Wednesday, August 24, 2011

ONE HALF OF THE LAST CENTURY OF "PROGRESSIVE" RULE

They say it is the entitlements that are killing us. And that may be half of the story. But you cannot tell me that discretionary spending on subsidies isn't the other half of the story. Neither entitlements or subsidies are constitutional, so we are on wrong footing with both of these issues. But if you will humor me for a small walk back through history, I'll see if we can figure out how we got where we are. Sometimes a historical perspective can help us get a grip.

Both entitlements and discretionary spending have become monstrous burdens on the people of this nation. Both entitlements and subsidies are the brain children of "Progressive" meddlers. Interestingly enough both government entitlements and subsidies a century ago were designed by Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, all self proclaimed "Progressives." Since then, add Johnson, Carter, Clinton, and now Obama so far. That is seven presidents, with somewhere around 47.1 years of governing between them. By the time Obama is finished it will be almost 50 of the last 100 years of "Progressive" rule that has bent and manipulated our way of life to benefit Socialists. You can add whichever "Progressive" policies into the mix by RINO Republicans, and you see how far "Progressive" Socialism has come. And by that, measure how far removed we have become from the U.S. Constitution. Is it any wonder that our country is split in half by two sets of ideology. We have half of the last century taking us in a completely different direction from the Founders' vision of America. Maybe it is more of a miracle that half of us still stand with them.

Here we are 100 years + from the origins of the "Progressive" movement in America and the government has its hands on manipulating everything. Our fight for freedom is not new. It has been going on a long long time and we are just visiting the latest incarnation of it. Perhaps, in our day and time, it is that we have only just barely tasted freedom really, when you look at the state of our government from 1900 forward. There are so few freedoms left.

From Academic American

"The Progressive Movement, which gained substantial strength after 1900, can be defined in part as a protective reaction against the growing threat of communism or socialism in American economic and political life. The Progressives were behind many reforms aimed at cleaning up capitalism and protecting workers’ rights. But because the Progressive Movement did not move fast enough for some, the Socialist Party in United States gained a bit of traction. In 1912 the Socialist party under Eugene Debs won almost a million votes. The Populist Party in 1892 had had similar success, and though the Populists were not explicitly communists or socialists, their interests certainly lay in the same direction."

"Although the Progressive Movement is considered to have ended with the outbreak of the First World War, the Progressive Party continued to thrive, and many liberal politicians were—and still are—comfortable being identified as Progressives. Wisconsin’s Robert La Follette garnered almost 5 million votes as the Progressive Party candidate for president in the election of 1924. When the Great Depression hit and American capitalism seemed to be crumbling, those who had embraced communism and socialism seemed vindicated. Intellectuals flocked to the Socialist camp, led by men such as Lincoln Steffens who, having visited Soviet Russia, said, “I have seen the future and it works.”

"With the Cold War tensions on the rise, and with the rise of McCarthyism in the early 1950s, the Socialist movement began to die out. Being labeled a communist or socialist ceased to be respectable except to the fringe on the very far left of America’s political spectrum. That fringe emerged once again in the 1960s as part of the protest movement against the Vietnam War and the excesses of American capitalism; a few old Socialists became darlings of the “New Left.” But with the fall of the Soviet Union in 1990 and the end of the Cold War, the Socialist alternative in America was for a time considered dead and buried. More recently, however, government responses to the economic crisis and the debate over health care reform have awakened the notion that the nation may be drifting toward socialist solutions."

(Note: the article cited above has some built in biases. For instance in the paragraph just above it does not mention the Socialist fringe that, since the 1960's, has infiltrated the education system and the media to sell their ideology to the culture over these past 50 years. And that right after the Soviet Union fell, Americans elected Bill Clinton who is one of the global Socialist left.)

The entire focus of "Progressives" is to control everything. Their model is communism. And through entitlements and subsidies, they control those on the receiving end of these, PLUS they control those on the paying end of these. That pretty much covers all of us at this moment.

The Constitution has already been shredded by these "Progressives" in our country. They came here, they stayed here, they have ruined everything they've touched. If you are taking an entitlement or a subsidy, you are already in the clutches of communist control. If you are still one of the paying segment of the population, you are already forced into supporting communism.

You can't say it is just the entitlements. You can't say it is just the discretionary spending of subsidies. You can't say it is just regulations. It isn't just one thing here and there. It is all of it. You can't say it is only in certain sectors of our lives. Since Barack Obama was elected, it is now everywhere, in every pore and crease of life itself. He has just built a higher castle on the foundations laid by the previous "Progressive" presidents. Time has a way of giving one a perspective if you just step back and look at the events of history.

The fight for freedom goes on.





2 comments:

  1. The progressives have left no stone unturned, have they? It will take years to undo all that they have done. Today i read that the "green police", the Department of Fish and Wildlife and the DOJ, raided factories of Gibson Guitars for supposedly using wood from India that is illegal according to the laws of India! But there is no priority when it comes to illegal immigrants. Tis government is anti-American!

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  2. Jim...the interesting thing about this appalling attack on Gibson Guitars is that they are supposedly using India's laws to prosecute Americans. I am willing to bet that wood all came through customs and that Gibson is completely innocent on any charges. If U.S. Customs failed in their duty...why in the hell would Gibson be at fault?? Appalling.

    As far as I can tell, this was an excuse to use some international or other sovereign's laws against Americans. Our government is trying to make us adhere to something outside of the U.S. Constitution. The more they do this, the more Americans are hamstrung to govern our own affairs. And that is the point, isn't it?? You are so right that our own government is now anti-American. Atlas is shrugging.

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