Free Republic

Have you ever read Theodore Roosevelt's Bull Moose party platform? You should. In Chapter 3 of his book "The Art of War", Sun Tzu writes: If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle. That quote has been in the right side bar of the progressingamerica blog since day one, and will never change. We need to know progressives...

Have you ever heard "what if Texas were its own country" or "what if California", etc.... Here we go. If Alaska were it's own country, because of its size and land mass it would rank 33rd among all of the world's nations. If Texas were it's own country, because of its size and land mass it would rank 40th among all of the world's nations. If California were it's own country, because of its size and land mass it would rank 59th among all of the world's nations. But what of the BLM - the Bureau of Land Management, an...

This idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except the sovereign people, is still the newest and the most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man. - Ronald Reagan, October 27th, 1964 Democracy, the moldy-oldy discredited system, was introduced in the year 507 BC. That's 2,500+ years, for those of you counting. The American Republic and the Liberty which it was founded on, which was never discredited but simply circumvented by progressives; by comparison was introduced in 1776 AD. That's 240 years. But who's counting? Democracy...

Specifically, the science that progressives are rejecting is Newtonian in nature. I'll explain: In the book Constitutional Government in the United States, Woodrow Wilson wrote the following:(page 57) Living political constitutions must be Darwinian in structure and in practice. Fortunately, the definitions and prescriptions of our constitutional law, though conceived in the Newtonian spirit and upon the Newtonian principle, are sufficiently broad and elastic to allow for the play of life and circumstance. To be even more specific, what Woodrow Wilson is doing as he is actively inventing the concept of the "living constitution", is holding up Darwinian science over...

Progressives are fond of selling old ideas as somehow being new, and the only real point that they have to rely on is that someone won't go and look it up. Meanwhile they engage in revisionist history, erasing and covering up historical facts, then progressives top it all off with the arrogance to claim that "Well the Founders could not have fore saw........" (finish the false claim) Mr. progressive, you would be wrong - as you always are. As recorded by James Madison, Gouverneur Morris made the following comment on August 9th, 1787: Mr. Govr. MORRIS. The lesson we are...

Have you ever scratched your head sometimes, when someone you know who you are sure is not progressive in any way, doesn't support big government, doesn't like it, and doesn't like people who are progressives and are constantly push for the biggest government man has ever known - sends you something or says something that makes you scratch your head? The end result is you say to yourself or to them: "You know who wrote that, right?" Enter the "An American's Creed". You ever heard of this? Chances are, you've seen it in whole or at least in part at...

Here's something I do not understand: The very same people who blast Margaret Sanger, and inevitably bring up the fact that she supported eugenics, will then turn around and defend Theodore Roosevelt with the deepest sincerity knowing full well that Theodore Roosevelt also supported eugenics. Somehow TR is a good progressive, but MS is a bad progressive. How is this possible?!?!?!???? In my book, there are no good progressives and I think every last one of them ought to be thrown out onto the ash heap of history. What follows are two quotes, and I defy anybody - anybody to...

Would anybody say to themselves that it must be that Margaret Sanger tripped, fell over, and landed on a Klansman? Yes, that must be it, I'm sure. It was all coincidence. She received an invitation to a Klan meeting, and everybody in her inner circle scratched their heads not having any clue how. When Sanger founded the American Birth Control League in 1921, she was close friends with one Lothrop Stoddard. They had been friends for years, as her publication Birth Control Review gave a very positive review of his most notorious book in 1914, almost a decade earlier. (See...

It has long ceased to be a secret that college campuses at all levels, from the highest ivy league centers down to community colleges, are centers of far far left wing indoctrination. Why then is it that corporations keep requiring 4 year and above degrees - many times for jobs that clearly don't need such a thing? Most of the time, if you don't have that bachelor degree, you aren't even getting in the door. Don't bother. Don't send an email, don't call, do not show up at the office. Just don't. Ok, Mr. Corporate toady boss. Let's examine your...

The Demise of a Highly Respected DoctrineBy Neva R. Deardorff, January 12, 1918 ASSISTANT DIRECTOR PHILADELPHIA BUREAU OF MUNICIPAL RESEARCH LAISSEZ-FAIRE is dead! Long live social control! Social control, not only to enable us to meet the rigorous demands of war, but also as a foundation for the peace and brotherhood that is to come. This was the theme that ran strongly through all the annual meetings of the learned societies of the social sciences(1) which were held holiday week in Philadelphia. Education in idealistic concepts of service, toleration, justice, are in the future to underlie this social control and...

In the wake of Rolling Stone and its activist being found guilty of manufacturing a fraudulent rape hoax story, I wanted to start back at the beginning. Who was the first liberal journalist? Everything has a beginning. Where can you find that very first yellow brick in the road? Well, the first thing is making sure that we get the question right, otherwise we will produce garbage answers. In computer science, that falls into the category of "Garbage in, garbage out". So, "Who was the first liberal journalist in the age of objective journalism?".(meaning, when they started hiding their biases)...

Hey, did you know that Teddy once killed a lion? It's true. And they are going to put it on display again soon. People haven't seen this lion for two decades. Hey, did you know that Teddy really loved football? Hey, did you know that Teddy was a really avid outdoorsman? Hey, did you know that Teddy once was giving a speech, someone shot him, and he kept on speaking? Hey, did you know (pick your favorite wholly-divorced-from-governmental-policy-related-trivia and place it here)? I could just imagine if Ronald Reagan had shot a lion. The Washington Compost certainly wouldn't be celebrating...

Does today's trucker and trucking industry owe its entire existence to big government? The answer to that question may very well be yes. Recently, I wrote a post pulling together details about how Teddy used "reaching across the aisle" to undermine any attempt to keep government small, in passing the 1906 Hepburn Act. But what happened after the act passed? Well, it significantly damaged the railroad industry, and some news outlets at the time attributed the economic recession: the Panic of 1907 (whom some also call the "Roosevelt Panic") specifically to the Hepburn Act.(Source) The Panic had multiple causes to...

Have you ever heard the whole story about exactly what it was that ol' Teddy did to get the 'rate bill' - the Hepburn Act, passed in 1906? If I didn't know the details of what I was reading and who was involved, I would swear this story mirrored a similar situation with John McCain rampaging on the floor of the Senate against Tea Party Hobbitses. Yes my friends. All tricks are fair game. Roosevelt threatened to pass the bill with democrat votes in order to undercut his own party, in order to stick the nose of government further into...

In 1914, the publication Birth Control Review published a review of the book The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy, by Lothrop Stoddard. The review was published by Havelock Ellis, a close friend of Margaret Sanger. Additionally, Stoddard was a board member of Sanger's pride and joy: The American Birth Control League. To what degree did Sanger agree with the contents of this review? As editor of the magazine, she had the ability to decline/approve anything written in her pages. The review said: (page 14) Dr. Stoddard is an American, a graduate of Harvard and a citizen of New...

In the first draft of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson wrote the following: he has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it's most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemispere, or to incure miserable death in their transportation hither. this piratical warfare, the opprobium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian king of Great Britain. [determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought and sold,] he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every...

All of us know how politicized the Nobel Prize is, but many people falsely believe that it's only been politicized since around the time of Obama, perhaps since the time of Carter. It's been a tool for awarding statists for over a century. Don't forget, Wilson also won a Nobel. On May 5th, 1910, Theodore Roosevelt gave his acceptance speech for receiving his political prize. Here is how Roosevelt began the last paragraph of that speech: Finally, it would be a masterstroke if those great powers honestly bent on peace would form a League of Peace, not only to keep...

If this country could be ruled by a benevolent czar, we would doubtless make a good many changes for the better. - Theodore Roosevelt, 1897 In most of the puff piece biographies written about Theodore Roosevelt, one will read about the valiant days of TR as police chief, cleaning the joint up, and rooting out the bad guys. But is that really all that happened? Nothing more? Why is it that the full story is never told, rather, it has to be pieced together? During his time as a police commissioner, TR was actually quite unpopular. There were many who...

Joe Biden made some interesting comments recently regarding the constitution of Japan and nuclear armaments. It's been widely reported, so I don't have much need to re-hash all of that. Except for one thing: What is it about Japan's constitution that makes progressives believe that the Japanese constitution does not qualify as a living and breathing document? I would really like to know the answer to that question.

In 2008 Daniel J. Flynn published A Conservative History of the American Left, which he ends chapter 8 this way: Despite his loyal namesake's best efforts, Henry George is not imagined as a Christ-like figure by contemporary leftists. This is because, overwhelmed by Marxism, few contemporary leftists remember their non-marxist forebears. But George's contemporaries certainly did. He flashed, burned white hot, and was gone. In a fit of overly generous praise, which ages poorly, philosopher John Dewey held: "It would require less than the fingers of the two hand to enumerate those who, from Plato down, rank with Henry George...