below Page 2 of
3 THE SHAPE OF
US POPULISM, Part 3 The progressive era By
Henry C K Liu
the heresy trial and
subsequent banishment of Anne Hutchinson from the
colony.
On liberty Winthrop wrote:
There is a twofold liberty, natural
(I mean as our nature is now corrupt) and civil
or federal. The first is common to man with
beasts and other creatures. By this, man, as he
stands in relation to man simply, hath liberty
to do what he lists; it is a liberty to evil as
well as to good. This liberty is incompatible
and inconsistent with authority and cannot
endure the least restraint of the most just
authority. The exercise and maintaining of this
liberty makes men grow more evil and in time to
be worse than brute beasts: omnes sumus
licentia deteriores. This is that great
enemy of truth and peace, that wild beast, which
all of the ordinances of God are bent against,
to restrain and subdue it.
The other kind of liberty I
call civil or federal; it may also be termed
moral, in reference to the covenant between God
and man, in the moral law, and the politic
covenants and constitutions amongst men
themselves. This liberty is the proper end and
object of authority and cannot subsist without
it; and it is a liberty to that only which is
good, just, and honest. This liberty you are to
stand for, with the hazard (not only of your
goods, but) of your lives, if need be.
Whatsoever crosseth this is not authority but a
distemper thereof. This liberty is maintained
and exercised in a way of subjection to
authority; it is of the same kind of liberty
wherewith Christ hath made us free.Under Winthrop’s moral liberty,
God help those who think, let alone act,
independently of authority. The term "Puritan"
first began as a taunt or insult applied by
traditional Anglicans to those who criticized or
wished to "purify" the Church of England.
"Puritan" refers to two distinct groups:
"separating" Puritans, such as the Plymouth
colonists, who believed that the Church of England
was corrupt and that true Christians must separate
themselves from it; and non-separating Puritans,
such as the colonists who settled the
Massachusetts Bay Colony, who believed in reform
but not separation and wished to reform the
established church, largely Congregationalists who
believed in forming churches through voluntary
compacts. The idea of compacts or covenant was
central to the Puritan conception of social,
political, and religious organizations. Belief in
predestination differentiates Puritans from other
Christians. Salvation is determined by God’s
sovereignty, including choosing those who will be
saved and those who will receive God’s
irresistible grace.
As such, Winthrop also
subscribed to the belief that the native peoples
who lived in the hinterlands around the colony
had been struck down by God, who sent disease
among them because of their non-Christian
beliefs:
But for the natives in these parts,
God hath so pursued them, as for 300 miles space
the greatest part of them are swept away by
smallpox which still continues among them. So as
God hath thereby cleared our title to this
place, those who remain in these parts, being in
all not 50, have put themselves under our
protection.
Notwithstanding Winthrop’s
dubious claim of "God clearing our title to this
land", which made a farce of the principle of
private property rights, particularly when such
clearing had been accomplished by biological
terrorism, the historical fact was that smallpox
was spread to Native Americans by the biological
terrorism practiced by Lord Jeffrey Amherst,
commanding general of British forces in North
America during the final battles of the so-called
French and Indian war (1754-1763).
Amherst
distributed smallpox-infected blankets as
instruments of germ warfare against Native
Americans, as reported in Carl Waldman’s Atlas
of the North American Indian. Waldman writes,
in reference to a siege of Fort Pitt (Pittsburgh)
by Chief Pontiac's forces during the summer of
1763:
... Captain Simeon Ecuyer had bought
time by sending smallpox-infected blankets and
handkerchiefs to the Indians surrounding the
fort - an early example of biological warfare -
which started an epidemic among them. Amherst
himself had encouraged this tactic in a letter
to Ecuyer. [p. 108]
As president,
Reagan’s official attitude on HIV/AIDS as God’s
punishment for homosexuals did much to forestall
effective early prevention of a global epidemic.
Political support for Reagan came primarily from
the newly organized religious right as represented
by the Moral Majority, a right-wing
political-action group founded by the Reverent
Jerry Falwell who proclaimed with religious
authority: "AIDS is the wrath of God upon
homosexuals."
Reagan’s communications
director Pat Buchanan echoed that AIDS is
"nature’s revenge on gay men". AIDS became the
convenient weapon and gay men the easy target, for
the Reagan era politics of fear, hate and
discrimination that carried on the "shining city
on the hill" tradition of John Winthrop. In
reality, socio-medical data show that innocent
African American women, not sinful gay men, are
the largest AIDS-infected group. Over 57% of all
infected children were black in a population in
which blacks constitute only 13%.
Taxes
and war Reagan also said in his farewell
speech: "Common sense told us that when you put a
big tax on something, the people will produce less
of it."
By this simplistic logic, there
should be a big tax on war to produce less war and
more peace. Yet, instead of a big tax on war, the
Reagan administration provided a big subsidy for
foreign wars, producing the largest national debt
in history by big spending on offensive arms. The
financial statistics of war in the US economy show
definitively that war has been highly profitable
for big business as most war purchases are
directed towards the private sector.
The
current concern about the two foreign wars
draining funds from domestic needs is part of the
revived wave of populism. War spending is a big
factor in the strong corporate earnings that silly
pundits continue to refer to as sign of
fundamental strength in the economy in the face of
a total collapse of the financial sector.
The moral imperialism of US foreign policy
is based not on what Reagan believed is "a tall
proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans"
but on an illusionary fantasy built on the
quicksand of self-indulging morality. As a nation,
the US is probably not better or worse morally
than other nations. What makes the US dangerous as
the world’s sole remaining superpower is its
transformational foreign policy to "enlarge
democracy" based on an unjustified self-image of
self-righteous moral superiority. God may be on
the side of the US, but facts are not.
The first Progressive
president With the assassination of
President McKinley in 1901, Theodore Roosevelt,
not quite 43, became the youngest president in the
nation’s history and served two terms until 1909.
Roosevelt reversed the pro-big-business polices of
McKinley with progressive policies. The official
White House biography of Roosevelt read:
He brought new excitement and power
to the Presidency, as he vigorously led Congress
and the American public toward progressive
reforms and a strong foreign policy. He took the
view that the President as a 'steward of the
people' should take whatever action necessary
for the public good unless expressly forbidden
by law or the Constitution ... As President,
Roosevelt held the ideal that the Government
should be the great arbiter of the conflicting
economic forces in the Nation, especially
between capital and labor, guaranteeing justice
to each and dispensing favors to none. Roosevelt
emerged spectacularly as a "trust buster" by
forcing the dissolution of a great railroad
combination in the Northwest. Other antitrust
suits under the Sherman Act followed.
Roosevelt steered the United States more
actively into world politics. He liked to quote
a favorite proverb, "Speak softly and carry a
big stick". Aware of the strategic need for a
shortcut between the Atlantic and Pacific,
Roosevelt ensured the construction of the Panama
Canal. His corollary to the Monroe Doctrine
prevented the establishment of foreign bases in
the Caribbean and arrogated the sole right of
intervention in Latin America to the United
States. He won the Nobel Peace Prize for
mediating the Russo-Japanese War, reached a
Gentleman's Agreement on immigration with Japan,
and sent the Great White Fleet on a goodwill
tour of the world. Some of Theodore Roosevelt’s
most effective achievements were in
conservation. He added enormously to the
national forests in the West, reserved lands for
public use, and fostered great irrigation
projects.
Roosevelt was followed as
president by William Howard Taft. According to
official White House biography:
[Taft] was caught in the intense
battles between Progressives and conservatives.
… He pledged his loyalty to the Roosevelt
program, popular in the West, while his brother
Charles reassured eastern Republicans. William
Jennings Bryan, running on the Democratic ticket
for a third time, complained that he was having
to oppose two candidates, a western progressive
Taft and an eastern conservative Taft.
Progressives were pleased with Taft’s election.
"Roosevelt has cut enough hay," they said; "Taft
is the man to put it into the barn."
Conservatives were delighted to be rid of
Roosevelt - the "mad messiah".
Taft
recognized that his techniques would differ from
those of his predecessor. Unlike Roosevelt, Taft
did not believe in the stretching of
Presidential powers. He once commented that
Roosevelt "ought more often to have admitted the
legal way of reaching the same ends". Taft
alienated many liberal Republicans who later
formed the Progressive Party by defending the
Payne-Aldrich Act which unexpectedly continued
high tariff rates. … In 1912, when the
Republicans re-nominated Taft, Roosevelt bolted
the party to lead the Progressives, thus
guaranteeing the election of Woodrow
Wilson.
Notwithstanding the
co-optation of populism into the progressive wings
of the two-party system, the presidential election
of 1912 was contested by three major candidates,
two of whom had previously won election to the
highest office of the land.
Incumbent
Republican President William Howard Taft was
re-nominated with the support of the conservative
wing of the party. Frustrated, former Republican
president Theodore Roosevelt, supported by the
populist faction, formed the Progressive Party
(nicknamed the "Bull Moose Party", a name derived
from his response to press question about his
health that he was "as fit as a bull moose").
Democrat Woodrow Wilson was
nominated only on the 46th ballot of a contentious
convention, helped finally by the support of the
populist Bryan and the delegates Bryan controlled.
In the election,
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