Posted on 11/30/2012 7:22:11 AM PST by ProgressingAmerica
In the lead up to modern redistributive social justice, the preceding movement used to call itself the "social gospel". This has proven to be a particularly hard shell for me to crack, but thankfully I'm not the only one out here trying to learn the history of progressivism and show it to others.
An article by Dr. Richard M. Gamble titled "Savior Nation: Woodrow Wilson and the Gospel of Service". Here's the PDF downloadable version, and here's the Google Docs directly viewable version lays it all out pretty well. Here's an example:
The United States had preserved its own liberty and now as a belligerent power was “an instrument in the hands of God to see that liberty is made secure for mankind.” Wilson, who habitually reversed the logic and sequence of cause and effect in history, derived the real meaning of the past from the present, of the Civil War from the later Great War: “We did not know that God was working out in His own way the method by which we should best serve human freedom—by making this nation a great, united, indivisible, indestructible instrument in His hands for the accomplishment of these great things.” 34 American history was a clear and seamless revelation to Wilson, the meaning of the Old Testament waiting to be read in the New.In short, it seems that for Wilson American history and its principles and even its symbols belonged to all humanity. To think otherwise would have been the epitome of national selfishness, an unspeakable crime to the humanitarian internationalists of the Progressive Era. In a remarkable speech given before the outbreak of the European war in the summer of 1914, just days after the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, Wilson stood in front of Independence Hall in Philadelphia on the Fourth of July and claimed that since the United States was the champion of “the rights of humanity” then its “flag is the flag, not only of America, but of humanity.”35 He divorced the symbolism of the flag’s colors and stars and stripes from their historical meaning and reinvented the banner as a universal symbol for the freedom of all mankind - an audacious claim of boundless national mission.
Dr Gamble's essay is compelling, at least to me, as to the corrupting nature of Wilson's Presidency, particularly in his use and abuse of history and the faith of the people to rationalize doing things that should never have been done.
Wilson promised to keep America out of Europe’s war, and yet all along hankered to get America involved in it. Got 110,000 good boys killed to fight an enemy that posed no cogent threat to the United States, and, in defeating it, set the stage for fascism and communism a generation later, thus getting 400,000 more Americans (and tens of millions of other people) killed fighting those 2 menaces. What a vile human being he was.
dont forget this moron also got the federal reserve started in 1913....scrooing us royally right down to today....
Didn’t Wilson also institute the income tax? I realize it was a Constitutional Amendment so he had plenty of accomplices but it only applied to a tiny percentage of the population thereby fertilizing the egg of class warfare.
PGA ...I guess that’s not the Professional Golf Association we’re talking about...I was wondering what the hell Wilson had to do with them so I opened this without linking to source...Hate to say this but will this professor end up his 2nd term the way the first one did... To paraphrase Freidrick The Great ...the best way I know how to punish a province is to let be ruled by a professor (phlosopher).
That is pretty much the meaning Wm F. Buckley intended when he said he’d rather be ruled by the first 200 names in the Boston phone book than by the Harvard faculty.The term “philosopher” has a definition:
- philosophy
- the study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence, especially as an academic discipline
which is quite distinct from its etymology (etymology means “true meaning”):IOW the word “philosopher” was coined in ancient Greece precisely to denote someone who had humility and a willingness to listen to facts and logic, wherever they might lead. That is pretty much the opposite, however, of the meaning of “Harvard faculty” as Buckley intended it.
- sophist
- 1542, earlier sophister (c.1380), from L. sophista, sophistes, from Gk. sophistes, from sophizesthai "to become wise or learned," from sophos "wise, clever," of unknown origin. Gk. sophistes came to mean "one who gives intellectual instruction for pay," and, contrasted with "philosopher," it became a term of contempt. Ancient sophists were famous for their clever, specious arguments.
- philosopher
- O.E. philosophe, from L. philosophus, from Gk. philosophos "philosopher," lit. "lover of wisdom," from philos "loving" + sophos "wise, a sage."
"Pythagoras was the first who called himself philosophos, instead of sophos, 'wise man,' since this latter term was suggestive of immodesty." [Klein]
To spread service? Not so much.
Thanks ProgressingAmerica.
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