https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Marcuse+Oss+Cia+Frankfurt+School+%22Father+of+the+New+Left%22
Who wants BBQ?
Posted on 01/09/2018 4:44:48 PM PST by ProgressingAmerica
In his book The Promise of American Life, Herbert Croly wrote the following: (page 29)
But although Hamilton is much the finer man and much the sounder thinker and statesman, there were certain limitations in his ideas and sympathies the effects of which have been almost as baleful as the effects of Jefferson's intellectual superficiality and insincerity. He perverted the American national idea almost as much as Jefferson perverted the American democratic idea, and the proper relation of these two fundamental conceptions one to another cannot be completely understood until this double perversion is corrected.To make Hamilton and Jefferson exclusively responsible for this double perversion is, however, by no means fair. The germs of it are to be found in the political ideas and prejudices with which the American people emerged from their successful Revolutionary War. At that time, indeed, the opposition between the Republican and the Federalist doctrines had not become definite and acute; and it is fortunate that such was the case, because if the opponents of an efficient Federal constitution had been organized and had been possessed of the full courage and consciousness of their convictions, that instrument would never have been accepted, or it would have been accepted only in a much more mutilated and enfeebled condition. Nevertheless, the different political points of view which afterwards developed into Hamiltonian Federalism and Jeffersonian Republicanism were latent in the interests and opinions of the friends and of the opponents of an efficient Federal government; and these interests and opinions were the natural product of contemporary American economic and political conditions.
Now, there is a lot here that I have to ignore. The entire Founding is a testament to Republicanism, but Croly views both Jefferson and Hamilton as Democrats.(I mean[and he meant] the government structures, not the parties) He goes on to write that the Federalists were in favor of a "strong central government".(which they were not) But I don't want to get hung up on these fallacies.
The word for today is "Efficient", because many if not most of us look at the Republican form of government which the Founders gave us as very efficient, precisely because it is completely limited by the Constitution to the point to where it cannot hurt us; yet progressives look at limited government itself(as Croly is writing about here) as completely inefficient. To the progressive, government must be big and within that big structure, it can be made into a sleek and efficient machine.
The fact is this: there simply is no point of compromise between big government and small government.
It really isn't any more complex than that. I could write another 50 paragraphs on it but I really don't need to. It's only one word, "efficient" yet that one word has two diametrically opposite definitions. Either America will have a big government and the progressives win, or we will have a small government limited by the Constitution. There is no middle here. A kind of big, kind of small, kind of limited, kind of unlimited government - that's not making anybody happy here in the 21st century, and it didn't make people happy in the 20th either.
Ping..............
Is it time to water the tree of liberty?
THIS, is the truth. One has to win and the other has to lose. The wonderful America as we know it, will, be lost to globalism which is what the Progressives AKA communists want.
Think about it people. Freedom or Communist tyranny.
1) In before John starts whining about blogs.
2) Progressivism is fundamentally authoritarian in nature, making it incompatible with the US Constitution.
How in the heck can a Socialist and Conservative be able to compromise on anything? There is no there there!
There. Fixed it for ya.
Actually I think this is all wrong. The real battle is between the globalist Free Traitor Uni-party and the patriots in the nationalist camp. Too many progs and so called conservatives are globalist. They both really want the same thing.
How real-world "progressives" keep their "machine" sleek and efficient:
“The Party only needs good seeds. The Party commands you to kill them”
[Cambodia: THE FORCED LABOR OF ANGKAR LEU/CAP TREN 1975-79 (8/11) [KH-EN]
"https://youtu.be/UwWzNoU1JOM?t=1m52s"
Democrats lost the election. So reward them with amnesty.
So reward them with Daca Caca.
If conservatives lose then the progressives will soon follow. The truth is that they NEED us, we don’t need them.
Look at the places where the ‘progressives’ won out, Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, Zimbabwe, etc...
Wherever progressives rule, there is tyranny, misery and death.
It seems to me that we are always at that compromise, unfortunately big government snowballed right over limited government in this ‘compromise’ the definition of ‘efficiency’ became spending all money taken from the producers and still wanting.
I simply see the predictions of the forefathers eventually coming true.
No, we cannot compromise but, we did.
Now what? There is still enough meat on the bones to sustain for a while and most are content with it, this is a huge problem in itself, our nation seems to destined to be consumed....eventually.
Time for two different America’s but first the Progressives have to leave this one to go find and create a country of their own. This one is taken. It doesn’t matter if they outnumber us either. This one is ours. Patriots made it and will keep it.
The original progressives around the turn of the 20th century were nationalists.
>>The original progressives around the turn of the 20th century were nationalists.
You mean like the original parasites who sold the machinery necessary to “protect socialism” to the “progressives” who were “progressing”/starving 6-10 million Ukrainians to death?
Or maybe their Transhumanist/Postgenderist Technocrat Uber successors?
Maybe it’s time to take a good hard look at how Russia got “progressed”...
https://wikispooks.com/wiki/200_Years_Together
...in ENGLISH.
.[19] Elizabeth Becker quoted Carter's National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, as acknowledging that "I encourage[d] the Chinese to support [Khmer Rouge leader] Pol Pot ... we could never support him, but China could."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_United_States_support_for_the_Khmer_Rouge
PROGRESS, for grave diggers, Comrade?
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Marcuse+Oss+Cia+Frankfurt+School+%22Father+of+the+New+Left%22
Who wants BBQ?
Maybe what Croly meant was using goverment and bureaucracy to benefit the poor or ordinary people (Jeffersonian), rather than the rich or the elite (Hamiltonian). But really, how does that formula work out?
Is it really fair to Hamilton? Was his goal or end really the creation of a moneyed elite? Or was his goal to achieve strong, wealthy, powerful, secure and stable nation with the development of commercial, financial, and industrial elites as a means, rather than an end? I don't know, but it's at least possible that some of what we think we know about Hamilton is a caricature created by his opponents.
And what about Jefferson? It's hard to talk about Jefferson now as people did a century (or even a half-century) ago. It's hard to take him as seriously as an opponent of elites and hierarchies. Of course, Croly was speaking the language of his day, and people back then didn't have any problem with seeing Jefferson as the great proponent of egalitarian democracy and the common man, but what role would the common man have in Croly's vision?
I always assumed that Jefferson was Croly's hero -- that's why the ends were Jeffersonian and only the means Hamiltonian, I thought. But dipping into Croly's Promise of American Life it's clear that he was himself a Hamiltonian at heart. He wanted a strong and powerful government, and I guess a strong and powerful country, but he was going to use that government power to achieve goals that Hamilton hadn't even considered, and that is where the Jeffersonian window-dressing comes in.
What was Jeffersonianism about? If it was about being left alone by government, that definitely doesn't have much to do with Crolyism. If it was about popular majority rule and citizen participation in government that also may not have much of an echo in Croly. The citizens, ordinary people, the poor are supposed to be the beneficiaries of his program but they don't have much of a role in hashing it out. It seems like they're more intended to be passive recipients.
Croly thought that Jeffersonianism was about equality or egalitarianism, but that Jeffersonians used the language of liberty to express it. Croly wanted to bring that egalitarianism to the forefront (in place of the rhetoric of liberty and limited government) and use government to realize an "egalitarian" agenda. But if you reject individualism and rely on government bureaucrats and planners to govern, rather than ordinary voters, do you really get closer to a meaningful and valuable equality?
You may be able to see a parallel between Croly's Hamilton and Croly himself. Both had visions of National Greatness. Both wanted an elite to create a greater nation. Ultimately, outsiders would wonder whether the expressed vision of the nation or the creation of a governing elite was the real end or goal.
So I think you can see Croly as a forerunner of the New Deal. The New Deal generation was grateful for the government relief programs that helped them survive the Depression. Subsequent generations would be suspicious and hostile to bureaucracy and top-down social planning, with its disregard for local values, and the indifference to the aspirations of those who weren't in the governing elite.
Croly's parents were followers of the French philosopher Auguste Comte and positivism. That's probably where his belief that society needed to be organized, directed and controlled by an intellectual elite came from. But he was also living in an age of bigness, when small household or workshop production had been replaced by massive trusts and combinations and individual desires were frustrated by impersonal economic forces to a greater degree than today.
It was easy under those circumstances to think that individuals and even local communities didn't count for much. Democracy for Croly didn't mean speaking one's mind and defending one's rights. It had more to do with choosing one set of rulers over another and letting them decide what was best. That wasn't uncommon in the middle phase of industrialization, when Ford only made cars in one color. As the country grew richer, individualism and self-expression would come back into their own.
You might see a parallel between Croly's views and today's liberalism, which for all the talk of democracy and egalitarianism, often seems to promote the administrative state and governing elite above everything else.
As usual, your posts are very thoughtful.
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