Free Republic

Historians are fond of referring to the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments together as "America's Second Founding". These three amendments produce an overwhelming, positive good: They abolish (Constitutionally) the legacy of the British Crown in bringing slavery to these colonies and henceforth these states. But here is the funny thing. The "Founding Fathers" of these three amendments, did not create a brand new United States of America. They did not discuss contraceptives. They did not discuss homosexuality, or abortions, the parents of illegal aliens, or any other of the things that radical judges like to say they discussed. They didn't...

This is exactly why we need citizen historians. The "real" big time "historians" don't teach history because at the worst they do not want to, or at the best they are incapable of teaching it because they are ignorant of it. Most of the time, historians teach history as a series of unrelated events while memorizing who said what, when what was built, and what year did x happen. Instead of teaching Americans, the people of Liberty, about the story of Liberty that history has to tell. It's the greatest story never told. C-SPAN's list of presidents is getting attention,...

Where We Can Work With SocialistsIt is true that the doctrines of communistic Socialism, if consistently followed, mean the ultimate annihilation of civilization. Yet the converse is also true. Ruin faces us if we decline steadily to try to reshape our whole civilization in accordance with the law of service, and if we permit ourselves to "Be mislecf by any empirical or academic consideration into refusing to exert the common power of the community where only collective action can do what individualism has left undone, or can remedy the wrongs done by an unrestricted and ill-regulated individualism. There is any...

Where We Cannot Work With SocialistsIt is always difficult to discuss a question when it proves impossible to define the terms in which that question is to be discussed. Therefore there is not much to be gained by a discussion of Socialism versus Individualism in the abstract. Neither absolute Individualism nor absolute Socialism would be compatible with civilization at all; and among the arguments of the extremists of either side the only unanswerable ones are those which show the absurdity of the position of the other. Not so much as the first step towards real civilization can be taken until...

It's that time again, another audiobook has been finalized and ready for download. The Challenge of WasteWhat's interesting about this 1922 book, is that Stuart Chase, who would a decade later coin the term "New Deal" and be an adviser to FDR, based much of his opinions for this book on a study about waste which was commissioned by Herbert Hoover. That's because Hoover himself didn't stop being a progressive until seeing his own failures as president and Franklin Roosevelt doubling down on what clearly did not work. Hoover, like any other early 20th century progressive, was utterly obsessed with...

Authors Susan S. Fainstein and James DeFilippis wrote a book titled Readings in Planning Theory, which is all about centralized planning. In the book, the two authors spend a lot of time focusing on early planners Ebenezer Howard, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Le Corbusier, and here's their conclusion about the three men: (page 23) "Many people dream of a better world; Howard, Wright, and Le Corbusier each went a step further and planned one." This is what we're up against. If it was really "better", it wouldn't keep failing. "The more the planning fails, the more the planners plan." -...

I recently wrote an entry about Walter Lippmann, in which I made the case that his book "Public Opinion" makes him the founding father of fake news. It's important to understand, "fake news" does not end with "journalistic objectivity", fake news begins with "journalistic objectivity". It has to, because if "fake news" doesn't begin with "We are objective, you can trust us" then you'll get lost in the quagmire of thousands of years of people who, while they did report things inaccurately, did not do so because it was their ideological drive. They either lied because they were told to...

One thing I don't think conservatives truely recognize and appreciate,(and I include myself in that - I always do) is that after the Woodrow Wilson era, how utterly devastated progressive ideology was. They were so annihilated, that a decade later they were forced to re-appropriate the word "liberal" and take it for themselves. In many ways, the 1920's is a "lost decade" for American tyranny aka progressivism. They were completely routed, and after the way Wilson abused regulatory and other powers, the American economy and American life suffered for it. There were no excuses. There was nobody to blame. Progressives...

Do you want someone to direct your life? God how I wish someone would come and direct my life. I just don't know what the heck I'm doing! For those who want to be directed, there are others, who call themselves progressives, who dream of directing your life. They dream of a day when you'll stop using the ballot box to vote for leadership, and start using the ballot box to start voting for dictatorship. It's true, they've written it. In his 1922 pamphlet "The Challenge of Waste", Stuart Chase (who would later serve as an adviser for President FDR)...

There's a lot of talk about "fake news" these days, but lost in the 'here we are' is the 'how did we get here'. Some websites have proclaimed Dan Rather the founder of fake news, others have crowned Brian Williams as such. Understanding fake news is impossible without a full-scale structural analysis of "objective journalism" itself, because "objective journalism" was designed to facilitate fake news. The name to know is Walter Lippmann. Walter Lippmann is generally regarded as the father of modern journalism, and as most of us know, modern journalism is what it is today because of the concept...

When I got up this morning and sat down at my computer, I started searching. I don't quite know why, but once I got started I had a feeling. This morning, I was going to find something special. And, I did. As someone who is still realizing just how powerful of a weapon against progressivism that the progressives' own history is against them, I have found many useful things. But nothing like this. Arguably the most ardent planner of the New Deal, Rexford Guy Tugwell, gave a speech in 1939 titled "The Fourth Power". This speech is amazing for its...

On February 23rd, 1903, Woodrow Wilson said: I am of the class of men who are described as imperialists, and yet I have had such an intense sympathy with the men on the other side who are getting sat upon that I could almost have wished that my opinions were different that I might join their ranks. From The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, Volume 14, Page 367. Also, here. See also: Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and modern American imperialismProgressives don't want you to know, and many of them don't even know, that when they lament and bemoan "imperialism" they are...

I tell you, Lippmann's book Public Opinion is the gift that keeps on giving. This little narrative from his book is incredible, it explains so much in regard to the symbiosis that exists between progressive journalists and their masters at city hall. On page 338, Lippmann describes an important aspect of how journalists "collect news": Newspapers do not try to keep an eye on all mankind. They have watchers stationed at certain places, like Police Headquarters, the Coroner's Office, the County Clerk's Office, City Hall, the White House, the Senate, House of Representatives, and so forth. They watch, or rather...

Have you ever read Theodore Roosevelt's Bull Moose party platform? You should. In Chapter 3 of his book "The Art of War", Sun Tzu writes: If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle. That quote has been in the right side bar of the progressingamerica blog since day one, and will never change. We need to know progressives...

Have you ever heard "what if Texas were its own country" or "what if California", etc.... Here we go. If Alaska were it's own country, because of its size and land mass it would rank 33rd among all of the world's nations. If Texas were it's own country, because of its size and land mass it would rank 40th among all of the world's nations. If California were it's own country, because of its size and land mass it would rank 59th among all of the world's nations. But what of the BLM - the Bureau of Land Management, an...

This idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except the sovereign people, is still the newest and the most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man. - Ronald Reagan, October 27th, 1964 Democracy, the moldy-oldy discredited system, was introduced in the year 507 BC. That's 2,500+ years, for those of you counting. The American Republic and the Liberty which it was founded on, which was never discredited but simply circumvented by progressives; by comparison was introduced in 1776 AD. That's 240 years. But who's counting? Democracy...

Specifically, the science that progressives are rejecting is Newtonian in nature. I'll explain: In the book Constitutional Government in the United States, Woodrow Wilson wrote the following:(page 57) Living political constitutions must be Darwinian in structure and in practice. Fortunately, the definitions and prescriptions of our constitutional law, though conceived in the Newtonian spirit and upon the Newtonian principle, are sufficiently broad and elastic to allow for the play of life and circumstance. To be even more specific, what Woodrow Wilson is doing as he is actively inventing the concept of the "living constitution", is holding up Darwinian science over...

Progressives are fond of selling old ideas as somehow being new, and the only real point that they have to rely on is that someone won't go and look it up. Meanwhile they engage in revisionist history, erasing and covering up historical facts, then progressives top it all off with the arrogance to claim that "Well the Founders could not have fore saw........" (finish the false claim) Mr. progressive, you would be wrong - as you always are. As recorded by James Madison, Gouverneur Morris made the following comment on August 9th, 1787: Mr. Govr. MORRIS. The lesson we are...

Have you ever scratched your head sometimes, when someone you know who you are sure is not progressive in any way, doesn't support big government, doesn't like it, and doesn't like people who are progressives and are constantly push for the biggest government man has ever known - sends you something or says something that makes you scratch your head? The end result is you say to yourself or to them: "You know who wrote that, right?" Enter the "An American's Creed". You ever heard of this? Chances are, you've seen it in whole or at least in part at...

Here's something I do not understand: The very same people who blast Margaret Sanger, and inevitably bring up the fact that she supported eugenics, will then turn around and defend Theodore Roosevelt with the deepest sincerity knowing full well that Theodore Roosevelt also supported eugenics. Somehow TR is a good progressive, but MS is a bad progressive. How is this possible?!?!?!???? In my book, there are no good progressives and I think every last one of them ought to be thrown out onto the ash heap of history. What follows are two quotes, and I defy anybody - anybody to...