I think I found the El Dorado of progressivism

When I got up this morning and sat down at my computer, I started searching. I don't quite know why, but once I got started I had a feeling. This morning, I was going to find something special.

And, I did. As someone who is still realizing just how powerful of a weapon against progressivism that the progressives' own history is against them, I have found many useful things. But nothing like this.

Arguably the most ardent planner of the New Deal, Rexford Guy Tugwell, gave a speech in 1939 titled "The Fourth Power". This speech is amazing for its brevity, its loquacious and direct statement of goals, and also its footnotes. The footnotes, are in some instances even better than the speech itself!

I have always known, even before I officially began the progressingamerica project so many years ago, that the New Deal was a cesspool of progressive authoritarianism; however, I have mostly stayed away from it for three reasons:

1) It is not the beginning of our troubles. Progressivism already had a 30+ year track record by the time the New Deal began. It simply could not as a function of basic mathematical principles be the beginning.

2) Perhaps more importantly, the vast majority of New Deal propaganda is all buttoned up tightly behind a firewall of copyright. There's nothing for me to search and research. Ergo, nothing to blog and nothing to record.

3) Lastly, and I mean both lastly and minorly, most conservatives already recognize the New Deal for what it is, albeit, mistakenly as the beginning. So I don't really have to do much work to educate people of what they already know: The New Deal is a poisonous and unconstitutional chapter in American history.

In "The Fourth Power", Tugwell talks about 'social control', which had been an obsession of progressives for decades, he talks about regulations - which without getting specific, goes back to Theodore Roosevelt. Other topics include collectivism, the failure of free markets, a strikingly honest outline of the concept of Democracy - which to progressives has nothing to do with ballot boxes, scientific management, and other topics. He mentions numerous important authors such as George Soule, John Dewey, Thorstein Veblen, Simon Patten and others. And above all, he goes on and on about planning, planning, planning. And in the last section of the address, he continues the elitism against the Founding that we are all used to from progressives

The best part is, this is not in copyright.

Which means it will be my next audiobook. This is too good to pass up, it is too good to leave hidden and lost. We can use this. This is a powerful, powerful thing in our favor.

Tugwell's "The Fourth Power" can be found here, flip to page 104. I'll post a transcript soon, so that it becomes super easy to find in any search engine.

http://tinyurl.com/hma6hcj