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To: pigdog
I am very familiar with Woodrow Wilson. I do not think it is correct to refer to Wilson as a "socialist," unless you look very carefully at the sense of the term before 1917, when many would have looked at English Fabian Socialism as the model, one that implied an evolutionary process of government responsibility for social justice, achieved primarily through regulating the power and wastefulness of monopoly capital. Wilson rejected Marxist doctrine from the outset and he was nothing but horrified at what he saw in the Bolshevik Revolution, which created more problems for him than a lot of people realize. And it is hard to make a case, in my opinion, that Wilson's New Freedom reforms of 1913-1915 look anything like Socialism. The Underwood-Simmons Tariff of 1913 was the first downward revision of tariffs since the Civil War, the Federal Trade Act establishing the FTC was meant to restore competition in the marketplace by curbing illegal business practices, the Clayton Anti-Trust Act of 1914 gave definition to the terms "monopoly" and "monopolistic business practice" -- again enhancing competition, and the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 created the cornerstone of American capitalism in the Federal Reserve. It can be argued that Wilson began to turn his legislative agenda more towards social justice in 1916 and that major reform legislation such as the Keating-Owen Child Labor Act, the Adamson Railroad Act, and the Federal Farm Loan Act were designed to appeal to the Left, who already liked Wilson's opposition to the war, and to "bring them in," but I don't think it approaches the label of "socialist" as we use it today.

It is worth pointing out that Wilson's decision to take the U.S. into the war in 1917 cost him the support of everyone on the left, which started the process of breaking up the reform coalition he put together. The Socialists opposed this completely.
50 posted on 06/15/2006 11:56:27 AM PDT by StJacques
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To: StJacques
But to me the real start of Wilson's socialism really got going at the end of WWI when his "14 points" were deconstructed and, basically, laughed out of Dodge and he then more and more became a big government fancier.

And I'm sorry but I don't think of the Federal Reserve as a high water mark of capitalism - quite the contrary I consider it an early step in government's control and manipulation of the economy. And Wilson was definitely in favor of that.

We'll have to disagree about Wilson since I find him to be the first modern socialist President (followed all too soon by others).

IAE, here's a link to Beardsley Ruml's interesing speech Taxes For Revenue Aare Obsolete.

52 posted on 06/15/2006 2:03:34 PM PDT by pigdog
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To: StJacques; pigdog
Found a very nice article, germane to the subject at hand, and thought you both might enjoy it as well.

The Philosophical Origins of Austrian Economics

54 posted on 06/17/2006 6:05:13 AM PDT by Bigun (IRS sucks @getridof it.com)
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