Where Did Our Republic Go??

[PoliticalChic]

I couldn't believe Hamilton listed as a progressive. But some have their own definitions.

1. Both Croly and TR abhorred Jefferson’s legacy of limited government and uncontrolled individualism. Rather, they championed Hamilton’s legacy of strong government and elite leadership.

a. Croly favored Hamiltonianism. And Croly was a preeminent Progressive.

b. Jefferson correctly viewed any tendency to impair the integrity of democracy as a prescription for disaster: the support must be of the whole people. And for Jefferson, democracy meant extreme individualism: as little government as possible.

c. For Croly, the nation needed Hamiltonian means to achieve Jeffersonian ends. Individual desires had to be subordinated to national purpose.

2. Listen to the echo of Croly in the thoughts of TR, from his ‘Autobiography,” wherein he wrote, that after the Civil War, “our strongest and most capable men had thrown their whole energy into business, into moneymaking, into the development, and above all the exploitation and and exhausdtion at the most rapid rate possible, of our natural resources…these men were not weak men, but they permitted themselves to grow short-sighted and selfish.” “Autobiography, “ p.28.

3. Wilson distrusted the great combinations that had come to dominate or destroy the Jeffersonian America of small business and community life. He believed that the only way to rid the nation of this evil was by restoring full competition. Roosevelt saw in the industrialized America what Hamilton had foreseen, the ills visited upon the working class and knew that industrial capitalism could only be moderated, not eliminated. Chace, p. 197.

4. TR and Wilson invented the activist modern presidency. TR’s commitment to use Hamiltonian means to achieve Jeffersonian ends was not unlike Wilson’s use of executive power to promote free competition that would prevent big business from stifling local economies.
For TR, as for Wilson, Hamilton’s strong government had to be united with the “one great truth taught by Jefferson- that in America a statesman should trust the people, and should endeavor to secure each man all possible individual liberty, confident that he will use it right.” Cooper, “The Warrior and the Priest,” p. 41.

See Chace, "1912."

So, in the sense of investing in a big, strong central government, Hamilton was a Progressive....before progressivism.

 

[PoliticalChic]

5. Today, another Progressive President uses bureaucracy to eviscerate our republic:
"Behind every powerful health care mandate under Obamacare is a power-hungry woman named Kathleen Sebelius. As the Health and Human Services Secretary, she has unprecedented power under Obamacare to control health care decisions, the approval of medical products and the national biomedical research agenda. The Secretary is not only the key player; she is the only one on the field. "The Secretary shall…" is mentioned more than 1000 times in the new health care law."
The American Spectator : Obama's Nurse Ratched

Shouldn't you be hating on Steve Larsen significantly more than on Kathleen Sebelius? Or did that memo not get out to the fringe rightwing yet?

Do you get a government memos?

How about government compensation for posting the above?

Are you paid to put out your propaganda?

 

[regent]

Jefferson were not set in cement, as America changed, so his means to the end changed, but not the end.
The America of small farms Jefferson hoped for was disappearing even as he wrote the Declaration. Madison also was changing, flip flopping if you will, but both were changing their means to achieve a liberal America. Did the presidency change Jefferson's means to the end the most, was the purchase of Louisiana a harbinger, was it age, or simple recognition that America was changing, government, industry, politics all and he had to change his means to the end. Today, some take those changes as indicative of Jefferson's liberalism changing?

 

[Sunni Man]

Jefferson were not set in cement, as America changed, so his means to the end changed, but not the end.
The America of small farms Jefferson hoped for was disappearing even as he wrote the Declaration. Madison also was changing, flip flopping if you will, but both were changing their means to achieve a liberal America. Did the presidency change Jefferson's means to the end the most, was the purchase of Louisiana a harbinger, was it age, or simple recognition that America was changing, government, industry, politics all and he had to change his means to the end. Today, some take those changes as indicative of Jefferson's liberalism changing?

Would you please provide a link to exactly when and where either Jefferson or Madison said their end goal was a liberal America?

 

[regent]

Might try the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution instead of quotes.
The time had come progressives believed, that we needed a strong central government to combat the strong corporations. Hamilton believed in strong a central government, Jefferson in the people, so finally the two philosophies came together in the progressive movement. Maybe Jefferson's ideal of a weak central government was sort of a pipe dream particulary now with three hundred million people instead of five million. In any case the only ones that say they believe in a weak central government are some Republlcians but when in power they seem to enlarge the government.

 

[PoliticalChic]

Might try the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution instead of quotes.
The time had come progressives believed, that we needed a strong central government to combat the strong corporations. Hamilton believed in strong a central government, Jefferson in the people, so finally the two philosophies came together in the progressive movement. Maybe Jefferson's ideal of a weak central government was sort of a pipe dream particulary now with three hundred million people instead of five million. In any case the only ones that say they believe in a weak central government are some Republlcians but when in power they seem to enlarge the government.

I've got your 'progressive movement' right here:

1. In 1923 Georg Lukacs helped establish a Marxist research center at the University of Frankfurt under the sponsorship of Felix Weil. Like Marx’s benefactor, Friedrich Engels, Weil was the son of a wealthy capitalist and an ardent Marxist who had earned a Ph.D. in political science from Frankfurt University. These rich slackers used family money to fund the Institute for Social Research, best known as the institutional home of the Frankfurt School and critical theory. http://www.lust-for-life.org/Lust-F...turalMarxismAndPoliticalCorrectness-part2.pdf

a. …the Institute attracted gifted scholars not only in economics but also in philosophy, history, psychology, sociology… convinced that the major impediment to the spread of Marxism was Western culture. In particular, they despised traditional Judeo/Christian ethics and morality, which they believed prevented the widespread acceptance of Marxism.

b. The Frankfurt School propagated a revisionistic Neo-Marxist interpretation of Western culture called Critical Theory, an aggressive promotion of a radical left-wing socio/political agenda. In essence, Critical Theory was a comprehensive and unrelenting assault on the values and institutions of Western civilization. Based on utopian social and political ideals, Critical Theory offered no realistic alternatives, but it was nonetheless a devastating critique of the history, philosophy, politics, social and economic structures, major institutions, and religious foundations of Western civilization.

2. “Under Horkheimer’s leadership the Frankfurt School attracted some brilliant scholars and intellectuals such as Theodor Adorno, Eric Fromm, Wilhelm Reich, Walter Benjamin, Leo Lowenthal and Herbert Marcuse. Like Trotsky, Luxemburg, Lukacs, Bela Kun and other notable European Marxists in the early 1900s, many of the Frankfurt scholars were secular Jews, a fact that the Nazis successfully exploited in their propaganda regarding a “Jewish conspiracy” of Communist intellectuals who were perverting German society.” Ibid.

a. The Critical Theorists held a common commitment to Neo-Marxism and the belief that Western civilization has been an imperialistic and repressive force in human history – especially, Western Christianity. In their view, Western civilization was built on aggression, oppression, racism, slavery, classism and sexual repression.

b. Thus, there is a straight line from the Frankfurt School to the formation in many colleges and universities of programs, and departments of African-American Studies, Ethnic Studies, Feminist Studies, Peace Studies, and LGBT (Lesbian/Gay/Bi-sexual/Transgender) Studies.

3. Waiting to ally themselves with the Frankfurt School Marxists were the Americans who had accepted the Wilson/TR synthesis of Hegel and Marx. And a welcoming ‘nest’ was provided for these vipers by the Columbia University Sociology department. And, the perfect storm: America was up for helping scholars fleeing from Germany. The guy in charge of this was Edward R. Murrow, the Emergency Committee in Aid of Displaced Foreign Scholars.

4. Erich Fromm pushed cultural Marxism through psychology by blaming Western tradition for the rise of Nazism and the rejection of Marxism. Fromm, “The Fear of Freedom,” p. 241.

a. Of course, Marxism is just as totalitarian as Nazism. But, by Fromm’s logic, just as soldiers are authoritarian because they follow orders, businessmen are authoritarian because the follow “economic laws.” Ibid, p. 145-146. And, Leftists still enjoy using this logic and calling their opponents ‘Nazis.’

b. Fromm continued the John Dewey-rejection of parental authority, telling parents to stand by and let junior reinvent the wheel. Next: Benjamin Spock, who helped launch the self-esteem movement.

c. The purpose of a university should be to make a son as unlike his father as possible. “The University's Part in Political Life” (13 March 1909) in PWW (The Papers of Woodrow Wilson) 19:99.


Wake up.
Wise up.

 

[regent]

1. re·pub·lic/riˈpəblik/ Noun:
A state in which supreme power is held by the people and their elected representatives, and which has an elected or nominated president...

2. "Woodrow Wilson first articulated what would become American government bureaucracy in a 1887 scholarly paper advocating the study of public administration (Wilson 1887).... Although the United States Constitution has been in existence since the beginning of the Union and states enacted their own constitutions modeled after it, very few municipal charters specifically limited or delegated authority."
Ethics of Bureaucracy

a. "The politics-administration dichotomy is a theory which holds that bureaucrats are experts who should be left alone to do their job without political interference. It derives from the Woodrow Wilson days of the "founding" of public administration,..."
Bureaucracy Theory

Unelected technocrats, experts, and bureaucrats?
b. Ludwig von Mises said: "The worst law is better than bureaucratic tyranny."

3. Former NY Senator James L. Buckley said the following:
"Today, this federal law is 1700 pages more than it was prior to the New Deal. The reason is the creation of more and more bureaus and agencies endowed with ever broader responsibilities and discretion in defining the rules that govern our activities and our lives. And these rules have the full force of law! Congress has increased the number of rules whose infractions are criminalized, waiving the common law requirement that one knows he is breaking the law. Today, one can be jailed for violating a regulation that one had no reason to know even existed!

a. While the officials in these agencies are generally good people, they become focused on their particular portfolio of duties, that, often, they cannot see the consequences on other parts of society. Put this together with human nature, and one can see bullying, and misuse of power, especially when these individuals are immune to penalty, and supported by free and extensive legal representation: they have sovereign immunity in their positions.

4. C.S. Lewis identified the result of such great delegation of power and authority to these bureaucrats...
"I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of "Admin." The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the offices of a thoroughly nasty business concern." C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

5. Today, another Progressive President uses bureaucracy to eviscerate our republic:
"Behind every powerful health care mandate under Obamacare is a power-hungry woman named Kathleen Sebelius. As the Health and Human Services Secretary, she has unprecedented power under Obamacare to control health care decisions, the approval of medical products and the national biomedical research agenda. The Secretary is not only the key player; she is the only one on the field. "The Secretary shall…" is mentioned more than 1000 times in the new health care law."
The American Spectator : Obama's Nurse Ratched


When did Americans decide to cede their power to a bureaucracy?
When did we lose our republic?

Bureacracy has little to do with progressiveism, as does Hamilton. The goal of Progressives is to make the nation more responsive to the people and democratic. To this end a nation may need larger government and a larger bureacracy but the goal is activism towards democracy and the well being of its people. During the Progressive period in our history, generally said to be somewhere between 1900 and 1915 the muckrakers made America aware of the evils taking place and government and the people tried with some success to correct those evils and make the US more democratic. We seem to have these periods but none so successful as the Progressive period.

 

[Sallow]

It took some time off during Reaganism and Bushism. But it seems to be back.

 

[PoliticalChic]

1. re·pub·lic/riˈpəblik/ Noun:
A state in which supreme power is held by the people and their elected representatives, and which has an elected or nominated president...

2. "Woodrow Wilson first articulated what would become American government bureaucracy in a 1887 scholarly paper advocating the study of public administration (Wilson 1887).... Although the United States Constitution has been in existence since the beginning of the Union and states enacted their own constitutions modeled after it, very few municipal charters specifically limited or delegated authority."
Ethics of Bureaucracy

a. "The politics-administration dichotomy is a theory which holds that bureaucrats are experts who should be left alone to do their job without political interference. It derives from the Woodrow Wilson days of the "founding" of public administration,..."
Bureaucracy Theory

Unelected technocrats, experts, and bureaucrats?
b. Ludwig von Mises said: "The worst law is better than bureaucratic tyranny."

3. Former NY Senator James L. Buckley said the following:
"Today, this federal law is 1700 pages more than it was prior to the New Deal. The reason is the creation of more and more bureaus and agencies endowed with ever broader responsibilities and discretion in defining the rules that govern our activities and our lives. And these rules have the full force of law! Congress has increased the number of rules whose infractions are criminalized, waiving the common law requirement that one knows he is breaking the law. Today, one can be jailed for violating a regulation that one had no reason to know even existed!

a. While the officials in these agencies are generally good people, they become focused on their particular portfolio of duties, that, often, they cannot see the consequences on other parts of society. Put this together with human nature, and one can see bullying, and misuse of power, especially when these individuals are immune to penalty, and supported by free and extensive legal representation: they have sovereign immunity in their positions.

4. C.S. Lewis identified the result of such great delegation of power and authority to these bureaucrats...
"I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of "Admin." The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the offices of a thoroughly nasty business concern." C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

5. Today, another Progressive President uses bureaucracy to eviscerate our republic:
"Behind every powerful health care mandate under Obamacare is a power-hungry woman named Kathleen Sebelius. As the Health and Human Services Secretary, she has unprecedented power under Obamacare to control health care decisions, the approval of medical products and the national biomedical research agenda. The Secretary is not only the key player; she is the only one on the field. "The Secretary shall…" is mentioned more than 1000 times in the new health care law."
The American Spectator : Obama's Nurse Ratched


When did Americans decide to cede their power to a bureaucracy?
When did we lose our republic?

Bureacracy has little to do with progressiveism, as does Hamilton. The goal of Progressives is to make the nation more responsive to the people and democratic. To this end a nation may need larger government and a larger bureacracy but the goal is activism towards democracy and the well being of its people. During the Progressive period in our history, generally said to be somewhere between 1900 and 1915 the muckrakers made America aware of the evils taking place and government and the people tried with some success to correct those evils and make the US more democratic. We seem to have these periods but none so successful as the Progressive period.

Dangerously short-sighted of you not to realize how the "movement" has been co-opted by the Left, the neo-Marxists.

But, of course, you are not alone.
Look at Sally.....

 

[regent]

Of course, how negligent, not to see Marxism involved. Can you name the nations that have practiced Marxian communism?

 

[Dragon]

1. Both Croly and TR abhorred Jefferson’s legacy of limited government and uncontrolled individualism. Rather, they championed Hamilton’s legacy of strong government and elite leadership.

See, this is what happens when you don't check your theories against the facts. Here's how your reasoning appears to go:

1) Jefferson's views were all about small government -- that's what he wanted. Not equality and liberty, not keeping ordinary people safe from abuses by the rich and powerful, to which end small government was purely and only a means, but small government itself, for its own sake.

2) Modern liberals, on the other hand, are all about big government. That's what we want. Not equality and liberty, not keeping ordinary people safe from abuses by the rich and powerful, to which end in an industrial economy big government may sometimes be a means, but purely and only a means when it is -- we want big government itself, for its own sake.

3) Alexander Hamilton was also an advocate of big government.

4) Therefore, Alexander Hamilton must be a progressive icon.

Now, here we have what is known as a falsifiable prediction on the basis of the theory. If the theory is correct, then indeed Hamilton should be a progressive icon.

What's the next step? Why, the next step -- if you have any intellectual integrity -- is to ask progressives what they think of Hamilton.

And I'll tell you, just as if you had asked. Alexander Hamilton was an advocate of capitalist concentration of wealth. He was a believer in industrialization, and for that purpose he wanted strong central government, so that it could aid and assist the rich getting richer. In that way, he hoped to accumulate capital and use it to industrialize the country. He wanted to keep ordinary people held down, and skim their wealth through one mechanism or another into the pockets of the very wealthy.

He was absolutely NOT a progressive. He was NOT one of us. He is NOT a progressive icon -- the notion is laughable.

Now -- what does that say about your theory as to what Jefferson and classical liberals on the one hand, and modern liberals on the other, were and are all about?

It says that your theory is WRONG. Because your reasoning is sound, if your theory was true, then indeed Hamilton should be a progressive icon.

But he's not.

And therefore your theory must be wrong.

 

[PoliticalChic]

Of course, how negligent, not to see Marxism involved. Can you name the nations that have practiced Marxian communism?

So, the default position is the ol' "real Marxism hasn't been tried..."


A variation of "It wasn't tried long enough...."?


How many lives will have to be sacrificed before Leftists agree that human nature is not malleable?
That was rhetorical...no number needed.

 

[Wry Catcher]

Our Republic has evolved (devolved, IMO) into a Plutocracy. The final nail in the coffin of democracy in America was CU v. FEC.

This was not happenstance, using the pen is mightier than the sword, the power elite in our nation has slowly, methodically and with malice aforethought eroded our democratic principles and created a faux Republic. No doubt there are good men and women in the Congress, but always enough have been purchased by the special interests; enough to ensure power is not shared with The People.

 

[Dragon]

Of course, how negligent, not to see Marxism involved. Can you name the nations that have practiced Marxian communism?

So, the default position is the ol' "real Marxism hasn't been tried..."

Speaking as an ex-Marxist who has no interest in promoting even the REAL Marxism, that statement is in fact the truth: real Marxism hasn't been tried. I'm not sure it even can be, but am completely sure that when you violate all of its conditions (starting with an advanced capitalist economy, which according to theory was supposed to be a prerequisite for a workers' revolution), you ain't got it.

Not that this means we should try to have a real Marxist society, either. I've already expressed my problems with Marx elsewhere. But it does illustrate that for right-wingers, the term carries no real cognitive content and is used merely as a boogie-man to scare people away from anything resembling social and economic justice.

 

[PoliticalChic]

Of course, how negligent, not to see Marxism involved. Can you name the nations that have practiced Marxian communism?

So, the default position is the ol' "real Marxism hasn't been tried..."

Speaking as an ex-Marxist who has no interest in promoting even the REAL Marxism, that statement is in fact the truth: real Marxism hasn't been tried. I'm not sure it even can be, but am completely sure that when you violate all of its conditions (starting with an advanced capitalist economy, which according to theory was supposed to be a prerequisite for a workers' revolution), you ain't got it.

Not that this means we should try to have a real Marxist society, either. I've already expressed my problems with Marx elsewhere. But it does illustrate that for right-wingers, the term carries no real cognitive content and is used merely as a boogie-man to scare people away from anything resembling social and economic justice.

"...merely as a boogie-man to scare people..."

"...real Marxism hasn't been tried...."
What a vapid excuse...

1. From “The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression,” which is a compilation of research edited by French scholar Stephane Courtois,
...totals over 100 million victims of Communist murder during the 20th Century.

a. Courtois and his colleagues do not simply unfold the numbers relentlessly and numbingly. Instead, they painstakingly explore the many ways the killing was done-from summary execution to forced deportations, from mass starvation to the gulag-and examine its many pretexts.”
The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression
Foreign Affairs (Book Review); New York; Nov/Dec 1999; Robert Legvold;


2.'After the halo wore off the Soviet Union, China emerged as a new beacon for credulous Westerners. .Mr. Margolin writes that "one myth was common in the West: the idea that China was far from being a model democracy, but that at least Mao had managed to give a bowl of rice to every Chinese person." In fact, nothing was further than the truth. Mao, like Stalin deliberately engineered a famine that killed untold millions.” '
WALL STREET JOURNAL MONDAY, OCTOBER 25, 1999

3. [Paul Hollander] is best known for his now-classic book "Political Pilgrims," which examined the phenomenon of twentieth-century Western intellectuals who allowed themselves to be seduced and duped by radical revolutionary regimes of the most patent despotism and brutality. How and why did so many intelligent, cultivated, and educated people come to believe such obvious nonsense? Pilgrims was a tragicomic study of how the cherished ideas of the self-important can so easily overwhelm their common sense, and how education can serve to blind as well as to enlighten.
Between Experience and Reflection by Theodore Dalrymple, City Journal 27 April 2009


"Speaking as an ex-Marxist ...for right-wingers, the term carries no real cognitive content and is used merely as a boogie-man to scare people away from anything resembling social and economic justice."

You can stop using the "ex-."

 

[Dragon]

"...merely as a boogie-man to scare people..."

"...real Marxism hasn't been tried...."
What a vapid excuse...

I don't need an excuse. Joseph McCarthy needs an excuse. And as you are following in his footsteps, so do you.

 

[PoliticalChic]

"...merely as a boogie-man to scare people..."

"...real Marxism hasn't been tried...."
What a vapid excuse...

I don't need an excuse. Joseph McCarthy needs an excuse. And as you are following in his footsteps, so do you.

But you haven't explained...were you a fool then, or now?

Senator Joseph McCarthy was a hero. It is slowly coming to light....maybe even to ex-Marxists.

1. Roosevelt flooded Stalin with Lend-Lease aid- food, planes, tools and supplies in large quantities. Stalin, in turn, planted spies in the United States who worked their way into key positions in the American government. They influenced U.S. policy to favor Russia; they sent copies of government documents to Russia; and they described U.S. plans in messages to Russia. Stalin knew about the development of the atomic bomb before President Truman did. Folsom and Folsom, "FDR Goes To War," P. 304.

2. Whittaker Chambers wrote in his book "WITNESS" that liberals are/were incapable of ever effectively fighting Communism because they did not see anything in Communism that was antithetical to their own beliefs. In short, Liberals are Communists and Communists are Liberals. The revisionist is aware of the horrors of Communism; the tortures, the Gulags, the over 100 million persons done to death.

3. Senator Joe McCarthy confronted government officials concealing communist involvement and excessively lax security with regards to Communists in sensitive U.S. Government posts. In many cases he was on target, with over 81 of the names he gave the Tydings committee resulting in resignations or movement of security risks. Given that over 200 of the spies uncovered in the Venona decrypts were never identified, we can only speculate as to the national security impact of removing Communists from key DoD and State Dept posts.

Arthur Herman, author of "Joseph McCarthy: Reexamining the Life and Legacy of America's Most Hated Senator," says that the accuracy of McCarthy's charges "was no longer a matter of debate," that they are "now accepted as fact." And The New York Post's Eric Fettmann has noted: "growing historical evidence underscores that, whatever his rhetorical and investigative excesses - and they were substantial - McCarthy was a lot closer to the truth about Communism than were his foes."

So, should I refer to you as Red-Liz from now on?

 

[regent]

Marx gave Republicans their best ammunition to scare Americans. They have labeled everything they don't like from Social Security to ingrown toenails as communistic. To save their big gun, communism, from overuse they use socialism and stepping down from that Pinko, and fellow traveler, although those last two term have lost a lot of their pizazz with McCarthy gone. Have the Republicans been successful with the communist thing, you betcha.

 

[rightwinger]

Our Republic has gone nowhere

It is the one nation under god......there are no others
We are indivisible
We provide liberty and justice for all

 

[Dragon]

But you haven't explained...were you a fool then, or now?

I have never been a fool, except when I was in love. Can't help that.

I was, in my current opinion, mistaken back when I was a Communist. Not a fool. Just wrong. But only in part.

Senator Joseph McCarthy was a hero.

To tyrants and would-be tyrants, perhaps. Also to those who make heroes out of confused, attention-seeking drunks.