Free Republic

In chapter 1 of the book "Public Opinion", Walter Lippmann writes the following: (page 40) The wireless constantly used the statistics of the intelligence bureau at Verdun, whose chief, Major Cointet, had invented a method of calculating German losses which obviously produced marvelous results. Every fortnight the figures increased a hundred thousand or so. These 300,000, 400,000, 500,000 casualties put out, divided into daily, weekly, monthly losses, repeated in all sorts of ways, produced a striking effect. Our formulae varied little: 'according to prisoners the German losses in the course of the attack have been considerable' ... 'it is proved...

There is a fascinating piece of audio out there from Aldous Huxley titled "The Ultimate Revolution". This lecture is a lot like the book Philip Dru, in the sense that a lot of conspiracy theorist websites have had a bonanza with it, which is sad commentary. I will say that a large 70-90% of what he's saying you have to throw out the window because it's nonsense, but in the first few minutes of the lecture he says something that is incredibly profound: Well now in regard to this problem of the ultimate revolution, this has been very well summed...

The Progressive believes in precisely two things: his own magnificence and the constructive power of brute force. In combination, they lead him naturally from the role of pestiferous busybody to brutal dictator. Where the productive man dreams of the things he might create if only left alone by his fellows, the Progressive dreams of the world he could create if only the lives and property of his fellows were at his disposal. The roots of his pathology lie in that oldest and most destructive of all human vices, the desire for the power to rule over other men. As...

In the book "Drift and Mastery" by Walter Lippmann, there are some surprisingly honest pieces of information. The way progressives abuse the language can be truely frustrating, but once you develop the capability to parse it it becomes incredibly easy to deal with. I'll demonstrate this. On page 285, after quoting from Santayana, Lippmann writes the following: For the discipline of science is the only one which gives any assurance that from the same set of facts men will come approximately to the same conclusion. And as the modern world can be civilized only by the effort of innumerable people...

PROGRESS OF NATIONALISM IN THE UNITED STATES. BY EDWARD BELLAMY, AUTHOR OF "LOOKING BACKWARD." Technically, the term Nationalism, as descriptive of a definite doctrine of social and industrial reform, was first used in 1888 by clubs made up of persons who sympathized with the ideas of a proper industrial organization set forth in "Looking Backward," and believed in the feasibility of their substantial adoption as the actual basis of society. Nationalism, in this strict sense, is the doctrine of those who hold that the principle of popular government by the equal voice of all for the equal benefit of all,...

In Walter Lippmann's book "Public Opinion", a very interesting comment is made: (page 294) It was economic government by anybody's economic philosophy, though it was supposed to be controlled by immutable laws of political economy that must in the end produce harmony. It produced many splendid things, but enough sordid and terrible ones to start counter-currents. One of these was the trust, which established a kind of Roman peace within industry, and a Roman predatory imperialism outside. People turned to the legislature for relief. They invoked representative government, founded on the image of the township farmer, to regulate the semi-sovereign...

On the website for McGraw-Hill, there is an interesting poll question available for now: #1: Fearing the power of an unrestricted printing press during 1476-1776, the British Crown: A) Required individuals to obtain a license before printing materials. B) Forced printers to deposit large sums of money in the form of bonds. C) Made it a crime to criticize the government in print. D) All of the above. D is the right answer, let it be stated. Trying to find information from monarchical decrees that's centuries old, on the internet, can be quite an infuriating task. But I was able...

If you want to understand progressivism, the BBC's documentary called "The Century of the Self"(CotS) is a surprisingly good place to start. Not just in what it does say, but in what it does not say and does not emphasize greater. Unfortunately, an accurate watching of CotS requires a certain level of built in knowledge. Much more than I could or will cover in one blog posting, for example, CotS mentions Woodrow Wilson as well as the CPI. That's beyond the scope of this blog posting to go in-depth, but I have covered both extensively and made plenty of information...

Arguably the most distinct and identifying feature of Progressivism is their complete faith and trust in bureaucratic despotism. One can say "the media are virtually never critical of the federal government's various departments" as an observation of reporting, but Walter Lippmann makes an interesting proposal in his book Public Opinion: (page 330) The newspaper deals with a multitude of events beyond our experience. But it deals also with some events within our experience. And by its handling of those events we most frequently decide to like it or dislike it, to trust it or refuse to have the sheet in...

Back in 2011, I wrote about how George Creel's plan with the Committee for Public Information (CPI) was to make journalists associates of the state. Here is in part what he wrote: (page 17) With the nation in arms, the need was not so much to keep the press from doing the hurtful things as to get it to do the helpful things. It was not servants we wanted, but associates. Better far to have the desired compulsions proceed from within than to apply them from without. And from page 18: My proposition, in lieu of the proposed law, was...

A few days ago in the Senate, Harry Reid gave a small speech in which he called tea partiers "non-violent anarchists". Most people will probably either debate the merits of his points or refute them, I want to point out that historically, he is in line with what earlier progressives believed. Before I give you the quotes, my reason for doing this is to highlight one single thing: Progressives do not change. They change the outside; they wear different suits, they use different language and key words, they even call themselves by different titles. "I'm a liberal", or "I'm a...

In the book "The Godless Constitution", written by Isaac Kramnick and J. Laurence Moore, the following is written about footnotes: Because we have intended the book to reach a general audience, and because the material we have cited is for the most part familiar to historians and political scientists, we have dispensed with the usual scholarly apparatus of footnotes. There's just one problem. It's up to us to prove that this is what the book actually states. Google Books has two entries, (1) (2) neither of which allow you see page 179, which is the page that this is on....

A few days ago I wrote how Progressives proposed and ultimately turned the veto and budgeting process on its head, by taking that power away from congress and giving it to the executive, despite the fact that that's unconstitutional. There's an interesting fact wrapped up in all this. In "The decline and resurgence of Congress", by James L Sundquist, the following observations are made: (page 40) When President Taft took office, he made budget reform a matter of major concern. Among other steps, he appointed a Commission on Economy and Efficiency; it recommended that the executive branch be required to...

THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF MASSACHUSETTS TO DENNYS DE BERDT. JANUARY 12, 1768. [Massachusetts State Papers, pp. 124-133; a text is in Prior Documents(1) pp. 167-175, and in the Boston Gazette, April 4, 1768.] Sir, Since the last sitting of the General Court, divers acts of Parliament, relating to the colonies, have arrived here; and as the people of this province had no share in the framing those laws, in which they are so deeply interested, the House of Representatives, who are constitutionally entrusted by them, as the guardians of their rights and liberties, have thought it their indispensable duty,...

Even called it dangerous. On May 31st, 1787, Elbridge Gerry made the following remark: Mr. GERRY. The evils we experience flow from the excess of democracy. The people do not want virtue, but are the dupes of pretended patriots. In Massts. it had been fully confirmed by experience that they are daily misled into the most baneful measures and opinions by the false reports circulated by designing men, and which no one on the spot can refute. One principal evil arises from the want of due provision for those employed in the administration of Governmt. It would seem to be...

In "The New Democracy", by Walter Weyl, the following is written: (page 163-164) All the inspiring texts of democracy fall into nonsense or worse when given a strict individualistic interpretation. "Government should rest upon the consent of the governed" is a great political truth, if by "the governed" is meant the whole people, or an effective majority of the people; but if each individual governed retains the right at all times to withhold his consent, government and social union itself become impossible. So, too, the phrase "taxation without representation is tyranny," if interpreted strictly in an individualistic sense, leads to...

In "The Lesson of Popular Government", by Gamaliel Bradford, the following is written: (pages 366-367) The present French President has no veto except upon subordinate councils, just as the prefects have upon the decisions of local councils. The French suspensory veto of 1789 was repeated in the Spanish constitution of 1812 and the Norwegian of 1814. The Swiss executive has no veto on the acts of the Assembly, but it rests with the popular vote in the referendum. In the United States the general principle, both in the federal government and in the States, except North Carolina, Ohio, Delaware, and...

On the whole, the Spanish Translation of George Washington's Fifth Annual Address here, that I was involved with creating, has been met with positive response both online as well as personally. But I do think that among quite a few that there has been a bit of either a miscommunication, or perhaps even outright resistance. There really isn't any need for that, and I hope that I can either clear things up for some, or for others, persuade them that this is not only a good thing to pursue but the right course of action.(one among many, naturally) Firstly, I...

He even helped to establish a German-language College. Benjamin Rush, with financial assistance from Dr. Franklin, established Franklin College in Lancaster, Pa.: (Translation Studies Reader, by Lawrence Venuti, page 454) In Pennsylvania alone, there were enough German speakers that Benjamin Franklin thought of publishing his first newspaper, the Philadelphische Zeitung(1732), in that language, and another Founding Father, Benjamin Rush, even put forth the idea of establishing German-language colleges. In 1787, Benjamin Rush wrote about this in his "Letter Describing the Consecration of the German College at Lancaster in June, 1787", though I was unable to find a version readily readable...

John Quincy Adams was an amazing person. Certainly a testament to the upstanding nature of his parents. One of the lesser known thing about him(perhaps) was his tendency to translate things across different languages. In "Memoirs of John Quincy Adams", the following is written: (page 176) The reading of the month has carried me through Luzac's Richesse de la Hollande, and the Traite General de Commerce; the latter as mentioned on the day when I finished it; the Life of Dumouriez, Garat's Memoirs, and Pratt's Gleanings. Of all these books I have made mention, and some slight observations at the...

Yesterday I wrote of Wilson's over the top respect for Walter Bagehot. I did not really quote Wilson's essays, which I will do here, but rather a letter he wrote in which he details a visit to Bagehot's grave site. Robespierre also exhibited this behavior. In "The Life of Maximilien Robespierre", by George Henry Lewes, the following is written: (page 337) Robespierre, although he had no precise doctrine, had, in an extraordinary degree, what Lamartine calls the sentiment of the revolution. He felt—no one more strongly—the necessity of a doctrine: and that religious tendency which I have been careful to...

A WIT AND A SEER WE are often very glib and confident in our generalizations about the characteristics of the English race, - not noting, perhaps not caring to note when the mood for generalization is upon us, how many individuals of that race escape our classification and show what qualities they please. Under which characteristic of that sturdy and for the most part matter-of-fact people do we place its extraordinary fecundity in every kind of individual genius? Is Shakespeare a typical product, or is he not, - or has the race changed since the sunny and open times of...

Personalities and cults of personalities surrounding revolutionaries, revolutionary leaders, and the people that revolutionaries look up to, is nothing new. So it goes for Woodrow Wilson as well. In a letter to his wife Ellen Axson Wilson, Woodrow Wilson wrote the following: (Links throughout for context) To Ellen Axson Wilson Langport, Somerset, 12 August, 1896 My own darling, Langport is the place where Bagehot was born and lived; his grave is in the churchyard here, and in the church there is a beautiful memorial window to him, put in by his wife, who still lives at the family place (Herds...

A LITERARY POLITICIAN "Literary politician" is not a label much in vogue, and may need first of all a justification, lest even the man of whom I am about to speak should decline it from his very urn. I do not mean a politician who affects literature; who seems to appreciate the solemn moral purpose of Wordsworth's Happy Warrior, and yet is opposed to ballot reform. Neither do I mean a literary man who affects politics; who earns his victories through the publishers, and his defeats at the hands of the men who control the primaries. I mean the man...

In "The Papers of Woodrow Wilson", Volume 3, Wilson states the following: (page 111) "I have modelled my work chiefly on Mr. Bagehot's essays on the English Constitution, though I have been guided in some points of treatment by the method followed in some of the better volumes of "Macmillan's admirable "English Citizen Series." According to an undescript Google Blog page, here: One major book by Wilson which clearly displayed the strong influence of Bagehot’s political thought was Congressional Government, published in 1885. Wilson never concealed this, and in a letter to his publishers, Houghton, Mifflin & Co, on 4...

In "A History of the town of Gorham, Maine", by Josiah Pierce, the following story is told: (pages 113-116) In 1772, in response to a Circular from the town of Boston, a town meeting was called in Gorham to express the sense of our citizens on "the Rights of the Colonies and the several infractions of those rights." Solomon Lombard, Esq., was chosen Moderator; a Committee of Safety and Communication, and to draw up Resolves expressive of the sense of the town on the subject matter of the Boston Circular, was raised. The committee was composed of nine members, who...

On December 3rd, 1793, George Washington met with Congress to deliver his fifth annual address, which we would call a "State of the Union" address today. The term "State of the Union" was first used in 1934 by Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Due to the importance of George Washington in America's history, what we decided to do with this is reach out to a new audience. Not to pander, but to reach out with the truth and with right reason. George Washington was considered to be "The Indispensable Man" when he was alive, and he is still very much indispensable today....

In the book "Public Opinion", Walter Lippmann writes the following: (Page 355) It is a problem of provoking feeling in the reader, of inducing him to feel a sense of personal identification with the stories he is reading. News which does not offer this opportunity to introduce oneself into the struggle which it depicts cannot appeal to a wide audience. The audience must participate in the news, much as it participates in the drama, by personal identification. Just as everyone holds his breath when the heroine is in danger, as he helps Babe Ruth swing his bat, so in subtler...

The Social Democratic Party, the precursor to the SPA, the Socialist Party of America, had several important figures in it. This old illustration from 1900 places the point very well: Two of those 5, Frederic Heath and Eugene Debs, wrote something very interesting. In Heath's "Social Democracy Red Book", Page 41-42, Heath writes the following: Laurence Gronlund has said that in 1880 he could count the native born American Socialists on the fingers of one hand. Had the foreign born residents suddenly left the country they would have practically taken Socialism with them. In 1880 Judge Thomas Hughes, the Christian...

While I was working to transcribe Fabian Freeway, so too, was this guy. Mises.org is now officially hosting the EPUB file on it's website. My target was the internet, while he made an EPUB. This is very useful, for one, the download is much smaller. The PDF file is 42Mb, whereas the EPUB is less than 1Mb. Being an EPUB, it's specifically designed for your Kindles, Ipads, even Iphones and other such devices. My web friendly transcription starts here: (Table of Content) For those who don't know what this book is and why I would mention it(I'm sure there are...

In "An introduction to political economy", Richard T. Ely writes the following: (page 92) Public and Private Responsibilities.- It is seen in general that there is no limit to the right of the State, the sovereign power, save its ability to do good. Duty, function, is co-extensive with power. The State is a moral person. It may be further said in general that the fundamental principle, the basis of the economic life of modern nations, is individual responsibility. It is designed that each grown person should feel that the welfare of himself and of his family, if he has one,...

On archive.org, there's a mislabeled book here, it's actual title is "The Forty-Sixth Annual Report On The Work of The Fabian Society", and if you dig through the preface here is what you will see: (Page 5-6) Provincial and other Societies. During the year under review there has been little change to note in regard to the various provincial and other Fabian Societies recorded in our last report. No new local societies have been established, but the membership of most of the other local societies has shown an increase during the year. Through the Fabian Nursery and the New Fabian...

Don't miss the warning signs of radicalism. I recently posted a series of two images of a letter, written by Neville Chamberlain, (Now on archive.org, here) which is an object lesson in what happens when people don't, won't, or even can't, see the warning signs. For most people, it's don't and won't. They instinctively know they're looking at something ugly, but because none of us are taught proper history in schools we don't know what we're looking at. So they want to shield their eyes hoping it will go away. But for Chamberlain, it was can't. He couldn't see the...

Sidney Webb, one of the founding members of Britain's Fabian Society, wrote the following in his book "Socialism in England", Page 19: It is true that with the collapse of the Chartist movement in 1848, all serious agitation of a Socialist character came to an end, and for thirty years popular aspirations in England took the forms of a development of trades unions, the progress of co-operative distributive stores and building societies, in conjunction with the purely political agitation for the Parliamentary franchise. But the Socialist leaven was still at work. The Chartist survivors continued to be centres of quiet...

I ran into some interesting quotes the other day, and I wanted to make it easier for people to find. Most people have heard the phrase "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery". That comes from Charles C. Colton in his book "Lacon", page 113. What I found interesting enough to go looking for was this: POWER will intoxicate the best hearts, as wines the strongest heads. No man is wise enough, nor good enough, to be trusted with unlimited power; for, whatever qualifications he may have evinced to entitle him to the posession of so dangerous a privilege, yet,...

That is, if you use the definition of anarchy that conforms with the concept of absolutely no government - completely out of control and destructive. As I've written in the past, Stuart Chase, Woodrow Wilson, and John Dewey have all made this belief clear.(I'll give the quotes below) Now, FDR. Raymond Moley eventually split with the Brains Trust and coughed up all kinds of details. For some, he's infamous. For others, he delivered some of the most valuable insights into the New Deal at the time, perhaps ever. In his book "After Seven Years", Moley writes something that is probably...

If the closest confidante and advisor to an extremely consequential American president had written a fantasy novel about a heroic social agitator with a plan to bring about a "benevolent" progressive dictatorship by instigating a brutal civil war, might one imagine that an honest press would take an interest? In fact this has happened, and America's actual press has tried to dismiss the book as a meaningless "bad novel". In 1912, Edward Mandell House, Woodrow Wilson's most intimate and influential advisor, wrote Philip Dru: Administrator. (Read it online here.) House is credited with having orchestrated Wilson's presidential nomination, and was...

In his book "The conservation of natural resources in the United States", Charles Van Hise writes the following: (Page 337, section: "Conservation and Patriotism") The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, during the natural resources of the country were being taken possession of, were naturally times of intense individualism. Each man took freely of the resources, did with them as pleased, and regarded interference from any source as unwarranted. But the private possession of our resources placed a new situation before us and demands of the people the twentieth century different ideals from those that obtained in the past. If you happen...

In a book titled "Visions of Progress: The Left-Liberal Tradition in America", the following is written: (page 46) A host of discussion clubs in New York City between 1900 and 1910 brought together Socialist and liberal activists and intellectuals, who clearly felt they had much in common. That common property was the Fabian side of American reform. The flamboyantly named X Club, for example, begun by William James Ghent in 1903, had Algernon Lee, William English Walling, and Edmond Kelly among its members, and visitors to its meetings included John Dewey, Charles Beard, Franklin H Giddings, Walter Weyl, Norman Hapgood,...

As we look at the damage that has been done to history curricula by agenda driven progressive professors and progressive curriculum writers, the long term trend is easy to spot. First, they started by manipulating what the Founders said - revising and editing - and at this point the progressives have just had it and decided to remove it altogether. Or worse, they outright demonize American history. One of the most well known items of progressive history revisionism is a book titled "George Washington, the Image and the Man". Published in 1926, it is well known for having exactly zero...

When I wrote some months ago about how Fabians employ what they call "permeation" in order to advance their causes, I quoted an interesting passage from Margaret Cole's book "The Story of Fabian Socialism", page 85: 'Permeation' is a peculiarly Fabian term, with a very long history. It is first found in print in Hubert Bland's Fabian Essay - curiously enough Bland was not there advocating but warning the Society against it; but the casual reference shows that it was already in common use. Occasionally it seems to mean no more than what the Americans have taught us to call...

I've written extensively about The New Republic's two founding members, but what of it's first editor? Walter Weyl was the person tapped for that job, and he has a lot to say about progressive ideology. In his book "The New Democracy", Walter Weyl writes the following: (Page 163) All the inspiring texts of democracy fall into nonsense or worse when given a strict individualistic interpretation. "Government should rest upon the consent of the governed" is a great political truth, if by "the governed" is meant the whole people, or an effective majority of the people; but if each individual governed...

In a letter to Henry L. Pierce, Lincoln wrote the following: (Original source) This is a world of compensations; and he who would be no slave, must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, can not long retain it. All honor to Jefferson--to the man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document, an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and so to...

For the Framers of our constitution, the people could be trusted and their wise discretion informed. Self government was an all important thing to achieve, so as to get away from despotic government. But for progressives, you have a different outlook. Progressives do not understand the concept of "self interest" at all, and the notion of public reason isn't even considered. It's just silly voodoo magic.In the book "Public Opinion", by Walter Lippmann, he writes the following on page 313: If, then, you root out of the democratic philosophy the whole assumption in all its ramifications that government is instinctive,...

Having spent some time over the last few days highlighting some of the foundations of press manipulation(here and particularly here), I find it instructive to highlight how it is that the press came to be so closely tied to national government, in an official capacity. Ideologically, the press support big government by default, but that's a different topic.(see my prior entries) The two people to focus in on are Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt. Particularly Roosevelt, who was the first. And how he does this is stunning. The following information was quite a pain to get access to over the...

There is well known quote of Adam Smith's, that goes as follows: People of the same trade seldom meet together even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public or some contrivance to raise prices. This can be found in The Wealth of Nations, Book 1, Chapter 10, "Of Wages and Profits". Part 2, page 207, very top of the page.I find this quote to be interesting. Not necessarily for what it states, but for how it's been nearly universally received. Finding the direct source of the quote led me to all sorts of...

I'm sure many who see the headline I typed will think I've gone too far. Read on. It's all here. Walter Lippmann, considered by many to be the father of modern journalism, writes in his book "Public Opinion" on page 243: Leaders often pretend that they have merely uncovered a program which existed in the minds of their public. When they believe it, they are usually deceiving themselves. Programs do not invent themselves synchronously in a multitude of minds. That is not because a multitude of minds is necessarily inferior to that of the leaders, but because thought is the...

Have you ever noticed how modern progressives assault any kinds of profits to the death? No matter how big or how small. Profits mean "taking advantage of" someone. Profits mean greed. There's an answer to this. For some progressives, the answer is rooted in marxism, as many who claim to be progressives really are not. But true progressive ideology also gives us the answer. Herbert Croly is a great place to start, as he was not a marxist from what I can tell, but he clearly supported an ever expanding huge government with commissions and bureaucratic despots. In "Progressive Democracy",...

Searching Google Books for Poor Richard's has become somewhat of an exercise in frustration for me. Typically, what you will find are compilations. Authors who have looked at Franklins' works and decided what should be considered "greatest hits" quotations. Consider me uninterested. So I finally got my hands on a copy from the library which contained the original constructs of Poor Richards' as Franklin wrote them, that way I would know what to search for. Below, you will see where to find all of them online, in their original context. 1733, 1734, 1735, 1736, 1737 ,1738, 17391740 ,1741, 1742, 1743,...