How Progressives Have Shaped This Country

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How Progressives have shaped this country, Part I, Education;

EDUCATION

FOUNDING PLATFORM
The history of schools in America pre-dates almost all other types of social insti¬tutions except churches. Harvard College was established in 1639, about 150 years before the birth of our nation itself. In fact, all but one of the Ivy League universities were founded years before the American Revolution. (Cornell University appeared in 1865.)
These esteemed institutions of higher learning shaped the values and intellects of the young men who eventually became the Founding Fathers. In turn, several of our earliest patriots also had a profound influence on the educational system of their day. For example, after helping to bring the Unites States into existence, Thomas Jefferson founded the University of Virginia.

While the Founders’ opinions on education differed, one theme remained constant: Education was for civil govern¬ment’s sake. It was to teach the rule of law and diminish the glorification of European culture. Education was a means to sup¬port liberty.

The concept of “publick schools” does not appear in the United States Constitution. Any powers not delegated to the Federal government were reserved exclusively for the states and the people. Therefore, several of the state constitu¬tions do address the role of government in public education. For example, the Mas¬sachusetts Constitution actually includes a section titled “The Encouragement of Literature, etc.”

Adopted in 1780, the Massachusetts Constitution was drafted in large part by John Adams and his cousin, the renowned brewer-patriot Samuel Adams. Chapter V, Section II begins:

Wisdom, and knowledge, as well as virtue, diffused generally among the ody of the people, being necessary for the preservation of their rights and liberties; and as these depend on spreading the opportunities and advantages of education in the various parts of the country, and among the different orders of the people, it shall be the duty of legislatures and magis-trates, in all future periods of this commonwealth, to cherish the interests of literature and the sciences, and all seminaries of them; especially the university at Cambridge, public schools and grammar schools in the towns…

Notwithstanding “the university at Cambridge” (read Harvard), these ideals were not immediately attainable for a new nation emerging from war. The generation that followed the Founding Fathers included educational pioneers like Horace Mann who organized the first publicly-supported local school systems.

PROGRESSIVE PLATFORM
“Education is a social process. Education is growth. Education is, not a preparation for life; education is life itself.”
~ John Dewey (Progressive Education Reformer)

Education is an issue close to the hearts of Progressives. The Progressive desire is for non-violent social change, or progress. What better way to achieve this than by helping shape the minds of the next generation?

Progressives believe that, if we teach our children a set of shared values it will help build a more unified society. Good values, emotional development, social development and career preparation are all strong components of the Progressive education platform. In addition, Progres¬sives put great faith in the idea that highly educated experts have much to offer so¬ciety. This illustrates another key plank to their platform; increased public investment in education. This commitment to public education includes a desire to expand educational opportunities.

Progressives support universal pre-school and easier access to post high school education. For example, President Obama, a Progressive, called for young Americans to complete at least one year of education past the high school level.

Progressives support more local and state control over education. They disagree with federal standardized testing such as “No Child Left Behind.” Progres¬sives feel that a ‘one-size fits all’ testing system ignores social and economic fac¬tors that can impact a child’s intellectual development. They also strongly oppose home schooling and programs such as vouchers which move education into the private sector. They believe these make educational outcomes inconsistent and sow cultural divisions.

Regarding educational methods and content, Progressives rely on what experts in the field are currently saying, as op¬posed to past approaches. This means Progressive methods themselves change over time as experts come up with new ideas. But the methods always tend to emphasize group oriented, learning-by-doing activities, and giving the child more control over their own education.

Quotes from Founders and Progressives;

“A primary object...should be the education of our youth in the science of government. In a republic, what species of knowledge can be equally important? and what duty more pressing on its legislature than to patronize
a plan for communicating it to those who are to be the future guardians of the
liberties of the country?”
~ George Washington

“The motive commonly held up is the acquisition of a certain degree of skill and an amount of knowledge. The quality of skill and knowledge is generally fixed by courses of study and the conventional examinations. This is a mistake. In contrast with this false motive of education, to wit, the gaining of skill and knowl¬edge, I place what I firmly believe to be the true motive of all educa¬tion, which is the harmonious development of the human being, body, mind and soul.”
~ Francis W. Parker (father of progressive education), passage from Notes of Talks on Teaching, 1882

“The good education of youth has been esteemed by wise men in all ages as the surest foundation of the happiness both of private families and of commonwealths. Almost all governments have therefore made it a principal object of their attention, to establish and endow with proper revenues, such seminaries of learning as might supply the succeeding age with men qualified to serve the public with honor to themselves, and to their country.”
~ Benjamin Franklin

“…[K]nowledge alone will not bring the future our children deserve. Our schools and community institutions must also help each child develop a moral compass. Education must blend basic American values such as honesty, personal responsibility, and service. These indispensable elements will not only help children succeed in challenging work environments, they will also help our youth engage in and contribute to their communities.”
~ Barack Obama from a proclamation on Education and Sharing Day, 2009

“[T]he American people owe it to themselves, and to the cause of free government, to prove by their establishments for the advancement and diffusion of Knowledge, that their political Institutions, which are attracting observation from every quarter, and are respected as Models, by the new-born States in our own Hemisphere, are as favorable to the intellectual and moral improvement of Man as they are conformable to his individual & social Rights. What spectacle can be more edifying or more seasonable, than that of Liberty & Learning, each leaning on the other for their mutual & surest support?”
~ James Madison

“The purpose of a school is not solely to communicate knowledge, but to enhance and increase the mental power of a child. The mind of a child is not a barn for the storage of intellectual achievements. The more a man can think the more of a man he is and hence it should be the first duty of a school to teach the child to think; but with all that the highest and
principal object of a school is the formation of character.”
~ Felix Adler (progressive social reformer), passage from the New York Times “Ethics for the Schools…,” 1897

“There are two types of education. One should teach us how to make a living, and the other how to live.”
~ John Adams

“I believe that education is the fundamental method of social progress and reform…I believe that education is a regulation of the process of coming to share in the social consciousness; and that the adjustment of individual activity on the basis of this social consciousness is the only sure method of social reconstruction.”
~ John Dewey (progressive education reformer), passage from “My Pedagogic Creed,” 1897

“…[P]rogressive education, if it means anything at all, must embody a profound threat to the status quo. It is a direct challenge, for example, to all the policy initiatives that deskill and hammer teachers into interchangeable cogs in a bureaucracy, all the pressure to reduce teaching to a set of manageable and easily monitored tasks, all the imposition of labels and all the simple-minded metrics employed to describe student learning and rank youngsters in a hierarchy of winners and losers. It’s a threat to all that, and more.”
~ William Ayers (social reformer and education professor at University of Illinois at Chicago), passage from
“Love Me, I’m a Liberal,” 2006

“America’s future will be determined by the home and the school. The child becomes largely what he is taught; hence we must watch what we teach, and how we live.”
~ Jane Addams (social reformer and founder of the Hull House)

“…the object of the college, as we have known and used and loved it in America, is not scholarship […] but the intellectual and spiritual life. Its life and discipline are meant to be a process of preparation, not a process of information. By the intellectual and spiritual life I mean the life which enables the mind to comprehend and make proper use of the modern world and all its
opportunities. The object of a liberal training is not learning, but discipline and the enlightenment of the mind. The educated man is to be discovered by his
point of view, by the temper of his mind, by his attitude towards life and his fair way of thinking”
~ Woodrow Wilson, passage from “The Spirit of Learning” in Wilson’s College and State: Educational, Literary and Political Papers, 1909

KEY HISTORICAL EVENTS:
1875: Francis Parker becomes superintendent of schools in Quincy, Massachusetts. One of the earliest Progressive reformers, Parker had spent two years in Germany studying new educational ideas. He implemented many of them in Massachusetts. They include the substitution of traditional learning with “child-centered,” learning-by-doing activities.

1896: Dr. John Dewey sets up a laboratory school at the Universityof Chicago to serve as a testing ground for his ideas on education. His approach is designed to develop each individual child’s abilities within a cooperative group setting. Dewey’s ideas had a profound impact on American education. He went on to co-found The New School for Social Research, which continues today, as do his University of Chicago Laboratory Schools.

1955: Rudolf Flesch deals a blow to Progressive education with his book Why Johnny Can’t Read. It advocates a return to phonics-based reading. The newer progressive method of sight-based reading had be-come popular in American schools. Flesch blamed this for American students’ poor reading skills. The book also taught parents how to teach
children to read at home.

CURRENT PROGRESSIVE BILLS IN ACTION:

American Recovery and Reinvestment Act 2009
This law designates supplemental ppropriations to agencies that upport school improvement programs, student financial aid programs, special education and education of the disadvantaged.

Generations Invigorating Volunteerism and Education Act (a.k.a. GIVE Act)
Sponsored by 36 Democrats, one ndependent and one Republican, this bill expands federal funding for volunteer programs such as AmeriCorps and National Civilian Community Corps. It also creates other “corps” such as Clean Energy Corps, Education Corps, Healthy Futures Corps and Veterans Service Corps.

From FUSION Magazine

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Understanding The Progressives And the Transformation of the American Political System

By Josh Lerner

If you've had an opportunity to peruse the latest works by some of the less nuanced members of the conservative movement, you will have noticed that a rather unusual term has entered the lexicon of "synonyms for liberal." From relatively high brow figures like, say, Jonah Goldberg, to the openly populist Glenn Beck, the term "progressive" has really come into its own as a pejorative description for those on the modern day American left. But when these writers and talk show hosts are using the term, they are not merely polishing a new club with which to hit liberals with; rather, they are connecting modern liberalism to the American progressive movement, a reform-oriented political and social movement that started right around the turn of the last century, and, as the traditional narrative goes, ended with the onset of the "roaring twenties."

This is not merely a phenomenon of the right. In a debate leading up to the 2008 election, Hillary Clinton declared that she really was not a liberal, but "considered [herself] an American progressive." Why has there been such an increased interest in progressivism? Where does it come from? And what lessons does the Progressive era have to teach us about modern politics?

At one level, the interest is purely academic. It is far from controversial to claim that the Progressive era represented one of the most monumental eras of reform in American history. It is also far from controversial to claim that the reforms enacted during this era—including, but not limited to, the establishment of the Federal Reserve, the creation of the Food and Drug Administration, the establishment of national parks, the expansion of direct ballot initiatives, recall, and referendum, the direct election of Senators—all play a major role in shaping the modern political and social landscape.

But another school of thought, one that is becoming more dominant in conservative circles, holds that progressivism is not merely a label to attach to modern liberals in hope of obfuscating their principles, but is rather the preeminent intellectual origin of modern liberalism. They further hold that, even as the specific elements of their platform have changed, the same intellectual foundations, conceits, and villains exist in both. Although the intellectual strains of American progressivism contained many idiosyncrasies and disagreements existed amongst its greatest practitioners, what remains consistent is a philosophical program. Built upon the historicist framework of German non-Marxist followers of Hegel but tinged with an American appreciation for democracy and equality, it ultimately provided the intellectual basis for the New Deal and culminated politically with the Great Society. Serious foundational ideas found in progressive literature, like an emphasis on the notion of an inevitable "progress" or the importance of an administratively run bureaucratic state as a response to political or economic uncertainty, coupled with advocacy for the increased "democratization" of society, shape the boundaries of liberal intellectual discourse today.

From a distance, the question of who the progressives were is a rather easy question of the historical record. There existed a very prominent Progressive political party, and a progressive caucus in the both the Republican and Democratic parties. Yet, the question remains less cut-and-dry because the important figures of progressivism, with a few exceptions, were not found in the House of Representatives, but in the halls of academia, particularly at the "new" Germanic-style research institutions: Johns Hopkins University, and the University of Chicago, and in the Ivy League, particularly at Princeton.

Progressives were among the leading intellectuals, thinkers, activists, and politicians of the 1880s through the 1920s. What makes someone a progressive is the basic adherence to several key ideas concerning rights, History, administration, and democracy. Other elements of the progressive agenda—like foreign policy—were far more contentious within the progressive movement, but this basic intellectual framework defined progressivism.

The essence of Progressivism is the rejection of the natural rights and social contract theories underlying the founding of the United States and the Declaration and Constitution. While these were certainly not the first American theorists to reject the concept of the social contract, they were the first to levy a sustained attack against the foundations of the American Constitution and, particularly, the philosophy undergirding it. The use of "nature" by the founders and notions of "inalienable" rights strikes against the heart of the progressive project. Progressives argued that the rapid modernization undertaking the United States at the turn of the century, particularly the great economic and political uncertainty that came with the end of the first great industrial era in American history, required a more dynamic vision of the role of government. They thought that the state should not be constrained by republican measures to prevent too much action, but rather be guided by the best of modern science (natural and social) and capable of acting in whatever ways were necessary.

As reductionist as this may sound, progressivism, in its heart of heart, is the sustained belief in progress. Progress means, essentially, that human events have an easily deducible direction. History has moved beyond being "one damn thing after another," as noted progressive historian Carl Becker once put it, but is now a meaningful expression of direction and distance. History, in the most Hegelian way possible, has a knowable end. Intellectual, political, and social development would all culminate in a singular end, one that after we've reached it would illuminate what choices we need to make now to get there. Paradoxically, progress is both inevitable and within our powers to achieve. Progressives saw only the light of progress as their guide, and the sciences and other modern forms of knowledge attainment as the only tools needed. Progress, both social and political, became the only goal.

It wasn't just politics that took on a Progressive dimension; the Progressive project, as much as anything, aimed to alter the fundamental moral notions of our nation. Progressivism substituted the notion of unchanging rights, natural rights or natural law—all of which meant there were permanent standards of right and wrong—with a new kind of progressive morality, in which the only moral dimensions available became forward or back. Charles Merriam, a leading progressive political scientist, wrote that "the individualistic ideas of the 'natural right' school of political theory…are discredited and repudiated…. The origin of the state is regarded, not as the result of a deliberate agreement among men, but as the result of historical development, instinctive rather than conscious; and rights are considered to have their source not in nature, but in law." Morality and other transcendent codes of justice become defined by conventions and therefore the state; nothing of any moral power exists beyond the conventional law codified by the state as a product of its time.

Socially or politically traditional ideas and institutions became malevolent (hence the rise of the pejorative reactionary) and the new deliberately and rationally created ideas became intrinsically good. Rights, insofar as they were useful, only existed as creations of the time at which they were talked about; old concepts of natural rights needed to be replaced by more nebulous concepts like "Human Rights" and social rights. As Teddy Roosevelt expressed it, "property rights [one of the banes of progressivism] to the exclusion of human rights, had first mortgage on the Constitution." Meaningful and eternal rights are a major impediment to the progressive project, something that puts progressivism directly in contrast with the principles of our founding.


Theodore Roosevelt, as a Republican, started the first American Progressive Party, the Bull Moose Party

From this moral framework arose a sustained criticism of our Founding, not necessarily as a malevolent force, but as simply an outdated one. For what it is worth, some progressives would pay some sort of needed social due to the founders, but only as the embodiment of the "progressive ethos" for their time. For the most part, though, progressives approached the Founding as if it was an irrelevant fact of our nation's history. The Constitution, as the manifestation of the Founders' belief in the separation and balancing of powers, was to be circumvented in the name of progress. And certainly, according to these progressive critics, the relevance of the Constitution need not be large because it is simply an 18th century document, and America, as they put it, now faced 20th century problems. The limited, but vibrant, government created by the Founders was fine for the 18th century, but given the massive social and political upheaval following the Civil War, America needed, according to the progressives, a new means of dealing with new problems.

The Founders' belief that the purpose of government is tied to the protection of individual rights against the dual prospects of anarchy and tyranny ran directly contrary to the view the progressives held. Underlying the emphasis on eternal rights is a (Lockean) belief in the permanence of human nature: that certain flaws exist intrinsically in man and the best a political system can hope to do is to mediate them so as not abridge fundamental, natural rights. In doing this, the Founders were primarily concerned about the ways in which the government can tyrannize people, and they thought that even a democratically elected republican government needs to be cognizant of natural rights.

Progressives saw such talk as tied to outmoded ways of thinking. They thought that the Founders' worries about the tyranny of government from a democratic nation, however appropriate they were in their time, no longer applied because we had all accepted the moral proposition tyranny was intrinsically evil. The purpose of government went from a limited one of protecting against abuses of natural rights to a corrective and redemptive one. Accordingly, progressives placed no limits on the functions and powers that a democratic government could perform. Progressive political theorist John Dewey wrote that "[the] state has the responsibility for creating institutions under which individuals can effectively realize the potentialities that are theirs", implying an obligation from government to the people that goes well beyond freedom and safety, but extends to more nebulous roles like fulfillment. Any impediments to a government capable of performing such tasks needed to be eliminated by progressives in order for their political and social reforms to take place. This imperative brought forth their contempt for the political machinery built into the Constitution.

The obstructionist elements of the American Constitution, the elements designed to prevent rapid unilateral change, were the parts most decried by progressives. Theodore Roosevelt, in one of his most progressive moments, wished to drastically alter the Constitution's roadblocks to policy making by radically democratizing both the Courts and the Senate. A series of amendments to the Constitution that he proposed in the 1912 election, and considered the most important elements of his progressive platform, would have essentially eliminated all republican restraints of power in our government.

His first proposed amendment, which was eventually passed, was the direct election of Senators. This was, ostensibly, designed to minimize the corruption in the then-current model under which the state legislature appointed the Senator, but the amendment also served to weaken the powers and interests of any individual state. The direct election of Senators eliminated any say the state and local governments would have, beyond simple petitioning, in regards to the federal government, and allowed for a greater congruency between the opinions of the members of the House and the Senate because they would be elected in essentially similar ways.

The second proposed amendment, a far more radical one, would have created the process of "judicial recall and review", meaning that the people could overturn any decision made by the judiciary if a majority did not like it. This amendment, even more than the first one, would have radically destabilized politics in America in a way that Roosevelt would have liked; Progressive reforms, never more popular than in the 1912 election, would have probably been pushed through over the (token) opposition of the judiciary.

As bad as this amendment seems—and completely making the American judicial system subservient to the whims of a bare majority is an affront to republican principles—it was nothing compared to the crown jewel of the Roosevelt 1912 campaign, an amendment eliminating the need of a supermajority to amend the Constitution. This, Roosevelt thought, was the fulcrum of the great Progressive reforms the country firmly needed. No longer would we be tied down to an outmoded 18th century system of governance, but we would be able to reform the country in the ways done in other nations. Roosevelt lamented that, as it then stood, "the constitution is a dead form, holding back the people's growth, shackling the people's strength, but giving a free hand to malign powers that prey upon the people." Roosevelt wanted to make "the people themselves…the ultimate makers of their Constitution."

Directly democratic reforms weren't all about restructuring the Constitution. Progressive intellectuals, including President Wilson, were adamantly opposed to the two party system. In their view, it fostered divided decision-making and diminished the individual's say in his or her own government. Part of the Progressive project of having the people as the makers of the Constitution was decentralizing the power of political parties to make choices and eliminating their ability to obfuscate about their own positions and others. Things like the primary system, the rise of ballot initiatives, and the recall election were part of this general progressive platform of redistribution power in political parties.

But direct democracy was far from the only aspect of the progressive political project. Their other major goal was the establishment of a technically competent administrative apparatus, designed to realize the political will of the people. The extent to which progressives believed government intervention was necessary—from regulating railroads to managing the environment—required a regulatory system far greater than anything yet seen before in American history. The ideal was a bureaucracy, staffed with devoted professionals, that would be able to make the most rational and, therefore, neutral decisions about managing American life. Progressive faith in bureaucracy rested in their belief in the infallibility of expertise.

This accords with to progressive belief in direct democracy, although in a very different way than just the belief in direct democracy, because Progressives wished to eliminate non-technical decision making from the implementation side of policy, while still maintaining the "will" of the people. Constitutional roadblocks to complete efficiency within government like checks-and-balances limited these experts' ability to mediate the will of the people. Wilson, in his seminal 1880 essay The Study of Administration, writes extensively about the role administrative bureaucracy played in the modernization of Germany. Recognizing the limits that our Constitution places on the development of such an infrastructure, Wilson is adamant about importing the best elements of the Prussian system to America. The ways in which Bismarck effectively combined creating a "serious" welfare state and imposing a "properly guided" regulatory infrastructure greatly appealed to Wilson's own vision for what he wanted to do in the United States. Interestingly enough, Wilson quotes Hegel's Philosophy of Right in justifying the expansive administrative state as something that is the culmination of "the spirit of the time."


Woodrow Wilson= Federal Reserve, Council on Foreign Relations, Progressive Income Tax, Treaty of Versailles, League of Nations, American Protective League, and Internment camps during WW I.

It is this idealized Prussian infrastructure, the embodiment of Weberian "legal/rational administration", that Wilson wished to impose on the American political system. What was needed in these administrative bureaucracies, Wilson argued, were people who, like him recognized where history itself was going and were cognizant of all the complexities it implied. Politics was no longer thought to be the proper mode of decision making for such a complex society. Wilson thought that "the steady and unmistakable growth of nationality of sentiment" had eliminated the need to manage against faction, because we had all begun to realize the ultimate ends of government. The science of Administration was to be the ultimate source of authority for regulation, leaving almost unfettered power in the hands of bureaucrats.

Roosevelt, again in the 1912 election, wished to create "a national industrial commission" that had "complete power to regulate and control all the great industrial concerns engaged in interstate business—which practically means all of them in this country." This would essentially be regulation by bureaucratic fiat, not by law; "[a]ny corporation voluntarily coming under the commission should not be prosecuted under the antitrust law as long as it obeys in good faith the orders of the commission." President Wilson tried to establish a similar bureaucracy in 1913, calling it the Federal Trade Commission. Senator Albert Cummins, one of the architects of the FTC felt that it was something that could exist beyond politics, because of "our faith and confidence in administrative tribunals" as a just and neutral adjudicator. Luckily, the FTC that ended up being created had virtually no teeth, and was something of a regulatory laughingstock for the better part of the 20th century. But underlying it was the progressive belief in the science of administration.

A rather important feature of progressivism is this very clear tension between its directly democratic ethos, and its "scientific" approach to governance; American Progressives believed in both the well-managed state, run by men of the best expertise available, and, at the same time, in a completely democratic regime. The political apparatus would be democracy and the administrative apparatus would be expertise. Embedded in this view was the same veiled Hegelian historicism; since history had an end, there must exist in every situation the obviously correct policy choice, which progressives thought of as only knowable through the use of administrative expertise. The will of the people would, if freed from other constraints, find this essentially correct policy because it would be in accordance with their interests. The belief in direct democracy is not unlike Rousseau's belief in the General Will; it is not an arguable account because man, if freed completely from his chains, would be completely aware of the proper political solution, so whatever policy was produced in the most democratic way possible was, by definition, the best. And, if a policy was in accord with the General Will, it was therefore Historically correct; the progressives thus sought to combine Hegel and Rousseau.

The result of this combination is twofold. First, dissent from the Progressive project is simply not feasible, because, like the General Will, it is by definition correct. Accepting progressive epistemological proclamations on progress and knowledge essentially creates a dialectic between Progress, science and the future on the one hand, and tradition, reaction, and restraint on the other hand. Conservatism, in this view, is only useful insofar as it provides an intellectual corrective to the more correct progressives; the idea of excess on the part of progressives was entertained, but not seriously considered, given that they move with history. The other major implication of the Progressive project is the basic tension between their democratic and administrative elements. When the people deviate from the progressive policy on any given issue, say during a referendum, Progressives explain these lapses as the people not recognizing what is best for them, either through corporate, religious, or prejudicial influences. They do so in order to avoid confronting the implications of their belief in democracy. This is not terribly different from Marxist explanations of deviations from the class based dialectic model, a point that is crucial in understanding the relationship between Marxism and progressivism.

Progressives, for all the issues that I have brought up, are fundamentally not Marxists. This is an absolutely essential point to understanding them. They consider themselves an American corrective against Marxist socialism, and champion democratic and liberal reforms. Although they share with the Marxists a Hegelian view of history, the progressives deviate in that they do not see an actualized end to history, let alone a Communist state as that end. Class distinctions, crucial to any Marxist understandings of history, are largely ignored by progressives, who hope to mollify any serious labor discontentment with a generous welfare policy and a robust regulatory prerogative. The means of Progress are the only positives the progressive's recognize as an absolute, so Marxist notions of a "general strike" or the righteousness of the proletariat revolution are not only not in accordance with the progressive vision for America, but, even more so, are fundamentally opposed to it.

I take great issue with some of my friends on the right who group together Progressives with Marxists or proto-fascists. What differentiates the progressives from these groups is their fundamental Americanism, the overarching belief in the righteousness of democracy. Granted, the progressive rejection of the Anglo-Enlightenment is rather similar to that their fascist and Marxist counterparts, and many of the same texts that influenced American progressives also became the intellectual foundations of fascist thought. So it is not unreasonable to see elements of Fascism or Marxism in progressivism, but at the same time, it is even more important to recognize the differences.


Franklin Roosevelt, the New Deal, Social Security, confiscation of Gold, WW II Internment camps, United Nations

For conservatives, it is crucial to fully understand progressivism because it, in so many ways, provides the intellectual building blocks for modern liberalism. What I hoped to focus on in this essay was, in fact, the eternal similarities between progressivism and liberalism. I tried not to cherry pick the most egregious examples of progressive malfeasance (like their support for racial eugenics), but rather to explore the fundamental truths underlying their beliefs. Future pieces on the subject of progressivism can go more in detail about the direct connections to modern liberalism, particularly through the mediation of Franklin Roosevelt. Still, understanding progressive views on administration, democracy, and the inevitability of History, is a major part of fully recognizing, and therefore more successfully combating modern liberalism. It is no accident that many of the most popular liberal domestic policies of the last 50 years or so, things like national healthcare and an agency devoted to environmental protection, were ideas created and first thought through during the Progressive era. Conservatives need to recognize not only what they stand for, but what we, in turn, wish to return to. We must be cognizant of the principles of the American founding rejected by Progressives, and we must really understand both. The fight between progressivism and American constitutionalism is far from over, and conservatives need to know which side we're on and why.

http://counterpoint.uchicago.edu/archives/winter2011/progressives.html



Old Man Dalton:
I disagree with Josh Lerner when he takes “great issue with some of my friends on the right who group together Progressives with Marxists or proto-fascists.” Here are many of the Fascistic and Marxist ideas of American Progressives;

Fascism, which "advocates the creation of a totalitarian single-party state".

"The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to the doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can "throw the rascals out" at any election without leading to any profound or extreme shifts in policy."
- Carrol Quigley, Tragedy and Hope

Fascismis led by a supreme leader who exercises a dictatorship over the fascist movement, the government and other state institutions. Fascist governments forbid and suppress opposition.

Progressives believe in an Executive Branch with power over every aspect of society.

fascists purge forces, ideas, people, and systems deemed to be the cause of decadence and degeneration.

President Woodrow Wilson created the American Protective League, a volunteer force of 250,000 members, which was empowered by the U.S. Justice Department to spy on Americans for anti-government/anti-war behavior. As national police, the APL checked up on people who failed to buy Liberty Bonds and spoke out against the government’s policies. We ended up with over 100,000 political prisoners because of this.

Fascism promotes political violence and war as actions that create national regeneration, spirit and vitality.

Woodrow Wilson and the KKK, APL, Wall Street bombing of 1920, May Day Riots of 1919, Internment camps during WW I. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Internment camps during WW II. Obama, Occupy Walls Street, WW III?

Fascists commonly utilize paramilitary organizations for violent attacks on opponents or to overthrow a political system.

American Protective League, KKK, and Obama's “We’ve got to have a Civilian National Security Force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded (as our military),”

Fascists advocate: a state-directed, regulated economy… the use … of regulated private property and private enterprise contingent upon service to the nation …. of state enterprise where private enterprise is failing or is inefficient…

Every President since Woodrow Wilson, the creator of an administratively run bureaucratic state, has added to the Executive Branch’s power of regulations which continues to erode the power of the Legislative Branch of Government.

Fascist movements have commonly held social Darwinist views of nations, races, and societies. They argue that nations and races must purge themselves of socially and biologically weak or degenerate people, while simultaneously promoting the creation of strong people, in order to survive in a world defined by perpetual national and racial conflict.

The Progressive Movement of the 1920s and 30s supported the eugenics program of the Nazis. Planned Parenthood was started by, Margaret Sanger, a progressive, racist and eugenisist.

Fascist states pursued policies of social indoctrination through propaganda in education and the media and regulation of the production of educational and media materials.

The Progressive wrote our text books and taught in our schools and colleges their progressive beliefs of an antiquated Constitution, marginalized our Founding Fathers, and inculcated our children with humanist’s ideals. Michele Obama explained it this way, “We’re going to have to make sacrifices, we’re going to have to change our conversation, we’re going to have to change our traditions, our history and we’re going to have to move to a different place.”

Fascists promoted their ideology as a "Third Position" between capitalism and Bolshevism. Italian Fascism involved corporatism, a political system in which the economy is collectively managed by employers, workers, and state officials by formal mechanisms at the national level. Fascists advocated a new national class-based economic system, variously termed "national corporatism", "national socialism" or "national syndicalism". The common aim of all fascist movements was elimination of the autonomy or, in some cases, the existence of large-scale capitalism.

What we have today in America, crony capitalism, corporatism controlled by the state through heavy regulation.

Fascist governments exercised control over private property did not nationalize much of the industry.

GM, Post Office, PBS, Fannie Mae/ Freddie Mac/, plus 12 others and soon National Health Care.

Fascists declared their opposition to finance capitalism, interest charging, and profiteering.

Occupy Wall Street.

Fascists thought that private property should be regulated to ensure that "benefit to the community precedes benefit to the individual."

50 U.S. federal regulatory agencies with over 150,000 pages of rules. According to a 2005 study commissioned by the Small Business Administration, the cost of all rules on the books was some $1.1 trillion per year, more than Americans paid in federal income taxes in 2009.

Marxists use class warfare as a political tool and oppose capitalism.

Watch any progressive candidate’s or pundit’s position, either Democrat or Republican, and you will see class warfare in action, especially now with OWS and their war on the highest 1%, who by the way pay 37% of the Federal Income Tax.

Marxists transform societies through revolutions.

Black Panther, the Weather Underground, Symbionese Liberation Army , SDS, STORM, Prairie Fire Organizing Committee and now the Occupy Wall Street Movement.

[Obiwancaptain of 100]

Don't be telling this to the people here..... They think Conservatives are "exactly" the same.
They don't understand there is a big difference. Of course, not that a conservative hasn't even done anything slightly progressive, nor that they weren't asleep some for awhile, but there is a BIG difference between the two sides. They are not at all the same.

Claiming they are the same is like trying to say that because a liberal/progressive does something conservative sometimes that that means he's actually conservative. STUPID!

[moonwhimcaptain of 1,000]

OMD, please do an expose on the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, and the Bilderberg group. You keep focusing on the branches but not the Root of the problem. Glenn Beck makes the same omission.

[InfoWarrior82captain of 1,000]

OMD, please do an expose on the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, and the Bilderberg group. You keep focusing on the branches but not the Root of the problem. Glenn Beck makes the same omission.

And you'll be surprised to discover that those groups mentioned by moohwhim are in control of the progressive/marxist agenda.





I would love to hear your comments after you have watched these highly informative and well documented videos.

[Oldemandaltoncaptain of 1,000]

There are progressive 'conservatives' too. For example Newt.

I have been trying to study where the New World Order is run by progressives which is the NWO philosophy. I am rereading the Naked Capitalist and finding most of the people Skousen names as the authors of the secret combinations are progressives.

[moonwhimcaptain of 1,000]

There are progressive 'conservatives' too. For example Newt.

I have been trying to study where the New World Order is run by progressives which is the NWO philosophy. I am rereading the Naked Capitalist and finding most of the people Skousen names as the authors of the secret combinations are progressives.

OMD, you need to take your intellectual blinders off.

[moonwhimcaptain of 1,000]

There are progressive 'conservatives' too. For example Newt.

I have been trying to study where the New World Order is run by progressives which is the NWO philosophy. I am rereading the Naked Capitalist and finding most of the people Skousen names as the authors of the secret combinations are progressives.

OMD, watch this one first for an introduction to the real conspirators:

[Original_Intentcaptain of 1,000]

Don't be telling this to the people here..... They think Conservatives are "exactly" the same.
They don't understand there is a big difference. Of course, not that a conservative hasn't even done anything slightly progressive, nor that they weren't asleep some for awhile, but there is a BIG difference between the two sides. They are not at all the same.

Claiming they are the same is like trying to say that because a liberal/progressive does something conservative sometimes that that means he's actually conservative. STUPID!

Please, brother, quit mischaracterizing other people's positions. Maybe you should stick to espousing your own thoughts instead of building all the straw men,

Progressives infiltrated conservatism and are what true conservatives refer to as "Neo-Conservative" or Neo-cons for short.

No one says they are identical, but they are both incompatible with Liberty. Both are driving our nation towards catastrophe, although from different angles and at different speeds.

Both progressives and neoconservatives want PROGRESSIVELY larger government. Yes the neocons will squawk about welfare programs, but they will pass them. Yes, the progressives wil squawk about corporate welfare, but they pass it. Progressives whine about the never ending wars, but they keep us in them...they are far more different in their RHETORIC than they are in actual practice. True conservatives want smaller government, more personal responsibility, and stricter adherence to the constitution.

Both neocons and progressives want larger government, less personal responsibility and more intervention in other countries' INTERNAL matters.

But again, they are not identical - they are only identical in the ultimate destination that our country will arrive at under their combined "leadership". But they are quite different poisons for sure. How do you want to bankrupt the country, with social programs or through militarism around the world?

[Original_Intentcaptain of 1,000]

There are progressive 'conservatives' too. For example Newt.

I have been trying to study where the New World Order is run by progressives which is the NWO philosophy. I am rereading the Naked Capitalist and finding most of the people Skousen names as the authors of the secret combinations are progressives.

These progressive conservatives are waht true conservatives refer to as "NEO-CONSERVATIVES"

They represent the infiltration and hi-jacking of the conservative movement by progressives. Many of those in power that call themselves conservatives are actually neocons. As you say, Newt is a poster-boy example. Many of those in the media who pose as conservatives also are actually wolves in sheeps clothing neocons. The "Rockefeller Republicans" are not true conservatives, they are neocons. The GoldWater Republicans represent the true conservative remnant of the Republican party. The only president elected in the last fifty years that was against the will of the neocons was Reagan, and he was brought into line early in his first term with a bullet. He was also forced at convention to accept neocon George Bush Sr. as his running mate.

[Oldemandaltoncaptain of 1,000]

Moonwhim
OMD, please do an expose on the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, and the Bilderberg group. You keep focusing on the branches but not the Root of the problem. Glenn Beck makes the same omission.
OMD, you need to take your intellectual blinders off.

I don’t own a pair Moonwhim. I have gone way beyond the CFR, TC and the rest of the alphabet of LDGs. What is the movement that these and other secret combinations use to get their programs enacted? They have been calling it the “Progressive Movement for over a hundred years. Who created the CFR? President Wilson a full-fledged progressive. You will see their hand in everything that has changed our country for the worse in the last century if you just look.

Original Intent

Progressives infiltrated conservatism and are what true conservatives refer to as "Neo-Conservative" or Neo-cons for short.

Progressives DID infiltrate both parties, OI:

“The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to the doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can "throw the rascals out" at any election without leading to any profound or extreme shifts in policy.”

- Carrol Quigley, Tragedy and Hope

OI
No one says they are identical, but they are both incompatible with Liberty. Both are driving our nation towards catastrophe, although from different angles and at different speeds.

Yes, Republican Progressives are headed the same direction as the ‘liberal’/Democratic progressives. The difference is that the Democratic Progressives will get there much faster.

OI
Both progressives and neoconservatives want PROGRESSIVELY larger government. Yes the neocons will squawk about welfare programs, but they will pass them. Yes, the progressives wil squawk about corporate welfare, but they pass it. Progressives whine about the never ending wars, but they keep us in them...they are far more different in their RHETORIC than they are in actual practice. True conservatives want smaller government, more personal responsibility, and stricter adherence to the constitution.

Agreed 100%

Original Intent
These progressive conservatives are waht true conservatives refer to as "NEO-CONSERVATIVES"
They represent the infiltration and hi-jacking of the conservative movement by progressives. Many of those in power that call themselves conservatives are actually neocons. As you say, Newt is a poster-boy example. Many of those in the media who pose as conservatives also are actually wolves in sheeps clothing neocons. The "Rockefeller Republicans" are not true conservatives, they are neocons. The GoldWater Republicans represent the true conservative remnant of the Republican party. The only president elected in the last fifty years that was against the will of the neocons was Reagan, and he was brought into line early in his first term with a bullet. He was also forced at convention to accept neocon George Bush Sr. as his running mate.

I agree that the last non-progressive President elected was Reagan. He slowed the progressive movement and their plans for decades by cutting government regulations, cutting taxes, and by knocking Russia on its heels for a few decades. The Progressives have been back in power and have come back with a vengeance. The “Tides Foundation” was created in the 80s to try and counteract what Reagan did. They wanted a changing tide. It has.

[Oldemandaltoncaptain of 1,000]

I American Progressivism

by Ronald J. Pestritto
Shipley Professor of the American Constitution at Hillsdale College


Glenn has asked me to expand a bit on our discussion of America’s Progressives from Friday’s television show, which I’ll do in this and four subsequent pieces for the newsletter. In today’s piece, I’ll explain who the Progressives were and why they were important.

Many on the left today call themselves “progressive,” and they do so not just because it’s a nicer way of saying “liberal,” but also because they very much intend to revive the political principles of America’s original Progressives, from the Progressive Era of the 1880s through World War I. Why would leftist politicians, like Mrs. Clinton, purposely identify themselves with this Progressive movement?

The reason is that America’s original Progressives were also its original, big-government liberals. Most people point to the New Deal era as the source of big government and the welfare state that we have today. While this is perfectly accurate, it is important to understand that the principles of the New Deal did not originate in the New Deal; rather, they came from the Progressives, who had dominated American politics and intellectual cultural a generation prior to the New Deal.

We have no less an authority on this connection than Franklin Roosevelt himself. When FDR campaigned in 1932, he pointed to the Progressives – and in particular to Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson – as the source of his ideas about government.

In terms of the personalities who made up the Progressive movement, some are familiar to us and others are less so. The movement was comprised of well known politicians like Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt; but it was also comprised of intellectuals and writers who are less well known but who have been very influential in America. There were folks like John Dewey, who was America’s public philosopher for much of the early 20th century. Even less well known was Herbert Croly, but Croly was highly influential, since he founded and was the first editor of The New Republic – which became the main organ of Progressive opinion in the United States, and is still one of the most important journals on the Left today. I should add here that Woodrow Wilson actually fell into both of these categories – he was both a well known politician and president, but also was, for decades prior to his entry into politics, a prominent intellectual (a college professor and president of Princeton) who wrote many books and influential articles.

As I’ll explain in my next piece, these Progressives wanted a thorough transformation in America’s principles of government, from a government permanently dedicated to securing individual liberty to one whose ends and scope would change to take on any and all social and economic ills. Here’s the order of the points we’ll consider in the pieces to follow:

1) What did Progressives think about the American founding, and why did they want to eradicate its principles?

2) How did we get today’s excessively powerful presidency from the Progressives?

3) What was the connection between Progressivism and Socialism? Were the Progressives actually Socialists?

4) What are some of the critical connections between Progressivism and what’s going on in our country today?


II The Progressives and their Attack on America’s Founding

As I mentioned in my last piece, America’s Progressives aimed for a thorough transformation in America’s principles of government. While our founders understood that our national government must have the capacity to be strong and vigorous (this is why the Articles of Confederation were failing), they also were very clear that this strength must always be confined to very limited ends or areas of responsibility; government, in other words, while not weak or tiny, was to be strictly limited.

The Progressive conception of government, on the other hand, was quite the opposite; Progressives had an “evolving” or a “living” notion of government (yes, we get the term “living constitution” from the Progressives), and thus wanted government to take on whatever role and scope the times demanded. The Progressives reasoned that people of the founding era may have wanted a limited government, given their particular experience with George III, but they argued that people of their own time wanted a much more activist government, and that we should adjust accordingly.

Quite simply, the Progressives detested the bedrock principles of American government. They detested the Declaration of Independence, which enshrines the protection of individual natural rights (like property) as the unchangeable purpose of government; and they detested the Constitution, which places permanent limits on the scope of government and is structured in a way that makes the extension of national power beyond its original purpose very difficult. “Progressivism” was, for them, all about progressing, or moving beyond, the principles of our founders.

This is why the Progressives were the first generation of Americans to denounce openly our founding documents. Woodrow Wilson, for example, once warned that “if you want to understand the real Declaration of Independence, do not repeat the preface” – i.e. that part of the Declaration which talks about securing individual natural rights as the only legitimate purpose of government. And Theodore Roosevelt, when using the federal government to take over private businesses during the 1902 coal strike, is reported to have remarked, “To hell with the Constitution when people want coal!” This remark may be apocryphal, but it is a fair representation of how TR viewed these matters.


III How the Progressives Originated the Modern Presidency


As I explained in my last piece, the Progressives wanted to disregard the Constitution in order to enlarge vastly the scope of government. As a practical matter, how was this to be done? It happened in a variety of ways, but principal among them was a fundamental change in the American presidency.

Under the system of our founders, government was to have sufficient strength and energy to accomplish its ends, but those ends were strictly limited by the Constitution. The principal way in which the Constitution keeps the government within its boundaries is through the separation of powers. As readers of The Federalist and of Thomas Jefferson know, the point of separation of powers is to keep any one set of hands from wielding all of the power in national government.

The Progressives, especially Woodrow Wilson, hated the separation of powers for precisely this reason: it made government inefficient, and made it difficult, if not impossible, to expand the power of government so that it could take on all of the new tasks that Progressives had in mind. So they looked to the presidency as a way of getting around this obstacle.

Under the original system, the president was merely leader of a single branch, or part, of the government, and thus could not provide leadership of the government as a whole. In his book Constitutional Government, Wilson urged that “leadership and control must be lodged somewhere.” The president, Wilson pointed out, was the only politician who could claim to speak for the people as a whole, and thus he called upon the president to rise above the separation of powers – to consider himself not merely as chief of a single branch of government, but as the popular leader of the whole of national politics. Wilson even contrasted the “constitutional aspect” of the presidency – its constitutionally defined role as chief of one of the three co-equal branches of government – to the “political” function of the president, where he could use his connection to public opinion as a tool for moving all of the branches of government in the direction called for by the people.

It was in this way that Wilson believed the original intention of the separation of powers system could be circumvented, and the enhanced presidency could be a means energizing the kind of active national government that the progressive agenda required.


IV Progressivism and Socialism

Since the Progressives had such a limitless view of state power, and since they wanted to downplay the founders’ emphasis on individual rights, it is only natural to ask if they subscribed to socialism. There are several things to consider in answering this question.

First, when considering the relationship of progressivism to socialism, we must be clear that we are talking about the similarity in the philosophy of government; we are not suggesting that America’s progressives were the kind of moral monsters that we see in the history of some socialist or fascist regimes (although it is the case that their racial views – particularly those of Woodrow Wilson – were indeed morally reprehensible).

Second, we must also bear in mind that there was an actual socialist movement during the Progressive Era, and prominent progressives such as Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt were critics of it. In fact, Wilson and Roosevelt both ran against a socialist candidate in the 1912 election (Eugene Debs). The progressives were ambivalent about the socialist movement of their day not so much because they disagreed with it in principle, but because the American socialist movement was a movement of the lower classes. The progressives were elitists; they looked down their noses at the socialists, considering them a kind of rabble.

Keeping these points in mind, it is, nonetheless, the case that the progressive conception of government closely coincided with the socialist conception. Both progressivism and socialism champion the prerogatives of the state over the prerogatives of the individual. Wilson himself made this connection very plain in a revealing essay he wrote in 1887 called “Socialism and Democracy.” Wilson’s begins this essay by defining socialism, explaining that it stands for unfettered state power, which trumps any notion of individual rights. It “proposes that all idea of a limitation of public authority by individual rights be put out of view,” Wilson wrote, and “that no line can be drawn between private and public affairs which the State may not cross at will.” After laying out this definition of socialism, Wilson explains that he finds nothing wrong with it in principle, since it was merely the logical extension of genuine democratic theory. It gives all power to the people, in their collective capacity, to carry out their will through the exercise of governmental power, unlimited by any undemocratic idea like individual rights. He elaborated:

“In fundamental theory socialism and democracy are almost if not quite one and the same. They both rest at bottom upon the absolute right of the community to determine its own destiny and that of its members. Limits of wisdom and convenience to the public control there may be: limits of principle there are, upon strict analysis, none.”

Roosevelt, too, argued for a new conception of government, where individual natural rights would no longer serve as a principled boundary that the state was prohibited from crossing. He called in his New Nationalism program for the state to take an active role in effecting economic equality by way of superintending the use of private property. Private property rights, which had been serving as a brake on the more aggressive progressive policy proposals, were to be respected, Roosevelt argued, only insofar as the government approved of the property’s social usefulness. He wrote:

“We grudge no man a fortune in civil life if it is honorably obtained and well used. It is not even enough that it should have been gained without doing damage to the community. We should permit it to be gained only so long as the gaining represents benefit to the community. This, I know, implies a policy of a far more active governmental interference with social and economic conditions in this country than we have yet had, but I think we have got to face the fact that such an increase in governmental control is now necessary.”


V Progressivism and the Current Crisis

There are important connections between America’s original Progressive Era and the crisis we are facing today, and it is useful to consider these connections on two levels.

The first connection is at a general level, and concerns our abandonment of the Constitution. The present crisis did not appear out of nowhere, and didn’t simply begin with the election of Barack Obama. Politicians of both parties spent the better part of the 20th century disregarding the Constitution, as they looked to have government step up to solve every conceivable human problem. Thus it ought to be no surprise that the Constitution’s limits on government aren’t even part of the conversation today as our politicians debate the new interventions in our economy and society that seem to come daily.

Such a state of things would have greatly pleased America’s original progressives. As I’ve endeavored to explain in these pieces for the newsletter, progressives believed that the role of government should be determined not by our Constitution, but by whatever the needs of the day happened to be. This is why they sought to eradicate talk of the Constitution from our political discourse; today, that goal seems to have been realized.

The second connection between the original Progressive Era and our situation today has to do with policy. The progressives knew that our original system of government was not capable of handling all of the new tasks that they had in mind for it. So they envisioned creating a vast set of bureaucratic agencies. They argued that Congress should enact very broad and vague laws for supervising more and more facets of the American economy and society, and then delegate to the bureaucratic agencies the power and discretion to enact specific policies. Both Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt conceived of government in this way.

The New Deal certainly went a long way toward implementing this progressive vision, and what we have seen in our own situation with TARP and the various other interventions is simply greater steps toward the progressive plan. Our Congress has simply said to the Treasury agencies: here’s a trillion dollars, here’s all the legal authority you need, now go out, determine what is in the public interest, and spend and regulate accordingly. That is the progressive vision of government, in a nutshell.



http://www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/198/23936/#I

[InfoWarrior82captain of 1,000]

OMD, what did you think about those two documentaries I posted for you to watch?

[Oldemandaltoncaptain of 1,000]

InfoWarrior I am trying to keep up posting on several threads AND trying to do my own research and now you want me to watch hours of documentaries? Cut me some slack dude.

How about a ‘Readers Digest’ version. I know quite a bit about the secret combinations out there.

[moonwhimcaptain of 1,000]

I know quite a bit about the secret combinations out there.

I haven't seen any evidence of that, you are caught up in your Glenn Beck/Neo-con universe.....Beck only exposes some of the mid-level minions.....I don't know how you can settle for that.

[InfoWarrior82captain of 1,000]

InfoWarrior I am trying to keep up posting on several threads AND trying to do my own research and now you want me to watch hours of documentaries? Cut me some slack dude.

How about a ‘Readers Digest’ version. I know quite a bit about the secret combinations out there.

I know, I know they are pretty long. Obviously they would require investing time out of your day to watch them, but I can assure you that once you watch them, you will have a better idea of where I'm coming from... and who knows... might even learn something new? I would also like to make it clear- that these documentaries don't go against all the things that you have been posting or even what Glenn Beck has researched. They go hand in hand. I would describe it as "adding/expanding upon" the truths that you have a testimony to be true. Kind of like what missionaries say to investigators. "The Book of Mormon doesn't really require you to throw away your truths, but just adds to and re confirms what you hold dear."

[Original_Intentcaptain of 1,000]

Some of those long documentaries out there are a great investment in time. Although it can be quite hit and miss.

I find it kind of funny watching people respond to OMD. OMD is coming along just fine, he is a truth seeker, clearly. Everything will be all right, things are coming into focus for him just fine. It is easy to get impatient watching someone going thru some of the same processes many of us have, and itis natural that we all want to "hurry the process along".

I can tell that OMD is very meticulous and likes to have his facts straight and all of his ducks lined up - far moreso than myself - I have no question where his studies will take him.

Two longish documentaries that were very helpful to me were "Money Masters" (about two hours) and "The Century of the Self" (about three hours). The fact that you (OMD) are reading "The Naked Capitalist" tells me that you already understand most of what is going on. A book I have read recently that I felt kind of updated TNC was "Hiding in Plain Sight" by Ken Bowers. I also bet you would enjoy reading "The Politician" by Robert(?) Welch

[Oldemandaltoncaptain of 1,000]

moonwhim
I haven't seen any evidence of that, you are caught up in your Glenn Beck/Neo-con universe.....Beck only exposes some of the mid-level minions.....I don't know how you can settle for that.

Glenn Beck is not my only source of the LDGs Moonwhim. He just helped me to connect the dots between how the efforts of the progressives and LDGs are the same, which you haven’t yet.

What philosophy does Satan use to get cooperation between all of the secret combinations to work together for one cause, destroy the freedom of man and create a world government?

If you want to expose the LDGs to as many of the people you can, and awaken them to the danger that our enemies are destroying the Constitution while not sounding like a ‘tin foil hat’ guy, do you say it’s the Illuminate/CFR/etc or do you use the term which they themselves have used for over a century to define themselves?

Who started the ‘progressive movement’? We know who started Marxism, it’s named after him. We know who wrote the Constitution and founded this great nation. Who was the author of the ‘progressive movement’?

InfoWarrior
I know, I know they are pretty long. Obviously they would require investing time out of your day to watch them, but I can assure you that once you watch them, you will have a better idea of where I'm coming from... and who knows... might even learn something new? I would also like to make it clear- that these documentaries don't go against all the things that you have been posting or even what Glenn Beck has researched. They go hand in hand. I would describe it as "adding/expanding upon" the truths that you have a testimony to be true. Kind of like what missionaries say to investigators. "The Book of Mormon doesn't really require you to throw away your truths, but just adds to and re confirms what you hold dear."

I promise to check it out this weekend, InfoWarrior, but I suspect that I know what’s in them which is fine.

Original_Intent

Some of those long documentaries out there are a great investment in time. Although it can be quite hit and miss.

I find it kind of funny watching people respond to OMD. OMD is coming along just fine, he is a truth seeker, clearly. Everything will be all right, things are coming into focus for him just fine. It is easy to get impatient watching someone going thru some of the same processes many of us have, and itis natural that we all want to "hurry the process along".

Its funny you say that OI. It is not I who has changed, its your perception of what I believe is what has changed. Just because I don’t believe in the 9/11 Myth you think that I do not believe in the Secret Combinations which is plaguing our country and world. Because I defend Israel and oppose Iran getting nuclear weapons, I am a Zionist neo-con warmonger. That I have swallowed the MSM propaganda and am led blindly around by the LDGs.

Nothing is farther from the truth. I have made an effort to study ALL of the secret combinations since reading Skousen’s ‘Naked’ series decades ago. I have studied the goings on in the Middle East since the ‘Six Day War’ in ‘67. I have been studying prophesy and how it applies to current events ever since reading ‘Prophesy: Key to the Future”. I know, from my perspective what is going on. I am not asleep or need to be awakened. I am there.

I can tell that OMD is very meticulous and likes to have his facts straight and all of his ducks lined up - far more so than myself - I have no question where his studies will take him.

Again you are assuming I am not there OI. I am just not standing where you are. We see the same thing. Our perspectives are not that far apart. We both are watchman on the wall. We have differing views of the enemies’ approach.

Two longish documentaries that were very helpful to me were "Money Masters" (about two hours) and "The Century of the Self" (about three hours). The fact that you (OMD) are reading "The Naked Capitalist" tells me that you already understand most of what is going on. A book I have read recently that I felt kind of updated TNC was "Hiding in Plain Sight" by Ken Bowers. I also bet you would enjoy reading "The Politician" by Robert(?) Welch

Thanks OI, I’ll make sure I see and read those on my next vacation which will be a ‘Second Honeymoon’. I am sure my wife wont mind.

[Oldemandaltoncaptain of 1,000]

moonwhim
I haven't seen any evidence of that, you are caught up in your Glenn Beck/Neo-con universe.....Beck only exposes some of the mid-level minions.....I don't know how you can settle for that.

Glenn Beck is not my only source of the LDGs Moonwhim. He just helped me to connect the dots between how the efforts of the progressives and LDGs are the same, which you haven’t yet.

What philosophy does Satan use to get cooperation between all of the secret combinations to work together for one cause, destroy the freedom of man and create a world government?

If you want to expose the LDGs to as many of the people you can, and awaken them to the danger that our enemies are destroying the Constitution while not sounding like a ‘tin foil hat’ guy, do you say it’s the Illuminate/CFR/etc or do you use the term which they themselves have used for over a century to define themselves?

Who started the ‘progressive movement’? We know who started Marxism, it’s named after him. We know who wrote the Constitution and founded this great nation. Who was the author of the ‘progressive movement’?

InfoWarrior
I know, I know they are pretty long. Obviously they would require investing time out of your day to watch them, but I can assure you that once you watch them, you will have a better idea of where I'm coming from... and who knows... might even learn something new? I would also like to make it clear- that these documentaries don't go against all the things that you have been posting or even what Glenn Beck has researched. They go hand in hand. I would describe it as "adding/expanding upon" the truths that you have a testimony to be true. Kind of like what missionaries say to investigators. "The Book of Mormon doesn't really require you to throw away your truths, but just adds to and re confirms what you hold dear."

I promise to check it out this weekend, InfoWarrior, but I suspect that I know what’s in them which is fine.

Original_Intent

Some of those long documentaries out there are a great investment in time. Although it can be quite hit and miss.

I find it kind of funny watching people respond to OMD. OMD is coming along just fine, he is a truth seeker, clearly. Everything will be all right, things are coming into focus for him just fine. It is easy to get impatient watching someone going thru some of the same processes many of us have, and itis natural that we all want to "hurry the process along".

Its funny you say that OI. It is not I who has changed, its your perception of what I believe is what has changed. Just because I don’t believe in the 9/11 Myth you think that I do not believe in the Secret Combinations which is plaguing our country and world. Because I defend Israel and oppose Iran getting nuclear weapons, I am a Zionist neo-con warmonger. That I have swallowed the MSM propaganda and am led blindly around by the LDGs.

Nothing is farther from the truth. I have made an effort to study ALL of the secret combinations since reading Skousen’s ‘Naked’ series decades ago. I have studied the goings on in the Middle East since the ‘Six Day War’ in ‘67. I have been studying prophesy and how it applies to current events ever since reading ‘Prophesy: Key to the Future”. I know, from my perspective what is going on. I am not asleep or need to be awakened. I am there.

I can tell that OMD is very meticulous and likes to have his facts straight and all of his ducks lined up - far more so than myself - I have no question where his studies will take him.

Again you are assuming I am not there OI. I am just not standing where you are. We see the same thing. Our perspectives are not that far apart. We both are watchman on the wall. We have differing views of the enemies’ approach.

Two longish documentaries that were very helpful to me were "Money Masters" (about two hours) and "The Century of the Self" (about three hours). The fact that you (OMD) are reading "The Naked Capitalist" tells me that you already understand most of what is going on. A book I have read recently that I felt kind of updated TNC was "Hiding in Plain Sight" by Ken Bowers. I also bet you would enjoy reading "The Politician" by Robert(?) Welch

Thanks OI, I’ll make sure I see and read those on my next vacation which will be a ‘Second Honeymoon’. I am sure my wife wont mind.

[jeffersons ghostHi, I'm new.]

Some very good essays on this thread. This is my first post here. A friend recommended LFF to me and I can see why.

A lot of people have no idea just how important government indoctrination is to the radical left. If you read their literature, it is full of comments about how they want to put their ideas into the youth before they can think for themselves.

It's fortunate that many people of faith have realized this as far as religious education goes. It is unfortunate that many haven't figured out that secular education is very important.

[InfoWarrior82captain of 1,000]

I promise to check it out this weekend, InfoWarrior, but I suspect that I know what’s in them which is fine.

Thanks OMD. Remember, I'm curious as to where you think certain matters discussed in the documentaries go astray and why.

[Oldemandaltoncaptain of 1,000]

Will do Infowarrior.

[Oldemandaltoncaptain of 1,000]

InfoWarrior, just checking in to let you know I am working on a response to the documentaries you posted. It started out to be a short one but kept growing till it has gone way beyond that. Let’s just say it begins in the pre-Earth life.

[InfoWarrior82captain of 1,000]

InfoWarrior, just checking in to let you know I am working on a response to the documentaries you posted. It started out to be a short one but kept growing till it has gone way beyond that. Let’s just say it begins in the pre-Earth life.

Looking forward to it.

[Oldemandaltoncaptain of 1,000]

First installment:

Jones says Woodrow Wilson was naïve. On the contrary he was one of the major movers and shakers behind the progressive movement and the LDGs. After reading the following you’ll realize why Woodrow Wilson is Glenn Beck’s least favorite president:





More than anyone, Woodrow Wilson advanced the new Progressive theory of human nature and human institutions and the corresponding Progressive critique of the principles of the American Founding and the Founders' Constitution. Wilson, who was president of Princeton and of the American Political Science Association before becoming President of the United States, was the first Chief Executive to openly criticize the Constitution, once comparing it to "political witchcraft." So hostile was he to the self-evident truths of the Founding that in a 1911 address he remarked, "if you want to understand the real Declaration of Independence, do not repeat the preface."

Wilson above all others deserves credit for the notion that the Constitution is a "living" or "evolving" document. As he wrote in 1908, "Government is not a machine, but a living thing. It falls, not under the theory of the universe, but under the theory of organic life. It is accountable to Darwin." Insisting that the Constitution does not contain any theories or principles, Wilson argued that the Constitution has a "natural evolution" and is "one thing in one age, another in another." "Living political constitutions," he wrote, "must be Darwinian in structure and in practice."

In the course of the 20th century and continuing into the 21st century, Wilson's interpretation of the Constitution has served the cause of big government, eventually dropping the self-description of "progressive" for the more marketable label "liberal." But whether they call themselves progressive or liberal, whether they are Democrat or Republican, the advocates of big government are unified in their belief that the principles of the Founding are irrelevant and the meaning of the Constitution can be easily stretched to justify any exercise of government power. http://www.claremont.org/publications/precepts/id.83/precept_detail.asp






War Against the Weak is the gripping chronicle documenting how American corporate philanthropies launched a national campaign of ethnic cleansing in the United States, helped found and fund the Nazi eugenics of Hitler and Mengele — and then created the modern movement of "human genetics."

In the first three decades of the 20th Century, American corporate philanthropy combined with prestigious academic fraud to create the pseudoscience eugenics that institutionalized race politics as national policy. The goal: create a superior, white, Nordic race and obliterate the viability of everyone else. How? By identifying so-called "defective" family trees and subjecting them to legislated segregation and sterilization programs. The victims: poor people, brown-haired white people, African Americans, immigrants, Indians, Eastern European Jews, the infirm and really anyone classified outside the superior genetic lines drawn up by American raceologists. The main culprits were the Carnegie Institution, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Harriman railroad fortune, in league with America's most respected scientists hailing from such prestigious universities as Harvard, Yale and Princeton, operating out of a complex at Cold Spring Harbor on Long Island. The eugenic network worked in tandem with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the State Department and numerous state governmental bodies and legislatures throughout the country, and even the U.S. Supreme Court. They were all bent on breeding a eugenically superior race, just as agronomists would breed better strains of corn. The plan was to wipe away the reproductive capability of the weak and inferior. Ultimately, 60,000 Americans were coercively sterilized — legally and extra-legally. Many never discovered the truth until decades later. Those who actively supported eugenics include America's most progressive figures: Woodrow Wilson, Margaret Sanger, and Oliver Wendell Holmes who ruled on the infamous Carrie Buck trial and declared "three generations of imbeciles is enough."

American eugenic crusades proliferated into a worldwide campaign, and in the 1920s came to the attention of Adolf Hitler. Under the Nazis, American eugenic principles were applied without restraint, careening out of control into the Reich's infamous genocide. During the pre-War years, American eugenicists openly supported Germany's program. The Rockefeller Foundation financed the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute and the work of its central racial scientists. Once WWII began, Nazi eugenics turned from mass sterilization and euthanasia to genocidal murder. One of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute doctors in the program financed by the Rockefeller Foundation was Josef Mengele who continued his research in Auschwitz, making daily eugenic reports on twins. After the world recoiled from Nazi atrocities, the American eugenics movement — its institutions and leading scientists — renamed and regrouped under the banner of an enlightened science called human genetics.
http://www.waragainsttheweak.com/





"Mr. House is my second personality. He is my independent self. His thoughts and mine are one."
— President Woodrow Wilson quoted by Charles Seymour, The Intimate Papers of Colonel House, Houghton Mifflin, vol. I, pp. 114-115.




"For seven long years, Colonel House was Woodrow Wilson's other self. For six long years he shared with him everything but the title of Chief Magistracy of the Republic. For six years, two rooms were at his disposal in the north wing of the White House. It was House who made the slate for the Cabinet, formulated the first policies of the Administration, and practically directed the foreign affairs of the United States."
— Viereck, The Strangest Friendship in History - Woodrow Wilson and Colonel House 1932




Wilson had House assemble "The Inquiry"—a team of academic experts to devise efficient postwar solutions to all the world's problems. In September 1918, Wilson gave House the responsibility for preparing a constitution for a League of Nations. In October 1918, when Germany petitioned for peace based on the Fourteen Points, Wilson charged House with working out details of an armistice with the Allies.

House helped Wilson outline his Fourteen Points, and worked with the president on the drafting of the Treaty of Versailles and the Covenant of the League of Nations. House served on the League of Nations Commission on Mandates with Lord Milner and Lord Robert Cecil of Great Britain, M. Simon of France, Viscount Chinda of Japan, Guglielmo Marconi for Italy, and George Louis Beer as adviser. On May 30, 1919 House participated in a meeting in Paris, which laid the groundwork for establishment of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). Throughout 1919, House urged Wilson to work with Senator Henry Cabot Lodge to achieve ratification of the Versailles Treaty.

In the 1920s, House strongly supported U.S. membership in the League of Nations and the World Court, the Permanent Court of International Justice. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_M._House





Edward Mandell House was also known as “Colonel” House. The title was honorary. House's very impressive resume includes: son of a wealthy Texas planter; a "kingmaker" in Texas politics 1892-1902; a top agent for the New York international bankers; mastermind of Woodrow Wilson's election as President in 1912; chief advisor to Woodrow Wilson during his Administration from 1913 until 1921; the "unseen guardian angel" of the Federal Reserve in 1913; one of the founders of the League of Nations; founder of the Council on Foreign Relations in 1921; and important advisor to President Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s. In short, Edward Mandell House was one of the most important Insiders of the 20th century, a master conspirator. House published Philip Dru anonymously in 1912.

Here's an excerpt from The Shadows of Power by James Perloff that provides a glimpse of just how important a role Colonel House had in the creation of the Council on Foreign Relations:

Well before the Senate's vote on ratification, news of its resistance to the League of Nations reached Colonel House, members of the Inquiry, and other U.S. internationalists gathered in Paris. It was clear that America would not join the realm of world government unless something was done to shift its climate of opinion. Under House's direction, these men, along with some members of the British delegation to the Conference, held a series of meetings. On May 30, 1919, at a dinner at the Majestic Hotel, it was resolved that an "Institute of International Affairs" would be formed. It would have two branches —one in the United States, one in England.

The American branch became incorporated in New York as the Council on Foreign Relations on July 29, 1921.
http://www.jbs.org/commentary/glenn-beck-discovers-philip-dru-administrator








Edward Mandell House was Wilson's chief advisor. He persuaded Wilson to sign the Federal Reserve Act and he was the real architect of the League of Nations. House was no ordinary advisor. He was Wilson's "alter ego," and he was an "unabashed and unapologetic" socialist. House published a novel in 1912 entitled Philip Dru: Administrator. The story is a recitation of socialist thinking enacted by Dru, whose purpose was "to pursue Socialism is dreamed of by Karl Marx," and who, in the story, replaced Constitutional government with "omnicompetent" government in which "the property and lives of all were now in the keeping of one man." In the story, Dru created a "League of Nations" much like the League of Nations he fashioned for Woodrow Wilson.

More importantly, House came to his position with Woodrow Wilson from an elite circle of friends known as the "Inquiry": Paul Warburg, J. P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, John W. Davis, among others, all of whom had direct interest in the Federal Reserve System and great interest in the League of Nations. House was well on his way to transforming Woodrow Wilson into his fictional Philip Dru -- until the Senate refused to ratify the League of Nations in 1920. Embarrassed and defeated, Wilson died four years later, ironically, the same year Lenin died.

The dream of world domination, however, did not die. House and his friends realized that public opinion in America had to be changed before any form of world government could succeed. While shuttling to Europe on post-war peace negotiations, House arranged an assembly of dignitaries from which was created the Institute of International Affairs which had two branches.

In London, it was called the Royal Institute of International Affairs (RIIA); in New York, it was called the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), formed officially July 29, 1921. http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sociopolitica/esp_sociopol_un06_01.htm








Jonah Goldberg:
Woodrow Wilson was in many respects the first — forget the word fascist for two seconds. The first totalitarian dictator in western civilization, modern one at least.

He creates the first propaganda ministry, he unleashes 100,000 propaganda agents on the United States where he sends them out sometimes without revealing their identities to give these speeches in all public places to persuade people to support the war, to distrust Germans, to hate immigrants. Wilson creates these, under Wilson, the Justice Department creates the American Protective League at a time where 250,000 badge-carrying goons who were allowed to beat people up in the street, arrest people in mass arrests, do home break-ins without warrants, spy on people, do government background checks, carry badges. They were just basically what, you know, what were called a bunch of sort of street gang political goons who could do the Government’s bidding at will.

Wilson closed down scores of newspapers and magazines, threatened thousands of others with closing them down, used the mail service, which back then was like the Internet and mail combined. I mean, it was where everyone got their information, used the postal service to clamp down on all dissent. One woman who spoke in her own home about how she liked Lenin was given six months in jail. One guy refused to stand up for the Star-Spangled Banner at a baseball game, was shot in the back. Another guy refused to sing the national anthem at a liberty bond drive, was beaten senseless. These guys were not convicted of anything because they were just doing their patriotic duty. Even if you buy the caricature of George Bush and Joseph McCarthy, if you buy the cartoon version of what’s out there, they still, still look like co-hosts of romper room compared to what Woodrow Wilson did in this country. http://www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/196/4199/








President Woodrow Wilson issued two sets of regulations on April 6, 1917, and November 16, 1917, imposing restrictions on German-born male residents of the United States over the age of 14. The rules were written to include natives of Germany who had become citizens of countries other than the U.S Some 250,000 people in that category were required to register at their local post office, to carry their registration card at all times, and to report any change of address or employment. The same regulations and registration requirements were imposed on females on April 18, 1918. Some 6,300 such aliens were arrested. Thousands were interrogated and investigated. A total of 2,048 were incarcerated for the remainder of the war in two camps, Fort Douglas, Utah, for those west of the Mississippi and Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia, for those east of the Mississippi.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_American_internment






Glenn Beck: James Madison and the 17th Amendment

Saturday, Jun 12, 2010 at 4:30 AM EST

Founding Father James Madison was not an imposing figure, standing only about 5 foot, 4 inches and weighing less than 100 pounds — think Victoria Beckham after a month-long fast. George Washington called him "a withered little apple."

He may not have been imposing to look at, but he was an intellectual force to be reckoned with.

He was a major player at the Constitutional Convention and is often referred to as the "father of the Constitution." And what better source to go to in order to talk about something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately: the 17th Amendment.

Do you know about the 17th Amendment? It was passed in 1913 — Woodrow Wilson supported this. Immediately now, when I see that Woodrow Wilson something, I can be quite certain that it’s not going to be a good outcome.

Before 1913, U.S. senators were appointed by state legislatures. Madison explained that the House of Representatives would always be regarded as the "national" institution because its members were elected directly by the people. But the Senate, on the other hand, would derive its powers from the states.

The idea was to have the senators be the representatives of the states’ interests — sort of a like a lobbyist for the state. You’d think progressive would have liked that.

The 17th Amendment changed that and instituted direct popular election of United States senators: Two senators from each state, elected by the people. And since that time, states have had no direct representation in Washington.

In 1821, Thomas Jefferson warned: "When all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the centre of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another, and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated."

Progressives will tell you that the change was needed because the states were becoming too corrupt. Well, what’s happened since? It allowed special interests to lobby senators directly, cutting out the middleman of the state legislatures.

Has anyone else noticed that senators routinely get large influxes of campaign cash from outside the state? Remember Chris Dodd? I didn’t know anyone in Connecticut who was ready to give money to Chris Dodd. Yet he was getting tons of cash nationally. How is that representative of Connecticut?

Let me give you an example of the 17th Amendment coming into play today: Obama’s health care bill would never have seen the light of day. A senator looking out for the interest of their state would likely not even consider anything with an unfunded federal mandate attached to it. Think of a state like Massachusetts: Why would they pay more taxes for mandated health care that they already currently have?
James Madison and the Founders didn’t intend for the federal government to have that much power. What would they do if they were around today? http://www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/198/41793/





To sum up Woodrow Wilson:

1.Eugenicist and racist who re-segregated the military.

2.Pushed through the Federal Reserve Act.

3.Passed the Progressive Income Tax.

4.With his “Fourteen Points” gave birth to the League of Nations the precursor to the U.N.

5.Wilson pushed the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918 through Congress.

6.Created "The Inquiry" to write the Treaty of Versailles and form the Council of Foreign Relations.

7.President Woodrow Wilson created the American Protective League, a volunteer force of 250,000 members, which was empowered by the U.S. Justice Department to spy on Americans for anti-government/anti-war behavior. As national police, the APL spied on people who failed to buy Liberty Bonds and spoke out against the government’s policies. We ended up with over 100,000 political prisoners because of this.

8.Established Internment Camps for Germans. These policies FDR used to inter tens of thousands during WW II.

9.Pushed through the 17th Amendment which changed in a significant way how the Senate works and took power from the states and added more to Washington.

Glenn says that Woodrow Wilson and Barak Obama are the ‘book ends’ to the progressive movement’s (LDG's) 100 year plan for America.
See also:

Obama and Wilson By David Pietrusza http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/03/obama_and_wilson.html

The Next Woodrow Wilson? by Martin Sieff http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=25742

[InfoWarrior82captain of 1,000]

There is no doubt or can there be any argument that Wilson was one of the worst presidents that ushered in the progressive/eugenics model. I do think Alex realizes this, but I think the reason why he decided to go with calling him naive was because of this quote from Wilson at the end of his presidency:

Despite many warnings, Woodrow Wilson signed the 1913 Federal Reserve Act.

A few years later he wrote: I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men.

In the end, I would have to say he was a shill or a controlled politician who took orders from the LDGs.

Other than this minor disagreement, I'm glad that so far there has been no glaring opposition to the information presented. *Fingers are crossed!*

[Oldemandaltoncaptain of 1,000]

Infowarrior I am not so sure Woodrow Wilson said that. He may have not said it but that doesn't change the fact that the quote is correct whether it is a fabrication or not.

Here is a discussion on wikiquotes about this ‘quote’ from Wilson:

"I am a most unhappy man..."

"I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men."
-Woodrow Wilson, after signing the Federal Reserve into existence

It seems to be all over the internet so it must be true... but seriously: many of the "Federal Reserve controlling the world" conspiracy buffs seem to cite it, but I haven't seen any that actually cite a date or a specific document, and with conspiracy buffs even many quotes that do have specified citations turn out to be bogus. Until it can be found in some fairly reliable source, I'd treat it with extreme skepticism. "I have unwittingly ruined my country" seems a bit too extreme of a statement for any politician to ever say. I wouldn't put much trust in too many of the "conspiracy" quotes that are used by all kinds of people— even the legitimate ones are often taken out of context in extreme ways. ~ Achilles 14:16, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)


It actually has been added to the Wikipedia on the Federal Reserve Act page... but even there it has been given no specific source, and I remain skeptical about it. ~ Achilles 14:20, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)


Achilles, you should do some real research before you just throw the entirety of the subject into the "conspiracy theory" heap. It's not a conspiracy theory when it's true. The Federal Reserve and banking elitists in this country in collusion with other central banking elitists in foreign countries, using their money to buy political offices and lobby their own causes, have raped the United States as well as other countries of any true wealth. - xxxAdamasxxx 4/16/11



In his book The New Freedom: A Call For the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People, chapter 9 Woodrow Wilson cites most of this. However, "I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country." contains no reference.
—This unsigned comment is by 75.81.11.163 (talk • contribs) .



The source is easy enough to find: National Economy and the Banking System, Senate Documents, Col. 3 No. 23

I've done a bit of searching for this quote and can only find it on tax protester sites, without any citation other than date. On the date usually given, Wilson seems to have been in Colorado giving a speech about the League of Nations which has nothing to do with the above quote. His State of the Union speech given a few months later completely contradicts the essence of this quote. I believe the quote to be a false one. I'll eat my words if someone can actually produce a verifiable citation, but I doubt I'll have to.

And further, the reference to "National Economy and the Banking System, Senate Documents, Col. 3 No. 23" is BS

National Economy and the Banking System, Senate Documents, Col. 3 No. 23 PAGE 100.

The quote is mostly words Wilson actually wrote, with the first two sentences of it apparently being incorrect and the rest taken from Wilson's The New Freedom. Below is what one can actually derive from connecting together two passages from The New Freedom:

A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is privately concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men ... [W]e have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated, governments in the civilized world—no longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and the duress of small groups of dominant men.

All of the above is from Woodrow Wilson's The New Freedom: A Call for the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People (New York and Garden City: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1913).[1] In this same work, Wilson also wrote the below:

Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men's views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of somebody, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.
206.148.136.60 18:58, 22 October 2006 (UTC)



It doesn't really matter who said it, the point is that it is true, the federal government and federal reserve create a monarchy as opposed to a democracy.
—This unsigned comment is by 118.90.56.124 (talk • contribs) .


Guys, the United States is not supposed to be a democracy. It's supposed to be a Constitutional Republic. If you look at the Federal Reserve, Congress, the Senate, and what recent presidents have been pulling, you'll see that they are not following the Constitution. That is why we have an illegal, unapportioned income tax and are engaged in several unconstitutional wars. Also, the Federal Reserve is a PRIVATE corporation. The responsibility of the coin purse of the United States is supposed to fall directly to Congress and the Treasury. - xxxAdamasxxx 4/16/11



Actually this quote is taken from Woodrow Wilson's diary not in any speech he gave. those would be big words for a politician to preach to the public.
—This unsigned comment is by 98.115.254.59 (talk • contribs) .



The FED published data on three monetary aggregates, yet on November 10th 2005 announced that as of March 23rd 2006, it would cease publication of M3. YET M3 is the best description of how quickly the Fed is creating new money & credit. Which means they're creating it out of thin air, therefore depreciating the value of each dollar in circulation IF EACH DOLLAR REPRESENTS AN IOU BASED ON GOLD.
Here's The Recent Data which confirms Woodrow Wilson's quote: http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h6/discm3.htm
—This unsigned comment is by 98.217.198.108 (talk • contribs) .



Misattributed Section Change

I don't know if I did the right thing or not but i removed the Misattributed Section that stated that a famous Wilson quote was entirely made up. Most of it at least is real as can be verified by the source so I added the part that is definitely true to the Sourced Section.
From the original text one would understand that 100% of the quoted text was false when in fact at least most of it was accurate. Right now the article contains what it should (in my oppinion): Wilson's original quote.
Leave the debates for the talk pages please. --xeq


I am in the process of verifying the original quote with "I am a most unhappy person. I have unwittingly ruined my country." at the beginning. I think I might have found someone who has a copy of “National Economy and the Banking System," Senate Documents Co. 3, No. 23 -- xeq


Someone said the reference to "National Economy and the Banking System, Senate Documents, Col. 3 No. 23" is BS. Would that person please elaborate? Did he read the book and find the quote to be different? Did he read the book and notice the quote doesn't exist? Does that document not exist?

The document certainly exists as it is referenced on many believable sites and I may have even found someone who might have a copy. I am pretty sure people agree to this (if they don't I will have to include links as right now I don't think it's the case and I'm too lazy).

One more thing... there appear to be 3 versions of this quote. One I included in the Sourced Section. The second includes "I have unwittingly ruined my country" in front. The third includes "I am a most unhappy man" in front of the second.

There are also 3 possible sources:
•One has been proven for the first version: The New Freedom: A Call for the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People (New York and Garden City: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1913)

•Some sites (pretty believable in my opinion) say Woodrow Wilson said version 2 (and some version 3) in 1916, three years after the passing of the Federal Reserve Act.

•National Economy and the Banking System, Senate Documents, Col. 3 No. 23 (Owen, Robert L., 1939), which is said to contain version 2 and (by some sites) version 3 of the quote, possibly (in my opinion) from 1916.
--xeq


I restored the misattributed section and its content, as well as extending some of the genuine material out of which this "quote" was woven. Political campaign speeches notoriously resort to histrionics, but to begin a statement with what seems to be a total fabrication "I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country." and then follow it with cherry-picked portions of other campaign statements against several types of general business monopolies to make it seem that there is some single monolithic and sinsister cabal that he is warning people about, when that is not actually the case, is to compose a very bogus and misleading "quotation".

Wilson himself in his Preface to the collection of genuine material indicates "I have not written a book since the campaign. I did not write this book at all. It is the result of the editorial literary skill of Mr. William Bayard Hale, who has put together here in their right sequences the more suggestive portions of my campaign speeches." Thus this is done openly, with his own material, and with his own authorization, making the statements that appear in the book his. To mix statements in plainly misleading ways and without authorization, and to mix the false with the true are other matters entirely.

Wikiquote articles are places to expose widely circulated bogus quotes as well as to post genuine ones, and the comments accurately indicated that the statement seemed to be a misleading mixture of the genuine and the fabricated, and this remains the case. ~ Kalki 21:53, 14 March 2007 (UTC)



Isn't it possible that Wilson later repeated that speech (as many politicians do) including "I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country"? Setting aside the apparent radical nature of the words, has it been proven that Wilson never said those words? To say that quote is misattributed is to say it's on good authority that he never said it. Is this the case? I think at the very least this section shouldn't exist. There can be two possible sources of information on this: one saying that he did say it and the other that he didn't. While the first exists (in quite a few forms, though some people don't entirely trust) the second certainly doesn't.

Two kinds of people seem to exist: the ones that read a conspiracy theory and accept it without research and the ones that read it and say it's false without research. The first act out of spite for the authorities while the second act out of spite for conspiracy theories. I just ask you to be trully impartial on this matter.

What you are saying here is that because Wilson said that quote without "I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country" in front he definitely couldn't have said it in the second form. What's your exact reasoning? As people cites their sources when they say this quote is true you should cite yours when you say it isn't. Right now it appears you're citing yourself. There should be at least a newspaper article, a university professor, any public figure that looked into the matter and found this quote to be bogus. I grant you there is a possibility that Wilson never said it but right now it's not probable. Right now the opposite is probable (according to sources, excluding "National Economy...").

There are pretty good chances that this material is genuine as there are quite a few good sources on it (note that in the end no source can be said to be 100% trustworthy). There apparently is a book in which this quote appears and if it's there than no person on Wikipedia, unless that person is an authority on the subject, can decide it's false. So until someone clarifies what's written in "National Economy and the Banking System, Senate Documents, Col. 3 No. 23" I don't think anyone here can assume to have more authority on the matter than Mr. Owen, Robert L. (the author) and i suggest that until then the section should be deleted. Right now one would assume that the person who says this quote is misattributed read that book and found that quote not to be there or to be different OR that person is saying that he is a better authority on the matter then the author. None of these are true.

The practice of not only deleting a quote that has a source but also saying it's misattributed, although nobody who says this read the book, is a really bad one.

I would like it if at least people agreed that it' still an open debate and it should be left for the talk pages. Right now the entry in the Misattributed section is citing the talk pages! I think that's where the debate should take place until a proper resolution. ~ xeq 12:34, 15 March 2007 (UTC)




I do not think it at all credible that a person who is running for the office of President, would at any point in his campaigning say "I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country." Nor that someone who had not yet even been elected to that office would even have any cause or reason to say it. The portions of Wilson's statements that are genuine, in context, are also plainly are referring to things far less sinister and secretive than they plainly are meant to imply in the cobbled together versions that they have been used to create. Personally, I do not think it at all credible that he actually said anything remotely like that statement as it is portrayed, at any point in his life, let alone on the campaign trail, and the overwhelming preponderance of the evidence indicates that it is a deliberately concocted statement meant to mislead people to false conclusions, and not a genuine one, meant to illuminate actual truth.

Many famous people have quotes falsely attributed to them, and their are sections on many pages of the Wikiquote project where such quotes are presented along with the evidence that exists that they are not genuine. No one can absolutely prove that Eleanor Roosevelt did not at some point in her life say "America is all about speed. Hot, nasty, bad-ass speed" but one has to be extremely ignorant and credulous to actually be inclined to believe that she did, merely because she is "quoted" as having done so in Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. One should not have to be in so absurd a position as that of having to prove so absurd a thing is false. If something seems both absurdly uncharacteristic and is not reliably documented, it should be the burden of those who insist upon it as genuine to prove that it is true. ~ Kalki 13:50, 15 March 2007 (UTC)



I heard this speech with my own ears. I was there. It's verbatim. Stop screwing with history. 130.111.158.192 22:10, 15 April 2007 (UTC)


If this is false then why hasn’t any proof of National Economy and the Banking System, Senate Documents, Col. 3 No. 23 been produced? That would seem to be the best way to prove Truth or fault about this.

Also check out http://www.freedomtofascism.com/ Aaron Russo's film on the subject. This is my first experience with Mr. Russo's work. And I believe he would take his time to find Truth before using false claims.

Even Repub. Congressman RON PAUL from Texas agrees that the FED is EVIL! And he is the Defender of the Constitution! http://www.ronpaul2008.com He appears in Aaron Russo's film and talks openly about this.

I think I would Believe a very educated and loyal servant of our Nation when he speaks against the Big Machine.
I am searching for Answers like the rest of you... K.Maguire 11/26/2007 (http://www.gotlocalmusic.com)
—This unsigned comment is by 67.131.229.200 (talk • contribs) .



I retained the "Disputed" tag to the section on my last edit, as it remains disputed, but I see very little credible evidence that it is not a misattribution. As with all attempts to prove a negative there can be no "proof" that is not, but there also remains no reliable evidence at all that it is genuine. I reverted changes made to the summary, as it seems very clearly to be a concoction, with only the first two sentences not yet sourced at all to other documents. I also added this comment to the previous remarks:

It has been said by some supporters of its supposed authenticity to appear in "Senate Documents Co. 3, No. 23, 76th Congress, 1st session, 1939" but even were it in these records it would certainly be someone quoting it into the record, and not a quote of Wilson directly, as he had already been dead a number of years. Many such misquotations thus appear in Senate and Congressional records. If such a record actually exists a citation of a more definite source might conceivably exist there.

I am not even confident that there is such a document at all, but if there is, unless it provides an earlier definite source, it merely provides a possible date of when this statement began circulating. ~ Kalki 14:39, 14 December 2007 (UTC)



As unlikely as it may be, I can also conceive of some genuine source for "I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country." eventually being found, but in a totally different context from that portrayed. I find very little credibility to the idea that such a statement was ever made by Wilson, or any other politician, in any campaign speech. ~ Kalki 14:46, 14 December 2007 (UTC)



Though the argument seems to be entangled so deeply into a spiral which is impossible now to even read, it seems the "doubters" have won by attrition. I would argue the merits of the quote by the fact that hundreds of other statesmen have repeatedly warned of the dangers of a "Central Banking System!" These quotes are easily available, but are also attacked by the intellectuals, which takes us to the same spiral.

I think we are all forgetting, (ONE) WE HAVE A CENTRAL BANK! (TWO) WE HAVE A 9 TRILLION DOLLAR DEFICIT! With a seventy trillion dollar entitlement, (social security, medicaid, and medicare).

The Democratic and Republican two party system was born of the Andrew Jackson presidency. Andrew Jackson's legacy was ending the Central Banking System that had already gained control of our money.

Historians will all agree a particular event that sticks out as leading to the Revolutionary War was King George III's attempt to outlaw the interest free, independent currency being used by the Colonies. There by forcing them to accept a paper bill issued by the Central Bank of England, at interest. This is the entire argument against the Central Banking System. It charges the government interest to borrow money from the bank in order to finance the need for a currency. —This unsigned comment is by Davmo (talk • contribs) . 14:26, 7 February 2008 (UTC)


References at Google Book

Woodrow Wilson: "I am a most unhappy man; unwittingly I have ruined my country..."

The American Mercury by George Jean Nathan, Henry Louis Mencken, 1924, p. 56 [2]

"President Woodrow Wilson-( After breaking with the engineers of the Fed Act, and near his death), "I am a most unhappy man; unwittingly I have ruined my ..."

The Federal Reserve Hoax By Wickliffe B. Vennard, 1959, p. 27, full quote [3]

Richard Cotten's Conservative Viewpoint by Richard B. Cotten [4]

"PRESIDENT WOODROW WILSON - (After breaking with Colonel House) who with Warburg engineered the Fed. act: "I am a most unhappy man; unwittingly I have ruined ..."

To All My Children As the World Turns By Gyeorgos C. Hatonn, 1993, p. 152 [5]

"Even Woodrow Wilson would regret his actions and before his death, stated: "I am a most unhappy man--unwittingly I have ruined my country."
After Fascism By Abid Ullah Jan, p. 31, full quote [6]

Web of Debt By Ellen Hodgson Brown. p. 127, partial quote [7]

"The bill passed on December 22, 1913, and President Wilson signed it into law the next day. Later he regretted what he had done. He is reported to have said before he died, "I have unwittingly ruined my country."

Outsourcing Culture By Robert E. Greenwood Jr. Phd, p. 118, partial quote [8]
--98.202.49.82 22:09, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

________________________________________
I found this quote which is kind of saying the same thing at brainyquotes.com I'm pretty sure it isn't a conspiracy theory site. "The government, which was designed for the people, has got into the hands of the bosses and their employers, the special interests. An invisible empire has been set up above the forms of democracy."
________________________________________
I agree that it is conceivable that there is a genuine source for "I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country." I also agree that it is unlikely that it would be included in a "campaign" speech. But I don't see where anyone has attributed said quote to a "campaign" speech. He was already President when the Federal Reserve Act was enacted, and he is said to have said these words "before he died." —This unsigned comment is by 65.25.43.158 (talk • contribs) . 01:42, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Senate Document 23

I've located Senate Doc. 23, 76th Congress, 1st Session. There's no "I am a most unhappy man" and there's no "I have unwittingly ruined my country". There are two quotes from Wilson on page 100:

Woodrow Wilson, 1916, said:

A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the Nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men... We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated, governments in the civilized world—no longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and the duress of small groups of dominant men.

President Wilson, in advocating the Federal Reserve Act, said:

We must have a currency, not rigid as now, but readily, elastically responsive to sound credit, the expanding and contracting credits of everyday transactions, the normal ebb and flow of personal and corporate dealings. Our banking laws must mobilize reserves; must not permit the concentration anywhere in a few hands of the monetary resources of the country or their use for speculative purposes in such volume as to hinder or impede or stand in the way of other more legitimate, more fruitful uses. And the control of the system of banking and of issue which our new laws are to set up must be public, not private, must be vested in the Government itself, so that the banks may be the instruments, not the masters, of business and of individual enterprise and initiative.

I have also looked at The Federal Reserve Hoax (1959) in a library. It has no references for any of its quotes. The quote "I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country" does not appear in Dwinell's The Story of Our Money (1946), and she would certainly have included it if the quote was known then. I conclude that the quote came into existence between 1946 and 1959 and is not genuine. KHirsch 03:05, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

•
o
 HERE'S SOME VERIFIABLE INFORMATION: First, you have to understand how money actually comes to exist in the first place. Common middle Americans only think statements such as Wilson's to be extreme because of a fundamental lack of education about our monetary system and its role, beginning with the Central Bank- ie. The Federal Reserve- incidentally privately owned, not federal AT ALL, in case you were unaware. I recommend two sources to give the fundamentals, easily located at http://www.video.google.com: The first is a 47 minute document:'ary explaining how money is created called Money As Debt; second (and longer, but equally important and well-documented) The Money Masters. You will find that Woodrow Wilson and all of the others, including presidents, were- pun intended- right on the money about how destructive the system is. Another from John Adams, one of our founding fathers: "All of the perplexities, confusion, and distress in America arises, not from the defects of the Constitution or Confederation, not from want of honor or virtue, so much as from DOWNRIGHT IGNORANCE OF THE NATURE OR COIN, CREDIT, AND CIRCULATION.'"***
--207.30.9.41 17:52, 1 September 2010 (UTC)Strawman Solution



Thank you for your interest, but notice at the top of this page: "This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Woodrow Wilson article." & "This is not a forum for general discussion about the article's subject." At issue here is not the subject matter of the purported quotes, but verifying whether Wilson actually said them. ~ Ningauble 15:39, 2 September 2010 (UTC)


If Wilson said the two first sentences or not:
If he said the rest, he most definetly was "a most unhappy man" and very hopefully "unwittingly". So leaving these 2 phrases in the quote seems very logical to me as to summarize the following.
—This unsigned comment is by 72.22.150.221 (talk • contribs) .


The source is dead. Even if he didnt say it EVERYTHING about the Federal Reserve and how it opperate is TRUE
—This unsigned comment is by 76.107.108.40 (talk • contribs) .


The legitimacy of this quote has pretty much been put to rest. The first two sentences appear to be complete fabrications. The rest of it is actually two separate quotes that are slightly altered and taken out of context. He is actually referring to monopolies. Source: The New Freedom --Ryan0991 20:51, 17 August 2011 (UTC)


http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:Woodrow_Wilson

[InfoWarrior82captain of 1,000]

Fair enough. I have no problem with siding that Woodrow Wilson knew what he was doing and was happy with it.

[ldsfireguycaptain of 100]

The Neo-cons are stellar examples of progressive thought in action. In fact, they are a living example of the idiom, "Only Nixon could go to China." The neo-cons, as fake conservatives, could get away with things both fiscal and otherwise that no one else could have done.

The neo-cons achieve elements of the Agenda which the liberals cannot, and then when the liberals are voted in because of overall disgust at the direction which the fake conservatives have taken us, the liberals are able to achieve other elements of the Agenda which the neo-cons could not. Thus the swinging of the pendulum achieves the overall Agenda because its fulcrum moves the entire field of play in the direction intended.

Reagan was a true conservative at heart in my opinion, but he was quickly coerced by the CIA into accepting George Bush senior (a man he loathed) as his VP, and he was thereafter soon taught not to reach for true conservatism.

The Bushes are at the heart of the conspiracy in our land referred to in Ether 8, going back 3 generations.

[Oldemandaltoncaptain of 1,000]

Infowarrior, in order for me to explain my views on secret combinations I need to explain the Law of Opposition In All Things and Satan’s Counterfeits


“As he went about in his ministry, Jesus was met with varied reactions. There were some who gladly accepted him, followed him wherever he went and tried to live his teachings. There were some who were indifferent, and then there were others who openly opposed him. So the people of that day had before them a clear working example of the law of opposition in all things. On the one hand was Jesus preaching the way of life; on the other were the Scribes and the Pharisees who fought him at every step.” Elder Mark E. Petersen, Conference Report, April 1945, Afternoon Meeting, p.41-42




Need of Opposition in All Things

Elder Reed Smoot, Conference Report, October 1927, Third Day-Morning Meeting, p.139

“Lehi goes on to explain why there must be opposition in all things. When you stop to think about it, it is absolutely as God's servant, Lehi, predicted. If there were no opposition to business it would run to dry rot. And, brethren and sisters, if there were no opposition to the Church of Christ, it never would make the headway it is making. Its foundations never would be so strong as they are without the opposition it has encountered. Many of the hardships and evils that come to us, come as blessings in disguise. People wonder why weeds grow on the farm, why disease comes to the body, why the wicked among the peoples of the world, why evil exists upon every hand? Evil is a challenge to good. The fight is between evil and good, and God intends to have a people who know the difference between good and evil, and follow in the footsteps of the teachings of the Master. And nothing but good ever was uttered by him in mortal life. Why do we have the poor among us? Suppose we did not have any poor. I have always considered poverty a challenge, and it does challenge our sympathy and generosity, and do you know that that is a wonderful thing to broaden a man or woman? And I know of no other pleasure in all the world equal to that which comes to one whose generosity and kindness helps one of God's children.”

Church-Persecution
Hardships-Blessings
Evil-Good
Poor-Rich
Stingy-Generosity


John A. Widtsoe, Evidences and Reconciliations, p.205

“First, there is "an opposition in all things." If there be a south, there must be a north; if there be light, there must also be the possibility of darkness; if a right side, also a left side; if activity, also quiescence; if good, there must be its opposite, which is evil; and so on with respect to every condition and act of existence. This is much like the positive and negative recognized in all mathematical and scientific work. It is because of this eternal "opposition" that man is alike to choose, thus doing good or evil.” John A. Widtsoe, Evidences and Reconciliations, p.205


South-North
Light-Darkness
Right-Left
Good-Evil
Activity-Quiescence
Positive-Negative

“I wish to tell you a truth; it is God's truth; it is eternal truth: neither you nor I would ever be prepared to be crowned in the celestial kingdom of our Father and our God, without devils in this world. Do you know that the Saints never could be prepared to receive the glory that is in reserve for them, without devils to help them to get it? Men and women never could be prepared to be judged and condemned out of their own mouths, and to be set upon the left hand, or to have it said to them, "Go away into everlasting darkness," without the power both of God and the devil. We are obliged to know and understand them, one as well as the other, in order to prepare us for the day that is coming, and for our exaltation. Some of you may think that this is a curious principle, but it is true. Refer to the Book of Mormon, and you will find that Nephi and others taught that we actually need evil, in order to make this a state of probation. We must know the evil in order to know the good. There must needs be an opposition in all things. All facts are demonstrated by their opposites. You will learn this in the Bible, the Book of Mormon, and in the revelations given through Joseph. We must know and understand the opposition that is in all things, in order to discern, choose, and receive that which we do know will exalt us to the presence of God. You cannot know the one without knowing the other. This is a true principle.” Remarks by President Brigham Young, Delivered in the Bowery, Great Salt Lake City, June 28, 1857.


“Under these circumstances, from time to time, he has made known his will to men. He has in different ages raised up men with whom he communicated, and to whom he revealed his will, and under certain circumstances to whom he committed his law, and he has made them his mouthpiece to the human family, and through them has revealed life and its principles, and has unveiled the heavens and given man a knowledge of the future, and has shown his condemnation, or evinced his hatred to evil and iniquity of every kind, and has shown through them the evil effects of pursuing this course. These men, in the different ages in which they lived, warned the people and the nations in regard to evil, and have tried to incite them to good, and held out to them the principle of lives, eternal lives hereafter to be obtained in the celestial, terrestrial or telestial kingdoms. These men and these principles, which have been introduced by the Almighty, have had their effect more or less among the human family. But there has been associated with this a spirit of antagonism to God to virtue, to truth, to purity, to holiness, and to those principles that were calculated to elevate and exalt humanity through time and through the eternities that are to come. Thus two influences have been at work among the nations and among the various peoples of the earth in the different ages. Sometimes it seems mysterious to the human family that things should be as they have been. They do not comprehend the meaning or the purposes or designs, or even the law of God in fact, some of these laws have not been made known generally to mankind. Permit me to say there are eternal laws that exist with the Gods in the eternal worlds, and from which they cannot depart, and to which they are bound in all their acts, I was going to say as we are, but I will say not as we are, but as we ought to be, subject to the law of God in all our acts, and that it is absolutely necessary that men should be placed in a state of trial, in a state of probation. It was just as necessary that Satan, if you please, would exercise his power as that God should exercise his. This is a thing that is not always understood by men, and, in fact, they understand very little about it. We are told, however, that "It must needs be that there is an opposition in all things," good and evil, light and darkness, happiness and misery, corruption and incorruption, life and death, heaven and hell.”
Journal of Discourses, 26 vols., 21:, p.16

“The Book of Mormon Doctrine of Opposite Existences:
Of this same class of ideas is what I shall call the Book of Mormon doctrine of "opposite existences," what the scholastics would call "antinomies (mutual incompatibility of two laws)." Be not disheartened at this statement of the subject; the Book of Mormon presentation of it will be much simpler; that simplicity in fact is part of its originality, an evidence of its being inspired. The statement of the doctrine in question occurs in a discourse of Lehi's on the subject of the atonement. The aged prophet represents happiness or misery as growing out of the acceptance or rejection of the atonement of the Christ, and adds that the misery consequent upon its rejection is in opposition to the happiness which is affixed to its acceptance: "For it must needs be," he continues, "that there is an opposition in all things. If [it were] not so righteousness could not be brought to pass; neither wickedness; neither holiness nor misery; neither good nor bad. Wherefore [that is, if this fact of opposites did not exist], all things must needs be a compound in one; wherefore, if it [the sum of things] should be one body, it must needs remain as dead, having no life neither death, nor corruption nor incorruption, happiness nor misery, neither sense nor insensibility. Wherefore, it must needs have been created for a thing of naught; wherefore there would have been no purpose in the end of its creation. Wherefore this thing [i. e. the absence of opposite existences which Lehi is supposing] must needs destroy the wisdom of God, and his eternal purposes; and also the power, and the mercy, and the justice of God." This may be regarded as a very bold setting forth of the doctrine of antinomies, and yet I think the logic of it, and the inevitableness of the conclusion unassailable. As there can be no good without the antinomy of evil, so there can be no evil without its antinomy, or antithesis-good. The existence of one implies the existence of the other; and, conversely, the non-existence of the later would imply the non-existence of the former. It is from this basis that Lehi reached the conclusion that either his doctrine of antinomies, or the existence of opposites, is true, or else there are no existences. That is to say-to use his own words-"If ye shall say there is no law, ye shall also say there is no sin. If ye shall say there is no sin, ye shall also say there is no righteousness. And if there be no righteousness, there be no happiness. And if there be no righteousness nor happiness, there be no punishment nor misery. And if these things are not, there is no God, and if there is no God, we are not, neither the earth; for there could have been no creation of things, neither to act nor to be acted upon: wherefore, all things must have vanished away."
But as things have not vanished away, as there are real existences, the whole series of things for which he contends are verities. "For there is a God," he declares, "and he hath created all things, both the heavens and the earth, and all things that in them are: both things to act, and things to be acted upon." (II Nephi ii. For a larger treatment of the theme see Y. M. M. I. A. Manual, No. 9, chap. xxxix.)” B. H. Roberts, Seventy's Course in Theology, 1:, p.131



B. H. Roberts, Seventy's Course in Theology, 2:, p.55-58
The statement of the doctrine in question occurs in a discourse of Lehi's on the subject of the Atonement. The aged prophet represents happiness or misery as growing out of the acceptance or rejection of the Atonement of the Christ, and adds that the misery consequent upon its rejection is in opposition to the happiness which is affixed to its acceptance: "For it must needs be," he continues, "that there is an opposition in all things. If [it were] not so righteousness could not be brought to pass; neither wickedness; neither holiness nor misery; neither good nor bad. Wherefore [that is, if this fact of opposites did not exist], all things must needs be a compound in one; wherefore, if it [the sum of things] should be one body, it must needs remain as dead, having no life neither death, nor corruption nor incorruption, happiness nor misery, neither sense nor insensibility. Wherefore, it must needs have been created for a thing of naught; wherefore there would have been no purpose in the end of its creation. Wherefore, this thing [i. e. the absence of opposite existences which Lehi is supposing] must needs destroy the wisdom of God, and his eternal purposes; and also the power, and the mercy, and the justice of God."

The inspired man, however, even goes beyond this, and makes existences themselves depend upon this law of opposites:

"And if ye shall say there is no law, ye shall also say there is no sin. If ye shall say there is no sin, ye shall also say there is no righteousness. And if there be no righteousness, there be no happiness. And if there be no righteousness nor happiness, there be no punishment nor misery. And if these things are not, there is no God. And if there is no God, we are not, neither the earth; for there could have been no creation of things; neither to act nor to be acted upon, wherefore, all things must have vanished away."

This may be regarded as a very bold setting forth of the doctrine of antinomies, and yet I think the logic of it, and the inevitableness of the conclusion unassailable. "The world presents us with a picture of unity and distinction," says S. Baring-Gould, in his excellent work "Origin and Development of Religious Beliefs" "Unity without uniformity, and distinction without antagonism. Everywhere, around us and within us, we see that radical antimony. The whole astronomic order resolves itself into attraction and repulsion-a centripetal and a centrifugal force; the chemical order into the antimony of positive and negative electricity, decomposing substances and recomposing them. The whole visible universe presents the antimony of light and darkness, movement and repose, force and matter, heat and cold, the one and the multiple. The order of life is resumed in the antimony of the individual and the species, the particular and the general; the order of our sentiments in that of happiness and sorrow, pleasure and pain; that of our conceptions in the antimony of the ideal and the real; that of our will in the conditions of activity and passivity. The American Philosopher, Emerson, also has something like this. He says: Polarity, or action and reaction, we meet in every part of nature; in darkness and light; in heat and cold; in the ebb and flow of waters; in male and female; in the inspiration and expiration of plants and animals; in the systole and diastole of the heart; in the undulations of fluids and of sound; in the centrifugal and centripetal gravity; in electricity, galvanism and chemical affinity. Superinduce magnetism at one end of the needle, the opposite magnetism takes place at the other end. If the south attracts, the north repels. To empty here, you must condense there. An inevitable dualism bisects nature, so that each thing is a half, and suggests another thing to make it whole; as, spirit, matter; man, woman; subjective, objective; in, out; upper, under; motion, rest; yea, nay. Every sweet hath its sour, every evil its good." (Emerson's "Compensation.")

In view of the utterances of the Book of Mormon already quoted I am justified in saying that evil as well as good is among the eternal things. Its existence did not begin with its appearance on our earth. Evil existed even in heaven; for Lucifer and many other spirits sinned there; rebelled against heaven's matchless King, waged war, and were thrust out into the earth for their transgression.

Evil is not a created quality. It has always existed as the background of good. It is as eternal as goodness; it is as eternal as law; it is as eternal as the agency of intelligences. Sin, which is evil active, is transgression of law; and so long as the agency of intelligences and law have existed, the possibility of the transgression of law has existed; and as the agency of intelligences and law have eternally existed, so, too, evil has existed, eternally, either potentially or active, and will always so exist.

Evil may not be referred to God for its origin. He is not its creator, it is one of those independent existences that is uncreate, and stands in the category of qualities of eternal things. While not prepared to accept the doctrine of some philosophers that "good and evil are two sides of one thing." I am prepared to believe that evil is a necessary antithesis to good, and essential to the realization of the harmony of the universe. "The good cannot exist without the antithesis of the evil-the foil on which it produces itself and becomes known." As remarked by Orlando J. Smith, "Evil exists in the balance of natural forces. It is also the background of good, the incentive to good, and the trial of good, without which good could not be. As the virtue of courage could not exist without the evil of danger, and as the virtue of sympathy could not exist without the evil of suffering, so no other virtue could exist without its corresponding evil. In a world without evil-if such a world be really conceivable, all men would have perfect health, perfect intelligence, and perfect morals. No one could gain or impart information, each one's cup of knowledge being full. The temperature would stand forever at seventy degrees, both heat and cold being evil. There could be no progress, since progress is the overcoming of evil. A world without evil would be as toil without exertion, as light without darkness, as a battle with no antagonist. It would be a world without meaning." Or, as Lehi puts it, in still stronger terms-after describing what conditions would be without the existence of opposites-"Wherefore, all things must needs be a compound in one; wherefore, if it [i. e. the sum of things] should be one body, [i. e. of one character-so called good without evil] it must needs remain as dead, having no life neither death, nor corruption nor incorruption, happiness nor misery, neither sense nor insensibility. Wherefore, it [the sum of things] must needs have been created for a thing of naught; wherefore there would have been no purpose in the end of its creation. Wherefore, this thing [the absence of opposites] must needs destroy the wisdom of God, and his eternal purposes; and also, the power, and the mercy, and the justice of God."

As there can be no good without the antimony of evil, so there can be no evil without its antimony, or antithesis-good. The existence of one implies the existence of the other; and, conversely, the non-existence of the latter would imply the non-existence of the former. It is from this basis that Lehi reached the conclusion that either his doctrine of antinomies, or the existence of opposites, is true, or else there are no existences. That is to say-to use his own words-"If ye shall say there is no law, ye shall also say there is no sin. If ye shall say there is no sin, ye shall also say there is no righteousness. And if there is no sin, ye shall also say there is no righteousness. And if there be no righteousness, there be no happiness. And if there be no righteousness nor happiness, there be no punishment nor misery. And if these things are not, there is no God, and if there is no God, we are not, neither the earth; for there could have been no creation of things, neither to act nor to be acted upon: wherefore, all things must have vanished away."

But as things have not vanished away, as there are real existences, the whole series of things for which he contends are verities. For there is a God," he declares, "and he hath created all things, both the heavens and the earth, and all things that in them is; both things to act, and things to be acted upon."
B. H. Roberts, Seventy's Course in Theology, 2:, p.55-58

To sum up:

There is a “law of opposition in all things.” Elder Mark E. Petersen.

Elder Reed Smoot,” if there were no opposition to the Church of Christ, it never would make the headway it is making.”

Opposition is an eternal principle. “It is because of this eternal "opposition" that man is alike to choose, thus doing good or evil.” John A. Widtsoe.

“Do you know that the Saints never could be prepared to receive the glory that is in reserve for them, without devils to help them to get it? Men and women never could be prepared to be judged and condemned out of their own mouths.…without the power both of God and the devil.” President Brigham Young

"The Law or Doctrine of Opposition in All Things is an inescapable law that is eternal. “But there has been associated with this a spirit of antagonism to God to virtue, to truth, to purity, to holiness, and to those principles that were calculated to elevate and exalt humanity through time and through the eternities that are to come. Thus two influences have been at work among the nations and among the various peoples of the earth in the different ages…some of these laws have not been made known generally to mankind. Permit me to say there are eternal laws that exist with the Gods in the eternal worlds, and from which they cannot depart, and to which they are bound in all their acts, I was going to say as we are, but I will say not as we are, but as we ought to be, subject to the law of God in all our acts, and that it is absolutely necessary that men should be placed in a state of trial, in a state of probation. It was just as necessary that Satan, if you please, would exercise his power as that God should exercise his. This is a thing that is not always understood by men, and, in fact, they understand very little about it. We are told, however, that "It must needs be that there is an opposition in all things," good and evil, light and darkness, happiness and misery, corruption and incorruption, life and death, heaven and hell.” President Brigham Young

"...doctrine of "opposite existences," what the scholastics would call "antinomies (mutual incompatibility of two laws)."… As there can be no good without the antimony of evil, so there can be no evil without its antimony, or antithesis-good. The existence of one implies the existence of the other; and, conversely, the non-existence of the latter would imply the non-existence of the former." B. H. Roberts

The Doctrine or Law of Opposition In ALL things is an eternal principle, like justice, that even God must follow:

“God is omnipotent, but only within the circumscribed boundaries of law, truth, and justice. He cannot violate these or He would cease to be God. As Mormon and Alma plainly taught: “And behold, I say unto you he changeth not; if so he would cease to be god…” (Mormon 9:19) “…the work of justice could not be destroyed; if so, he would cease to be God.”(Alma 42:13, 22)“What do ye suppose that mercy can rob justice? I say unto you, Nay; not one whit. If so, God would cease to be God.” (Ibid., 42:25)In other words, if eternal principles were violated, God would cease to be God.” Cleon Skousen.

IMO God must follow the Law Of Opposition and allow Satan “equal opportunity” in his war against God. If God establishes His church on earth then Satan must be allowed to establish a counter organization or counterfeit to ‘oppose’ God’s Kingdom. If God has a prophet on earth the Satan must be allowed a personal representative also. If God calls Apostles and other leaders then Satan must be allowed the same.

The question is has Satan taken the opportunity to call a personal representative on earth or a counterfeit organization to the church? I’ll answer that in the next post.