Posted on 01/13/2017 8:14:54 AM PST by ProgressingAmerica
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 brevity, its loquacious and direct statement of goals, and also its footnotes. The footnotes, are in some instances even better than the speech itself!
I have always known, even before I officially began the progressingamerica project so many years ago, that the New Deal was a cesspool of progressive authoritarianism; however, I have mostly stayed away from it for three reasons:
1) It is not the beginning of our troubles. Progressivism already had a 30+ year track record by the time the New Deal began. It simply could not as a function of basic mathematical principles be the beginning.
2) Perhaps more importantly, the vast majority of New Deal propaganda is all buttoned up tightly behind a firewall of copyright. There's nothing for me to search and research. Ergo, nothing to blog and nothing to record.
3) Lastly, and I mean both lastly and minorly, most conservatives already recognize the New Deal for what it is, albeit, mistakenly as the beginning. So I don't really have to do much work to educate people of what they already know: The New Deal is a poisonous and unconstitutional chapter in American history.
In "The Fourth Estate", Tugwell talks about 'social control', which had been an obsession of progressives for decades, he talks about regulations - which without getting specific, goes back to Theodore Roosevelt. Other topics include collectivism, the failure of free markets, a strikingly honest outline of the concept of Democracy - which to progressives has nothing to do with ballot boxes, scientific management, and other topics. He mentions numerous important authors such as George Soule, John Dewey, Thorstein Veblen, Simon Patten and others. And above all, he goes on and on about planning, planning, planning. And in the last section of the address, he continues the elitism against the Founding that we are all used to from progressives
The best part is, this is not in copyright.
Which means it will be my next audiobook. This is too good to pass up, it is too good to leave hidden and lost. We can use this. This is a powerful, powerful thing in our favor.
Tugwell's "The Fourth Estate" can be found here, flip to page 104. I'll post a transcript soon, so that it becomes super easy to find in any search engine.
Good post...thank you.
PROGRESSIVE = REPRESSIVE
Good find. A lot of this stuff has been available; but progressives have been very good at their policy of not showing it to the masses.
Wow. Great find. It is called The Fourth Power, not the Forth Estate, although the fourth estate today does consider itself a power. I think here of the Powers and the Principalities in the New Testament. I will have to pour a glass or two of brandy and read this meditatively later tonight. Much thanks.
Progressives/Communists cannot be honest because if they were, they would be rejected.
Political Correctness was designed to control the narrative and it has worked.
Bkmk
Try "The Civil War." That is a much better place to start. All the particulars were in place; Wealthy, Liberal power blocks trying to force their morality on everyone else and use the power of government to do it.
Others have pointed out that Progressivism started with the Puritans in Massachusetts, who were also arrogant and insistent that everyone conform to their moral opinions.
But for our modern understanding of the phenomena, the Civil War is a better point from which to project it's origin.
https://archive.org/stream/planningcivilcom05washrich#page/n101/mode/2up
"The Fourth Power", by Rexford G. Tugwell, in Planning and Civic Comment, April - June, 1939.
"I do not like the reappearance of the Jesuits....
Shall we not have regular swarms of them here, in as many disguises as only a king of the gipsies can assume, dressed as printers, publishers, [Banksters], writers and schoolmasters?If ever there was a body of men who merited damnation on earth and in Hell, it is this society of Loyola’s.
Nevertheless, we are compelled by our system of religious toleration to offer them an asylum."
--John Adams to Thomas Jefferson; May, 1816
Care to expand on what morality was being forced on others during the Civil War, and how it kicked off the Progressive Era?
Sure. The Liberals were objecting to the Southern manner of wearing hats and suits. They believed that it was an affront to God.
This is what started the great clothing war of 1861.
There’s a huge delta between bad policies and ideological drive.
There’s plenty of bad policies during the civil war, but there is no drumbeat during that time period that aims at big government simply for the existence of big government. That’s all progressivism, and doesn’t appear until the age of Theodore and Woodrow at the turn of the century.
bfl
That is why it is the origin of big government. After tasting it, some found it to their liking, and the government simply grew larger and more intrusive thereafter.
That’s all progressivism, and doesn’t appear until the age of Theodore and Woodrow at the turn of the century.
On our national scale, it started with a race obsessed Liberal Lawyer from Illinois. Lincoln grew the Federal government into a monster. Woodrow Wilson simply nourished the little monster that Lincoln had birthed.
Uh huh, sure.
The point I made is that morality was imposed, not whether we approve of it.
Currently they are trying to shove Homosexuality down our throats. Most of us do not agree with it, though I expect some do.
Is it the job of the government to shove morality down the throats of people who do not agree with it?
Yeah, that’s what I thought. You object to anyone having combated slavery, and derisively call that effort “progressive.” Southrons are so easy to spot, and such an embarrassment to this forum.
All law is legislating morality, so get over it.
Nice work. Thank you.
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