Why Populism is Really Statism

Conservative Review ^ | 03/17/2016 | Mark Levin

[MLL]

On Thursday night, Conservative Review Editor-in-Chief Mark Levin took on the rising tide of "populist nationalism" with a history lesson.

Populism, Levin explained, is really just progressivism. The populist movement in America was the forerunner of the progressive movement, and both populism and progressivism share the same disdain for constitutionalism that conservatives reject.

[DesertRhino]

“No wonder some of them support out-and-out Communist “nationalist” groups such as the Irish republican groups”

Said the Zionist. Ever hear of a kibbutz?

[Poison Pill]

In a word, the Free Trade system hastens the Social Revolution.

Yeah, after the Revolution, not so much freedom. It's all about using the state to get what you want.

[berdie]

later

[TTFlyer]

You voters are all a bunch of dumb asses. The GOPe, the ‘Rats, Levin, Limbaugh, Fox News, Romney, Obama, etc. etc., they’ve all been looking out for YOU and YOU are too STUPID to understand and too UNCULTURED to be grateful to your MASTERS.

YOU are the ignorant MOB and YOU are a threat to the Republic. Yes YOU!! And YOU are a FASCIST and YOU are a RACIST too!

Dear Lord I am so sick of this anti-Trump, anti-every-*******thing BULL**** being shoved at us 24/7. I am SO sick of it that when I saw that grotesque slob Eric Ericson on Lou Dobbs tonight I wanted to shoot my own TV. Who the hell died and made THESE jackasses “pundits,” “conservative leaders,” what-have-you.

They’re all worthless trash that needs to be taken out this November. ALL of them.

[Travis McGee]

Typo, I meant to write:
If the elite Rats and GOPes don’t mind the invasion, (cheap votes for one branch of the Uniparty, cheap labor for the other), we do mind it, a lot.

[lordsofthejungle]

They are not labels, they are descriptors, and ideology matters in your choice of government. Populism is a short sighted slippery slope, especially when you’re compromising with opponents who are doggedly statist and your cheerleaders are an uninformed mob.

[DesertRhino]

“Do you want me to tell him, instead?”

if he will listen go right ahead senor.

[DesertRhino]

“Do you want me to tell him, instead?”

if he will listen go right ahead senor.

[DesertRhino]

“Do you want me to tell him, instead?”

if he will listen go right ahead senor.

[Travis McGee]

Don’t worry, our betters will be along to explain how plumb ignorant we is, and how we should listen to them for another couple decades, while they sort it all out for us.

Not.

[nathanbedford]

In 2009 I offered these thoughts about the role of political parties in our peculiar constitutional system:

Our founding fathers were not naïve, but they entertained a skeptical view of the nature of man as a political creature. So they set up a system which anticipated unceasing tension. Although they deplored political parties, they made them virtually inevitable if society was to govern in a system in which the founders had placed so many obstacles to effective government. Political parties are designed to undo what the founders did, to bridge the gaps created by the founders as checks and balances. So, for longer than two centuries our society has been at eternal war with itself, always risking totalitarian government (such as today under Obama) by strong political parties on the one hand or risking ineffectual government such as we saw under The Articles Confederation or under the Southern Confederacy on the other hand.

Governing is about exercising power. Political parties are about appropriating that power to one's own purpose. The founding fathers created a government containing many checks and balances in an effort to frustrate human tendency to consolidate power in one tyrant or, on the other hand, to concede power to the mob. Political parties in America are designed to overcome the checks and balances put by the framers into the Constitution.

The peculiar architecture of the American federal system with its bicameral legislatures, tripartite "coequal" branches of government, staggered elections for various branches, Constitutional limitations of government power especially freedom of the press and speech, are designed to make government impotent in the absence of a general consensus. The purpose of political parties is to provide that consensus for its constituents' point of view, to provide a consensus about how power should be wielded across the various competing entities of government.

The peculiar architecture of the American federal political system with its checks and balances means that it functions properly as a two-party system. Any successful attempt to form a third political party invariably condemns the political party from which it shoots off and to which it is most closely ideologically aligned to oblivion. Since it is human nature to entertain incessant arguments over the proper application of political power, political parties in America have developed a survival mechanism, they co-opt the principle grievances of the splinter group and make the dissidents' platform their own. This has been the history of political parties in America since the beginning. When a new ideology becomes popular, one party or the other seeks to absorb it.

If the party misjudges the public mood and embraces a splinter ideology in an effort to co-opt when that ideology is too radical to be palatable to the general public, the party loses the next election because it moves out of the mainstream. If the party misjudges the other way and declines to co-opt a movement which happens to be of sufficient strength, the party loses the next election because it has fractured its base. If a party attempts to absorb views of the other party, or approaching that of the other party, it risks losing the next election by alienating its own base. If it fails to absorb views approaching the ideology of the other party, it risks losing the next election by isolating itself to its own base.

Political parties are eternally faced with the same dilemma: should the party dilute its core message to attract less ideologically motivated voters or should it confine itself to a pure message and energize its core constituents? In attempting to solve these tensions, political parties are like amoebas or yeasts, everlastingly dividing or growing.

[AmericanVictory]

Does he happen to mention that populism in the 19th century was in a very large part a reaction to the enormous power of the railroads, whose dominant wealth had been created by grants from the federal goveernment, in other words, statism? The railroads in turn bought officeholders and politicians. Does the Credit-Mobiiier scandal ring a bell. The railroad barons in turn united with giant grain companies that became so powerful based on crony capitalism that they were able to dictate the building of waterways by the feds. The small farmers got screwed on the grain prices and could not break into getting their produce transported at reasonable prices. Huge agribusinesses emerged playing on federal money and their cronyism with federal officeholders and and regulators. The ICC, for example, the first regulatory agency, was a reaction to out of control crony capitalism based on federal subsidies and crony capitalism and came about because of populism's rise

I don't believe the real picture is as clear as Levin asserts. I am reminded of Commodore Vanderbilt and his "ownership" of judges and public officials. My own father worked with an uncle in a law office representing James J. Hill in D.C.. James J. Hill, for example, forced the creation of Glacier Park through his cronyistic influence in order to draw traffic to his Great Northern Railroad. Although Marxists seized upon populism and converted its ideas to their socialistic agenda, the movement contained many small farmers and businessmen. Its targets were such trusts as Cargill and ADM, the company that later owned Hubert Humphrey.

Populism was not a response to free market capitalism. It was originally a response to statism and crony capitalism.

[Poison Pill]

are aware that Marx and Engels were very much in favor of free trade? They correctly judged that it destroyed the idea of nations and would hasten the proletarian revolution.

As a means to a nefarius end. Are you aware of what happens after the Revolution? Try trading freely after the Bolsheviks come storming through.

[1rudeboy]

You could argue that the free market made Levin a pundit.

[guitarist]

Trump is completely untrustworthy and the hugest flip flopper of all. And childish. Just being wrong on issues is only part of his problem.

[Pelham]

Good to see that you aren’t trying to pretend that the First Congress didn’t pass a protective tariff. As did the majority of Congresses for a hundred years afterwards.

But according to your definition that makes Washington and Hamilton “marxists”. Adam Smith must have been too, as he admitted that the use of retaliatory tariffs could be useful.

But they may well be “marxists”, since Karl Marx in fact wrote in favor of free trade in 1848. Not exactly for the usual reasons, but because he believed it would hasten the “revolution”:

“But, in general, the protective system of our day is conservative, while the free trade system is destructive. It breaks up old nationalities and pushes the antagonism of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie to the extreme point. In a word, the free trade system hastens the social revolution. It is in this revolutionary sense alone, gentlemen, that I vote in favour of free trade.”

[Mozilla]

MEGA BARF ALERT

[1rudeboy]

It was just a knee-jerk reaction, comrade.

[Seruzawa]

You’ve never noticed the prevalence of delusion in politics?

[TTFlyer]

Point taken. And I will argue it is the people that will make Levin an irrelevant/failed pundit. As the Middle Class disappears so will his advertisers(such as they are)and his audience. You reap what you sow.