George Bernard Shaw's Tribute to the Work of Henry George

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW'S TRIBUTE TO THE WORK OF HENRY GEORGE

1904

Henry George has one thing to answer for that has proved more serious than he thought when he was doing it - without knowing it.

One evening in the early eighties I found myself - I forget how and I cannot imagine why - in the Memorial Hall, Farringdon Street, London, listening to an American finishing a speech on the Land Question. I knew he was an American because he pronounced "necessarily" - a favorite word of his - with the accent on the third syllable instead of the first; because he was deliberately and intentionally oratorical, which is not customary among shy people like the English; because he spoke of Liberty, Justice, Truth, Natural Law, and other strange eighteenth century superstitions; and because he explained with great simplicity and sincerity the views of The Creator, who had gone completely out of fashion in London in the previous decade and had not been heard of since. I noticed also that he was a born orator, and that he had small, plump, pretty hands.

Now at that time I was a young man not much past 25, of a very revolutionary and contradictory temperament, full of Darwin and Tyndall, of Shelley and De Quincy, of Michael Angelo and Beethoven, and never having in my life studied social questions from the economic point of view, except that I had once, in my boyhood, read a pamphlet by John Stuart Mill on the Land Question. The result of my hearing that speech, and buying from one of the stewards of the meeting a copy of Progress and Poverty (Heaven only knows where I got that sixpence), was that I plunged into a course of economic study, and at a very early stage of it became a Socialist and spoke from that very platform on the same great subject, and from hundreds of others as well, sometimes addressing distinguished assemblies in a formal manner, sometimes standing on a borrowed chair at a street corner, or simply on a curbstone. And I, too, had my oratorical successes; for I can still recall with some vanity a wet afternoon (Sunday, of course,) on Clapham Common, when I collected as much as sixteen and sixpence in my hat after my lecture, for The Cause. And that the work was not all gas, let the tracts and pamphlets of the Fabian Society attest.

When I was thus swept into the Great Socialist revival of 1883, I found that five-sixths of those who were swept in with me had been converted by Henry George. This fact would have been more widely acknowledged had it not been that it was not possible for us to stop where Henry George had stopped. America, in spite of all its horrors of rampant Capitalism and industrial oppression, was, nevertheless, still a place for the individualist and the hustler. Every American who came over to London was amazed at the apathy, the cynical acceptance of poverty and servitude as inevitable, the cunning shuffling along with as little work as possible, that seemed to the visitor to explain our poverty, and moved him to say, "Serve us right!" If he had no money, he joyfully started hustling himself, and was only slowly starved and skinned into realizing that the net had been drawn close in England, the opportunities so exhaustively monopolized, the crowd so dense, that his hustling was only a means of sweating himself for the benefit of the owners of England, and that the English workman, with his wonderfully cultivated art of sparing "himself and extracting a bit of ransom here and a bit of charity there, had the true science of the situation. Henry George had no idea of this. He saw only the monstrous absurdity of the private appropriation of rent; and he believed that if you took that burden off the poor man's back, he could help himself out as easily as a pioneer on a pre-empted clearing. But the moment he took an Englishman to that point, the Englishman saw at once that the remedy was not so simple as that, and that the argument carried us much further, even to the point of total industrial reconstruction. Thus, George actually felt bound to attack the Socialism he himself had created; and the moment the antagonism was declared, and to be a Henry Georgite meant to be an anti-Socialist, some of the Socialists whom he had converted became ashamed of their origin, and concealed it; while others, including myself, had to fight hard against the Single Tax propaganda.

But I am glad to say that I never denied or belittled our debt to Henry George. If we outgrew Progress and Poverty in many respects, so did he himself too; and it is, perhaps, just as well that he did not know too much when he made his great campaign here; for the complexity of the problem would have overwhelmed him if he had realized it, or, if it had not, it would have rendered him unintelligible. Nobody has ever got away, or ever will get away, from the truths that were the centre of his propaganda; his errors anybody can get away from. Some of us regretted that he was an American and therefore necessarily about fifty years out of date in his economics and sociology from the point of view of an older country; but only an American could have seen in a single lifetime the growth of the whole tragedy of civilization from the primitive forest clearing. An Englishman grows up to think that the ugliness of Manchester and the slums of Liverpool have existed since the beginning of the world. George knew that such things grow up like mushrooms, and can be cleared away easily enough when people come to understand what they are looking at and mean business. His genius enabled him to understand what he looked at better than most men; but he was undoubtedly helped by what had happened within his own experience in San Francisco as he could never have been helped had he been born in Lancashire,

What George did not teach you, you are being taught now by your Trusts and Combines, as to which I need only say that if you would take them over as National property as cheerfully as you took over the copyrights of all my early books, you would find them excellent institutions, quite in the path of progressive evolution, and by no means to be discouraged or left unregulated as if they were nobody's business but their own. It is a great pity that you all take America for granted because you were born in it. I, who have never crossed the Atlantic, and have taken nothing American for granted, find I know ten times as much about your country as you do yourselves; and my ambition is to repay my debt to Henry George by coming over some day and trying to do for your young men what Henry George did nearly quarter of a century ago for me.

G. Bernard Shaw. London, Eng.

The League makes its announcement

Counter Attack on Reaction Organized - Research Group to Aid Labor—Wants Production for Use Not Profit (1922)

"A counter attack on the autocratic forces" which it charges are in control of American industry and "practical work for the socialization of industry" were announced recently by the League for Industrial Democracy, a new organization of engineers, publicists, technicians, economists, lawyers and members of other professions. The League is a successor to the Intercollegiate Socialist Society, which has been in process of reorganization for some months. The officers are Prof. Robert Morss Lovett, of Chicago, president; Charles P. Steinmetz, of Schenectady, Evans Clark, Florence Kelley and Arthur Gleason, of New York, vice presidents; Stuart Chase, treasurer; Harry W. Laidler, secretary and director of research, and Norman Thomas, chairman of the Executive Committee. The executive work of getting the new plan under way is in charge of Roger N. Baldwin.

The League's statement which outlines the new program shows why a reorganization of the Intercollegiate Socialist Society was decided upon after fifteen years of its work in the colleges arousing interest in socialist principles. "Prior to the World War, the form of organization adopted by the Society was admirably fitted in many respects to current intellectual needs. The large majority of American collegians were either utterly ignorant of the existence of socialism and the socialist movement, or regarded socialism as a mere Utopian theory, remote from the practical realm of politics and economics. The war came. Old economic systems collapsed. New social forms developed. The socialist and other movements of labor made and remade history. Even 'educated' men and women in provincial America were compelled to acknowledge the existence and power of these movements; thousands learned to regard them as the one hope of civilization.

"In spite of all their activities our liberals and radicals have had little effect upon our social life. They have left the labor movement untouched. They have created little literature of the new social order. The pamphlet, that instrument of social change, has gone rusty from disuse. The socialists have been so splendidly busy that they haven't worked out a plan of nationalization for the mines. The syndicalists and radicals have been so active that they have not shown the next step in workers' control in factory committees.

"Only one main idea is in sight with driving force and the power to capture the imagination of these groups. The idea concerns itself with changing the basis of civilization. It is the idea of production for use, of work for service. But an idea like that does not descend from heaven and travel on its own momentum. It is hammered out by the faithful in close thinking.

"Our first objective is the technician, the teacher, the social worker, the brain worker generally included in the 'great middle class' - a class which may be counted upon to obstruct social change until an effort is made to bring its need before them in their own language. Our final objective is the worker and the farmer.

"Our job demands that added to its primary educational work, the League shall stimulate the hardest kind of thinking on the concrete problems of social ownership and democratic control of our industrial life. It demands that the League shall do its part to utilize in constructive tasks the hundreds of young idealists who have aligned themselves on the side of the new social order."

Among the immediate aims is the thorough study of industrial disputes in order to arouse the public to the evils of the present system. The two basic industries to get first attention are coalmining and railroad transportation, in which national strikes are threatened in the near future.

Any person is eligible to membership in the League for Industrial Democracy, whose national headquarters are 70 Fifth Avenue, New York City.

Understanding Progressive Nationalism

In his speech to Congress on December 7, 1915, Woodrow Wilson made the following point about hyphenated Americans:

There are citizens of the United States, I blush to admit, born under other flags but welcomed under our generous naturalization laws to the full freedom and opportunity of America, who have poured the poison of disloyalty into the very arteries of our national life; who have sought to bring the authority and good name of our Government into contempt, to destroy our industries wherever they thought it effective for their vindictive purposes to strike at them, and to debase our politics to the uses of foreign intrigue.

Their number is not great as compared with the whole number of those sturdy hosts by which our nation has been enriched in recent generations out of virile foreign stock; but it is great enough to have brought deep disgrace upon us and to have made it necessary that we should promptly make use of processes of law by which we may be purged of their corrupt distempers. America never witnessed anything like this before. It never dreamed it possible that men sworn into its own citizenship, men drawn out of great free stocks such as supplied some of the best and strongest elements of that little, but how heroic, nation that in a high day of old staked its very life to free itself from every entanglement that had darkened the fortunes of the older nations and set up a new standard here,that men of such origins and such free choices of allegiance would ever turn in malign reaction against the Government and people who had welcomed and nurtured them and seek to make this proud country once more a hotbed of European passion.

A little while ago such a thing would have seemed incredible. Because it was incredible we made no preparation for it. We would have been almost ashamed to prepare for it, as if we were suspicious of ourselves, our own comrades and neighbors! But the ugly and incredible thing has actually come about and we are without adequate federal laws to deal with it. I urge you to enact such laws at the earliest possible moment and feel that in doing so I am urging you to do nothing less than save the honor and self-respect of the nation. Such creatures of passion, disloyalty, and anarchy must be crushed out.

Now, first of all, it chills me to the bone to see any American President talking about any other citizen in the context of "crushing", but with that aside..............

This quote has gotten a little bit of attention from other historians, so I want to highlight what they have highlighted:

Citizens..... born under other flags..... have poured the poison of disloyalty into the very arteries of our national life; who have sought to bring the authority and good name of our Government into contempt.....

Notice how he puts government ahead of all others? Government is more important than all industry, more important than anything else. Except one thing.

Wilson says "our national life". Theodore Roosevelt spoke much the same way, both in and outside of the context of "hyphenated-Americans", and here is one such example:

Therefore, we should devote ourselves as a preparative to preparedness, alike in peace and war, to secure the three elemental things; one a common language, the English language; two, the increase in our social loyalty - citizenship absolutely undivided, a citizenship which acknowledges no flag except the flag of the United States and which emphatically repudiates all duality of national loyalty; and third, an intelligent and resolute effort for the removal of industrial and social unrest, an effort which shall aim equally to secure every man his rights and to make every man understand that unless he in good faith performs his duties he is not entitled to any rights at all.

See, this is a trick. It's a dirty trick by a dirty trickster, that TR. "Social loyalty"?

Please. What an insult. This key word "social" is always used by progressives as a way to load the entire sentence with bull crap, and TR did it just the same. Others may not notice, but I notice it.

When TR, Woodrow Wilson, or any other progressive(Moreso in the early 20th century than today, for certain reasons; mainly globalism) uses the word "nation" or phrases like "our national life", they mean the most sinister and devious things you can think of. This is why no progressive can ever, ever be trusted. They take things which should be considered a good thing and they abuse it, pollute it, pervert it. We should be able to reasonably discuss the problem with those who would put something hyphenated in front of their title as an American, but as a conservative, under no circumstance should quoting of any progressive take place. Progressives have no credibility. This word "social", because of what they mean by it and how the statists use it, is at the root of so many of our problems. It's probably at the root of every single problem.

Now, Theodore Roosevelt was a disciple of Herbert Croly, who arguably got the "New Nationalism" from Croly. Like Croly, Roosevelt believed in the supremacy of the NATION, and I put that in both bold and caps for a reason. Croly was a big time statist. His belief about the nation was as a near cultification. For those of you who are well versed in Stalinism and the cult of personality that he built up around himself, its very much like that.

Croly hated the parties, because it divided loyalties. Croly hated religion, again, because it divided loyalty. Croly, and TR by extension, believed the same things - that everybody should worship at the mantle of the big NATIONAL government. The bigger the better. TR wanted a government as big as his own personality was. Now that's big. It's a total Jim Jones-ification of what people believe with regards to nationality.

Did you notice that both progressives Wilson as well as TR emphasized the flag? Again, these are progressives. These are dirty tricksters. You're not supposed to worship the flag! You're supposed to worship God.

God says "Thou shalt have no other gods before me". What Croly, TR, and so many other progressives say is that you shalt have no other gods before the nation. When TR proclaimed the "New Nationalism", what do you think he was impugning as the old nationalism? That's right, the same old saw from progressives that we've heard for the last 100 years. Those old dusty musty old ideas of the Founding Fathers, those all need to be put to bed. Put it back up in the attic and forget about it. That's sooooo 18th century. This is the New Nationalism. New. Shiny. Clean.

Constitution schmonstitution, your nation is before you. So bow down and be walked all over. You don't want to be walked over? We progressives will steamroll you. Prepare to be audited by the IRS.

To put it shortly, what progressive nationalists believe is probably the grossest perversion of the entire concept of nationalism. Unfortunately, that perversion persists to this day.

The Founding Fathers did not believe that the NATION ought to be dictator of all of our lives, quite the reverse. The Founding Fathers believed that THE PEOPLE ought to be above the nation, with God above all. Even as the Constitution was being built and a strengthening of the general government was under way, the Founders never went so far as nationalism. They chose federalism instead.

God first.

The people second.

Localities third.

The states fourth.

The nation? Last. Dead last. Now it is true that 17 powers were nationalized, but the rest of the powers were kept as far as could be from the nation, because that's tyranny.

Conversely, the progressives work in the opposite fashion. This is why they reject God. Government is their god.

The people last.

Localities fourth.

Regions third.

States second.

The nation first.

This is why globalism is a natural turning point for progressive nationalists, because there's only one form of government bigger, and that's globalism. Even Theodore Roosevelt proclaimed the need for global governance, in his Nobel Prize speech. They're progressives, and progressives love government. The bigger the better.

Somewhere down the line, our children's children's children are going to have to fight the progressives and their intra-globalism, because one world government just isn't big enough. They need one universe government. That's progressivism, and Progressive Nationalism is a step along this path. Gotta "make progress" to the bigger government at every turn.

https://tinyurl.com/y7f6mkfa

Evolution and Revolution, by G. D. H. Cole

In 1921, George Douglas Howard Cole(Who would become a member of the Fabian Society) wrote the following in a book about Guild Socialism: (page 156)

We have now completed our outline sketch of the structure and methods of working of a Guild Socialist Commonwealth, and have thus come to the threshold of the practical problem of transition to it from the capitalist Society of to-day. And here the first question that confronts us, as it confronts all Socialists under the conditions of the present time, is the question of "evolution and revolution." Do we hope and intend to bring about the great social transformation to which we look forward by purely evolutionary means, or do we anticipate, at some stage, a phase of catastrophic or revolutionary transition?

The question, stated, as it usually is, in that form, is to some extent misleading; for the word "revolutionary," and to a less extent the word "evolutionary" also, are capable of bearing a variety of interpretations. Revolution, or catastrophic transition, for example, though it probably always involves some employment of force, cannot be taken as necessarily involving force on a scale at all deserving the name of civil war. The first Russian Revolution of 1917 and the German Revolution of 1918 were both definitely revolutions, and were accompanied by some appeal to force ; but in neither was force, in the sense of armed conflict, employed on any considerable scale. The old constitutional system which was displaced crumbled, and a different system took its place, with the minimum of fighting. There are, of course, many who contend that this is one of the main reasons why both these Revolutions achieved so little, and that real social revolution, involving a change of social and economic system as well as of political institutions, will never be accomplished save by a much more extensive employment of armed power ; but, whether this is true or not, it is clearly necessary to distinguish between catastrophic change in which armed power, insofar as it exists, is only a secondary factor, and catastrophic change in which armed power is actually the principal agent of transformation.

Similarly, the word " evolutionary " has more than one sense. It is often interpreted to mean practically "political," and evolutionary methods are treated as identical with the constitutional employment of parliamentary action. But there is also a wider sense in which "evolutionary" tactics can denote a method applicable not merely to politics, but to every sphere of social action, economic and civic as well as political.

One of the things that I do think - is that there people who assume that just because a person is against communism, and against the revolutionaries, that somehow, this is a good person. No, not really. Not all socialists believe that communism is the final stage of socialism. This problem exists with Theodore Roosevelt. No, TR was not a communist, yes, he was a statist. He hated both communists and socialists, yet he was just as bad as they were. The different various big-government ideologies are constantly in competition and at war with each other, proclaiming themselves as the one, true utopia.

George Orwell was also this way, as a more relevant example to the topic. He was an evolutionary socialist, he lived his entire life a socialist and died a socialist. His book 1984 is a defense of socialism. I've even seen Orwell described as a conservative in many places, by people who ought to know better, it's crazy.

This is a grave, grave weakness. We're bringing the trojan horse into the city walls here. When the radicals start waxing poetic about evolution, they don't always mean life cycles and/or earth forces and/or pro-choice and/or Charles Darwin and/or lizards, geckos, fish, and turtles. Sometimes, they're honestly looking you in the face, honestly telling you that they're going to steal your liberty - they just aren't going to do it in one step. But they want you to think they're talking about turtles and/or pro-choice, because that makes it easier for them to steal your liberty. You don't see them coming.

Cole continues:

This, I believe, would be possible for a Labor Movement possessing the present strength of our own, only in face of a capitalist Society far less strong than our own, and only at a quite exceptionally favorable moment, such as occurred in Russia in 1917. To overthrow by this means the far stronger capitalism of Great Britain or America would require a very much stronger, and more fully awakened Labor Movement than now exists in either country.

This is why evolutionary socialists have had so much success in Europe and America. They know full well their movements aren't as strong as capitalism, so they have instead sought another way. Convince people healthcare is a right, convince people that government is a never ending spigot of free money and that debt doesn't matter. I could list a whole litany of things, but that's not the point. Remember Pelosi saying that "We’ll go through the gate. If the gate’s closed, we’ll go over the fence. If the fence is too high, we’ll pole vault in. If that doesn’t work, we’ll parachute in".... That's exactly what Cole is saying.

The point is this, being more knowledgeable about evolutionary socialism can and will be very useful knowledge as it will help to further discriminate about who is and who isn't actually an enemy, as it's never beneficial to bring the enemy into camp to do damage from within.

"Limited strength, when persistently applied, can accomplish great feats", "little strokes fell great oaks", "constant dripping wears away the stone", "death by a thousand cuts", take your pick. They all describe evolutionary socialism. George Orwell was an evolutionary socialist; and so he told a good story. So what? Why exactly does anybody look to him for guidance, especially considering the substance of authors like Friedrich Hayek who didn't create platforms to advance socialism.

https://tinyurl.com/y76gp9ww

The 9th amendment vs the living constitution

There is a new argument that progressives are cooking up, consider this a warning. Be prepared.

In Original Intent and the Framers' Constitution, the following is written: (page 268)

Oddly enough, those who advocate a constitutional "jurisprudence of original intention" and assert that the Constitution "said what it meant and meant what it said," are the ones who most vigorously deny content to the Ninth Amendment and to the concept of a "living Constitution." Presumably, they would not swear fealty to a dead Constitution, not even to a static one of the sort endorsed by Chief Justice Roger Taney in the Dred Scott case. Nevertheless, they reject as absurd the idea that the Ninth Amendment could have been intended as a repository for newly discovered rights that activist judges embrace.

I bring this up because on the face of it, this is a very potent attack. Unless you know a little history, you're about to get steamrolled flat.

I titled this posting "The 9th amendment vs the living constitution", because in reality the 9th amendment contradicts the living constitution theorem. But you have to dig to know.

As simply as I can put it, the 9th amendment is in conflict with Woodrow Wilson's Living Constitution because all rights come from God. Yes, I mean the God of Jacob, Isaac, and Abraham. That's what the Founders believed, that's what I believe, and that's also what those who the author quoted above is impugning believe.(generally)

Without Natural Law and by extension Natural Rights, the 9th amendment is meaningless. Without Natural Law, the progressives are taking the 9th amendment out of context and engaging in a dishonest discussion that's intended to grant themselves advantage.

First off, government cannot grant rights. Read any one of the original bill of rights you want. Here's a transcript. It's to my benefit for you to read them. Not one of the bill of rights grants a right. You don't have freedom of speech because of the first amendment. You don't have protection from property seizure because of the fourth amendment. You don't have protection without due process because of the fifth amendment. The Bill of Rights does. Not. Grant. Rights. It's not the source.

God is.

All rights as written in the Bill of Rights come from the fact that they limit government while propping up the individual. Even the trial by jury, which is a device that is designed to take a baseball bat to government's knees in the context of how governments can and have used courts in the past. It's still rooted in "government shall not". Government shall not throw you into the Star Chamber.

I don't want to spend an excessive amount of time on John Locke, but that's who you should read for the quickest crash course into God's gifts. Locke wrote Two Treatises of Government, and he also wrote The Reasonableness of Christianity as delivered in the Scriptures. Consider reading them. One of those exists even as an audiobook.

Even Thomas Paine, who went off the deep-end in his support for the French Revolutionaries never went so far as to lose his grounding in the reality that governments cannot grant rights. He wrote:

It is a perversion of terms to say that a charter gives rights.

Next, and here's what's even more important, is that the activist judicial view is making the case that judges can invent rights and legislate from the bench.

Then why did the Founders even bother to write article 2? Why have a house and senate in the first place? Just have a president and judges and be done with it all. If judges can invent law, why is article 3 so short? Why isn't article 3 the longest article in the constitution? BTW, judges inventing new law is a form of constitutional amending, as even some who favor such activism will readily admit.(not all, but some)

But! Marbury vs Madison!

What about it? Just because Marshall wrote that "It is emphatically the duty of the Judicial Department to say what the law is.", do you really think that the full text of the Marbury ruling is 15 words long? That's what the progressives think. The progressives do absolutely believe that the Marbury ruling is 15 words wrong. But out here in the real world, we can all put the ruling into our word processors and see that it is nearly 10,000 words long.

Here is what else that John Marshall wrote in the Marbury case:

The Constitution is either a superior, paramount law, unchangeable by ordinary means, or it is on a level with ordinary legislative acts, and, like other acts, is alterable when the legislature shall please to alter it. If the former part of the alternative be true, then a legislative act contrary to the Constitution is not law; if the latter part be true, then written Constitutions are absurd attempts on the part of the people to limit a power in its own nature illimitable.

He also wrote:

It is also not entirely unworthy of observation that, in declaring what shall be the supreme law of the land, the Constitution itself is first mentioned, and not the laws of the United States generally, but those only which shall be made in pursuance of the Constitution, have that rank.

Thus, the particular phraseology of the Constitution of the United States confirms and strengthens the principle, supposed to be essential to all written Constitutions, that a law repugnant to the Constitution is void, and that courts, as well as other departments, are bound by that instrument.

As these paragraphs from the Marbury case make clear, Marshall places the courts below the constitution. John Marshall does not establish judicial supremacy, not in any shape or form. Moreover, Marshall clearly holds the constitution to be a special, extraordinary document. That's why it cannot be changed by ordinary means. Only extraordinary means.

Doesn't the constitution have article 5 for describing what those extraordinary means might look like or what qualifications and procedures to look for and follow? Yes, it does. And judges are not in there.

So not only should we abolish article 2 because the judges have that covered, but we should also abolish article 5 because the judges have that covered as well.

What other parts of the constitution do we not need, simply because we have 9 people wearing black robes who are more than glad to tell us what is best?

Besides, as Marshall brilliantly points out, the Constitution is mentioned first, and the laws are mentioned second in the supremacy clause. Aren't judges mentioned third? Ponder that for a minute. The judges are mentioned last. Third. What does that say to the judicial supremacist? Well, it doesn't say anything to them because they're unaware of the fact that the Marbury ruling is longer than 15 words. But in reality, judicial cases aren't mentioned in the supremacy clause because judges were not supposed to be a part of the legislative process at all.

The best thing any conservative could do is read the Marbury v. Madison case, it's not a terribly long read and its incredible just how big the lies are that progressives tell about it. They are utterly reliant upon the fact that so many won't take the time to read the text. Here is the text. The way progressives constantly bring up Marbury, you would think that the ruling benefits them when in fact, the Marbury ruling is extremely adverse to the progressives mental health. It's also very adverse to the idea that the 9th amendment somehow helps prop up the notion that we have a living and breathing constitutional document.

There is one thing, however, that the original author got correct.

Nevertheless, they reject as absurd the idea that the Ninth Amendment could have been intended as a repository for newly discovered rights that activist judges embrace.

By definition, all of God's rights have already been given. In other words, they're all old. God probably isn't waiting until 2052 to spring yet another new one on us. Surprise! More to the point, if we do get a new one it won't be these progressives who discover it, because government is their god. They would reject whatever was given.

We know God. He knows us. This relationship is over 2,000 years old (and those gifts were given long before that!), and we know the rights he granted are not anything like the rubbish that the progressives are peddling. "New rights" only serve one purpose: to put us all under the thumb of an increasingly out of control government.

https://tinyurl.com/k8vnnmw

Will you listen to this speech audio? Unbelievable.

(He) stated his position when he said that the history of government, the history of liberty, was the history of the limitation of governmental power. This is true as an academic statement of history in the past. It is not true as a statement affecting the present. It is true of the history of medieval Europe. It is not true of the history of twentieth-century America.

In the days when all governmental power existed exclusively in the king or in the baronage and when the people had no shred of that power in their own hands, then it undoubtedly was true that the history of liberty was the history of the limitation of the governmental power of the outsiders who possessed that power. But today, the people have, actually or potentially, the entire governmental power. It is theirs to use and to exercise, if they choose to use and to exercise it. It offers the only adequate instrument with which they can work for the betterment, for the uplifting of the masses of our people.

Unbelievable. Had any democrat spoken these words, they would be raked over the coals. Obama could've said this! Yes, this is absolutely audio of whining that government is not big enough and needs to be bigger and more expansive.

Here's the audio. It's only a 3:48 (4 minute) clip.

This is the exact problem we have with progressivism, and have had now for just over a century. They live government. They breathe government. They sleep government, and they eat government. Government runs through their veins. Every aspect of their life is government-focused, every aspect of their thoughts are filtered through the prism of government. Everything they see would be improved if only government controlled it, and everything they touch needs government in the mix.

Government, government, government! And what's quoted above, that's not the worst of it. Here, here is what he says next: class warfare claptrap!:

The liberty of which (he) speaks today means merely the liberty of some great trust magnate to do that which he is not entitled to do. It means merely the liberty of some factory owner to work haggard women over-hours for under-pay and himself to pocket the profits. It means the liberty of the factory owner to close his operatives into some crazy deathtrap on a top floor, where if fire starts, the slaughter is immense. It means the liberty of the big factory owner—who is conscienceless, and unscrupulous—to work his men and women under conditions which [inaudible] their lives like an [inaudible]. It means the liberty of even less conscientious factory owners to make their money out of the toil, the labor, of little children. Men of this stamp are the men whose liberty would be preserved by (him). Men of this stamp are the men whose liberty would be preserved by the limitation of governmental power. We propose, on the contrary, to extend governmental power in order to secure the liberty of the wage workers, of the men and women who toil in industry, to save the liberty of the oppressed from the oppressor. (He) stands for the liberty of the oppressor to oppress. We stand for the limitation of his liberty not to oppress those who are weaker than himself.

Progressives have been using this very template for over 100 years. I heard Chuck Schumer use it last week. Any time you want to put government back into it's constitutional box, the progressives trot out this false narrative. Never fails. You're just a stooge for the rich, according to Theodore Roosevelt. You're in their pockets, you're beholden to the lobbyists, you're paid off. You're GREEDY. Thanks for clearing that up TR! Thanks pal!

Every word in that audio is perverse, it's word pollution - diarrhea of the mouth. Progressivism is incredibly sickening.

https://tinyurl.com/lcldp7s

Progressive Cause Greater Than Any Individual, by Theodore Roosevelt

PROGRESSIVE CAUSE GREATER THAN ANY INDIVIDUAL

By Theodore Roosevelt, October 14th, 1912

Just before entering the Auditorium at Milwaukee, an attempt was made on Colonel Roosevelt's life. The speech which follows is from a stenographic report, differing considerably from the prepared manuscript. - Editor's Note

FRIENDS, I shall ask you to be as quiet as possible. I don't know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot; but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose. But fortunately I had my manuscript, so you see I was going to make a long speech, and there is a bullet - there is where the bullet went through - and it probably saved me from it going into my heart. The bullet is in me now, so that I can not make a very long speech, but I will try my best.

And now, friends, I want to take advantage of this incident and say a word of solemn warning to my fellow countrymen. First of all, I want to say this about myself: I have altogether too important things to think of to feel any concern over my own death; and now I can not speak to you insincerely within five minutes of being shot. I am telling you the literal truth when I say that my concern is for many other things. It is not in the least for my own life. I want you to understand that I am ahead of the game, anyway. No man has had a happier life than I have led; a happier life in every way. I have been able to do certain things that I greatly wished to do, and I am interested in doing other things. I can tell you with absolute truthfulness that I am very much uninterested in whether I am shot or not. It was just as when I was colonel of my regiment. I always felt that a private was to be excused for feeling at times some pangs of anxiety about his personal safety, but I can not understand a man fit to be a colonel who can pay any heed to his personal safety when he is occupied as he ought to be occupied with the absorbing desire to do his duty.

I am in this cause with my whole heart and soul. I believe that the Progressive movement is for making life a little easier for all our people; a movement to try to take the burdens off the men and especially the women and children of this country. I am absorbed in the success of that movement.

Friends, I ask you now this evening to accept what I am saying as absolutely true, when I tell you I am not thinking of my own success. I am not thinking of my life or of anything connected with me personally. I am thinking of the movement. I say this by way of introduction, because I want to say something very serious to our people and especially to the newspapers. I don't know anything about who the man was who shot me tonight. He was seized at once by one of the stenographers in my party, Mr. Martin, and I suppose is now in the hands of the police. He shot to kill. He shot - the shot, the bullet went in here - I will show you.

I am going to ask you to be as quiet as possible for I am not able to give the challenge of the bull moose quite as loudly. Now, I do not know who he was or what party he represented. He was a coward. He stood in the darkness in the crowd around the automobile, and when they cheered me, and I got up to bow, he stepped forward and shot me in the darkness.

Now, friends, of course, I do not know, as I say, anything about him; but it is a very natural thing that weak and vicious minds should be inflamed to acts of violence by the kind of awful mendacity and abuse that have been heaped upon me for the last three months by the papers in the interest of not only Mr. Debs but of Mr. Wilson and Mr. Taft.

Friends, I will disown and repudiate any man of my party who attacks with such foul slander and abuse any opponent of any other party; and now I wish to say' seriously to all the daily newspapers, to the Republican, the Democratic and the Socialist parties, that they can not, month in and month out and year in and year out, make the kind of untruthful, of bitter assault that they have made and not expect that brutal, violent natures, or brutal and violent characters, especially when the brutality is accompanied by a not very strong mind; they can not expect that such natures will be unaffected by it.

Now, friends, I am not speaking for myself at all. I give you my word, I do not care a rap about being shot; not a rap.

I have had a good many experiences in my time and this is one of them. What I care for is my country. I wish I were able to impress upon my people - our people, the duty to feel strongly but to speak the truth of their opponents. I say now, I have never said one word against any opponent that I can not - on the stump - that I can not defend. I have said nothing that I could not substantiate and nothing that I ought not to have said - nothing that I - nothing that, looking back at, I would not say again.

Now, friends, it ought not to be too much to ask that our opponents - [speaking to some one on the stage] - I am not sick at all. I am all right. I can not tell you of what infinitesimal importance I regard this incident as compared with the great issues at stake in this campaign, and I ask it not for my sake, not the least in the world, but for the sake of our common country, that they make up their minds to speak only the truth, and not to use the kind of slander and mendacity which if taken seriously must incite weak and violent natures to crimes of violence. Don't you make any mistake. Don't you pity me. I am all right. I am all right and you can not escape listening to the speech either.

And now, friends, this incident that has just occurred - this effort to assassinate me, emphasizes to a peculiar degree the need of this Progressive movement. Friends, every good citizen ought to do everything in his or her power to prevent the coming of the day when we shall see in this country two recognized creeds fighting one another, when we shall see the creed of the “Have-nots " arraigned against the creed of the “Haves." When that day comes then such incidents as this tonight will be commonplace in our history. When you make poor men - when you permit the conditions to grow such that the poor man as such will be swayed by his sense of injury against the men who try to hold what they improperly have won, when that day comes, the most awful passions will be let loose and it will be an ill day for our country.

Now, friends, what we who are in this movement are endeavoring to do is to forestall any such movement by making this a movement for justice now - a movement in which we ask all just men of generous hearts to join with the men who feel in their souls that lift upward which bids them refuse to be satisfied themselves while their countrymen and countrywomen suffer from avoidable misery. Now, friends, what we Progressives are trying to do is to enroll rich or poor, whatever their social or industrial position, to stand together for the most elementary rights of good citizenship, those elementary rights which are the foundation of good citizenship in this great Republic of ours.

My friends are a little more nervous than I am. Don't you waste any sympathy on me. I have had an A-1 time in life and I am having it now.

I never in my life was in any movement in which I was able to serve with such whole-hearted devotion as in this; in which I was able to feel as I do in this that common weal. I have fought for the good of our common country.

And now, friends, I shall have to cut short much of the speech that I meant to give you, but I want to touch on just two or three of the points.

In the first place, speaking to you here in Milwaukee, I wish to say that the Progressive Party is making its appeal to all our fellow citizens without any regard to their creed or to their birthplace. We do not regard as essential the way in which a man worships his God or as being affected by where he was born. We regard it as a matter of spirit and purpose. In New York, while I was Police Commissioner, the two men from whom I got the most assistance were Jacob Riis, who was born in Denmark, and Oliver Van Briesen, who was born in Germany - both of them as fine examples of the best and highest American citizenship as you could find in any part of this country.

I have just been introduced by one of your own men here - Henry Cochems. His grandfathers, his father and that father's seven brothers, all served in the United States army, and they entered it four years after they had come to this country from Germany. Two of them left their lives, spent their lives, on the field of battle. I am all right - I am a little sore. Anybody has a right to be sore with a bullet in him. You would find that if I was in battle now I would be leading my men just the same. Just the same way I am going to make this speech.

At one time I promoted five men for gallantry on the field of battle. Afterward in making some inquiries about them I found it happened that two of them were Protestants, two Catholics and one a Jew. One Protestant came from Germany and one was born in Ireland. I did not promote them because of their religion. It just happened that way. If all five of them had been Jews I would have promoted them, or if all five had been Protestants I would have promoted them; or if they had been Catholics. In that regiment I had a man born in Italy who distinguished himself by gallantry; there was a young fellow, a son of Polish parents, and another who came here when he was a child from Bohemia, who likewise distinguished themselves; and friends, I assure you, that I was incapable of considering any question whatever, but the worth of each individual as a fighting man. If he was a good fighting man, then I saw that Uncle Sam got the benefit from it. That is all.

I make the same appeal in our citizenship. I ask in our civic life that we in the same way pay heed only to the man's quality of citizenship, to repudiate as the worst enemy that we can have whoever tries to get us to discriminate for or against any man because of his creed or his birth-place.

Now, friends, in the same way I want our people to stand by one another without regard to differences of class or occupation. I have always stood by the labor unions. I am going to make one omission tonight. I have prepared my speech because Mr. Wilson had seen fit to attack me by showing up his record in comparison with mine. But I am not going to do that tonight. I am going to simply speak of what I myself have done and of what I think ought to be done in this country of ours.

It is essential that there should be organizations of labor. This is an era of organization. Capital organizes and therefore labor must organize.

My appeal for organized labor is twofold; to the outsider and the capitalist I make my appeal to treat the laborer fairly, to recognize the fact that he must organize, that there must be such organization, that the laboring man must organize for his own protection, and that it is the duty of the rest of us to help him and not hinder him in organizing. That is one-half of the appeal that I make.

Now, the other half is to the labor man himself. My appeal to him is to remember that as he wants justice, so he must do justice. I want every labor man, every labor leader, every organized union man, to take the lead in denouncing crime or violence. I want them to take the lead in denouncing disorder and in denouncing the inciting of riot; that in this country we shall proceed under the protection of our laws and with all respect to the laws, and I want the labor men to feel in their turn that exactly as justice must be done them so they must do justice. That they must bear their duty as citizens, their duty to this great country of ours, and that they must not rest content unless they do that duty to the fullest degree.

I know these doctors when they get hold of me they will never let me go back, and there are just a few things more that I want to say to you.

And here I have got to make one comparison between Mr. Wilson and myself, simply because he has invited it and I can not shrink from it.

Mr. Wilson has seen fit to attack me, to say that I did not do much against the trusts when I was President. I have got two answers to make to that. In the first place what I did, and then I want to compare what I did while I was President and what Mr. Wilson did not do while he was Governor.

When I took office the Anti-Trust Law was practically a dead letter and the Inter-State Commerce Law in as poor a condition. I had to revive both laws. I did. I enforced both. It will be easy enough to do now what I did then, but the reason that it is easy now is because I did it when it was hard.

Nobody was doing anything. I found speedily that the Inter-State Commerce Law by being made more perfect could be made a most useful instrument for helping solve some of our industrial problems. So with the Anti-Trust Law. I speedily found that almost the only positive good achieved by such a successful lawsuit as the Northern Securities suit, for instance, was in establishing the principle that the Government was supreme over the big corporation, but that by itself that law did not accomplish any of the things that we ought to have accomplished; and so I began to fight for the amendment of the law along the lines of the Inter-State Commerce Law, and now we propose, we Progressives, to establish an inter-State commission having the same power over industrial concerns that the Inter-State Commerce Commission has over railroads, so that whenever there is in the future a decision rendered in such important matters as the recent suits against! the Standard Oil, the sugar - no not that - tobacco - Tobacco Trust - we will have a commission which will see that the decree of the court is really made effective; that it is not made a merely nominal decree.

Our opponents have said that we intend to legalize monopoly. Nonsense. They have legalized monopoly. At this moment the Standard Oil and Tobacco Trust monopolies are legalized; they are being carried on under the decree of the Supreme Court.

Our proposal is really to break up monopoly. Our proposal is to put in the law - to lay down certain requirements, and then require the commerce commission - the industrial commission - to see that the trusts live up to those requirements. Our opponents have spoken as if we were going to let the commission declare what the requirements should be. Not at all. We are going to put the requirements in the law and then see that the commission requires them to obey that law.

And now, friends, as Mr. Wilson has invited the comparison, I only want to say this: Mr. Wilson has said that the States are the proper authorities to deal with the trusts. Well, about eighty per cent. of the trusts are organized in New Jersey. The Standard Oil, the tobacco, the sugar, the beef, all those trusts are organized in New Jersey and Mr. Wilson - and the laws of New Jersey say that their charters can at any time be amended or repealed if they misbehave themselves and it gives the Government - the laws give the Government ample power to act about those laws, and Mr. Wilson has been Governor a year and nine months and he has not opened his lips. The chapter describing what Mr. Wilson has done about the trusts in New Jersey would read precisely like a chapter describing the snakes in Ireland, which ran: "There are no snakes in Ireland." Mr. Wilson has done precisely and exactly nothing about the trusts.

I tell you, and I told you at the beginning, I do not say anything on the stump that I do not believe. I do not say anything I do not know. Let any of Mr. Wilson's friends on Tuesday point out one thing or let Mr. Wilson point out one thing he has done about the trusts as Governor of New Jersey.

And now, friends, there is one thing I want to say especially to you people here in Wisconsin. All that I have said so far is what I would say in any part of this Union. I have a peculiar right to ask that in this great contest you men and women of Wisconsin shall stand with us. You have taken the lead in progressive movements here in Wisconsin. You have taught the rest of us to look to you for inspiration and leadership. Now, friends, you have made that movement here locally. You will be doing a dreadful injustice to yourselves; you will be doing a dreadful injustice to the rest of us throughout this Union, if you fail to stand with us now that we are making this National movement, and what I am about to say now I want you to understand if I speak of Mr. Wilson I speak with no mind of bitterness. I merely want to discuss the difference of policy between the Progressive and the Democratic Party and to ask you to think for yourselves which party you will follow. I will say that, friends, because the Republican Party is beaten. Nobody need to have any idea that anything can be done with the Republican Party.

When the Republican Party - not the Republican Party - when the bosses in the control of the Republican Party, the Barneses and Penroses, last June stole the nomination and wrecked the Republican Party for good and all; I want to point out to you nominally they stole that nomination from me, but really it was from you. They did not like me, and the longer they live the less cause they will have to like me. But while they do not like me, they dread you. You are the people that they dread. They dread the people themselves, and those bosses and the big special interests behind them made up their mind that they would rather see the Republican Party wrecked than see it come under the control of the people themselves. So I am not dealing with the Republican Party. There are only two ways you can vote this year. You can be progressive or reactionary. Whether you vote Republican or Democratic it does not make any difference, you are voting reactionary.

Now, the Democratic Party in its platform and through the utterances of Mr. Wilson has distinctly committed itself to the old flintlock, muzzle-loaded doctrine of States' rights, and I have said distinctly that we are for the people's rights. We are for the rights of the people. If they can be obtained best through the National Government, then we are for National rights. We are for the people's rights however it is necessary to secure them.

Mr. Wilson has made a long essay against Senator Beveridge's bill to abolish child labor. It is the same kind of an argument that would be made against our bill to prohibit women from working more than eight hours a day in industry. It is the same kind of argument that would have to be made; if it is true, it would apply equally against our proposal to insist that in continuous industries there shall be by law one day's rest in seven and a three-shift eight-hour day. You have labor laws here in Wisconsin, and any Chamber of Commerce will tell you that because of that fact there are industries that will not come into Wisconsin. They prefer to stay outside where they can work children of tender years, where they can work women fourteen and sixteen hours a day, where, if it is a continuous industry, they can work men twelve hours a day and seven days a week.

Now, friends, I know that you of Wisconsin would never repeal those laws even if they are to your commercial hurt, just as I am trying to get New York to adopt such laws even though it will be to New York's commercial hurt. But if possible I want to arrange it so that we can have justice without commercial hurt, and you can only get that if you have justice enforced Nationally. You won't be burdened in Wisconsin with industries not coming to the state if the same good laws are extended all over the other States. Do you see what I mean? The States all compete in a common market; and it is not justice to the employers of a State that has enforced just and proper laws to have them exposed to the competition of another State where no such laws are enforced. Now, the Democratic platform, and their speakers, declare that we shall not have such laws. Mr. Wilson has distinctly declared that you shall not have a National law prohibit the labor of children, to prohibit child labor. He has distinctly declared that we shall not have a law to establish a minimum wage for women.

I ask you to look at our declaration and hear and read our platform about social and industrial justice and then, friends, vote for the Progressive ticket without regard to me, without regard to my personality, for only by voting for that platform can you be true to the cause of progress through-out this Union.

https://tinyurl.com/zak2zdu

Woodrow Wilson describes progressive democrats and progressive republicans

In A People Awakened, a book detailing his bid for governor of New Jersey, Woodrow Wilson stated the following at a campaign speech on November 2nd, just days before the gubernatorial election: (page 203)

I feel as I look over an audience like this that something has happened in New Jersey. We have tried to introduce a new kind of political campaign, and it seems to take, for we are not interested in commending a party to you, we are not interested in commending persons for office, but we are deeply interested in commending certain political purposes to you, we are deeply interested in discussing the means of advancing the welfare of the Commonwealth to which we should be devoted.

We have heard a great deal in recent months of Progressive Republicans and of Progressive Democrats and of progressive men of this, that and the other creed or persuasion. I suppose that the implication is that there are also retrogressive Republicans and retrogressive Democrats and men of every sort or other who wish to stand still or to pull things back to a period which we hope we have left behind us. But whatever our understanding of the meaning of these designations may be, this thing is clear, that only those who profess progressive principles are now likely to attract the attention or to hold to themselves the purposes of this free country.

There is no means of health except progress. Nothing can be kept, nothing that lives can be kept at a single point without disease and decay. When you speak, therefore, of a Progressive Republican I understand you to mean a man who wishes to carry forward to the uses of a new age the ancient principles of an old party. When you speak of a Progressive Democrat I understand that you mean not a man who will always be standing upon a literal interpretation of quotations of Thomas Jefferson, but one who will try to carry forward in the service of a new age the spirit of Thomas Jefferson, the spirit of this man who tried to comprehend the things of the people, and to serve them by political combinations and concerted action.

What we want, therefore, and what I dare say a company of men like this is united in wanting, is a progressive Government. But it is one thing to use these general terms and to be sure that you want to make progress, and it is another thing to know what progress is and wherein it consists. The fact that a man is moving all the time does not prove that he is progressive; it depends where he started and in what direction he is going.

I have seen men stumble on the right track, and I have seen men keep to the right track by a sort of an indulgent Providence, but neither sort of man is the leader of progress. Progress consists of movement from day to day, foot by foot, through a long series of practical details. We never invented and never shall invent the airship in politics; we have to keep our feet on the ground, to accommodate ourselves to slow movements and a united life in order to make progress.

https://tinyurl.com/jtwkjny

Conservatives are protesters. Progressives are rioters.

I have been reading some news entries and saw some pictures of some of the crowds from the March 4 Trump rallies.

I just wanted to say thank you to all of you. You turned off your televisions, neglected whatever sport happened to be on, you got up off of your couches, and many of you brought your families. That is good, your young kids (or grandkids!) need to see you doing this - they need this example. They need to see you engaging in self-government, something which our Founders showed us that we needed to be out there doing. Yes, this is an important part of self-government, and showing up is the most important thing of all.

Protesting is not a "left wing thing", it's a constitutional thing. It's not less important than your job - and if you were scheduled to work that day and specifically went out of your way to request the day off or used a vacation day - bravo, you deserve a special thanks. You have your priorities straight. Going out to events like this are the single most inexpensive and least time consuming way we have to be heard and more importantly, to be seen.

I see no evidence anywhere that the left deserves to have a monopoly on holding up banners and being heard. Bravo to you, who are working hard to demolish that monopoly.

Now rioting, that's a different story. Good thing, we are letting progressives keep their monopoly on riots and violence. But that's the difference between conservatives and progressives.

Conservatives are protesters. Progressives are rioters. Some of you were even assaulted by these violent thug progressives. Thank you for acting true to form, and not striking back. That's the price we have to pay to be on the correct side of history. You and I, we all know that the progressives desperately want you to fight back, because then their buddies in the media can lay the blame all on you. There can be video of an entire incident, proving that you're innocent and only defended yourself, and the journalists - they won't care. They will craft the most bogus headlines and stories, and stand firm next to the lie. They're out to get you and anyone else whom they deem to be their political enemies, and therefore, all of us have to be willing to be the bigger man, the Gandhi, to their William Randolph Hearst.

Sincerely. If you place your Liberty as more important than your job or any other things, thank you. I have a strong appreciation for those who are willing to do something a simple as show up. It's not so simple after all.

After the Battle of Stony Point, General "Mad" Anthony Wayne sent a brief dispatch to General Washington, and in that note he said "Our officers and men behaved like men who are determined to be free".

The progressives have no need to be free. But you do. You are showing us what men who are determined to be free behave like. Peaceful. Resolute. Visible.

https://tinyurl.com/z3okcdt

Concerning the Founding of Nationalist Colonies, by Edward Bellamy

Concerning the Founding of Nationalist Colonies

By Edward Bellamy, editor of The New Nation (1893)

The editor of The New Nation is very often asked for an opinion as to the merits of various plans for starting colonies, communities and exclusive settlements for the purpose of carrying out the principles of nationalism. By way of general reply we would say that the existing colonies called cities, states and nations seem to us best adapted to the illustration of our principles. The machinery of these existing organizations is strong, well proven and complete, and it belongs to the people as soon as they get good and ready to take it away from the plutocrats and the politicians. We should consider the cause of nationalism more advanced by a single step taken by the city, state or nation toward its ideal, and embodied in the law of the land, than by the complete success of some small colony founded on the full nationalist plan. The gain made by the embodiment of a nationalist idea in the laws and institutions of a state a nation or a great city, is permanent; while the most brilliant success of a petty body of reformers is likely to be but temporary, depending as it ordinarily does upon the personal qualities of particular managers or a temporary wave of enthusiasm on the part of the membership. As a test of what the main body of humanity, that is to say the average man, is capable of, the success or failure of enterprises undertaken by selected enthusiasts is of no value whatever. We nationalists are not trying to work out our individual salvation, but the weal of all, and no man is a true nationalist who even wishes to be saved unless all the rest are. A slight amendment in the condition of the mass of men is preferable to elysium attained by a few.

It is sometimes urged as an argument for colony experiments as a means of advancing nationalism, that the success of a particular enterprise of that sort would soon convert the world. There is no reason to think so. The world has had numerous examples of saints, who illustrated in their lives the beauty of holiness, but the world has thus far shown itself decidedly more inclined to admire than to imitate their examples. If you would lead men you must take them by the hand.

The same amount of steam power which will raise one pound a thousand feet, will raise a thousand pounds one foot.

In like manner the moral force which might perfect the social conditions of a selected group, would, if expended in trying to wake up and brace up the community at large, perhaps only help them upward a very little; yet the latter is the righteous and godlike way of spending that force. Jesus Christ put it in a nutshell when he said "The field is the world." What is the matter with the colony we were born into?