How Theodore Roosevelt's big government schemes created the modern trucking industry

Does today's trucker and trucking industry owe its entire existence to big government? The answer to that question may very well be yes.

Recently, I wrote a post pulling together details about how Teddy used "reaching across the aisle" to undermine any attempt to keep government small, in passing the 1906 Hepburn Act.

But what happened after the act passed? Well, it significantly damaged the railroad industry, and some news outlets at the time attributed the economic recession: the Panic of 1907 (whom some also call the "Roosevelt Panic") specifically to the Hepburn Act.(Source) The Panic had multiple causes to be sure, but Hepburn clearly did not help.(source)

Let's examine what happened. Because Theodore just had, HAD to have bigger government, he undercut an entire industry and made it impossible for them to adequately continue. So what happened? Nature abhors a vacuum, that's what happened.

With all of the air sucked out of the room by the ICC, the Hepburn Act, and meddling progressive republicans, the Trucking industry stepped in. This new industry blew new air into the room and they've been trucking ever since. Now, I'm not the first historian to notice this,(source) at least, not in regard to the train half of the equation. I'm just the first to point out that progressivism is to blame. This is the logical conclusion of following a bankrupt ideology instead of paying attention to the constitution. In this article, Professor Albro Martin primarily focuses in on how the Hepburn Act ravaged the train industry.

However, if one is true then the other must also be true. A and b arrive hand in hand. Killing the train gave birth to the truck. Stuff has to be moved around somehow. What, did TR think we would all just sit around and accept his dictates without trying to get around the obstacle he created? Of course not, people have done this since time began, innovating their way around big government obstacles. The train industry cannot just sit around ravaged, without someone else coming along and saying "hey, we can do this" without the damaging effects of big government - brought to you by progressives. Trucking would again be strengthened by necessity during WWI, and trains would again be attacked later by Woodrow Wilson. This continued governmental assault necessarily has to have an end result. What is that result?

Today in the 21st century, progressives know full well that their schemes will destroy industry and destroy the lives of citizens. And they don't really care. To them, that's a good thing.

At least in this context, in the days of TR and other big government progressives probably really think that the utopia was upon them and that transporters would be more than happy to bend over and take it, even though no lube was being used.

Sorry for the graphic depiction folks. But there's just no good end result when government goes bullying people around. They hurt us. Government hurts us. Progressivism is the most destructive force in America and it has been now for almost 120 years. Isn't it time more people honestly dig in to their history, the progressives' history, and see just how much damage they've done to us?

Now, of course someone is going to come along and start saying "you're just an apologist for the railroad trusts" blah blah blah - do you really not understand how people would have been significantly hurt by the Panic of 1907? That panic may not very well have even needed to have happened. With regard to the railroad trusts, they made their own beds, but I'm not very interested in hurting everybody in the nation just so you can get your revenge. That's really petty.

What's the funniest thing of all, is that progressives have for the last decade or more been trying to revive an industry that THEY themselves destroyed. How is it that train technology, technology that's several hundred years old, is somehow the harbinger of the greatest progress? Every city must have mass transit, all of the cities must have government(they say "public") transit. That's progress - old technology.

In the end, trucking probably would have superceded trains anyways because of the advantages of open road, but we still have to respect the process as it actually happened and point out the authoritarianism of progressives going back to the turn of the 20th century. If they did it, then they own it. We should not be afraid to call a spade "a spade".

Lothrop Stoddard and Margaret Sanger

In 1914, the publication Birth Control Review published a review of the book The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy, by Lothrop Stoddard. The review was published by Havelock Ellis, a close friend of Margaret Sanger. Stoddard, like Ellis, was also a close friend of Sanger. Additionally, Stoddard was a board member of Sanger's pride and joy: The American Birth Control League.

To what degree did Sanger agree with the contents of this review? As editor of the magazine, she had the ability to decline/approve anything written in her pages.

The review said: (page 14)

Dr. Stoddard is an American, a graduate of Harvard and a citizen of New York, and like many Americans, aware that they have to attract the attention of a vast hustling audience absorbed in its activities over an enormous area, he is inclined to address it through a megaphone, in the strong, simple, emphatic language that that instrument demands. His message has thus to be a little discounted, but even when that allowance is made it remains a message it concerns us to hear, and it is delivered with force and knowledge. It is well to remember that his conclusions are, after all, fundamentally in harmony with those of sober and judicial observers in Europe, it is enough to mention Professor Demangeon's recent book Le Declin de l'Europe.

http://tinyurl.com/h6qs8x6

Theodore Roosevelt - the original "reach across the aisle" republican

Have you ever heard the whole story about exactly what it was that ol' Teddy did to get the 'rate bill' - the Hepburn Act, passed in 1906? If I didn't know the details of what I was reading and who was involved, I would swear this story mirrored a similar situation with John McCain rampaging on the floor of the Senate against Tea Party Hobbitses. Yes my friends. All tricks are fair game. Roosevelt threatened to pass the bill with democrat votes in order to undercut his own party, in order to stick the nose of government further into where it didn't belong. It's all a part of that war on big business, you know. The ends justify the means.

Politically, it is a brilliant move. Particularly if you love big government in every aspect of your life. But the danger of big government just keeps moving. It does not stop. It is never satisfied. Here is the scenario:

At the time of writing the Senate has not yet passed the Bill to regulate freight rates, but it will have passed the Senate several days before this is read. In the early days of this longdrawn-out and at times acrimonious contest between the President and some of the most influential Members of his Party in the Senate, Mr. Roosevelt announced that "Canossa gehen wir nicht." It would be somewhat unprofitable, and almost too academic, to determine whether the President played the part of Henry IV. and the Senate that of Gregory VII. The Republican Senators who blocked the Bill insisted that the Bill as it passed the House must be amended so as specifically to provide for an appeal from a decision made by the InterState Commerce Commission to the Federal Courts, which Mr. Roosevelt at that time resisted, because, as he viewed it, that would defeat the purpose the law was intended to correct. This appeal, however, has now been provided for, and Mr. Roosevelt expresses himself satisfied.

The Senators may claim it as a victory, but the country can see in it only the triumph of the President and the forced obedience of opposing Republican Senators to the will of the people. The country is correct in giving the President the credit for this legislation. He not only made it the great question in Congress, but he compelled a hostile Senate to enact it into law. Facing at one time a seemingly adverse Republican majority, he consented to the Bill being thrown into the hands of the Democrats, much to the confusion of the Republicans and to the gratification of their opponents, who expected to reap political advantage. But the Republicans pulled themselves together, and will vote solidly for the Bill, which disappointingly deprives the Democrats of their expected political gain. Mr. Roosevelt has again shown his amazing political shrewdness. He emerges from the fight the champion of rate legislation, and if that legislation corrects the abuses that are aimed at it, it is Mr. Roosevelt, and no one else, whom the victims of railway extortion - the farmers and small business men, who constitute the real political strength of the countrywill thank for relief and the end to favouritism, by which the great trusts have been able to crush out competition. Apart from what he gains personally, Mr. Roosevelt has put his Party in a very favourable position. Had the President been forced to accept Democratic votes to offset Republican defection, it would have been a non-partisan measure which, politically, would have done the Republicans great harm; but as the majority vote was cast by the Republicans, the Democrats can claim no credit. And though it is a fact that an important group of Republican Senators were able to secure the concession they demanded, thus again demonstrating that in a trial of strength between the President and the Senate it is generally the Senate that can force the President to its terms, the country will believe that for once, at least, the usual order was reversed. Mr. Roosevelt having said that the Bill suits him, the country sees in imagination the Senate making a wry face and swallowing an unpalatable dose while pretending to enjoy it. This discomfiture of the Senate, and this belief - quite a mistaken one, but which is of no consequence—that the Senate has at last met its master in the President, is very pleasing to the people.

Dang! No wonder McCain is literally in love with Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt was a supreme conservative-defeater! TR knew how to rout those nasty little hobbitses.

In T.R., the Last Romantic, Brands notes what TR wrote to his son Kermit: (page 547)

"I am now trying to see if I cannot get it through in the form I want by the aid of some fifteen or twenty Republicans, added to most of the Democrats."

"The Republican leaders have tried to betray me", Theodore Roosevelt whined to his son. Mr. Roosevelt, you were growing government bigger, your usual M.O. Of course they were betraying you. They were supposed to betray you. It is my sincerest wish that at any time someone is trying to grow government, that betrayal is what they face. I hope he fails. - to borrow four famous words.

Betraying the forces of big government means allying with those of us, the serfs of this country.

In any case, this mirrors the exact activity that we see today, with only one exception. Back then, republican leaders betrayed a big government president. Surely, many of them probably had all of their reasons that may not have had small government at its core, but that would have been the end result: a small government triumph. Today, the exception, is that republican leaders betray small government activists to the benefit of big government. Little doubt exists in my mind, that Theodore Roosevelt is very proud of what the GOP has become. They all now do what he did.

Other than that, what do we see? The republicans are too busy battling the democrats, and the democrats are too busy battling the republicans, that not a one of them stops and asks if the current activity is constitutional or not. We see it all the time, at least, a facade of such activity. Nobody asks the constitutional question. Nobody wants to ask that question. In the end, it's always 'we the people' who get hurt the most by government activity and largess. The GOP "goes along to get along" because in the end, they have proven that they reject the mold of constitutionally minded people such as the Founders, Reagan, or Coolidge. The GOP is the TR party. Over the last 80 years, TR won. They now want big government too in the GOP. The more bigger, the more better.

That's progressivism. The ends justify the means. Theodore Roosevelt, as usual, provides the blueprint of how its done. Growing government the big stick carrying way. This is the beginning of today's uniparty. These are the roots.

http://tinyurl.com/gwu5dsv

George Soros is translating Saul Alinsky into different languages

On October 14th, 2014, the Open Society of Macedonia held a workshop, promoting the great work of Saul Alinsky and his book Rules for Radicals, after the institute translated the book into the Macedonian language. Most of you will prefer to click on the second link. The third link is Rules for Radicals, in full, in the Macedonian language. They're that proud of their accomplishment, that they'll give it to you for free.

http://www.soros.org.mk/en/Home/NewsAndActivity?newsID=900&catID=7

Translated

PDF Download of "Pravila za Radikali" - Rules for Radicals

In the first links, you will notice a particular book on the table with a mostly white cover, but it has two distinct red diamonds in two corners. This is the version they translated.

A picture is worth a thousand words.

http://tinyurl.com/hq2s2xc

Conservatives: Worried about losing the internet? I have an idea; record an audiobook

It is almost certain that with giving the internet to "the world", that people with voices who say certain things run the risk of being silenced.

One possible solution: You should record an audiobook. Here's why.

As an example, one audiobook that I recorded was The Colored Patriots of the American Revolution, which highlights the black patriots that fought side by side against the British for American Independence and liberty. I completed that entire book on Valentines Day of this year, the day believed by some to be Frederick Douglass' birthday.

Why is this book important? Have you ever run into this meme that the Founding Fathers are supposedly racist? Well, I don't think one single book is going to put it to bed, and I certainly acknowledge that I can't possibly record every possible thing myself, however, these facts being so easily available, and so easily consumable, present quite a conundrum for those progressives who seek to keep "the narrative" alive. We need more. If more were available, there's a potential it could present a credible, visible threat.

Currently, there are roughly 3800 people who have been to this page, which is a fair estimate of at least how many people have listened to that book. That's 3800 in 8 months, and will certainly be over 4000 by year's end. The number who have listened is likely to be far higher, considering indirect mobile downloads and the like. But that's a number we can work with.

Think of that: That's nearly 4000 people I've educated about a topic that progressives would prefer people didn't know. If that number pattern stays true, at the end of the next year it will be 8000. In 5 years it will be 20,000.

Wouldn't you like to educate 20,000 people in five years about inconvenient facts? What kind of cultural impact does that have?

Here's how this relates to the internet giveaway. As I said at the outset, there will be voices who are silenced. I hardly think that audiobook recording is any kind of silver bullet, but I've yet to find any downside while conversely I can clearly demonstrate the upsides. The upsides are self-evident.

I'll give you another example, one which I think there might be some takers to my proposition. Have you ever run into the meme that there was no Christianity of any kind during the time of the American founding? Yeah, there were no pastors, that's it. And they certainly didn't discuss any political topics! The easiest way to combat that meme would be to record some sermons. Virtually everything prior to 1923 is public domain. Early American sermons, from pastors who were acknowledged to be highly influential in the years directly prior to the event of the Founding; the years that made the Founding possible. I know of several sermons that would be great candidates for recording, and several works of the Founders that have not yet been attempted. I, unfortunately, can't record everything on the planet in relation to these topics. At some point, someone will have to help.

I give all my audiobooks away for free. I'm not selling any thing here. Only, an idea. But selling you the idea isn't going to cost any money.

Making information easier to consume - that's a problem for the progressives. I'll gladly do that for free.

But, I do have one alternative, for those of you who would recoil at the idea. Here's what you should do. Do nothing. Sit there behind your keyboard. Do what you've been doing, because that's worked so well so far? It perturbs me to be harsh and I apologize in advance, but anything rooted in facts, and rooted in facts that are easier to consume(meaning faster), will present a little bit more of a challenge for anybody seeking the route of censorship. We need more, no matter how small that 'more' may appear to be. We have the power to give ourselves more. We don't have to wait for someone else to do it.

I'm looking to educate you, all I ask is that you are willing to listen. I'll give you every one of the mp3s as fast as you can download them. Now, I would like to find some people who would like to educate me. I'm willing to listen.

One thing I've noticed within the blogosphere is the tendency for people to focus exclusively upon their own opinion. This is not me saying that that is bad. I do it myself from time to time on my blog. But here is a converse thought.

The Founding Fathers - they speak for me. So I speak for them. And you can speak for them too. Why do you and I need to formulate new, additional words, when some of the best words that need to be spoken have already been spoken? They just weren't recorded. Ok, great! The only thing that is missing, is that microphones didn't exist in 1776 or 1753. That's not a problem. It's not.

We can rectify that. We have microphones. Download the transcript, and read it verbatim. For those of you who agree with me: if you can raise your hand and say "yes, the Founders speak for me",(or the pastors of that era) then it is likely that speaking for them may present a prospect that might be worth considering.