Opinion by Martin
This is the second part of a four part discussion about the political system of the United States and your part in it.
Quite a bit of the following section (italicized) has been taken from the Nebraska Studies website, www.nebraskastudies.org to show that Progressivism, at least in the United States, did not necessarily mean Socialism or Communism. That aspect came later when the Democrat Party was surrendered to elitists and the unions.
In the United States, the Progressive Movement has gone from one that truly worked for the Common Man to one of Elitist privilege. However, it wasn’t always that way. In the beginning, the nation was mainly an agrarian society and, although more and more was being produced through newly invented equipment and procedures, the various costs to operate farms and ranches kept going up while the prices for the production kept dropping.
The modern Progressive Movement actually started in Nebraska in the 1800s with the Patrons of Husbandry or “The Grange” attempting to reduce the cost of farming by organizing cooperatives that operated stores and built low-cost machinery. Most of their coops failed, but they did have some success in politics, i.e. an amendment to the Nebraska State constitution allowing the government to regulate the railroads.
The next step in radicalism of the Progressives was the Farmer’s Alliance which felt that neither the Democrats nor the Republicans represented their needs and in July of 1890, the Populist Party was founded. In November of 1890, the fledgling organization took over the Nebraska legislature with 54 members versus 25 Democrats and 21 Republicans. The Populists passed all kinds of social legislation – compulsory school attendance, public fund insurance laws and mutual insurance. They even passed an 8 hour work day except on farms. This law was promptly struck down by the Nebraska Supreme Court. In 1894, the Populists reunited with the Democrat Party with William Jennings Bryan as the key for unification. Although they worked very hard, the Populist Party never was able to take control of the state government and in 1908 was dissolved.
One of the positive aspects of the Progressive Movement was giving the Right to Vote to Women while some of the downside included the Federal Reserve Act, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Government’s control of currency and banking.[i] Another aspect of Progressivism was the Constitutional Amendment that started Prohibition and the era of the gangster.
Today’s Progressives claim to be for the “little person”, the disenfranchised, the elderly and the worker when nothing is further from the truth. The Progressive Movement has gone from an organization that fought against low wages and unsafe conditions for the workers to one that believes that government should provide everything to everyone (whether they want it or not). Today’s Progressive feels that your money and property belongs to the government and should be shared with others whether or not they are citizens or if they contribute to society. If you work hard and succeed through your own dedication, you should be punished through taxation and other legislative acts that spend your money. The government more or less been controlled by Progressives since before Theodore Roosevelt in the early 1900s. A few examples have already been mentioned, but include the Interstate Commerce Act (1887) through which the Federal Government is forcing us to accept obamacare, the Sherman Antitrust Act (used against the Bell Telephone System (for better or for worse), and Progressives have been slowly working from the local level (PTAs, Library Boards, Town Councils, County Commissions, etc) to take over the entire governmental system of the United States and form a “socialist utopia” based on massive spending and redistribution of wealth across the entire national spectrum.
In my opinion, the Progressive Movement (read Democrat Party) in the United States has been hijacked by “Big State Elitists” such as Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and the Unions as well as Socialists, Communists and statists of every stripe.
The only possible outcome of the Progressive agenda is the massive failure of the United States as a Nation and as the guiding light for the rest of the world. The Beacon of Freedom is being extinguished from within. Nikita Khrushchev was correct when he stated “We shall bury you!” AND, it is from within.
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