Posted on 02/07/2008 9:02:39 AM PST by peggybac
Voters should remember what happened under Woodrow Wilson.
Washington - I'm thinking of an American president who demonized ethnic groups as enemies of the state, censored the press, imprisoned dissidents, bullied political opponents, spewed propaganda, often expressed contempt for the Constitution, approved warrantless searches and eavesdropping, and pursued his policies with a blind, religious certainty.
Oh, and I'm not thinking of George W. Bush, but another "W" – actually "WW": Woodrow Wilson, the Democrat who served from 1913 to 1921.
President Wilson is mostly remembered today as the first modern liberal president, the first (and only) POTUS with a PhD, and the only political scientist to occupy the Oval Office. He was the champion of "self determination" and the author of the idealistic but doomed "Fourteen Points" – his vision of peace for Europe and his hope for a League of Nations. But the nature of his presidency has largely been forgotten.
That's a shame, because Wilson's two terms in office provide the clearest historical window into the soul of progressivism. Wilson's racism, his ideological rigidity, and his antipathy toward the Constitution were all products of the progressive worldview. And since "progressivism" is suddenly in vogue – today's leading Democrats proudly wear the label – it's worth actually reviewing what progressivism was and what actually happened under the last full-throated progressive president.
The record should give sober pause to anyone who's mesmerized by the progressive promise.
(Excerpt) Read more at csmonitor.com ...
A policy isn’t good, simply because it is new.
Fascism and Naziism were new once, too.
No. I want a reactionary pre-1960’s America, hold the instituional racisim.
There is nothing “progressive” (or “charismatic” in the case of the Obama mythology), about stealing money from the most productive members of the economy in order to support those unwilling to pay their own way.
McCain needs to wake up and smell the "VILE"!!!
"Bipartisanship" Is A Dirty Word; and RUSH: "We want to defeat them"
“.....hold the instituional racisim.”
Too late for that.
The firmly entrenched, so-called Affirmative Action programs take institutional racism to new levels.
Our country could use a good dose of
“If a man can work and shall not, nor shall he eat.”
That would solve a LOT of our problems, from gov’t intrusiveness to illegal immigration.
I don’t like that either, but I’m more willing to put up with it than blacks being prevented from voting or having equal rights under the law. I’d like to raise my kids in a color-blind version of Leave It To Beaver...
And I didn’t even like that show!
We are doomed.
We have a choice of three panderers for president.
America cannot survive another 8 years of an administration bent on destroying our heritage but that is what we will get.
Today's progressives still share many of the core assumptions of the progressives of yore. It may be gauche to talk about patriotism too much in liberal circles, but what is Barack Obama's obsession with unity other than patriotism by another name? Indeed, he champions unity for its own sake, as a good in and of itself. But unity can be quite amoral. Mobs and gangs are dangerous because of their unblinking unity.
Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, often insists that we must move "beyond" ideology, labels, partisanship, etc. The sentiment is a direct echo of the Pragmatists who felt that dogma needed to be jettisoned to give social planners a free hand. Of course, then as now, the "beyond ideology" refrain is itself an ideological position favoring whatever state intervention social planners prefer.
Call it what it is, Communism,, the end goal.
When one looks back at what has been shoved down the throats of legal US residents and supporters OF the Constitution the last 75 years, especially the last couple, it would seem the chunks of incremental progressivism have gotten larger and larger.
No wonder so many here are oft choking as this sorry saga unfolds. It’ll be illegal soon enough.. enjoy it while you can.
How much time do you spend everyday constructing the one post that you spam into every other thread on FR?
You are one tedious human being.
Thought this was good, ping.
Hey, so the guy’s got a cause... leave him be. It beats surfing porn all day.
At some point the breaking takes on a life of its own and it is merely assumed that it will lead ineluctably to the glowing future. That is class warfare. Such classes can be ethnic - Jews and Tutsis, for two grim examples - economic, religious, or political.
It isn't that one cannot be politically progressive without descending into class warfare but nearly all of the worst abuses in the arena have come from progressivism. One is so accustomed to hearing the Nazis dismissed as "right-wing" that one sometimes forgets that they were politically progressive to a fault, that fault taking form in a few tens of millions of corpses. Hitler most certainly had a vision of a beautiful future world (assuming one were sufficiently Aryan). The devil turned out to be in the details.
This is, unfortunately, far from academic with respect to American politics. Where that imagined future involves equality of material possessions, some must lose a great deal so that others gain a little. "We're going to take things away from you for the common good." That "common good" is an illusory progressive future. The only real part is the taking.
A policy isn’t good, simply because it is new.
Fascism and Naziism were new once, too.
Read the article at the source; Goldberg asserts that Woodrow Wilson's Progressivism had many of the characteristics of the Fascists. Including an aggressively enforced Sedition Act.
Ping to an article I’m bookmarking.
BTTT
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