1913: The Turning Point

American Thinker.com ^ | September 7, 2017 | Robert Curry

[Kaslin]

In 1913, Woodrow Wilson was the newly elected president. Wilson and his fellow progressives scorned the Constitution and the Declaration. They moved swiftly to replace the Founders' republic with a new regime.

There is widespread agreement that Wilson did not always show good judgment – for example, in his blunders in international relations – but in the project of overturning the Founding, he and the movement he led selected their targets shrewdly. By the time he left office, the American republic was, as they say, history. The fundamentals of the new regime were in place, and the expansion of government under FDR, LBJ, and Obama was made easy, perhaps even inevitable.

Nineteen-thirteen gave us the 16th and 17th Amendments to the Constitution. That year also saw the creation of the Federal Reserve. This burst of changes marks the effective beginning of the Progressive Era in American politics, the era in which we now live. Wilson was to do much more that would once have been considered out of bounds, but these three changes were enough to change everything. In 1913, the fundamental agreement the Founders made with the American people about the relation of the states and the federal government was broken.

Here is the Founders' original bargain, stated by James Madison in Federalist 45:

[Grampa Dave]

The Jekyll Island duck hunt that created the Federal Reserve

By Tyler E. Bagwell

http://www.jekyllislandhistory.com/federalreserve.shtml

[Fiddlstix]

......Nineteen-thirteen gave us the 16th and 17th Amendments to the Constitution. That year also saw the creation of the Federal Reserve. This burst of changes marks the effective beginning of the Progressive Era in American politics, the era in which we now live. Wilson was to do much more that would once have been considered out of bounds, but these three changes were enough to change everything. In 1913, the fundamental agreement the Founders made with the American people about the relation of the states and the federal government was broken......

[Hostage]

What you write about state legislative corruption is well-known by historians but your statement about no panacea is wrong.

The addition of a voter recall provision allows for voters to fire their US Senators. The 17th Amendment allowed voters to hire their US Senators. That was the wrong thing to do because it boomeranged back on state voters by having their state legislatures become irrelevant and so starting a long trek towards massive federal centralization where today the federal government controls and regulates more than 90% of every aspect of life.

In other words, freedoms were traded for uniform federal codes.

Today’s motto should replace the 17th Amendment with “You can fire them but you can’t hire them”. That puts the voters as a Board of Directors rather than as executives, and that is a much better arrangement because most voters can never truly know their US Senate candidates by words alone, only by deeds are they known. And misdeeds should permit firing.

Here’s a form of amendment that has reached debate at the highest levels now in which national news featured its recall provision just a few weeks ago as to how it would have stopped cold, for example, the 2010 passage of Obamacare:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3583879/posts?page=23#23

Pay attention to how control of the amendment’s language falls to state houses and state voters, and never to any branch of federal government. Because of how it is written, federal government will not be able to interfere with it. If anyone disagrees with that, ask them to give an example how he federal government can take control of such an amendment; answer: no example exists short of tyranny.

[rockinqsranch]

“.........Who was the first current or former President to call for a body of global governance? I’ll give you a hint. He did so when he accepted his Nobel Prize.”

The BIGGEST of government to date. Freedom is under assault.

[ReleaseTheHounds]

I recall my father telling me that when FDR passed, my grandfather’s reaction was “God d*mn all Roosevelt’s.”

[cherry]

all this hand wringing over what has happened to our country......

I believe it was Ben Franklin when asked what kind of govt we were going to have, said "a Republic, if you can keep it"

well, we couldn't keep it...

lets be honest, democracy on its face does not work once people can vote goodies for themselves....

it was predictable that our "republic" would eventually succumb to mob rule....

predictable that the rich would move to protect themselves and enhance their wealth...

so now what....

is there any govt in the world today NOT corrupt?...NOT totally controlling their citizens?....

the question is what do we do now...

[Pelham]

“Overall it is a good article, but its off by 12 years. The turning point for Progressivism was 1901 and the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt. “

That’s right. TR also made two speeches in favor of the income tax, a policy which his Republican successor Wm Taft carried forward. All that was left for Woodrow Wilson to do was put his name on the ratified Amendment.

There’s an interesting book by Gabriel Kolko on this period of history- the oddly named “The Triumph of Conservatism”. Kolko has the view that big business was the driving force behind progressive legislation rather than the social reformers often connected with the movement. Whether or not you find Kolko’s idea convincing the book is useful for its background on all that was going on at the time.

[Pelham]

” The Federal Reserve System is the name given to the twelve central banks regulating America’s banking industry and it insures that depositors will not lose their money in the event of funds mismanagement from an accredited bank.”

Yeah well that isn’t accurate- depositors got wiped out by the tens of thousands as banks collapsed over the years 1930-33.

The creation of the FDIC in response to this calamity is what finally gave depositors some protection. Milton Friedman called that the greatest piece of legislation to arise out of the Great Depression.

[Pelham]

and if Reagan had insisted on his pal Paul Laxalt for VP we would have been spared the Bush-GOPe ascendancy.

[Impy]

First of all state legislatures are not "irreverent", they hold massive power. Second of all the notion that state legislators, by virtue of being state legislators, are somehow opposed to the federal government having much power and thus would choose Senators that would oppose federal power, is perhaps the most ridiculous notion I've ever heard. Many members of Congress used to be state legislators. Democrat legislators would choose scum Senators, as would RINO legislators. In many GOP states RINOs would team with democrats to elect liberal RINO Senators instead of conservatives.

All levels are government bend the people over and give it to us from behind. State governments are as awful as the federal government.

My State Rep. Cythinia Soto (D) and State Senator Omar Aquino (D)

Living in the city of Chicago, US Senator is the only vote for any legislator I have that might make any difference. These a-holes can have MY vote for US Senator over my bloated, bullet-ridden corpse.

As for recalls, I'll remind you they are a progressive era idea also. They are a double-edged sword at best, recalls for Congress would lead to campaign season unending as scores of members on both sides are constantly being recalled, I fail to see how that will accomplish anything other than wasting money.

The way to stop future bad legislation from being passed is to nominate conservatives in GOP primaries and elect large GOP majorities in the general election. Bread and butter. There is no magical procedural fix, liberals will accommodate themselves to any procedure they need to.

[Impy]

You think Taft would have entered WW1 earlier?

[PGalt]

Thanks very much for the ping/post. Fascinating. i did not know that.

BUMP!

[TADSLOS]

Yes, Wilson is the undisputed father of American socialism. A complete fool when it came to international affairs and egged on by Teddy Roosevelt, one of the original globalists. He was also a thin skinned, smartest man in the room pr*ck- another role model for the fraud Kenyan to emulate.

[AuH2ORepublican]

“First of all state legislatures are not “irreverent”.”

Actually, I would posit that many state legislatures *are* deficient in veneration or respect for Anerican values. http://www.dictionary.com/browse/irreverent?s=t

But I agree with you that state legislatures are not *irrelevant*. : )

[x]

America was probably going to follow the general direction of the rest of the developed world. It's true that we're very different from Western Europe in some crucial ways, but we were probably going to develop regulatory mechanisms and social security. That seems to be the direction that capitalism + democracy moved in the 20th century, and we weren't going to be a complete hold-out.

Many people understand the Progressive era according to the current political pattern. There's a left pressing for more government and a right pressing for left. The generation of TR, WW, and WHT, though, was haunted by the spectre of revolution. Many educated people thought there would be a socialist or anarchist revolution from below, something like the French Revolution, and some saw such a revolution in the Populist movement. Others feared the coming of industrial or political or military Caesars, who'd overturn the Constitution and rule by force.

So many of the political figures of the day saw themselves as in the middle -- between the millionaires and the socialist revolutionaries -- attempting reforms to prevent one side or the other from overturning the existing system. So that's why you found some very surprising voices calling for measures that might seem quite risky and harmful in retrospect.

Teddy vs. Woodrow? The Progressive Era did start with Roosevelt, but he was such a unique and impulsive figure. TR changed how things were done, but it wasn't clear that others would be able to follow in his footsteps. Roosevelt was too charismatic, too much an individual, for less charismatic politicians to attempt to do what he did. The future may have looked more like Taft, than TR.

Wilson, though, was a creature of system. It didn't seem like the changes he brought were merely the work of one individual. They became the way things were done in Washington. After Wilson, you didn't just have individual Progressives and reformers peddling their own theories; you had the beginnings of a liberal Establishment in Washington.

That's one way of looking at it anyway. What I'm trying to say is that Roosevelt could just have been a fluke, an accident. The country's mindset wasn't that different in 1908 than it had been in 1900. Wilson consolidated the changes and put something on track that would lead to ever greater government power.