Saturday, January 9, 2010

• Item by Malcolm T. Hedges

Surprised? Well so was I, Glenn mentioned it yesterday, so I investigated..

“Call it what you like - progressivism, fascism, communism, totalitarianism - the first true enterprise of this kind was established not in Russia or Italy or Germany but in the United States, and Woodrow Wilson was the twentieth century’s first fascist dictator.“(1)

“In his brilliant new book Liberal Fascism, Jonah Goldberg (a colleague of mine) demonstrates how the opposite is the case, that fascism was a movement of the left and that liberal heroes like Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Delano Roosevelt were products of what Goldberg calls “the fascist moment” in America early in the 20th century. How we think of the ideological spectrum - socialism to the left, fascism to the right - should be forever changed.“(2)

“We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class of necessity in every society, to forgo the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.“
— Woodrow Wilson(3)

“For one thing, he was a huge racist.“, “His administration’s handling of the great influenza pandemic was disastrous, and his record on civil liberties was the worst in American history.“, “...the switch from “trust-busting” lawsuits to attempting to use the FTC to establish regulatory cartels doesn’t seem to me to have been a great idea.“(4)

“More than anyone, Woodrow Wilson advanced the new Progressive theory of human nature and human institutions and the corresponding Progressive critique of the principles of the American Founding and the Founders’ Constitution. Wilson, who was president of Princeton and of the American Political Science Association before becoming President of the United States, was the first Chief Executive to openly criticize the Constitution, once comparing it to “political witchcraft.“ So hostile was he to the self evident truths of the Founding that in a 1911 address he remarked, “if you want to understand the real Declaration of Independence, do not repeat the preface.“(5)

The two books(6)(7): “In Woodrow Wilson and the Roots of American Liberalism, Dr. Pestritto offers a penetrating account of Wilson’s historicist political philosophy and its influence for American politics. Woodrow Wilson: The Essential Political Writings is the first one-volume collection of Wilson’s seminal political works and will be especially useful for educators who teach Wilson and progressivism in the classroom.“(5)

“The story of big government in America begins in the Progressive Era, stretching from the 1880s through World War I. Enamored with 19th-century European historicist philosophy and unwilling to hold any truths as self-evident, American Progressives thought[think] the natural right principles of the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution represented the greatest obstacle to political “progress” and “evolution.“ In place of the U.S. Constitution,  Progressivism proposed an administrative state whose purpose would be the unending quest of evolutionary “progress” and whose powers therefore would be unlimited.“(8)

“In the course of the 20th century and continuing into the 21st century, Wilson’s interpretation of the Constitution has served the cause of big government, eventually dropping the self-description of “Progressive” for the more marketable label “Liberal.“ But whether they call themselves Progressives or Liberals, whether they are Democrats or Republicans, the advocates of big government are unified in their belief that the principles of the Founding are irrelevant and the meaning of the Constitution can be easily stretched to justify any exercise of governmental power.“(8)

Much more if you search the Internet…

Malcolm T. Hedges

1) Woodrow Wilson and the Birth of Liberal Fascism

2) Liberal Fascism

3) quotes by Woodrow Wilson

4) The Strange Case of Woodrow Wilson

5) Two New Books on Woodrow Wilson

6) Woodrow Wilson and the Roots of Modern Liberalism

7) Woodrow Wilson: The Essential Political Writings

8) Woodrow Wilson, Progressivism, Liberalism

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