Progressives: An Historical Perspective

[Dante]

what are you 22? Do you even know when Reagan's time was? Never mind, with all your bluster I thought you actually might know something about this stuff, but it turns out you are empty windbag. Have a nice day. I have to go to the range.

Shoot somebody in the face for us so we know you're a true blue conservative shooter

Because I hate the progressive ilk that has helped destroy the country.

Sickening.

Ugh!

really now

 

[PoliticalChic]

Oh the irony.

I always did say people like poli-chic were clueless cogs in a square wheel

The irony is your post: no one cares what you say.

 

[Dante]

The irony is your post: no one cares what you say.

The irony is your personal attacks, when you are one who decries others are doing such.

 

[PoliticalChic]

The irony is your personal attacks, when you are one who decries others are doing such.

From my memory of times gone by, I seem to recall your posts as being far more incisive, more insightful.

Now, you are simply a disappointment, and one learns nothing from them.

You have become one of the bloviating Trump haters.

You need not respond.

 

[whitehall]

Lincoln's negligence in allowing the Civil War to happen put the Federal government in charge of agenda and judicial issues rather than the United States.

 

[PoliticalChic]

Lincoln's negligence in allowing the Civil War to happen put the Federal government in charge of agenda and judicial issues rather than the United States.

What???????



Now, now......the Confederacy (Democrats) started the war.


Let's begin here: the South went to war.

1. Major Robert Anderson and 85 men were stranded in Fort Sumter.

2. Surrounding him were hundreds of militiamen and coastal guns.

3. Lincoln refused to give the fort up, but the fort was running out of food: if he sent a supply convoy into Charleston Bay, he would be blamed for starting the war.....but how could he give in, and give up the fort?

4. William Seward tried to undermine Lincoln....telling Lincoln to give up the fort for 'goodwill.'

5. On April 5, Lincoln dispatched a fleet of supply ships with the proviso that was relayed to Jefferson Davis: the vessels would be unarmed, with the only cargo "food for hungry men."

6. Firing on the defenseless ships would have been an act of war by the Confederacy.

7. On Tuesday, April 9, Davis held a cabinet meeting, deciding on war. Three days later, and hours before the ships would arrive....the Southern forces attacked the fort.
Gavin Mortimer
"Double Death: The True Story of Pryce Lewis, the Civil War's Most Daring Spy,"byGavin Mortimer, p.70-71
The First Battle of Fort Sumter opened on April 12, 1861, when Confederate artillery fired on the Union garrisonhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Sumter

P.G.T. Beauregard - HISTORY
www.history.com › topics › american-civil-war › pgt-b...

In this role he ordered the first shots of the Civil War during the bombardment of Fort Sumter (April 12-14, 1861). After his success in taking Fort ...

 

[mikegriffith1]

1. The Progressive aim was to concentrate more and more power in the executive branch, where enlightened experts would govern the country. In effect, they were turning the Founders vision upside-down. Individual liberty was no longer to be the standard by which to judge policy. Hayeks attack on scientism- the belief that well-educated public servants have the knowledge and skills to better run society with a certainty sought in the physical sciences- applies in spades to the Progressives and their agenda. Greatly expanding in the 1870s, the movement seduced both Republicans and Democdrats with the lure of federal power.
Kibbee, Hostile Takeover, chapter two.

2. Theodore Roosevelts accession to the presidency in 1901 could be considered the Progressives first major victory. He aggressively expanded the power of government. Here is the view of H.L. Mencken on that expansion:
He didn't believe in democracy; he believed simply in government. His remedy for all the great pangs and longings of existence was not a dispersion of authority, but a hard concentration of authority. He was not in favor of unlimited experiment; he was in favor of a rigid control from above, a despotism of inspired prophets and policemen. He was not for democracy as his followers understood democracy, and as it actually is and must be; he was for a paternalism of the true Bismarckian pattern ... a paternalism concerning itself with all things, from the regulation of coal-mining and meat-packing to the regulation of spelling and marital rights.... All the fundamental objects of Liberalism -- free speech, unhampered enterprise, the least possible government interference -- were abhorrent to him.
The THINK 3 INSTITUTE: H. L. Mencken on 'Forward Lookers'

3. FDR expanded government far beyond its constitutional mandate, endorsing a culture of dependency via welfare programs. And LBJ expanded the entitlement states future promises a degree of magnitude beyond our ability to finance them.

a. If you fill the trough, feeding will commence. As the reach of government grew, more and more decisions that were once left to the market were now routed through Washington.
Kibbee, Hostile Takeover, p.50.

4. The great push to centralize economic decision making from the top down was a fundamental departure from the laissez-faire principles that our nation was founded on.Economic decision makers in Washington can never grasp the particular knowledge of time and place that Hayek so eloquently described in his study of prices and information- essential knowledge that is generated from the bottom up, not from the top down.
Kibbee, Op. Cit., p.52.

a. We see this push toward centralization in government and the proliferation of czars, bureaucrats, agencies wanting to tell us what we can and cant do with our lives and with our pay. At the top, a President gathering executive power, designing government outside the ken of our Founders.

5. . In his The End of Liberalism: The Second Republic of the United States, Theodore J. Lowi claimed that the Founder's constitution of 1787 had been surreptitiously replaced with a new one by the FDR administration. Here are three pertinent 'articles' of the Progressive's Constitution.
See if they don't ring true.

Article II. The separation of powers to the contrary notwithstanding, the center of this national government is the presidency. Said office is authorized to use any powers, real or imagined, to set our nation to rights making any rules or regulations the president deems appropriate; the president may delegate this authority to any other official or agency. The right to make all such rules and regulations is based on the assumption in this constitution that the office of the presidency embodies the will of the real majority of the American nation.

Article III. Congress exists, but only as a consensual body. Congress possesses all legislative authority but should limit itself to the delegation of broad grants of unstructured authority to the president. Congress must take care never to draft a careful and precise statute because this would interfere with the judgment of the president and his professional and full time administrators.

Article IV. There exists a separate administrative branch composed of persons whose right to govern is based on two principles: (1), the delegations of power flowing from Congress; and (2), the authority inherent in professional training and promotion through an administrative hierarchy. Congress and the courts may provide for administrative procedures and have the power to review agencies for their observance of these procedures; but in no instance should Congress or the courts attempt to displace the judgment of the administrators with their own.

Your post contains a lot of good information and sources. I agree with most of your arguments.