosted freight traffic.

New Deal regulation of trucking smothered competition and productivity. The Motor Carrier Act of 1980 partially deregulated trucking by liberalizing entry requirements and removing restrictions on rates, cargo and routes. This lowered rates, increased competition and reduced inventory maintenance costs, sparking an increase in inter-modal carriage.

Liberals like Obama are trafficking in a false, revisionist history of the Great Depression and the subsequent deregulation of our economy, hoping that Americans will accept a new New Deal.

We need a new New Deal like we need a new Great Depression.