Gosh darn it I respect you with all that you all are doing here. I love it. This is such integrity and American patriotism. Sincerely, Carol from the Pacific Northwest
And thank you Carol!
Saturday, August 9, 2008
Obama's Dual Citizenship
Is it appropriate for the President of the United States to hold dual citizenship? Mr. Obama may believe himself to be a citizen of the world, but there is what economists call a principal-agent problem if the president has dual loyalties. This may or may not be relevant to the Article II issue. However (and h/t Larwyn), it would seem that the failure of the state and federal governments to establish a system whereby simple information about presidential candidates is made public seems to have shocked us a second time this year.
Gateway Pundit notes that Rocky Mountain News reports that he "(h)olds both American and Kenyan (since 1963) citizenship."
Gateway Pundit quotes Political Gateway's 2007 post.
“Under the Independence Constitution of Kenya, Obama became a Kenyan citizen on December 12, 1963. He has never renounced his Kenyan citizenship. On his senate web site, Obama tap dances around his own dual nationality when discussing his father. Obama obviously knows, because his father told him, that he also held/holds Kenyan nationality.
“Once again, we find Barry O concealing fascinating information about his identity. There is nothing unusual about dual nationality. Indeed, ancient Roman Law doctrines of jus sanguini and jus soli come into play, because both Kenya and the U. S. recognize dual nationality. Once again, the issue is not ‘legality.’ The issue is the cover-up; Obama’s concealment of his own identity. From us, and most of all from himself."
Yes, concealment is the issue, isn't it?
Gateway Pundit notes that Rocky Mountain News reports that he "(h)olds both American and Kenyan (since 1963) citizenship."
Gateway Pundit quotes Political Gateway's 2007 post.
“Under the Independence Constitution of Kenya, Obama became a Kenyan citizen on December 12, 1963. He has never renounced his Kenyan citizenship. On his senate web site, Obama tap dances around his own dual nationality when discussing his father. Obama obviously knows, because his father told him, that he also held/holds Kenyan nationality.
“Once again, we find Barry O concealing fascinating information about his identity. There is nothing unusual about dual nationality. Indeed, ancient Roman Law doctrines of jus sanguini and jus soli come into play, because both Kenya and the U. S. recognize dual nationality. Once again, the issue is not ‘legality.’ The issue is the cover-up; Obama’s concealment of his own identity. From us, and most of all from himself."
Yes, concealment is the issue, isn't it?
Black Republican Forum Meets in NYC
The Silent Majority discusses the recent Black Republican Forum:
"Martin Luther King Jr. was a Republican. Not enough people know this FACT but wonderfully that information was on display at the Annual Black Republican Forum. This Forum is here to Educate…to correct the propaganda passing as history and that it did. As The Silent Majority entered the second floor foyer of the beautiful Republican Women’s Club in New York City (just a hop from St. Patrick’s Cathedral) there was a table filled with books and pamphlets as well as a poster of the First American Blacks to sit in Congress (in the 1800’s!); Free Men and Elected! A long overdue freedom that came courtesy of the Republican Party; the real history of America that’s been erased by the Zinn/Chomsky ‘history’ books that have replaced the truth in our public schools."
"Martin Luther King Jr. was a Republican. Not enough people know this FACT but wonderfully that information was on display at the Annual Black Republican Forum. This Forum is here to Educate…to correct the propaganda passing as history and that it did. As The Silent Majority entered the second floor foyer of the beautiful Republican Women’s Club in New York City (just a hop from St. Patrick’s Cathedral) there was a table filled with books and pamphlets as well as a poster of the First American Blacks to sit in Congress (in the 1800’s!); Free Men and Elected! A long overdue freedom that came courtesy of the Republican Party; the real history of America that’s been erased by the Zinn/Chomsky ‘history’ books that have replaced the truth in our public schools."
Obama Investigation Petition Breaks 3,265 Signatures
The petition I circulated on Thursday now has3,266 signatures. There is still time to sign it at:
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/Federal-Elections-Commssion/
It reads:
The signers of this petition request the Federal Elections Commission and Mr. Donald McGahan, FEC chairman, to take responsibility to verify the eligibility of Mr. Barack H. Obama to be President of the United States. Mr. Obama has refused to produce a physical certified, stamped copy of his birth certificate. An electronically-displayed image displayed by his official campaign website has been alleged to be a forgery. We request that the FEC require Mr. Obama to authorize the FEC to obtain an official copy of his birth certificate and if he does not produce the authorization that the FEC reject his registration as a presidential candidate; that the FEC not monitor his campaign finances during the primary or election; that votes cast for Mr. Obama and reported by the states' boards of elections not be recorded and displayed by the FEC; and that Mr. Obama be considered in violation of 2 USC 437g for filing a false statement on FEC Form 2, as specified on that form.
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/Federal-Elections-Commssion/
It reads:
The signers of this petition request the Federal Elections Commission and Mr. Donald McGahan, FEC chairman, to take responsibility to verify the eligibility of Mr. Barack H. Obama to be President of the United States. Mr. Obama has refused to produce a physical certified, stamped copy of his birth certificate. An electronically-displayed image displayed by his official campaign website has been alleged to be a forgery. We request that the FEC require Mr. Obama to authorize the FEC to obtain an official copy of his birth certificate and if he does not produce the authorization that the FEC reject his registration as a presidential candidate; that the FEC not monitor his campaign finances during the primary or election; that votes cast for Mr. Obama and reported by the states' boards of elections not be recorded and displayed by the FEC; and that Mr. Obama be considered in violation of 2 USC 437g for filing a false statement on FEC Form 2, as specified on that form.
Request for Obama Investigation by New York's Secretary of State
Texas Darlin has proposed a state-by-state inquiry as to Mr. Barack H. Obama's eligibility to be president. Good idea, TD. I have adapted my earlier letter to the FEC and forwarded it electronically to Lorraine Cortes-Vazquez, Secretary of State for New York in Albany. I live within an easy drive, so I would not mind meeting with her representative.
PO Box 130
West Shokan, New York 12494
August 9, 2008
http://www.mitchell-langbert.blogspot.com
mlangbert@hvc.rr.com
Lorraine Cortés-Vázquez, Secretary of State
One Commerce Plaza,
99 Washington Avenue
Albany, NY 12231-0001
Dear Ms. Cortés-Vázquez:
I would like to file a public, formal complaint with the New York Department of State requesting verification of the natural-born U.S. citizenship of Mr. Barack Obama, and revocation of the registration and recognition of Mr. Obama’s candidacy for president of the United States if that citizenship is not verified as described below within 7 days of your receipt of this letter. Mr. Obama has not shown that he fulfills the Constitutional requirement for president, to be a “natural born citizen”, Article Two, Section 1.
The basis for this complaint is:
a) Mr. Obama’s refusal to produce a physical certified, stamped copy of his birth certificate, with the Hawaii file number visible, upon my previous repeated request and the requests of others.
b) Significant analysis of the electronically-displayed image displayed by Mr. Obama on his official campaign website as the certificate indicates forgery.
c) The electronically-displayed image displayed by Mr. Obama on his official campaign website has the Hawaii state birth certificate filing number blacked out, eliminating any objective information that links the image to an actual certificate on file (see http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2008/07/atlas-exclusive.html).
If Mr. Obama produces a certified, stamped copy of the original birth certificate with all information visible, I request as the complainant to see that document in person to examine its authenticity, including electronically, before you finalize its response; and the opportunity to verify the authenticity with the issuing state official. This process should require no more than two business days, and may take place in at your office.
If the certificate is not produced in 10 days and verified by you and myself within another 5 days, this complaint requests that Mr. Obama’s registration as a presidential candidate be rejected by the State of New York because he has failed to document his citizenship.
I ask for expedited formal response and resolution of this request, given that the national convention furthering the candidacy will occur in three weeks, and given that this document is easy to produce upon personal request of Mr. Obama to the Hawaii state government. Please note you can request it directly, as qualifying under Hawaii Revised Statutes § 338-18 has having “a direct and tangible interest in the record.”
This request is made with the utmost respect for New York’s laws, the presidential election process and the candidates involved, in the desire to resolve this question quickly and confirm their integrity. If a similar request is appropriate to be made to all presidential candidates it must not slow down this specific request.
If the you decide that you do not have jurisdiction in this matter, please respond within three business days of receipt of this complaint with the state agency or other governmental organization that is responsible for enforcing Article Two, Section One of the Constitution that requires natural-born citizenship for candidacy for the president of the United States. Please include the basis for such jurisdiction by that agency or organization. Please respond by email to: mlangbert@hvc.rr.com
Sincerely,
Mitchell Langbert
PO Box 130
203 Watson Hollow Road
West Shokan, New York 12494
PO Box 130
West Shokan, New York 12494
August 9, 2008
http://www.mitchell-langbert.blogspot.com
mlangbert@hvc.rr.com
Lorraine Cortés-Vázquez, Secretary of State
One Commerce Plaza,
99 Washington Avenue
Albany, NY 12231-0001
Dear Ms. Cortés-Vázquez:
I would like to file a public, formal complaint with the New York Department of State requesting verification of the natural-born U.S. citizenship of Mr. Barack Obama, and revocation of the registration and recognition of Mr. Obama’s candidacy for president of the United States if that citizenship is not verified as described below within 7 days of your receipt of this letter. Mr. Obama has not shown that he fulfills the Constitutional requirement for president, to be a “natural born citizen”, Article Two, Section 1.
The basis for this complaint is:
a) Mr. Obama’s refusal to produce a physical certified, stamped copy of his birth certificate, with the Hawaii file number visible, upon my previous repeated request and the requests of others.
b) Significant analysis of the electronically-displayed image displayed by Mr. Obama on his official campaign website as the certificate indicates forgery.
c) The electronically-displayed image displayed by Mr. Obama on his official campaign website has the Hawaii state birth certificate filing number blacked out, eliminating any objective information that links the image to an actual certificate on file (see http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2008/07/atlas-exclusive.html).
If Mr. Obama produces a certified, stamped copy of the original birth certificate with all information visible, I request as the complainant to see that document in person to examine its authenticity, including electronically, before you finalize its response; and the opportunity to verify the authenticity with the issuing state official. This process should require no more than two business days, and may take place in at your office.
If the certificate is not produced in 10 days and verified by you and myself within another 5 days, this complaint requests that Mr. Obama’s registration as a presidential candidate be rejected by the State of New York because he has failed to document his citizenship.
I ask for expedited formal response and resolution of this request, given that the national convention furthering the candidacy will occur in three weeks, and given that this document is easy to produce upon personal request of Mr. Obama to the Hawaii state government. Please note you can request it directly, as qualifying under Hawaii Revised Statutes § 338-18 has having “a direct and tangible interest in the record.”
This request is made with the utmost respect for New York’s laws, the presidential election process and the candidates involved, in the desire to resolve this question quickly and confirm their integrity. If a similar request is appropriate to be made to all presidential candidates it must not slow down this specific request.
If the you decide that you do not have jurisdiction in this matter, please respond within three business days of receipt of this complaint with the state agency or other governmental organization that is responsible for enforcing Article Two, Section One of the Constitution that requires natural-born citizenship for candidacy for the president of the United States. Please include the basis for such jurisdiction by that agency or organization. Please respond by email to: mlangbert@hvc.rr.com
Sincerely,
Mitchell Langbert
PO Box 130
203 Watson Hollow Road
West Shokan, New York 12494
Friday, August 8, 2008
Holy Gas Cap: Congressman Maurice Hinchey Accused of Assault
A Rosendale, NY man has accused Congressman Maurice Hinchey, who proposed price controls on gasoline a month or two ago, of assault according to the Kingston Daily Freeman.
According to the Daily Freeman, "Paul Lendvay, 46, who is the chairman of the Catskill Regional Friends of the National Rifle Association" is planning to press charges against Hinchey because the two got into a scuffle at a street fair over a Winchester 94 Teddy Roosevelt commemorative rifle that Lendvay was displaying and because Hinchey refused to buy raffle tickets for the rifle, which he was admiring.
The Freeman adds: "Police said that, based on what they knew of the alleged incident, a charge of misdemeanor assault would be unwarranted. Harassment, a violation, would be the more likely charge, they said."
Hinchey's spokesman accused Lendvay of pressing charges for political purposes.
"Hinchey, first elected to Congress in 1992, is running this fall for his ninth two-year term in the House. His Republican opponent is expected to be George Phillips of Endwell."
In a separate Freeman article, Republican challenger George Phillips, a gallant, capable, well educated and handsome gentleman, questioned Hinchey's far fetched statistics concerning energy exploration:
"In a press release, Phillips - who lives in Endwell, near Binghamton - said Hinchey was using "rhetoric" and was "blocking new oil production" by continuing to support a ban on opening drilling in protected areas.
"Despite polls showing public support for offshore drilling at near 70 percent, including a majority of Californians and Alaskans, Hinchey continues to oppose tapping the 20 billion barrels of oil that the Department of the Interior says can be found in the areas currently closed to drilling," Phillips said in the prepared statement. "The United States is alone among developed nations in implementing such a ban on offshore drilling."
New York's 22nd Congressional district looks like it's going to have an interesting and tight race. With Hinchey getting into street scuffles and Phillips getting major traction on energy, Ulster County and the rest of the gerrymandered district may be looking at a Republican in Congress next year.
According to the Daily Freeman, "Paul Lendvay, 46, who is the chairman of the Catskill Regional Friends of the National Rifle Association" is planning to press charges against Hinchey because the two got into a scuffle at a street fair over a Winchester 94 Teddy Roosevelt commemorative rifle that Lendvay was displaying and because Hinchey refused to buy raffle tickets for the rifle, which he was admiring.
The Freeman adds: "Police said that, based on what they knew of the alleged incident, a charge of misdemeanor assault would be unwarranted. Harassment, a violation, would be the more likely charge, they said."
Hinchey's spokesman accused Lendvay of pressing charges for political purposes.
"Hinchey, first elected to Congress in 1992, is running this fall for his ninth two-year term in the House. His Republican opponent is expected to be George Phillips of Endwell."
In a separate Freeman article, Republican challenger George Phillips, a gallant, capable, well educated and handsome gentleman, questioned Hinchey's far fetched statistics concerning energy exploration:
"In a press release, Phillips - who lives in Endwell, near Binghamton - said Hinchey was using "rhetoric" and was "blocking new oil production" by continuing to support a ban on opening drilling in protected areas.
"Despite polls showing public support for offshore drilling at near 70 percent, including a majority of Californians and Alaskans, Hinchey continues to oppose tapping the 20 billion barrels of oil that the Department of the Interior says can be found in the areas currently closed to drilling," Phillips said in the prepared statement. "The United States is alone among developed nations in implementing such a ban on offshore drilling."
New York's 22nd Congressional district looks like it's going to have an interesting and tight race. With Hinchey getting into street scuffles and Phillips getting major traction on energy, Ulster County and the rest of the gerrymandered district may be looking at a Republican in Congress next year.
Ed Roth On the Obama Birth Certificate: Is It Possible to Know?
>If you are the Langbert with the Obama birth certificate petition on blog this is information for you. To let you know how thing are done, let me tell you a true story. Years ago my cousin had a child who was born a few days late to meet the cut of day to start school. He called his US rep and told R the problem. A few days later a man appeared at his front door with a certified Cook County Illinois birth certificate with a different birth date. The date allowed his child to enter school a year early. The man told my cousin's wife to destroy the certificate after using it.
Nancy R Notifies Governor Lingle About Obama COLB Concerns
Dear Governor Lingle,
I have read Barack Obama's birth certificate is a forgery. Can you produce a new certified State of Hawaii birth certificate for him?
If the State of Hawaii has no record of his birth, this should be public knowledge before the Democratic Convention.
Please give the American people the truth.
Thank you very much!
Sincerely,
Nancy R
American Patriot
I have read Barack Obama's birth certificate is a forgery. Can you produce a new certified State of Hawaii birth certificate for him?
If the State of Hawaii has no record of his birth, this should be public knowledge before the Democratic Convention.
Please give the American people the truth.
Thank you very much!
Sincerely,
Nancy R
American Patriot
Does Larry Johnson of the No Quarter Blog Have a Hard Copy Obama COLB?
I just heard a rumor that Larry Johnson of No Quarter USA has obtained what purports to be a hard copy of Barack H. Obama's birth certificate. I am eager to learn of the substance of this rumor.
Seeking Associate in Missouri, the "Show Me" State
Dear Friends: I am seeking a resident of Missouri to send one letter each to the Missouri Secretary of State and the Missouri Board of Elections requesting that they take responsibility for investigation of citizens' questions concerning candidates' eligibility, including requests for birth certificates. If you are willing to send two letters (I will provide the templates) and you live in Missouri, please contact me at mlangbert@hvc.rr.com.
Thursday, August 7, 2008
Petition To Request the Federal Elections Commission to Investigate Barack Obama
Please consider signing this petition at
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/Federal-Elections-Commssion/
The signers of this petition request the Federal Elections Commission and Mr. Donald McGahan, FEC chairman, to take responsibility to verify the eligibility of Mr. Barack H. Obama to be President of the United States. Mr. Obama has refused to produce a physical certified, stamped copy of his birth certificate. An electronically-displayed image displayed by his official campaign website has alleged to have been a forgery, with the filing number blacked out. We request that the FEC require Mr. Obama to authorize the FEC to obtain an official copy of his birth certificate and if he does not produce the authorization that the FEC reject his registration as a presidential candidate; that the FEC not monitor his campaign finances during the primary or election; that votes cast for Mr. Obama and reported by the states' boards of elections not be recorded and displayed by the FEC; and that Mr. Obama be considered in violation of 2 USC 437g for filing a false statement on FEC Form 2, as specified on that form.
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/Federal-Elections-Commssion/
The signers of this petition request the Federal Elections Commission and Mr. Donald McGahan, FEC chairman, to take responsibility to verify the eligibility of Mr. Barack H. Obama to be President of the United States. Mr. Obama has refused to produce a physical certified, stamped copy of his birth certificate. An electronically-displayed image displayed by his official campaign website has alleged to have been a forgery, with the filing number blacked out. We request that the FEC require Mr. Obama to authorize the FEC to obtain an official copy of his birth certificate and if he does not produce the authorization that the FEC reject his registration as a presidential candidate; that the FEC not monitor his campaign finances during the primary or election; that votes cast for Mr. Obama and reported by the states' boards of elections not be recorded and displayed by the FEC; and that Mr. Obama be considered in violation of 2 USC 437g for filing a false statement on FEC Form 2, as specified on that form.
George Washington on Religion, Morality, Isolationism and Foreign Policy
"Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked: Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.
"It is substantially true that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. The rule, indeed, extends with more or less force to every species of free government. Who that is a sincere friend to it can look with indifference upon attempts to shake the foundation of the fabric?
Promote then, as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened...
"Observe good faith and justice towards all nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all. Religion and morality enjoin this conduct; and can it be, that good policy does not equally enjoin it? It will be worthy of a free, enlightened, and at no distant period, a great nation, to give to mankind the magnanimous and too novel example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence. Who can doubt that, in the course of time and things, the fruits of such a plan would richly repay any temporary advantages which might be lost by a steady adherence to it ? Can it be that Providence has not connected the permanent felicity of a nation with its virtue ? The experiment, at least, is recommended by every sentiment which ennobles human nature. Alas! is it rendered impossible by its vices?
George Washington's Farewell Address, 1796.
"It is substantially true that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. The rule, indeed, extends with more or less force to every species of free government. Who that is a sincere friend to it can look with indifference upon attempts to shake the foundation of the fabric?
Promote then, as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened...
"Observe good faith and justice towards all nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all. Religion and morality enjoin this conduct; and can it be, that good policy does not equally enjoin it? It will be worthy of a free, enlightened, and at no distant period, a great nation, to give to mankind the magnanimous and too novel example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence. Who can doubt that, in the course of time and things, the fruits of such a plan would richly repay any temporary advantages which might be lost by a steady adherence to it ? Can it be that Providence has not connected the permanent felicity of a nation with its virtue ? The experiment, at least, is recommended by every sentiment which ennobles human nature. Alas! is it rendered impossible by its vices?
George Washington's Farewell Address, 1796.
George Washington on the Future of US Foreign Policy
"If we remain one people, under an efficient government, the period is not far off when we may defy material injury from external annoyance; when we may take such an attitude as will cause the neutrality we may at any time resolve upon to be scrupulously respected; when belligerent nations, under the impossibility of making acquisitions upon us, will not lightly hazard the giving us provocation; when we may choose peace or war, as our interest, guided by justice, shall counsel."
---From Washington's Farewell Address, quoted in William Appleman Williams, Contours of American History, Chicago: Quadrangle Paperbacks, 1966, p. 173.
Williams adds:
"Far from being a call for isolation, what Washington issued was a mercantilist manifesto for an unchallengable empire. Whatever one thinks of the logic or of the goal itself, Washington's Farewell Address remains one of the great documents of America's Age of Mercantilism."
---From Washington's Farewell Address, quoted in William Appleman Williams, Contours of American History, Chicago: Quadrangle Paperbacks, 1966, p. 173.
Williams adds:
"Far from being a call for isolation, what Washington issued was a mercantilist manifesto for an unchallengable empire. Whatever one thinks of the logic or of the goal itself, Washington's Farewell Address remains one of the great documents of America's Age of Mercantilism."
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
New Ships of 9/11 Steel
The USS New York is an anti-terrorist ship that the Navy just launched (h/t Contrairimairi). The wrenching story behind it is that it is made from steel melted down from the World Trade Center. The USS New York website is very inspiring. Below are three pictures of the USS New York. The second one shows the christening where the Navy, NYPD and NYFD bands all played. God Bless America. And I hope they hit those terrorists very, very hard.
Conservative Bolters Should Listen to Jerry Molen
Jeremy E. Sarber and Friends (h/t Contrairimairi) has posted an essay by Jerry Molen, who notes:
"Most people aren’t even aware that the Democrats ruled Washington for over 40 years. It wasn’t until 1994 when the so called Gingrich Revolution changed that for a short period of time. Nor do people realize that it was the Dem’s that created the failed policies of the many entitlement programs that are falling apart right before our eyes. Please do not think I find the Republicans blameless in all this."
Jerry notes a paradox:
"Poor people have been voting for Democrats for the last fifty years….and they are still poor."
No kidding. The fact is, almost everyone is poorer because of the Progressive(Republican)/social democrat (Democratic) alliance.
Jerry has a few predictions about what Barack Hussein Obama would do as president:
1. Strict new gun laws will be enacted even though he promised he would not.
2. The phrase “In God We Trust” will be removed from all currency.
3. He will back away from his pledge to Israel and leave them to the wolves of Islam.
4. Hillary Clinton will be named to the Supreme Court.
5. Tax rates will return to their highest levels in 30 years.
6. The capital gains tax will be at least double current levels.
7. Retired Army General Wesley Clark will be named Secretary of Defense.
8. The borders will be ‘basically open’ to all comers. Especially those from the Middle East and South America.
9. Amnesty will be granted to all illegals now in the U.S.
10. The war in Iraq will be brought to an abrupt end and the results will be tragic and the consequences to our military will be devastating.
"Most people aren’t even aware that the Democrats ruled Washington for over 40 years. It wasn’t until 1994 when the so called Gingrich Revolution changed that for a short period of time. Nor do people realize that it was the Dem’s that created the failed policies of the many entitlement programs that are falling apart right before our eyes. Please do not think I find the Republicans blameless in all this."
Jerry notes a paradox:
"Poor people have been voting for Democrats for the last fifty years….and they are still poor."
No kidding. The fact is, almost everyone is poorer because of the Progressive(Republican)/social democrat (Democratic) alliance.
Jerry has a few predictions about what Barack Hussein Obama would do as president:
1. Strict new gun laws will be enacted even though he promised he would not.
2. The phrase “In God We Trust” will be removed from all currency.
3. He will back away from his pledge to Israel and leave them to the wolves of Islam.
4. Hillary Clinton will be named to the Supreme Court.
5. Tax rates will return to their highest levels in 30 years.
6. The capital gains tax will be at least double current levels.
7. Retired Army General Wesley Clark will be named Secretary of Defense.
8. The borders will be ‘basically open’ to all comers. Especially those from the Middle East and South America.
9. Amnesty will be granted to all illegals now in the U.S.
10. The war in Iraq will be brought to an abrupt end and the results will be tragic and the consequences to our military will be devastating.
The Left Eats Its Own--Blog Banning at Daily Kos
Lee Stranahan (h/t ReUnion PI) posts on Stranahan.com that he has been banned from the social democratic Daily Kos site (Lee erroneously calls Daily Kos "progressive"). A blogger on Daily Kos writes:
>"So apparently Lee Stranahan has been banned from this site for publishing one too many "Hey, what the hell is up with John Edwards and his completely odd and totally inept efforts to hide his love child from the media?" posts. Well isn't that just goddamn admirable of you all.
"In solidarity with Lee, I ask that you ban me as well. I'd rather not leave the site peacefully and willfully - no, preferably, I would like to be removed from the great orange monster for expressing dissent. That way, I could put one of those moronic "Dissent is Super Patriotic!" bumper stickers on my car and get the full experience."
Stranahan writes:
"Now I’m banned. I can’t write about ANYTHING at Kos. Can’t comment, can’t post a non-Edwards piece. Nothing...And I stand by my title - it’s largely John Edward’s fault that I’m banned."
Stranahan has a point.
There was a time when the left could claim that it really was on the side of democracy, that the "democratic" part of "social democratic" really meant something, and that it was victimized by witch hunts. With the advent of political correctness, the American left has become a suppressive movement, losing all claim to tolerance, democratic thinking and any claim to the appellation "progressive". The left is the perpetrator of witch hunts, not the victim.
I have worked or lived around counter culture and left wing communities for much of my life, and I conclude that they are as suppressive as any corporation or cult. It is not coincidental that all of the left wing governments have been intolerant of dissent. It is inherent in the social democratic ideology that true believers become convinced, much like cult members, there is one true answer and that anyone who deviates from their answer is to be silenced.
So while I pity Mr. Stranahan, I do not empathize with him. He has chosen to align himself with social democrats of his own free will.
>"So apparently Lee Stranahan has been banned from this site for publishing one too many "Hey, what the hell is up with John Edwards and his completely odd and totally inept efforts to hide his love child from the media?" posts. Well isn't that just goddamn admirable of you all.
"In solidarity with Lee, I ask that you ban me as well. I'd rather not leave the site peacefully and willfully - no, preferably, I would like to be removed from the great orange monster for expressing dissent. That way, I could put one of those moronic "Dissent is Super Patriotic!" bumper stickers on my car and get the full experience."
Stranahan writes:
"Now I’m banned. I can’t write about ANYTHING at Kos. Can’t comment, can’t post a non-Edwards piece. Nothing...And I stand by my title - it’s largely John Edward’s fault that I’m banned."
Stranahan has a point.
There was a time when the left could claim that it really was on the side of democracy, that the "democratic" part of "social democratic" really meant something, and that it was victimized by witch hunts. With the advent of political correctness, the American left has become a suppressive movement, losing all claim to tolerance, democratic thinking and any claim to the appellation "progressive". The left is the perpetrator of witch hunts, not the victim.
I have worked or lived around counter culture and left wing communities for much of my life, and I conclude that they are as suppressive as any corporation or cult. It is not coincidental that all of the left wing governments have been intolerant of dissent. It is inherent in the social democratic ideology that true believers become convinced, much like cult members, there is one true answer and that anyone who deviates from their answer is to be silenced.
So while I pity Mr. Stranahan, I do not empathize with him. He has chosen to align himself with social democrats of his own free will.
ContrairiMairi Contacts Dan White of Illinois Election Commission Re Obama Eligibility
Dear Mr. White,
I am writing to respectfully demand the Board investigate the qualifications of Barack H. Obama. In light of the Certificate of Live Birth posted at the Campaign's internet site, I feel there needs to be a full investigation of his citizenship status. Illinois statutes require that he be a citizen, and I challenge that his claim is valid. The Certificate posted has been altered. The certificate number has been removed. The document states clearly, that any alteration of it makes it invalid. I believe that removal of the certificate number does alter the document, thereby rendering it invalid.
It is the duty of the Board to insure that all legal guidelines and qualifications of any candidate running for office in this State are adhered to. He is our State Senator. That is far too important a position to leave in a questionable state. He must be required to make public, a legal documentation of his citizenship status.
It also now is known by Barack H. Obama's own writings, that he lived in at least two other countries. He may have been known there by his own name, or the name of Barry Soetoro, since he was adopted. The nature of his residency in either of these countries calls question to the possibility that he may own citizenship in either or both. Under United States law, his ownership of citizenship in either of the countries could negate his U.S citizenship, even if he was born here. I am respectfully challenging that if he is in fact holding multiple passports issued by countries that do not recognize dual citizenship, under either name, his American citizenship cannot be valid. I respectfully demand that he provide the Board with all documentation relating to travel in and out of the United States for public review and also related documents from any countries where he may still own citizenship by that country's laws.
It is imperative that the residents of this State are being represented by persons who meet all the legal qualifications as set forth by Illinois law. Your office is entrusted with upholding the law. You cannot expect that we should be governed by laws passed by someone who may be breaking the law. Please send verification with documented proof of his status to me at the address listed.
Sincerely,
I am writing to respectfully demand the Board investigate the qualifications of Barack H. Obama. In light of the Certificate of Live Birth posted at the Campaign's internet site, I feel there needs to be a full investigation of his citizenship status. Illinois statutes require that he be a citizen, and I challenge that his claim is valid. The Certificate posted has been altered. The certificate number has been removed. The document states clearly, that any alteration of it makes it invalid. I believe that removal of the certificate number does alter the document, thereby rendering it invalid.
It is the duty of the Board to insure that all legal guidelines and qualifications of any candidate running for office in this State are adhered to. He is our State Senator. That is far too important a position to leave in a questionable state. He must be required to make public, a legal documentation of his citizenship status.
It also now is known by Barack H. Obama's own writings, that he lived in at least two other countries. He may have been known there by his own name, or the name of Barry Soetoro, since he was adopted. The nature of his residency in either of these countries calls question to the possibility that he may own citizenship in either or both. Under United States law, his ownership of citizenship in either of the countries could negate his U.S citizenship, even if he was born here. I am respectfully challenging that if he is in fact holding multiple passports issued by countries that do not recognize dual citizenship, under either name, his American citizenship cannot be valid. I respectfully demand that he provide the Board with all documentation relating to travel in and out of the United States for public review and also related documents from any countries where he may still own citizenship by that country's laws.
It is imperative that the residents of this State are being represented by persons who meet all the legal qualifications as set forth by Illinois law. Your office is entrusted with upholding the law. You cannot expect that we should be governed by laws passed by someone who may be breaking the law. Please send verification with documented proof of his status to me at the address listed.
Sincerely,
Letter To Donald McGahan and Federal Election Commission Requesting Obama Investigation
I have mailed the following letter following conversations with Contrairimairi and others who have suggested an FEC investigation of the Obama birth information. Currently, it does not appear that any one government office has taken responsibility for verification of a candidate's eligibility to be president, and part of this inquiry is to force the FEC to clarify who is responsible.
PO Box 130
West Shokan, New York 12494
mlangbert@hvc.rr.com
http://www.mitchell-langbert.blogspot.com
August 6, 2008
Mr. Donald F. McGahn, II, Chairman
Federal Election Commission
999 E Street, NW, Washington, DC 20463
Dear Mr. McGahan:
I would like to file a formal complaint with the Federal Elections Commission requesting verification of the natural-born U.S. citizenship of Mr. Barack Obama, and revocation of the registration and recognition of Mr. Obama’s candidacy for president of the United States if that citizenship is not verified as described below within 7 days of the FEC receipt of this letter. Mr. Obama has not shown that he fulfills the Constitutional requirement for president, to be a “natural born citizen”, Article Two, Section 1.
The basis for this complaint is:
a) Mr. Obama’s refusal to produce a physical certified, stamped copy of his birth certificate, with the Hawaii file number visible, upon my previous repeated request and the requests of others.
b) Significant analysis of the electronically-displayed image displayed by Mr. Obama on his official campaign website as the certificate indicates forgery.
c) The electronically-displayed image displayed by Mr. Obama on his official campaign website has the Hawaii state birth certificate filing number blacked out, eliminating any objective information that links the image to an actual certificate on file (see http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2008/07/atlas-exclusive.html).
If Mr. Obama produces a certified, stamped copy of the original birth certificate with all information visible, I request as the complainant to see that document in person to examine its authenticity, including electronically, before the FEC finalizes its response; and the opportunity to verify the authenticity with the issuing state official. This process should require no more than two business days, and may take place in at the FEC office in Washington.
If the certificate is not produced in 10 days and verified by the FEC and myself within another 5 days, this complaint requests the following four remedies:
1) Mr. Obama’s registration as a presidential candidate is rejected (as filed on FEC Form 2).
2) Mr. Obama’s campaign finances will not be monitored by the FEC as a candidate, during the primary or election.
3) Votes cast for Mr. Obama and reported by the states’ boards of elections will not be recorded and displayed by the FEC.
4) Mr. Obama will be considered in violation of 2 U.S.C. 437g, for filing a false statement on FEC Form 2, as specified on that form.
I ask for expedited formal response and resolution of this request, given that the national convention furthering the candidacy will occur in three weeks, and given that this document is easy to produce upon personal request of Mr. Obama to the Hawaii state government. Please note the FEC can request it directly, as qualifying under Hawaii Revised Statutes § 338-18 has having “a direct and tangible interest in the record.”
This request is made with the utmost respect for the presidential election process and the candidates involved, in the desire to resolve this question quickly and confirm their integrity. If a similar request is appropriate to be made to all presidential candidates by the FEC it must not slow down this specific request.
If the FEC decides it does not have jurisdiction in this matter, please respond within three business days of receipt of this complaint with the agency or governmental organization that is responsible for enforcing Article Two, Section One of the Constitution that requires natural-born citizenship for candidacy for the president of the United States. Please include the basis for such jurisdiction by that agency or organization. Please respond by email to: mlangbert@hvc.rr.com
Sincerely,
Mitchell Langbert
PO Box 130
203 Watson Hollow Road
West Shokan, New York 12494
Cc: Steven T. Walther, Vice Chairman
Cynthia L. Bauerly, Commissioner
Matthew S. Petersen, Commissioner
Caroline C. Hunter, Commissioner
Ellen L. Weintraub, Commissioner
PO Box 130
West Shokan, New York 12494
mlangbert@hvc.rr.com
http://www.mitchell-langbert.blogspot.com
August 6, 2008
Mr. Donald F. McGahn, II, Chairman
Federal Election Commission
999 E Street, NW, Washington, DC 20463
Dear Mr. McGahan:
I would like to file a formal complaint with the Federal Elections Commission requesting verification of the natural-born U.S. citizenship of Mr. Barack Obama, and revocation of the registration and recognition of Mr. Obama’s candidacy for president of the United States if that citizenship is not verified as described below within 7 days of the FEC receipt of this letter. Mr. Obama has not shown that he fulfills the Constitutional requirement for president, to be a “natural born citizen”, Article Two, Section 1.
The basis for this complaint is:
a) Mr. Obama’s refusal to produce a physical certified, stamped copy of his birth certificate, with the Hawaii file number visible, upon my previous repeated request and the requests of others.
b) Significant analysis of the electronically-displayed image displayed by Mr. Obama on his official campaign website as the certificate indicates forgery.
c) The electronically-displayed image displayed by Mr. Obama on his official campaign website has the Hawaii state birth certificate filing number blacked out, eliminating any objective information that links the image to an actual certificate on file (see http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2008/07/atlas-exclusive.html).
If Mr. Obama produces a certified, stamped copy of the original birth certificate with all information visible, I request as the complainant to see that document in person to examine its authenticity, including electronically, before the FEC finalizes its response; and the opportunity to verify the authenticity with the issuing state official. This process should require no more than two business days, and may take place in at the FEC office in Washington.
If the certificate is not produced in 10 days and verified by the FEC and myself within another 5 days, this complaint requests the following four remedies:
1) Mr. Obama’s registration as a presidential candidate is rejected (as filed on FEC Form 2).
2) Mr. Obama’s campaign finances will not be monitored by the FEC as a candidate, during the primary or election.
3) Votes cast for Mr. Obama and reported by the states’ boards of elections will not be recorded and displayed by the FEC.
4) Mr. Obama will be considered in violation of 2 U.S.C. 437g, for filing a false statement on FEC Form 2, as specified on that form.
I ask for expedited formal response and resolution of this request, given that the national convention furthering the candidacy will occur in three weeks, and given that this document is easy to produce upon personal request of Mr. Obama to the Hawaii state government. Please note the FEC can request it directly, as qualifying under Hawaii Revised Statutes § 338-18 has having “a direct and tangible interest in the record.”
This request is made with the utmost respect for the presidential election process and the candidates involved, in the desire to resolve this question quickly and confirm their integrity. If a similar request is appropriate to be made to all presidential candidates by the FEC it must not slow down this specific request.
If the FEC decides it does not have jurisdiction in this matter, please respond within three business days of receipt of this complaint with the agency or governmental organization that is responsible for enforcing Article Two, Section One of the Constitution that requires natural-born citizenship for candidacy for the president of the United States. Please include the basis for such jurisdiction by that agency or organization. Please respond by email to: mlangbert@hvc.rr.com
Sincerely,
Mitchell Langbert
PO Box 130
203 Watson Hollow Road
West Shokan, New York 12494
Cc: Steven T. Walther, Vice Chairman
Cynthia L. Bauerly, Commissioner
Matthew S. Petersen, Commissioner
Caroline C. Hunter, Commissioner
Ellen L. Weintraub, Commissioner
McCain Campaign Needs to Stategize Fraud Prevention
Has the McCain campaign begun making preparations to preempt election day fraud? I was just on the phone with a lobbyist in Washington, DC who had been involved in the Democratic Texas Caucus, and she alleged that the Obama campaign engaged in intimidation against elderly women amounting to fraud. She also stated that these allegations have trailed Mr. Obama's campaigns beginning with his first race in Chicago, Illinois. Illinois has long been a state accused of being lax on fraud, going at least as far back as the 1960 presidential election. In a close race like the 2008 race, cheating could easily be the determinative factor. As well, Democrats continue to accuse Republicans of fraud in 2000, and there is no more likely thief than the man who believes that something has been stolen from him.
It is imperative that the McCain campaign begin thinking about and developing control procedures such as training an army of observers for election day. Rationally planned steps now could be the most important campaign strategy. As Sun Tzu said, wars are won before they're fought, and know your opponent. Barack Obama is an opponent capable of election fraud.
It is imperative that the McCain campaign begin thinking about and developing control procedures such as training an army of observers for election day. Rationally planned steps now could be the most important campaign strategy. As Sun Tzu said, wars are won before they're fought, and know your opponent. Barack Obama is an opponent capable of election fraud.
Israel Commentary Blog on Forged Birth Certificate
Israel Commentary blogs recent revelations of Techdude, TexasDarlin, Atlas Shrugs and Israel-Insider Insider about the identity of the original owner of the forged Obama birth certificate. Pamela Geller is said to know who the original owner was, and Pamela hasn't shrugged. She calls the identity "a jaw dropper"!
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Income Inequality Effects of Estate Tax
The controversy surrounding the estate tax has emphasized moralistic arguments. The first is that proponents claim that eliminating the estate tax will increase wealth inequality. The second is that opponents argue that the estate tax is coercive and deprives earners of their right to property. A corollary of the first is that the estate tax enhances government revenue. A corollary of the second is that the estate tax taxes wealth that already has been taxed via capital gains and income tax.
But what if the estate tax increases wealth inequality?
The claim that the estate tax reduces wealth inequality overlooks a critical point: not all estates are taxed. In particular, wealth placed in family trusts is not taxed. Since the ultra-wealthy tend to place their wealth in family trusts, the wealth-equalizing effects of the estate are uncertain.
There is surely a statistical argument that if you eliminate wealth of the top 2-0.5 percentiles of wealth earners, then there is more wealth equality. But wealth in the top 2-0.5% of wage earners is not what might be called deviant levels of wealth. The top 0.5% of wealth is in the 3-4 million dollar range, which is not enough to escape at least the threat of having to earn a living. Someone who aims to live a luxurious lifestyle would need to have much more than that. Thus, the variance of wealth distribution is a deceptive measure. It is only with respect to the top .1% and above that income inequality has significant effects on one's prospects, and it is precisely this group that establishes family trusts.
As I have previously blogged, a prime example is the Ochs Sulzbergers, owners of the New York Times, who have repeatedly advocated estate taxes for everyone else, but have dodged them for themselves for the past four or five generations via a family trust. To be fair, an estate tax would tax family trusts first, say 70% of a pro-rata share of each beneficiary who dies, before lesser wealth is taxed. I have never heard of a Congressional proposal to tax family trusts. Hence, Congress has never really cared about wealth inequality where it really counts. Just the opposite.
That is, there is a more subtle question. The onerous taxation of families in the top 2 - 0.5% percentile while exemption of families above that level from estate tax via family trusts may actually increase wealth inequality. This cannot be proven nor disproven empirically.
It takes some firms several generations to grow into Fortune-level concerns. Examples include Johnson and Johnson and IBM. If there are fewer very large firms than there would be without an estate tax, shares of the very large firms trade at higher prices than they would under conditions without the estate tax because there is less competition. The estate tax may accentuate the wealth of the very wealthy by nipping competition in the bud. If there would be a greater number of large firms in a free and fair market than there are today, then profit levels of the large firms would be lower. Stock prices of the large firms will also be lower. There will be more firms, more economic diversity, and as a result, more equality.
There would be more equality without an estate tax because the wealthiest, like the Ochs Sulzbergers, would not be as wealthy, and because the ranks of the very wealthy would be increased by a greater number of competitors. The larger number of competitors would reduce the wealth of the very wealthy and would increase their number. Thus, wealth inequality would be reduced. Moreover, the incentive to invest long term would increase, stimulating more Americans to achieve high degrees of wealth. The end result would be that income equality would be increased. This could have large effects on wages if increased competition increases demand for workers.
In other words, the estate tax may be increasing inequality by reducing the number of firms that become large over several generations and increasing the wealth of the Ochs Sulzbergers and other ultra-wealthy families. This freezing of American capitalism leads to a more permanent form of income inequality than would a competitive economy where families are struggling to compete with large firms.
As a result, not only can one not say with certainty that the estate tax reduces wealth inequality, but one can be fairly sure that the estate tax INCREASES the MOST IMPORTANT forms of social stratification whereby an ultra-elite that includes the Ochs Sulzbergers differentiates itself from the rest of society not because of merit but because of government and law.
One response might be to tax family trusts, and if there is to be an estate tax at all it should be applied to family trusts first because the oldest, least innovative firms are held by the oldest money that is most likely to be in trusts.
The most innovative firms that are most likely to create new technologies are held by families in the top 2-.5 percentiles. Thus, the estate tax may create wealth inequality in yet another way. By freezing out innovation and supporting the upper echelons in outmoded technologies, new business ideas that create new sources of wealth have been inhibited by the estate tax. The result is a country that is poorer because there is less innovation and economic growth and more wealth inequality. The effects of the estate tax likely exceed any mere statistical variance or Gini coefficient and may be unobservable because no one knows how badly the estate tax has harmed innovation.
Do not look for these ideas in the New York Times.
But what if the estate tax increases wealth inequality?
The claim that the estate tax reduces wealth inequality overlooks a critical point: not all estates are taxed. In particular, wealth placed in family trusts is not taxed. Since the ultra-wealthy tend to place their wealth in family trusts, the wealth-equalizing effects of the estate are uncertain.
There is surely a statistical argument that if you eliminate wealth of the top 2-0.5 percentiles of wealth earners, then there is more wealth equality. But wealth in the top 2-0.5% of wage earners is not what might be called deviant levels of wealth. The top 0.5% of wealth is in the 3-4 million dollar range, which is not enough to escape at least the threat of having to earn a living. Someone who aims to live a luxurious lifestyle would need to have much more than that. Thus, the variance of wealth distribution is a deceptive measure. It is only with respect to the top .1% and above that income inequality has significant effects on one's prospects, and it is precisely this group that establishes family trusts.
As I have previously blogged, a prime example is the Ochs Sulzbergers, owners of the New York Times, who have repeatedly advocated estate taxes for everyone else, but have dodged them for themselves for the past four or five generations via a family trust. To be fair, an estate tax would tax family trusts first, say 70% of a pro-rata share of each beneficiary who dies, before lesser wealth is taxed. I have never heard of a Congressional proposal to tax family trusts. Hence, Congress has never really cared about wealth inequality where it really counts. Just the opposite.
That is, there is a more subtle question. The onerous taxation of families in the top 2 - 0.5% percentile while exemption of families above that level from estate tax via family trusts may actually increase wealth inequality. This cannot be proven nor disproven empirically.
It takes some firms several generations to grow into Fortune-level concerns. Examples include Johnson and Johnson and IBM. If there are fewer very large firms than there would be without an estate tax, shares of the very large firms trade at higher prices than they would under conditions without the estate tax because there is less competition. The estate tax may accentuate the wealth of the very wealthy by nipping competition in the bud. If there would be a greater number of large firms in a free and fair market than there are today, then profit levels of the large firms would be lower. Stock prices of the large firms will also be lower. There will be more firms, more economic diversity, and as a result, more equality.
There would be more equality without an estate tax because the wealthiest, like the Ochs Sulzbergers, would not be as wealthy, and because the ranks of the very wealthy would be increased by a greater number of competitors. The larger number of competitors would reduce the wealth of the very wealthy and would increase their number. Thus, wealth inequality would be reduced. Moreover, the incentive to invest long term would increase, stimulating more Americans to achieve high degrees of wealth. The end result would be that income equality would be increased. This could have large effects on wages if increased competition increases demand for workers.
In other words, the estate tax may be increasing inequality by reducing the number of firms that become large over several generations and increasing the wealth of the Ochs Sulzbergers and other ultra-wealthy families. This freezing of American capitalism leads to a more permanent form of income inequality than would a competitive economy where families are struggling to compete with large firms.
As a result, not only can one not say with certainty that the estate tax reduces wealth inequality, but one can be fairly sure that the estate tax INCREASES the MOST IMPORTANT forms of social stratification whereby an ultra-elite that includes the Ochs Sulzbergers differentiates itself from the rest of society not because of merit but because of government and law.
One response might be to tax family trusts, and if there is to be an estate tax at all it should be applied to family trusts first because the oldest, least innovative firms are held by the oldest money that is most likely to be in trusts.
The most innovative firms that are most likely to create new technologies are held by families in the top 2-.5 percentiles. Thus, the estate tax may create wealth inequality in yet another way. By freezing out innovation and supporting the upper echelons in outmoded technologies, new business ideas that create new sources of wealth have been inhibited by the estate tax. The result is a country that is poorer because there is less innovation and economic growth and more wealth inequality. The effects of the estate tax likely exceed any mere statistical variance or Gini coefficient and may be unobservable because no one knows how badly the estate tax has harmed innovation.
Do not look for these ideas in the New York Times.
Candace de Russy on Solzhenitsyn
Candace de Russy on Democracy Project blogs about Solzhenitsyn:
"Like many of my generation, I owe much to Solzhenitsyn. His magisterial and uncompromisingly truthful writings jolted me into examining more rigorously my, and our culture’s, moral values and politics. He galvanized us into confronting, justly fearing, and committing to a lifetime of fighting – to the best of our ability – what he called “the absolute Evil” of totalitarianism in the world. Moreover, this moral titan put us on guard against “the timid” and “pacifist” in our ranks, in particular, the faint-hearted “American Intelligentsia,” which would abandon us to the barbarians, past and present, who ever threaten our gates."
For me as well, reading Gulag Archipelago was critical. It puzzles me as well that while Nazism, or National Socialism, has been appropriately reviled, Socialism in One Country, which is the name Stalin gave it and is an accurate description of all real-world forms of socialism, as John Lukacs points out, continues to receive healthy support in universities. Solzhenitsyn showed us the reality of collectivist and socialist depravity, and so is a true giant.
"Like many of my generation, I owe much to Solzhenitsyn. His magisterial and uncompromisingly truthful writings jolted me into examining more rigorously my, and our culture’s, moral values and politics. He galvanized us into confronting, justly fearing, and committing to a lifetime of fighting – to the best of our ability – what he called “the absolute Evil” of totalitarianism in the world. Moreover, this moral titan put us on guard against “the timid” and “pacifist” in our ranks, in particular, the faint-hearted “American Intelligentsia,” which would abandon us to the barbarians, past and present, who ever threaten our gates."
For me as well, reading Gulag Archipelago was critical. It puzzles me as well that while Nazism, or National Socialism, has been appropriately reviled, Socialism in One Country, which is the name Stalin gave it and is an accurate description of all real-world forms of socialism, as John Lukacs points out, continues to receive healthy support in universities. Solzhenitsyn showed us the reality of collectivist and socialist depravity, and so is a true giant.
New York Sun Covers Shut-Down of Mitchell Langbert's Blog/Google Apologizes
The New York Sun's Anna Phillips has covered the shut down of this and other anti-Obama blogs last week. Google has posted a general apology here. The Google text follows the Sun article.
Google insists that the problem is purely due to their computer algorithm. I do not know enough to argue, but it seems too coincidental that the Hillary Clinton campaign was having a similar problem several months ago when Hillary was running against Obama, and now I and other Republican anti-Obama bloggers have had the very same problem.
Just by way of self-defense, although it may look like I spend more time on the political diatribe-type blogs, the academic-type blogs such as my write-up of Howe's book on the Whigs take up 4/5ths of my blogging time. Thus my claim to Ms. Phillips about the blog being two thirds academic stuff is probably an understatement, although it may appear to be an overstatement.
Anna Phillips's Sun Article:
>Anti-Obama Bloggers Say They Were Silenced
Web loggers who are campaigning against Senator Obama's presidential run are accusing Google and Obama supporters of silencing them after their Web logs were marked as spam and their accounts temporarily frozen.
On Thursday, hours after publishing a post about an online petition demanding that Mr. Obama publicly produce his birth certificate, an associate professor of business administration at Brooklyn College, Mitchell Langbert, found that he could no longer access his Web log.
Google's Blogger hosting service had suspended "Mitchell Langbert's Blog," which Mr. Langbert describes as "two-thirds academic stuff I'm working on and one-third politics," until it could verify the Web log was not a "spam blog," or a site designed solely to increase the page views of associated Web sites.
A day later Google lifted the block on the account, but the incident and earlier Web log freezes in late June have led Mr. Langbert and other anti-Obama bloggers to accuse the Illinois senator's supporters of intentionally identifying their blog addresses to Google as spam blogs. They also say the company has reflexively suspended the sites.
"These tech-savvy smart alecks have figured out that if you report a blog you don't like, you can do some damage to a person," Mr. Langbert said.
A spokesman for Google, Adam Kovacevich, said in a statement that an overzealous antispam filter was responsible for the blocks.
"We believe this was caused by mass spam e-mails mentioning the 'Just Say No Deal' network of blogs, which in turn caused our system to classify the blog addresses mentioned in the e-mails as spam," he said. "We have restored posting rights to the affected blogs, and it is very important to us that Blogger remain a tool for political debate and free expression."
Several of the blogs that were blocked, including hillaryorbust.com and comealongway.blogspot.com, are part of the "Just Say No Deal" network of anti-Obama blogs. But Mr. Langbert's blog is not, leading him to conclude that Obama supporters had targeted him.
On her right-leaning blog "Atlas Shrugs," Pamela Geller keeps a list of blogs that Google has temporarily blocked. "The blockings do come in waves," she said. "The last wave was this past week, and now it got very quiet."
Some writers have had their blogs unblocked, while others have moved them to WordPress, a rival blog host.
"I don't think" Google has "malicious intentions at all, it's just that spammers can literally overrun a service if you're not careful, so their defenses have become overzealous," a spokesman for WordPress, Matthew Mullenweg, said in an e-mail.
"We always have human review before turning off an active blog," he said. "People invest so much time into their blogs, to treat it with anything less than the utmost respect is criminal."
<
Two Google Apologies (h/t Phil Orenstein):
Google Apology
Spam Fridays
"While we wish that every post on this blog could be about cool features or other Blogger news, sometimes we have to step in and admit a mistake.
"We've noticed that a number of users have had their blogs mistakenly marked as spam, and wanted to sound off real quick to let you know that, despite it being Friday afternoon, we are working hard to sort this out. So to those folks who have received an email saying that your blog has been classified as spam and can't post right now, we offer our sincere apologies for the trouble.
"We hope to have this resolved shortly, and appreciate your patience as we work through the kinks."
AND
You Are Not Spam
You knew that already, and now we do too. We have now restored all accounts that were mistakenly marked as spam yesterday. (See: Spam Fridays)
We want to offer our sincerest apologies to affected bloggers and their readers. We’ve tracked down the problem to a bug in our data processing code that locked blogs even when our algorithms concluded they were not spam. We are adding additional monitoring and process checks to ensure that bugs of this magnitude are caught before they can affect your data.
At Blogger, we strongly believe that you own and should control your posts and other data. We understand that you trust us to store and serve your blog, and incidents like this one are a betrayal of that trust. In the spirit of ensuring that you always have access to your data, we have been working on importing and exporting tools to make it easier to back up your posts. If you'd like a sneak peek at the Import / Export tool, you can try it out on Blogger in Draft.
Our restoration today was of all blogs that were mistakenly marked as spam due to Friday's bug. Because spam fighting inherently runs the risk of false positives, your blog may have been mis-classified as spam for other reasons. If you are still unable to post to your blog today you can request a review by clicking Request Unlock Review on your Dashboard.
Google insists that the problem is purely due to their computer algorithm. I do not know enough to argue, but it seems too coincidental that the Hillary Clinton campaign was having a similar problem several months ago when Hillary was running against Obama, and now I and other Republican anti-Obama bloggers have had the very same problem.
Just by way of self-defense, although it may look like I spend more time on the political diatribe-type blogs, the academic-type blogs such as my write-up of Howe's book on the Whigs take up 4/5ths of my blogging time. Thus my claim to Ms. Phillips about the blog being two thirds academic stuff is probably an understatement, although it may appear to be an overstatement.
Anna Phillips's Sun Article:
>Anti-Obama Bloggers Say They Were Silenced
Web loggers who are campaigning against Senator Obama's presidential run are accusing Google and Obama supporters of silencing them after their Web logs were marked as spam and their accounts temporarily frozen.
On Thursday, hours after publishing a post about an online petition demanding that Mr. Obama publicly produce his birth certificate, an associate professor of business administration at Brooklyn College, Mitchell Langbert, found that he could no longer access his Web log.
Google's Blogger hosting service had suspended "Mitchell Langbert's Blog," which Mr. Langbert describes as "two-thirds academic stuff I'm working on and one-third politics," until it could verify the Web log was not a "spam blog," or a site designed solely to increase the page views of associated Web sites.
A day later Google lifted the block on the account, but the incident and earlier Web log freezes in late June have led Mr. Langbert and other anti-Obama bloggers to accuse the Illinois senator's supporters of intentionally identifying their blog addresses to Google as spam blogs. They also say the company has reflexively suspended the sites.
"These tech-savvy smart alecks have figured out that if you report a blog you don't like, you can do some damage to a person," Mr. Langbert said.
A spokesman for Google, Adam Kovacevich, said in a statement that an overzealous antispam filter was responsible for the blocks.
"We believe this was caused by mass spam e-mails mentioning the 'Just Say No Deal' network of blogs, which in turn caused our system to classify the blog addresses mentioned in the e-mails as spam," he said. "We have restored posting rights to the affected blogs, and it is very important to us that Blogger remain a tool for political debate and free expression."
Several of the blogs that were blocked, including hillaryorbust.com and comealongway.blogspot.com, are part of the "Just Say No Deal" network of anti-Obama blogs. But Mr. Langbert's blog is not, leading him to conclude that Obama supporters had targeted him.
On her right-leaning blog "Atlas Shrugs," Pamela Geller keeps a list of blogs that Google has temporarily blocked. "The blockings do come in waves," she said. "The last wave was this past week, and now it got very quiet."
Some writers have had their blogs unblocked, while others have moved them to WordPress, a rival blog host.
"I don't think" Google has "malicious intentions at all, it's just that spammers can literally overrun a service if you're not careful, so their defenses have become overzealous," a spokesman for WordPress, Matthew Mullenweg, said in an e-mail.
"We always have human review before turning off an active blog," he said. "People invest so much time into their blogs, to treat it with anything less than the utmost respect is criminal."
<
Two Google Apologies (h/t Phil Orenstein):
Google Apology
Spam Fridays
"While we wish that every post on this blog could be about cool features or other Blogger news, sometimes we have to step in and admit a mistake.
"We've noticed that a number of users have had their blogs mistakenly marked as spam, and wanted to sound off real quick to let you know that, despite it being Friday afternoon, we are working hard to sort this out. So to those folks who have received an email saying that your blog has been classified as spam and can't post right now, we offer our sincere apologies for the trouble.
"We hope to have this resolved shortly, and appreciate your patience as we work through the kinks."
AND
You Are Not Spam
You knew that already, and now we do too. We have now restored all accounts that were mistakenly marked as spam yesterday. (See: Spam Fridays)
We want to offer our sincerest apologies to affected bloggers and their readers. We’ve tracked down the problem to a bug in our data processing code that locked blogs even when our algorithms concluded they were not spam. We are adding additional monitoring and process checks to ensure that bugs of this magnitude are caught before they can affect your data.
At Blogger, we strongly believe that you own and should control your posts and other data. We understand that you trust us to store and serve your blog, and incidents like this one are a betrayal of that trust. In the spirit of ensuring that you always have access to your data, we have been working on importing and exporting tools to make it easier to back up your posts. If you'd like a sneak peek at the Import / Export tool, you can try it out on Blogger in Draft.
Our restoration today was of all blogs that were mistakenly marked as spam due to Friday's bug. Because spam fighting inherently runs the risk of false positives, your blog may have been mis-classified as spam for other reasons. If you are still unable to post to your blog today you can request a review by clicking Request Unlock Review on your Dashboard.
Monday, August 4, 2008
Letter to Chuck Schumer Re Death Tax
PO Box 130
West Shokan, New York 12494
August 4, 2008
The Honorable Charles E. Schumer
313 Hart Senate Building
Washington, DC 20510
Dear Senator Schumer:
I oppose the inheritance or death tax and urge you to vote to repeal it. There are many New Yorkers, to include the Ochs Sulzbergers, the Rockefellers and the Goulds, who are wealthy but have never paid any inheritance tax because they put their money in trusts. Congress has never seen fit to tax trusts, leaving the big fish to eat the remains of small.
There is one estate tax I do favor: an estate tax on trusts that hold family-owned newspapers. Your patrons at the New York Times ought to practice what they preach, and I am sure that you will see to it that they never will.
Sincerely,
Mitchell Langbert
West Shokan, New York 12494
August 4, 2008
The Honorable Charles E. Schumer
313 Hart Senate Building
Washington, DC 20510
Dear Senator Schumer:
I oppose the inheritance or death tax and urge you to vote to repeal it. There are many New Yorkers, to include the Ochs Sulzbergers, the Rockefellers and the Goulds, who are wealthy but have never paid any inheritance tax because they put their money in trusts. Congress has never seen fit to tax trusts, leaving the big fish to eat the remains of small.
There is one estate tax I do favor: an estate tax on trusts that hold family-owned newspapers. Your patrons at the New York Times ought to practice what they preach, and I am sure that you will see to it that they never will.
Sincerely,
Mitchell Langbert
Ochs Sulzbergers and the Estate Tax
The New York Times has been in the same family's hands since 1896. Adolph Ochs purchased the New York Times and, since then, the Ochs Sulzbergers have retained control of the family business through inheritance via a family trust. The Ochs Sulzbergers are the wealthiest of the wealthy, among the top one thousandth of one per cent in terms of assets, yet the inheritance or death tax has not affected them, nor do they seem to think it should. Recently, shareholders of the Times complained, alleging mismanagement on the part of Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Adolph Ochs's great grandson, but the Ochs Sulzberger family asserted privilege of ownership. I wonder if Arthur Ochs Sulzberger would lead the most powerful newspaper in the country if he did not inherit this position via a family trust.
Despite the fact that the Ochs Sulzbergers have inherited their assets, live off an inheritance, and the current generation has done little of importance other than be born to the right great-grandfather, the Ochs Sulzbergers preach an inheritance or death tax for others, but not for themselves.
On June 21, 2005 in a baldly hypocritical editorial, the Times wrote:
"This is not about saving mom-and-pop shops or the family farm, as President Bush and his allies would have you believe. Repealing the estate tax would cut taxes for the top 2 percent of Americans at an estimated cost of $745 billion during the first 10 years of repeal. That is more than the United States is projected to budget for homeland security. Many supporters of a repeal say the cost would be $290 billion over the next 10 years. But that lower estimate includes five years in which the estate tax is still on the books. Properly done, estate tax reform would be welcome."
In other words, if you're a family of sharpies like the Ochs Sulzbergers then you get to inherit and drive a billion dollar family fortune you did not earn into the ground, but if you're a small businessman who doesn't think in terms of legal niceties and trusts, inheritance is a selfish and reactionary proposition, a matter of budget balancing for the elite to ponder. After all, the inheritance tax is targeted at grimy small businessmen, not virtuous aritocrats like the Ochs Sulzbergers who utilize trusts to avoid the taxes that they wish to impose on others.
Although I oppose the inheritance tax, I do favor a special inheritance tax for families who own newspapers in trusts. Let the Ochs Sulzbergers practice what they preach, frauds that they and the New York Times be.
Despite the fact that the Ochs Sulzbergers have inherited their assets, live off an inheritance, and the current generation has done little of importance other than be born to the right great-grandfather, the Ochs Sulzbergers preach an inheritance or death tax for others, but not for themselves.
On June 21, 2005 in a baldly hypocritical editorial, the Times wrote:
"This is not about saving mom-and-pop shops or the family farm, as President Bush and his allies would have you believe. Repealing the estate tax would cut taxes for the top 2 percent of Americans at an estimated cost of $745 billion during the first 10 years of repeal. That is more than the United States is projected to budget for homeland security. Many supporters of a repeal say the cost would be $290 billion over the next 10 years. But that lower estimate includes five years in which the estate tax is still on the books. Properly done, estate tax reform would be welcome."
In other words, if you're a family of sharpies like the Ochs Sulzbergers then you get to inherit and drive a billion dollar family fortune you did not earn into the ground, but if you're a small businessman who doesn't think in terms of legal niceties and trusts, inheritance is a selfish and reactionary proposition, a matter of budget balancing for the elite to ponder. After all, the inheritance tax is targeted at grimy small businessmen, not virtuous aritocrats like the Ochs Sulzbergers who utilize trusts to avoid the taxes that they wish to impose on others.
Although I oppose the inheritance tax, I do favor a special inheritance tax for families who own newspapers in trusts. Let the Ochs Sulzbergers practice what they preach, frauds that they and the New York Times be.
Letter to Governor Rod R. Blagojevich (D-IL) Re Obama Birth Certificate
PO Box 130
West Shokan, New York 12494
August 4, 2008
The Honorable Rod R. Blagojevich
Office of the Governor
207 State House
Springfield, IL 62706
Dear Governor Blagojevich:
This is an inquiry as to why Dan White’s Board of Elections has failed to investigate the eligibility of Senator Barack Obama to hold the office of Senator for the State of Illinois. Under the Constitution, a Senator must be a US citizen for nine years prior to becoming Senator. Proof of citizenship is an authentic birth certificate. But in recent weeks Mr. Obama’s supporters have posted a fraudulent birth certificate on a Web site, and Mr. Obama has failed to respond to my and others’ requests for a copy of his birth certificate. The issue of whether Mr. Obama was actually born in the State of Hawaii is heightened by his birth’s having been recorded in two unrelated hospitals, both in Honolulu, and by persistent questions about his mother’s whereabouts at the time of birth. Because of its culture of secrecy, the State of Hawaii has refused to make the presidential candidate’s birth information public.
Some observers have suggested that, like Hawaii, Illinois’s famously corrupt and secretive political culture ensures that Mr. White will fail to do his job and investigate the propriety of Mr. Obama’s holding the office of Senator. I urge you to oversee a thorough and open investigation of Mr. Obama’s place of birth.
Sincerely,
Mitchell Langbert, Ph.D.
Cc: Dan White, Executive Director
Illinois Board of Elections
1020 S. Spring St.
Springfield, Illinois 62704
West Shokan, New York 12494
August 4, 2008
The Honorable Rod R. Blagojevich
Office of the Governor
207 State House
Springfield, IL 62706
Dear Governor Blagojevich:
This is an inquiry as to why Dan White’s Board of Elections has failed to investigate the eligibility of Senator Barack Obama to hold the office of Senator for the State of Illinois. Under the Constitution, a Senator must be a US citizen for nine years prior to becoming Senator. Proof of citizenship is an authentic birth certificate. But in recent weeks Mr. Obama’s supporters have posted a fraudulent birth certificate on a Web site, and Mr. Obama has failed to respond to my and others’ requests for a copy of his birth certificate. The issue of whether Mr. Obama was actually born in the State of Hawaii is heightened by his birth’s having been recorded in two unrelated hospitals, both in Honolulu, and by persistent questions about his mother’s whereabouts at the time of birth. Because of its culture of secrecy, the State of Hawaii has refused to make the presidential candidate’s birth information public.
Some observers have suggested that, like Hawaii, Illinois’s famously corrupt and secretive political culture ensures that Mr. White will fail to do his job and investigate the propriety of Mr. Obama’s holding the office of Senator. I urge you to oversee a thorough and open investigation of Mr. Obama’s place of birth.
Sincerely,
Mitchell Langbert, Ph.D.
Cc: Dan White, Executive Director
Illinois Board of Elections
1020 S. Spring St.
Springfield, Illinois 62704
Letter to Governor Linda Lingle (R-HI) Re Obama Birth Certificate
PO Box 130
West Shokan, New York 12494
August 4, 2008
The Honorable Linda Lingle
Capitol, Room 415
Honolulu, Hawai`i 96813
Dear Governor Lingle:
This is a public follow up to my earlier letter to Chiyome L. Fukino, MD, Hawaii’s Director of Public Health. Dr. Fukino has not responded to my earlier letter. I am now inquiring with you as to why the State of Hawaii has been violating its Open Records Law and § 338-18 of the Hawaii Revised Statutes by refusing to make public the birth records of a major party presidential candidate in which all Americans have a direct and tangible interest.
Might it be time to allow sunlight in to disinfect Hawaii’s secretive Public Health Department?
Sincerely,
Mitchell Langbert, Ph.D.
Cc: Dr. Chiyome L. Fukino, MD
Director of Public Health
State of Hawaii Department of Health
Honolulu, Hawaii 98601-3378
West Shokan, New York 12494
August 4, 2008
The Honorable Linda Lingle
Capitol, Room 415
Honolulu, Hawai`i 96813
Dear Governor Lingle:
This is a public follow up to my earlier letter to Chiyome L. Fukino, MD, Hawaii’s Director of Public Health. Dr. Fukino has not responded to my earlier letter. I am now inquiring with you as to why the State of Hawaii has been violating its Open Records Law and § 338-18 of the Hawaii Revised Statutes by refusing to make public the birth records of a major party presidential candidate in which all Americans have a direct and tangible interest.
Might it be time to allow sunlight in to disinfect Hawaii’s secretive Public Health Department?
Sincerely,
Mitchell Langbert, Ph.D.
Cc: Dr. Chiyome L. Fukino, MD
Director of Public Health
State of Hawaii Department of Health
Honolulu, Hawaii 98601-3378
It's the Jewish Lobby's Fault
By CHARLES HUTZLER, Associated Press Writer
19 minutes ago
BEIJING - In an audacious and deadly attack just days ahead of the Beijing Olympics, two men from a mainly Muslim ethnic group rammed a truck and hurled explosives at jogging policemen in China's restive far west Monday, killing 16.
The attack in a city near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border brought an immediate response from China's Olympic organizers, who pronounced security precautions ready to ensure safety in Beijing and other Olympic venues when the games open Friday.
Yet the timing so close to opening day heightened the attack's shock value and bore the hallmarks of local Muslim militants, said Li Wei, a counterterrorism expert affiliated with the government.
19 minutes ago
BEIJING - In an audacious and deadly attack just days ahead of the Beijing Olympics, two men from a mainly Muslim ethnic group rammed a truck and hurled explosives at jogging policemen in China's restive far west Monday, killing 16.
The attack in a city near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border brought an immediate response from China's Olympic organizers, who pronounced security precautions ready to ensure safety in Beijing and other Olympic venues when the games open Friday.
Yet the timing so close to opening day heightened the attack's shock value and bore the hallmarks of local Muslim militants, said Li Wei, a counterterrorism expert affiliated with the government.
TexasDarlin on Obama Birth Certificate--Previous Owner Was Female
TexasDarlin has several fascinating posts on the Obama birth certficate, h/t Contrairimairi, Larwyn and Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugs, indicating that the owner of the fraudulent Obama birth certificate presented on the Daily Kos site was female (and presumably could not have been Obama, but who knows?).
TD notes that two different Honolulu hospitals have records of Obama's birth.
On July 8 TexasDarlin asked:
"In which hospital was Obama born: Queens Medical Center or Kapiolani Medical Center? I read that Obama himself refuses to answer this question. Is that true?
Likewise the State of Hawaii continues to develop an image as a state that excels in secrecy in government. TD notes:
Recent calls to both hospitals to get confirmation of Obama’s birth led nowhere. A colleague reports:
“At Queens, I was told it was private information and I had to fill out a medical request form (needs to be signed by BO). I then said ‘Oh I thought it would be common knowledge in Hawaii which hospital he was born at.’ She then laughed nervously and said “Ah no” and told me again that I needed the form."
Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugs has an analysis and report here, here and here.
TD notes that two different Honolulu hospitals have records of Obama's birth.
On July 8 TexasDarlin asked:
"In which hospital was Obama born: Queens Medical Center or Kapiolani Medical Center? I read that Obama himself refuses to answer this question. Is that true?
Likewise the State of Hawaii continues to develop an image as a state that excels in secrecy in government. TD notes:
Recent calls to both hospitals to get confirmation of Obama’s birth led nowhere. A colleague reports:
“At Queens, I was told it was private information and I had to fill out a medical request form (needs to be signed by BO). I then said ‘Oh I thought it would be common knowledge in Hawaii which hospital he was born at.’ She then laughed nervously and said “Ah no” and told me again that I needed the form."
Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugs has an analysis and report here, here and here.
Open Letter to Mr. George Soros and Open Society Institute Re Obama Birth Certificate
Mr. George Soros
Open Society Institute
400 West 59th Street
New York, NY 10019, U.S.A.
Dear Mr. Soros:
You have made a point of claiming that you believe in an "open society" and you have assertively backed Barack Obama's candidacy. At present, the State of Hawaii has violated the requirements of its Open Records Law and § 338-18 of its statute concerning birth records by refusing to provide Barack Obama’s birth certificate to every American. Yet, every American has a direct and tangible interest in seeing this information first hand. I have written to Mr. Obama and asked that he open this information to society and he has not responded. Instead, Obama supporters have offered a fraudulent birth certificate via a Web site. I am curious as to how Mr. Obama's willingness to engage in manipulative secrecy jibes with your belief in an open society. Do you continue to support Mr. Obama's candidacy despite his indifference to an open society?
Some have argued that Mr. Obama's birth certificate is not problematic and that he is merely manipulating public opinion, intending to reveal favorable information at an opportune time. If so, is this sort of political manipulation the foundation of your interpretation of what the term "open society" ought to mean?
Sincerely,
Mitchell Langbert
Open Society Institute
400 West 59th Street
New York, NY 10019, U.S.A.
Dear Mr. Soros:
You have made a point of claiming that you believe in an "open society" and you have assertively backed Barack Obama's candidacy. At present, the State of Hawaii has violated the requirements of its Open Records Law and § 338-18 of its statute concerning birth records by refusing to provide Barack Obama’s birth certificate to every American. Yet, every American has a direct and tangible interest in seeing this information first hand. I have written to Mr. Obama and asked that he open this information to society and he has not responded. Instead, Obama supporters have offered a fraudulent birth certificate via a Web site. I am curious as to how Mr. Obama's willingness to engage in manipulative secrecy jibes with your belief in an open society. Do you continue to support Mr. Obama's candidacy despite his indifference to an open society?
Some have argued that Mr. Obama's birth certificate is not problematic and that he is merely manipulating public opinion, intending to reveal favorable information at an opportune time. If so, is this sort of political manipulation the foundation of your interpretation of what the term "open society" ought to mean?
Sincerely,
Mitchell Langbert
Jim and Mairi Fear an Illinois Democratic Cover Up Re Obama Birth Certificate
Given the anti-democratic and closed nature of Illinois politics Jim is skeptical of Mairi's petition drive. But stranger things have been successful. Barack Obama should hang his head in shame at his overt contempt for democracy.
Jim writes:
> I have exchanged emails with Mairia already. She is trying to collect signatures. God bless her for doing that.
> I have tried calling the RNC, but no one is picking up. You may not be familiar with Illinois, but the politics here are all run by the Chicago machine and the state combine. It is difficult to explain to an outsider how tightly controlled and inbred politics here really are. I am, at best, skeptical that a petition will produce results.
> I have called my state rep who is a democrat, but a decent guy. I will call Durbin just for yuks.
> I am open to other ideas to move this along.
>ContrairiMairi Writes:
>I am writing to request permission to circulate petitions at local Dominick's Grocery Store entrances. I am enclosing a copy of the petition being circulated. Please be certain that this petition is open to all adult residents of Illinois. It is not partisan, nor does it exclude people who are not registered voters.
>The petition requests that the State of Illinois verify that Barack Obama meets all legal requirements to hold the office of Senator of Illinois. This petition is a public service open to adults in our State. Illinois law mandates American citizenship in order to serve. Barack Obama has produced a certificate at his campaign website which is not valid. The certificate states clearly that any alteration of it renders it invalid. The certificate number has been removed, an alteration of the document, thereby rendering it invalid.
>The citizens of Illinois, by law, may request information to verify compliance with State Election guidelines and laws, and that is the sole motivation behind this petition drive.
>I am hoping you will grant us permission to circulate our petitions at your entrances. We shop frequently at Dominick's, and I feel that shoppers at your stores reflect an Illinois public that matches exactly what we hope to represent with our petition. We are striving to capture the feelings of residents who adequately reflect the total population of our great State. I feel that your shoppers meet and exceed our hope!
Sincerely,
Jim writes:
> I have exchanged emails with Mairia already. She is trying to collect signatures. God bless her for doing that.
> I have tried calling the RNC, but no one is picking up. You may not be familiar with Illinois, but the politics here are all run by the Chicago machine and the state combine. It is difficult to explain to an outsider how tightly controlled and inbred politics here really are. I am, at best, skeptical that a petition will produce results.
> I have called my state rep who is a democrat, but a decent guy. I will call Durbin just for yuks.
> I am open to other ideas to move this along.
>ContrairiMairi Writes:
>I am writing to request permission to circulate petitions at local Dominick's Grocery Store entrances. I am enclosing a copy of the petition being circulated. Please be certain that this petition is open to all adult residents of Illinois. It is not partisan, nor does it exclude people who are not registered voters.
>The petition requests that the State of Illinois verify that Barack Obama meets all legal requirements to hold the office of Senator of Illinois. This petition is a public service open to adults in our State. Illinois law mandates American citizenship in order to serve. Barack Obama has produced a certificate at his campaign website which is not valid. The certificate states clearly that any alteration of it renders it invalid. The certificate number has been removed, an alteration of the document, thereby rendering it invalid.
>The citizens of Illinois, by law, may request information to verify compliance with State Election guidelines and laws, and that is the sole motivation behind this petition drive.
>I am hoping you will grant us permission to circulate our petitions at your entrances. We shop frequently at Dominick's, and I feel that shoppers at your stores reflect an Illinois public that matches exactly what we hope to represent with our petition. We are striving to capture the feelings of residents who adequately reflect the total population of our great State. I feel that your shoppers meet and exceed our hope!
Sincerely,
The Progressives' Sleight of Hand
In the nineteenth century, "progress" meant technological and economic progress. Whig economists like Henry Carey believed in progress and were optimistic as opposed to the pessimism of Malthus and the Manchester school. However, by "progress" Carey meant technological and economic progress. He did not see politics as important. The idea that progress ought to occur through the political system was introduced in the late nineteenth century in several ways. First, the Mugwumps argued that rationalization of public administration through Civil Service laws meant progress. Populists argued that large scale industry must be broken up by government edict. Americans such as Henry Carter Adams, Richard T. Ely and John R. Commons, educated in Germany began to argue for social democratic intervention. Thus, the Progressives identified progress with governmental reform. Which is more important: breakthrough technologies and better management methods that increase wealth, or government policies that rationalize government operations and redistribute wealth? The Progressives seem to not have realized that there was a trade off. In particular, the policies that implement redistribution and regulation forestall entrepreneurship because their costs rest most heavily on small business entrepreneurs. The result is that the Progressives adopted an anti-progressive attitude toward technological and market progress, which was carried forward through the New Deal. The twentieth century saw a slowing of technological progress because of monetary, regulatory and redistributive reforms of the Progressive and New Deal era.
Suspicions About Obama Birth Certificate Grow
Thelma from Florida has written the following snail mail letter to my West Shokan PO Box. Her suggestion is that some good Republican in Hawaii go to all the hospitals in Honolulu to see if Obama's birth certificate can be found, and also to investigate Kenyan records. An interesting idea. Anyone up for a Hawaiian vacation in August? Or a trip to Kenya?
>Dear Sir:
I enjoyed reading your blog about your attempts to obtain Barack Hussein Obama's birth certificate.
Since Obama has dual citizenship, might it be possible to obtain information about his place of birth from Kenya records?
And Stanley Ann Dunham was on Mercer Island visiting friends with an approximately month old Obama in August 1961. The friend states that Dunham was on her way from Hawaii to visit Barack, Sr. at Harvard. But Barack Sr. didn't go to Harvard until 1963 (or late '62?) Is it possible to check records in Vancouver, Canada to determine if Dunham might have hidden out with friends in Canada while pregnant and had the child there?
At least one hospital in Honolulu that Wikipedia claims Obama was born in can find no record of his birth. Could records be checked in all hospitals in Honolulu?
I appreciate your efforts in attempting to obtain the birth certificate
Sincerely,
Thelma
>Dear Sir:
I enjoyed reading your blog about your attempts to obtain Barack Hussein Obama's birth certificate.
Since Obama has dual citizenship, might it be possible to obtain information about his place of birth from Kenya records?
And Stanley Ann Dunham was on Mercer Island visiting friends with an approximately month old Obama in August 1961. The friend states that Dunham was on her way from Hawaii to visit Barack, Sr. at Harvard. But Barack Sr. didn't go to Harvard until 1963 (or late '62?) Is it possible to check records in Vancouver, Canada to determine if Dunham might have hidden out with friends in Canada while pregnant and had the child there?
At least one hospital in Honolulu that Wikipedia claims Obama was born in can find no record of his birth. Could records be checked in all hospitals in Honolulu?
I appreciate your efforts in attempting to obtain the birth certificate
Sincerely,
Thelma
E-Mail From Reader: No Response from Hawaii Health Department
>Good afternoon.
I have been following the small drama surrounding Mr. Obama’s birth certificate.
The whole affair is odd. As a parent, I have to supply our schools with official, notarized, and authentic birth certificates for each of my children to attend school. So I write, pay my fee, and a few weeks later… viola! No big deal for me, so why such a fuss and all the foot dragging on Mr. Obama’s part?
Have you received any response yet from Hawaii? It has been a month.
--Jim
Dear Jim: The Hawaii Health Department has an odd interpretation of social responsibility. On the one hand, it views the records of a major party presidential candidate as confidential despite a Hawaii open records policy. On the other, when I contacted them, Director Chiyome L. Fukino's and Communications Officer Janice Okubo's response has been to clam up.
I have been following the small drama surrounding Mr. Obama’s birth certificate.
The whole affair is odd. As a parent, I have to supply our schools with official, notarized, and authentic birth certificates for each of my children to attend school. So I write, pay my fee, and a few weeks later… viola! No big deal for me, so why such a fuss and all the foot dragging on Mr. Obama’s part?
Have you received any response yet from Hawaii? It has been a month.
--Jim
Dear Jim: The Hawaii Health Department has an odd interpretation of social responsibility. On the one hand, it views the records of a major party presidential candidate as confidential despite a Hawaii open records policy. On the other, when I contacted them, Director Chiyome L. Fukino's and Communications Officer Janice Okubo's response has been to clam up.
ContrairiMairi Demands Illinois Election Board Investigate Obama
ContrairiMarie of Illinois has written the following letter to Dan White, Executive Director of the Illinois Board of Elections.
>Dan White, Executive Director
Illinois Board of Elections
1020 S. Spring St.
Springfield, Illinois 62704
Dear Mr. White,
I am writing to respectfully demand the Board investigate the qualifications of Barack H. Obama. In light of the Certificate of Live Birth posted at the Campaign's internet site, I feel there needs to be a full investigation of his citizenship status. Illinois statutes require that he be a citizen, and I challenge that his claim is valid. The Certificate posted has been altered. The certificate number has been removed. The document states clearly, that any alteration of it makes it invalid. I believe that removal of the certificate number does alter the document, thereby rendering it invalid.
It is the duty of the Board to insure that all legal guidelines and qualifications of any candidate running for office in this State are adhered to. He is our State Senator. That is far too important a position to leave in a questionable state. He must be required to make public, a legal documentation of his citizenship status. It also now is stated that he holds citizenship in two other countries that do not recognize dual citizenship with the United States. I am also respectfully challenging that his ownership of citizenship in either of those countries negates his U.S citizenship. If he is in fact holding multiple passports issued by countries that do not recognize dual citizenship, his American citizenship cannot be valid.
It is imperative that the residents of this State are being represented by persons who meet all the legal qualifications as set forth by Illinois law. You cannot expect that we should be governed by laws passed by someone breaking the law. Please send verification with documented proof of his status to me at the address listed.
Sincerely,
ContrairiMairi
>Dan White, Executive Director
Illinois Board of Elections
1020 S. Spring St.
Springfield, Illinois 62704
Dear Mr. White,
I am writing to respectfully demand the Board investigate the qualifications of Barack H. Obama. In light of the Certificate of Live Birth posted at the Campaign's internet site, I feel there needs to be a full investigation of his citizenship status. Illinois statutes require that he be a citizen, and I challenge that his claim is valid. The Certificate posted has been altered. The certificate number has been removed. The document states clearly, that any alteration of it makes it invalid. I believe that removal of the certificate number does alter the document, thereby rendering it invalid.
It is the duty of the Board to insure that all legal guidelines and qualifications of any candidate running for office in this State are adhered to. He is our State Senator. That is far too important a position to leave in a questionable state. He must be required to make public, a legal documentation of his citizenship status. It also now is stated that he holds citizenship in two other countries that do not recognize dual citizenship with the United States. I am also respectfully challenging that his ownership of citizenship in either of those countries negates his U.S citizenship. If he is in fact holding multiple passports issued by countries that do not recognize dual citizenship, his American citizenship cannot be valid.
It is imperative that the residents of this State are being represented by persons who meet all the legal qualifications as set forth by Illinois law. You cannot expect that we should be governed by laws passed by someone breaking the law. Please send verification with documented proof of his status to me at the address listed.
Sincerely,
ContrairiMairi
E-mail Re Obama's Cover Up
Dear Mitchell,
Once again, MANY thanks. I nearly considered giving up the petition drive in the short run, in favor of the challenge to the FEC. I still believe that the State level IS going to be the far more effective challenge, after your mail.
But thinking over all of this has me really worried. One site claims that in a "gentlemanly process, we accept self certification", as the reason that Hussein got this far in the first place with no challenge. This is my worry....why would any opposing candidate in any election accept self certification from the opposition, unless that candidate also had something to hide.
For instance, Hilary....she has been the First Lady! One would think she would be savvy enough to challenge any opponent's qualifications. Why hasn't she? John McCain had his own citizenship challenged. Why hasn't he returned the favor? Why are these and many other candidates so accepting of the "gentlemanly process" that they accept "self certification" from an opponent so willingly? Do you find this as frightening as I now do?
Why are we at a point in Hussein's term as Senator from Illinois that ordinary citizens will be the only ones offering the challenge? And at this late date! This SHOULD have been dealt with much earlier on. I am now finding it a bit more interesting that so few "good candidates" seem to be running for office. We always seem to be choosing the lesser evil. I am not a person who believes in "conspiracy theories", but I am really wondering now what is going on behind the scenes. Why are these people granting self certification to opponents, if in fact this is what is happening?
Seems to me, if I were running a clean campaign, my first course of action would be to make sure MY OWN qualifications were airtight. I would then expect the same from my opponent. I'll bet most Americans who pay any attention at all to the political process would think that to be a fundamental of the campaign process. Aren't we getting our eyes opened the hard way with this election? We had so many candidates in the Democratic Primary, who would have thought that this close to the general election, no one knows if the Democratic Presumptive nominee is even legally qualified!
Guess Americans had best get busy setting their own rules for elections and the campaign process. Rather than leave the question of legal qualification to the opponents in an election, we need to start demanding proof of legal qualification each time someone tosses their hat into the ring! It needs to be done at every level of the election process.
Sincerely,
Mairi
Once again, MANY thanks. I nearly considered giving up the petition drive in the short run, in favor of the challenge to the FEC. I still believe that the State level IS going to be the far more effective challenge, after your mail.
But thinking over all of this has me really worried. One site claims that in a "gentlemanly process, we accept self certification", as the reason that Hussein got this far in the first place with no challenge. This is my worry....why would any opposing candidate in any election accept self certification from the opposition, unless that candidate also had something to hide.
For instance, Hilary....she has been the First Lady! One would think she would be savvy enough to challenge any opponent's qualifications. Why hasn't she? John McCain had his own citizenship challenged. Why hasn't he returned the favor? Why are these and many other candidates so accepting of the "gentlemanly process" that they accept "self certification" from an opponent so willingly? Do you find this as frightening as I now do?
Why are we at a point in Hussein's term as Senator from Illinois that ordinary citizens will be the only ones offering the challenge? And at this late date! This SHOULD have been dealt with much earlier on. I am now finding it a bit more interesting that so few "good candidates" seem to be running for office. We always seem to be choosing the lesser evil. I am not a person who believes in "conspiracy theories", but I am really wondering now what is going on behind the scenes. Why are these people granting self certification to opponents, if in fact this is what is happening?
Seems to me, if I were running a clean campaign, my first course of action would be to make sure MY OWN qualifications were airtight. I would then expect the same from my opponent. I'll bet most Americans who pay any attention at all to the political process would think that to be a fundamental of the campaign process. Aren't we getting our eyes opened the hard way with this election? We had so many candidates in the Democratic Primary, who would have thought that this close to the general election, no one knows if the Democratic Presumptive nominee is even legally qualified!
Guess Americans had best get busy setting their own rules for elections and the campaign process. Rather than leave the question of legal qualification to the opponents in an election, we need to start demanding proof of legal qualification each time someone tosses their hat into the ring! It needs to be done at every level of the election process.
Sincerely,
Mairi
Sunday, August 3, 2008
Phil Orenstein on the Obama Birth Certificate Cover Up
Phil Orenstein has written a fine blog on the Obama birth certificate cover up here.
Daniel Walker Howe's Political Culture of the American Whigs
Daniel Walker Howe. The Political Culture of the American Whigs. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1979. 404 pages. Available from Amazon.com for $26.60. Available used and new from $14.00.
This is a fine book. Interesting, highly informative, fun to read. Howe's writing is lucid. Books like this inspire us to learn. Howe's insights about the American Whig Party, their ideas, religion and culture are wonderful, and he covers a lot of ground. He uses a biographical approach that covers a wide range of Whig Party politicians beginning with John Quincy Adams (who became a Whig after his presidency and during his post-presidency Congressional tenure) and ending with Abraham Lincoln, not only the best-remembered Whig but also the best-remembered 19th Century politician, except perhaps for Jefferson. Of course, the Whig Party expired in 1856 and Lincoln gained the presidency as the first Republican, but his allegiance to Henry Clay never diminished.
I read the book because I became curious about the continuity of American elitist and pro-Central Bank ideology between the 18th and twentieth centuries. This book makes clear that there are many linkages between the Whigs and the Progressives, hence the New Deal (which is my own conclusion, not Professor Howe's). Nancy Cohen makes clear the link between the Mugwumps and the Progressives, and in his concluding pages Howe mentions that the Whigs mildly reasserted themselves via the Liberal Republican Party in the 1872 election, which is often referred to as an early phase of the Mugwumps' activism. Although Howe characterizes the Whigs as the "country" party, it is clear that many former Federalists became Whigs in the 1830s. It also is clear that the economic elite was associated with the Whigs just as they had been with the Federalists, niceties about political ideology aside. Thus, there is a clear line from the Federalists to the Whigs, then to the Mugwumps and then to the Progressives. The speeches of Theodore Roosevelt, himself a one-time Mugwump, make clear the connection between his own ideas and those of Franklin Roosevelt's.
One of the nice things about this book is that Howe covers the religious and evangelical elements in the Whig philosophy along with the economic and political. It is fairly clear that the evangelical social concerns, linked of course to abolitionism, form the basis of today's social democrats' concerns. The evangelical religious impulse developed in several ways, one of which was through Social Gospel Christianity, through to Progressivism and then the social welfare elements of the New Deal. The emotional commitment of social democrats to their programs can be explained in this evolution of religious feeling that has been displaced into social democracy.
This book, written as a solid piece of history, does not suggest that there is a continuous party that has favored economic centralization from the Federalists to the New Deal Democrats. But it seems clear from the evidence. For most of its history, with the exception of the Mugwump period, the centralization party has favored a central bank, public works (which were characteristic of not only of Hamilton's Federalist program but also of Henry Clay's American system, of Theodore Roosevelt's ideas and of the New Deal) and business. The Whigs, the Mugwumps and the Progessives were ambivalent about big business, although their moral concerns seem to have been easily displaced. There is little doubt that the tariffs that the Whigs implemented were in large part responsible for big business in America. The Mugwumps, at least in some instances, were willing to repeal the tariffs but the Progressives amounted to a reassertion of more aggressive Whiggery than had existed since the end of the Civil War. In the Mugwump period the urban elite became hostile to corruption of some big business. In turn, the Progressives and New Dealers in increasing progression used anti-business rhetoric to cloak their centralist orientation. The centralizing party favored tariffs in the Hamiltonian and Clay periods, then divided over tariffs during the Mugwump period. The anti-tariff position won thereafter to the extent that reductions in tariffs did not hurt American business interests.
American history occurs in cycles, with each cycle involving various combinations and variations on the issues of economic centralization, central banking, protectionism, and support for industry. Progressivism aggressively asserted the centralizing position against the late nineteenth century elitists' deviant laissez-faire philosophy. I call it deviant because in all other periods other than the late nineteenth century American elites have opposed laissez-faire in favor of corporatist, centralizing mercantilism, Progressivism and finally so-called "liberalism". It is a tribute to the power of laissez-faire that a movement that was backed primarily by working-class and small farmer Jacksonians from say 1825to today really, and had the backing of economic elites only during the post-bellum period that ended in the late 1890s, continued to provoke so much distress from university-trained economic elites, business and banking interests, organized labor and other proponents of elitist centralization through to the present.
Like the Whigs, the Progressives were advocates of a return to the corporatist mercantilism of the 17th and 18th centuries represented by Anthony Ashley Cooper, the Earl of Shaftesbury in the 17th century and Sir James Steuart in his "Inquiry into the Principles of Political Oeconomy", published in 1767. As William Appleman Williams aptly points out in his classic Contours of American History :
"...it is possible to gain a vital insight into that contemporary liberalism which defends the right of private property and asserts the supremacy of individual liberty while at the same time advocating the general welfare. For although such liberals show superficial similarities to the mercantilists, they are considerably removed from that conservative tradition of the common good. Such liberals usually label Karl Marx a heretic and consider socialism a heresy, but the reverse is much closer to the truth. The liberal tradition stems from the triumph of laissez-faire individualism over corporate Christianity. Marx and other socialists reasserted the validity of the original idea in response to the liberal heresy. That is indeed one of the basic explanations of socialism's persistent relevance and appeal in the 20th century."*
Williams's point can be expanded a bit, because not only socialists but also Whigs and Progressives rejected the laissez-faire heresy.
As opposed to laissez-faire, the Whig Party (p. 16) "advanced a particular program of national development. The Whig economic platform called for purposeful intervention by the federal government in the form of tariffs to protect domestic industry, subsidies for internal improvements, and a national bank to regulate the currency and make tax revenues available for private investment...The Democrats inclined toward free trade and laissez-faire; when government action was required, they preferred to leave it to the states and local communities. The Whigs were more concerned with providing centralized direction to social policy...The most important single issue dividing the parties, and the source of the most acute disappointment to the Whigs after President Harrison had been succeeded by Tyler, concerned the banking systemm. Jackson's veto of the recharter of the Second Bank of the United States in 1832 became the point of departure for a generation of political partisanship". By 1860 Abraham Lincoln favored reinstitution of a central bank but was unable to effect it, and a central bank was not reinstituted until 1913, under Woodrow Wilson, who was the first of several Democratic Party Whigs.
Howe goes on to point out (p. 17):
"The banking-currency issue (that is, the right of banks to issue their own paper money) mattered at the state as well as the federal level. Many states redrafted their constitutions during the Jacksonian period and had to decide whether they would authorize state banking monopolies (usually mixed public-private corporations), specially chartered banks, free banking, or no banks of issue at all. As time went by, the parties tended to polarize with respect not only to rechartering a national bank but to the function of banking in general. The Democrats generally became more committed to hard money (specie or government-issued currency), while the Whigs became defenders of the credit system (in which banks were the issuers of currency)."
"When Democratic "Martin van Buren complained during the Panic of 1837 that people looked to the government for too much," (Whig) Henry Clay retorted that the people were "entitled to the protecting care of a paternal government." This is very much in the tradition of mercantilism.
But while on economic issues the Democrats were anti-inflation and pro-democracy, on the race issue the Democrats were pro-slavery and racism while the Whigs were less racist and more anti-slavery.
Howe argues that (p. 20):
"there is danger in calling the Whigs champions of the positive liberal state. It makes them sound too much like twentieth-century liberals. Actually, the differences between the Whigs and twentieth century liberals are more important than the similarities. Whig policies did not have the object of redistributing wealth or diminishing the influence of the privileged. Furthermore, the Whigs distrusted executives in both state and federal government (they had been traumatized by the conduct of Jackson), whereas twentieth century liberals have endorsed strong executives more often than not. For all their innovations in economic policy, the Whigs usually thought of themselves as conservatives, as custodians of an identifiable political and cultural heritage. Most deeply separating the Whigs from twentieth century liberals were their moral absolutism, their paternalism and their concern with imposing discipline...the Whigs proposed a society that would be economically diverse but culturally uniform; the Democrats preferred the economic uniformity of a society of small farmers and artisans but were more tolerant of cultural and moral diversity."
Taking the last point first, economic diversity is not an issue of importance today, but cultural uniformity is. Perhaps invisibly to Howe, twentieth century social democrats have aimed to foist a cultural uniformity on America. In the mid twentieth century they claimed that liberalism reflected the national consensus. By the 1980s they advocated political correctness. Political correctness is a moralistic impulse with Whiggish religious roots. Moreover, although the twentieth and 21st centuries have rejected the sexual morality and Aristotelian virtues characteristic of the Whigs and earlier, they have replaced these with a host of politically correct moralities with which they replace faith and tradition, to include animal rights, global warming and similar causes.
It fascinates me that Howe's argument begs the argument of Murray Rothbard, Ronald Radosh and Martin J. Sklar in New History of Leviathan that twentieth century liberalism did not aim to redistribute wealth but only used social democratic rhetoric to re enforce elitist goals. In terms of culture, there is no doubt that 20th and 21st century liberalism repudiates 19th century Whiggish elitism as well as 19th century Democratic Party racism in favor of a revised elitist philosophy based in part on similar impulses, such as claiming special status for the educated, especially the professions. Changing technology and extensions of knowledge created new economic interests in the late nineteenth century that changed the emphasis of the Whigs' descendants, the Mugwumps, into emphasizing the role of the professions, Whiggish forms of government intervention in support of the professions and rationalization of industry and government (which the Whigs would have supported). Naturally, economic conditions altered the form elitist centralization took just as religious and moral emphasis and alliances shifted.
But on the following page Howe puts the statist essence of the Whigs into focus (p. 21):
"Because of their commitment to 'improvement', Whigs were much more concerned than Democrats with providing conscious direction to the forces of change. For them, real progress was not likely to occur automatically; it required careful, purposeful planning...Whig morality was corporate as well as individual; the community, like its members, was expected to set an example of virtue and to enforce it when possible. A third recurring theme in Whig rhetoric was the organic unity of society...the Whigs were usually concerned with muting social conflict."
Seventy years later, when Frederick Winslow Taylor advocated a "mental revolution" between labor and management as part of his system of scientific management that aimied to rationalized industry, like a good Whig Progressive (and Herbert Croly specifically endorsed Taylorism) he was arguing for the organic unity of society.
The Whigs liked to draw an analogy between the human body and the political system (p. 29): "An essential feature of the analogy for the Whigs was the parallel between regulating the faculties within an individual and regulating the individuals within society. Faculty psychology tgaught an ideal of harmony within diversity...The model ruled out laissez-faire as a social philosophy, emphasizing instead the mutual responsibility of individuals and classes. The ideal society, like the ideal personality, improved its potential in many directions. Economic development promoted a healthy diversity, which 'furnishes employment for every variety of human faculty.' The conception implied an active, purposeful central government, administering the affairs of the nation according to its best judgment for the good of the whole and all parts of the whole."
This explains the difference between the Whigs and their later descendants, the Progressives and the New Dealers, as to the importance of the chief executive. By 1900 the federal government was becoming too complex to permit a legislature to make managerial decisions. Hence, advocates of centralization had to choose between no centralization and a strong legislature or centralization and and a strong executive. Obviously, centralization was more important to the centralizing party than was a weak executive. As a practical matter, centralization is impossible without a strong executive once government reaches a certain level of size and complexity. Since the Whig/Progressive/New Deal Party has been focused on expanding government to satisfy the economic interests of the professional and managerial classes, the issue of a powerful executive is a trivial one compared to the issue of increasing size and complexity of government. You can't have both.
Moreover, the Whigs anticipated today's liberal New Deal Democrats in their claim that the educated had the right to special privileges and that the educated ought to rule over the uneducated (p. 30):
"John Locke had written that people who lacked the opportunity to cultivate their higher faculties (such as women and the poor) could not become fully rational and therefore justly held subordinate positions within society...The American Whigs were less explicit than Locke, but they shared his general view that those who had not had the opportunity of education should defer to the leadership of those who had received it..."
Today, the claim of elite privilege by the educated has reached a fever pitch. I doubt that a single Congressman or member of the President's cabinet lacks a college degree. This is so even as the intellectual demands of a college education have dwindled to next to nothing and college graduates today know less than high school graduates of 100 years ago. Compare this with an observation by Herbert Hoover in 1922**:
"That our system has avoided the establishment and domination of class has a significant proof in the present administration in Washington. Of the twelve men comprising the President, Vice-President, and Cabinet, nine have earned their own way in life without economic inheritance, and eight of them started with manual labor."
Andrew Jackson and the Democratic Party violated the "politics of deference" characteristic of early American society through extending the spoils system to all classes (p. 31). This tradition continued through Hoover's time, but the Progressives and their New Deal descendants put in place policies that were less democratic. This repositioning of elitism to focus on education rather than on the traditional land and wealth criteria occurred during and before the Mugwump period. The Mugwumps emphasized the rationalization of civil service, a concept which the Progressives developed into scientific management.
To support business, Whigs supported tariffs and the central bank (p. 32). These stands appealed to wealthy business interests but not to the poor. In order to appeal to the poor, the Whigs emphasized ethnic (specifically, WASP) identity politics, and moral issues that cut across social classes. Part of this involved the evangelical Second Great Awakening as well as appeals to basic morals (p.33):
"The Whig party's electoral campaigns formed part of a cultural struggle to impose on the United States the standards of morality we usually term Victorian. They were standards of self-control and restraint, which dovetailed well with the economic program of the party, for they emphasized thrift, sobriety and public responsibility...They looked upon the Democratic voters as undisciplined."
The Whigs extended this moralism to a belief in central planning and opposition to free markets (p. 34):
"Running through Whig political appeals was the concept of consciously arranged order. This was characteristic of their reliance on government planning rather than the invisible forces of the marketplace. It was characteristic of their reliance on government planning..."
The Whigs emphasized public education, in part through the activities of Horace Mann, a Whig (p. 36): "A believer in uniformity and conscious planning, Mann wanted more centralization in school systems. Democrats, resenting higher taxes and loss of control, frequently opposed Mann and other Whig educational reformers."
In contrast to Democrats, who aimed to end economic privilege through systemic reform such as the abolition of the central bank (p. 37):
"Whig reforms were frequently altruistic efforts to redeem others rather than examples of self-help. Whigs supported Dorothea Dix's campaign for federal aid to mental hospitals; Democrats opposed. Whig prison reformers sought to make prison a place of redemption as well as retribution...Democratic prision reformers, on the other hand, were usually concerned with economy, efficiency and deterrence."
The parallels to Progressivism and the New Deal seem clear.
The Jacksonian Democrats were the ones who oppressed the Indians. For instance the Cherokee case, where the rich lands of the Five Tribes in Georgia led to their expulsion via the famously tragic "trail of tears" was a partisan Democratic policy. "Chief Justice John Marshall delivered the judgment of the United States Supreme Court in Worcester et al. v. Georgia on March 3, 1832. He found Georgia's action unconstitutional: the state had no right to legislate for the Cherokee Nation...But Georgia defied the Court's decision...and went ahead with the expulsion of the Indians. Jackson made it clear that he would never enforce the Court's mandate, and loopholes in federal appellate procedure enabled him to avoid doing so. Meanwhile, he used the Army to facilitate the dispossession of the Indians, not to protect them." Chief Justice Marshall was, of course, a Whig.
In part because of their emphasis on moral development that coincided with their belief in economic development, Whigs emphasized history to a greater extent than Democrats (p. 72). Whigs believed that a generation could bind a later generation, lending acceptability to long term mortgages. Again, we seen a hint of future big government social democracy. For instance (p. 72) the Whig William Henry Seward recommended a series of internal improvements in New York.
Thomas J. DiLorenzo of the Ludwig Von Mises Institute quotes a Edgar Lee Masters's biography of Lincoln that states that the internal improvements of the Whigs involved a considerable degree of corruption:
"Henry Clay was their champion, and he represented 'that political system which doles favors to the strong in order to win and to keep their adherence to the government. His system offered shelter to devious schemes and corrupt enterprises.' They advocated 'a people taxed to make profits for enterprises that cannot stand alone.' The Whig party had 'no platform to announce, because its principles were plunder and nothing else.' These men 'adopted the tricks of the pickpocket who dresses himself like a farmer in order to move through a rural crowd unidentified while he gathers purses and watches.'...Lincoln in the 1830s succeeded in having the legislature allocate $12 million in an absurd make-work scheme to turn Illinois into one vast system of government-subsidized canals and railroad lines...The scheme was a colossal failure as virtually all of the money was stolen or squandered. Lincoln's law partner, William Herndon, called the scheme 'reckless and unwise' and a disaster that 'rolled up a debt so enormous' that it impeded Illinois' economic growth for many years. 'The internal improvement system, the adoption of which Lincoln had played such a prominent part, had collapsed,' Herndon wrote in his biography of Lincoln."
These points contradict some in Howe's book, but Howe does not address the issue of corruption in the actual implementation of the public works projects that Whigs like Lincoln did implement. It is not surprising that corruption was involved, nor is it surprising that ideologically the Whigs might not have addressed this issue despite or rather because of the moralism in their belief system. On the other hand, Howe's evidence does not support DiLorenzo's claim that the Whigs did not have a platform. On some issues, such as treatment of the Indians, Whig opposition to the Mexican War (which was a Jacksonian plicy) and abolition, there was considerably more overlap between the Whigs' position and the libertarian one that DiLorenzo advocates. Nor is it fair to dismiss the mercantilist view as one that intentionally encouraged corruption. The economic development of Britain between 1600 and 1840 was one of the dramatic feats of economic development in the history of the world, and it occurred under a primarily mercantilist ideology. It might have been better to have adopted the ideas of Murray Rothbard in 1600, but it also might have been better if jets and cellular phones had been available to Clay, Biddle and Lincoln.
Like Libertarians, Jacksonian Democrats feared the emergence of a plutocratic elite. However, the Whigs saw a threat "in the perversion of the political process by demagogoues taking advantage of the loss of an independent spirit among the people" (p. 76) and they saw Jackson himself as a demagogue. Like the Federalists, the Whigs emphasized not democracy but balance. In their view (p. 77) "the purpose of government is not to implement popular will but to balance and harmonize interests." Balanced government, of course, is the theme of the Federalist Papers. The Whigs emphasized the national origin of the Constitution. They did not believe that the Constitution originated with the states. The federal government is mixed, neither wholly federal nor wholly consolidated.
(p. 77) "The most salient characteristic of American Whig political thought was that it remained within the tradition of the "commonwealthmen," that remarkable group of English and Scottish writers...Two favorite writers in the tradition were James Harrington and Viscount Bolingbroke."
(p. 78) "That the Whigs who advocated industrialization and economic development should have identified with a political heritage called 'country' may seem at first anomalous. Actually, however, the word 'country' was understood more in opposition to 'court' than in opposition to 'city'. Within the English 'country party' not only landed gentlemen but also bourgeois Protestant Dissenters were prominent...As a group that included both townsmen and commercial farmers, and as inheritors of the religious tradition of English Dissent, the Whigs found the country-party tradition congenial."
p. 90 "Both Whigs and Democrats claimed to be heirs of the Republican Party of Jefferson though both in fact contained some some former Federalists. Ex-Federalists like Daniel Webster became willing to cite Jefferson as an opponent of executive power once they had become Whigs. The closest ideological predecessors of the Whigs seem to have been not the Federalists but the 'moderate' or 'nationalistic' wing of the Republicans. This group combined, as the Whigs did later, a country-party respect for consitutional balance, legal tradition and executive restraint with belief in federally sponsored economic development and government 'for' rather than 'by' the people. The archetypal representative of this brand of Republicanism, and the patron of Whiggery, was James Madison. It is well known (or it should be) that Jefferson disapproved of Jackson's candidacy in 1824; it is even more significant that Madison and Gallatin, who were still alive in 1832, when the issues of the Jacksonian era had been clearly drawn, supported Clay for president that year."
"The Whig defeat in 1844 entailed consequences of imponderable magnitude, leading as it did to war with Mexico and exacerbated sectional antagonism. War was traditionally an evil in country-party ideology, dreaded not only for its cost in blood and money but because it provided an occasion for executive aggrandizement. President Polk's devious and provocative conduct, both before and afterthe beginning of hostilities, provided plenty of confirmation for such fears" (p. 92)
Howe provides fascinating biographies of two Whig entrepreneurs: Nathan Appleton and Henry Carey. Appleton founded various textile mills, including most famously an early joint stock company called the Merrimack Manufacturing Company. Appleton named the company town "Lowell" after a deceased partner. The firm made early forays into human resource management on a dramatic scale:
"The company built homes for the households of its male supervisory employees and boardinghouses for its unamrried female operatives; it supplied the town with a school, a hospital and a library, whose resources made possible the magazine the employees put out, the famous Lowell Offering. It was by no means sufficient for the proprietors to provide what they thought were wholesome working and living conditions at Lowell. They desired to preserve the morals of the people there to be gathered. With this in mind, they built or subsidized eight churces, exercised strict supervision over the workers' private lives and founded a savings bank...Lowell Massachusetts represented social innovation as much as technological innovation. In its original conception, it was to be not only a company town but also an experimental utopia...Lowell illustrates the Whig desire to remake the world...most of the workers were isolated from their families and lived regimented lives of hard work, chastity and diligent uplift...the workers would be women...By hiring women the Merrimack Manufacutring Company could pay lower wages than British industry was paying men..."
(p. 104) "In reply to Democratic charges that corporations were conspiratorial and elitist, Whig defenders of corporations (mixed or private) insisted that they conferred great benefit on savers of modest means by allowing them to participate with the rich in the profits of incorporated business. This was why John Quincy Adams could speak of the 'truly republican institution of joint stock companies.'"
Appleton and his associates founded a private banking system based in Boston. As a result, New England was not dependent on the bank of the United States for a uniform circulating medium. "Member banks in many New England towns would desposit sufficient funds to guarantee their notes at the Suffolk Bank in Boston. In consideration for the use of their money, the Suffolk Bank would redeem the notes of the out-of-town banks at par instead of discounting them. Thus a uniform circulating medium and banking reserve requirements were maintained within the region..." (p. 106).
Henry Carey (p. 109) "identified himself with what might be called the commercial wing of Jeffersonian Republicanism, advocating internal improvements, a protective tariff, a national bank, and reconciliation with the Federalists--in short, the Madisonian Platform." Carey was a moral philosopher and economist (p. 111) "who believed America would be a better place to live if it could industrialize." He believed that "genuine full employment was both the means to economic progress and, for Carey, the end of economic progress. Carey was a feminist and argued that economic development held out considerable promise to women (p. 112). He believed in a mixed economy, capitalism combined with government intervention (remember, this was the 1830s--the idea that a mixed economy was "progressive" was a claim of the 1900's-1930s, 70-100 years after Carey). "Government policy should add...what is today called social overhead--a transportation network and an educational system. To keep the economy expanding, the burden of taxation should not be oppressive, but in the United States in Carey's time there was little danger of this. Carey laid the most stress on a plentiful money supply and a protective tariff to prevent this money from being drained off...Taken together, trhese policies would secure investment capital, increase productivity and raise wages..."
"Carey looked to technology to solve the differences between capital and labor" (P. 113). Carey's philosophy had Christian and moral overtones (p. 114). He believed in progress and opposed Malthus and the Manchester school. He advocated a culture of progress (by which he meant economic as opposed to political progress).
Whigs may have been the first advocates of suburbanization. "Whiggery was an outlook more appropriate to villagers or townsmen than to either frontiersmen or city dwellers....in many parts of the country where the Whig party was strongest it was asociated with a longing to recreate the early New England town settlement." (p. 116). Whig candidates generally outpolled Democrats in the cities (p. 117). "The Whig desire to preserve rural values within an urban context eventually led to important developments in urban park and cemetary landscape architecture, culminating after the Civil War in the genius of Frederick Law Olmstead". Olmstead was a Mugwump associate of EL Godkin.
Le Corbusier is generally recognized as the ideological forerunner of Robert Moses, but Moses seems to bear some things in common with the Whigs, specifically, the notion of the need to introduce country-like super-blocks would seem to echo Olmstead's concept of a park within a city (although when Olmstead designed Central Park it was on the northern end of the city). Moses would seem to have fulfilled the Whiggish tradition, both in terms of being a master public works builder and one who introduced urban America to the suburbs through highway building and superblocks.
Carey opposed trade, viewing it as parasitic and exploitative. He viewed the Irish potato famine as indicative of the problems that trade can cause (p. 118) "The same Carey who praised the small-to-medium-scale capitalism of the town deplored the large-scale capitalism of the metropolis. A trading economy corrupted its own society...Within cities a submerged 'proletariat' appeared...The trading classes lived by appropriation of wealth created by others." The Whig ideology had an anti-capitalist flavor at times, which parallels Progressivism seven decades later. Carey believed that the evils of trade could be overcome with a protective tariff. Protectionism led to "a diversified economy" which would "provide a healthy human environemnt for varied talents." A diversified economy secured people's independence against intimidation. (p. 122) "The great triumph of Carey's life came with the passage of the Morrill Tariff of 1862, commencing a century of American protectionism that would last until the Kennedy round of economic conferences. Yet instead of a decentralized 'middle zone' of opportunity and morality, economic consolidation and further urbanization characterized the high tariff era. The idea that protection was only a transitional phase for infant industries was ignored." This brings us back to the Rothbard/Radosh thesis. Were the Whigs merely fools to advocate tariffs to encourage "a diversified economy" instead of big business, or were they merely front men for big business interests?
Henry Clay
"Henry Clay believed in stability and order" (p. 123). (p. 139) "The Bank issue brought into sharp focus the conflict between the two views of the nation's destiny: Clay's vision of economic development planned centrally by a capitalist elite and the Democratic vision of a land of equal opportunity. Even after the Bank's charter finally expired in 1836, banking and currency remained the subject of bitterest partisan debate." (p. 146) "The conjunction of commerce with Christianity was typical of the Whig version of imperialism". Clay adopted the ideas of Henry Carey. He (p. 137) advocated revenue sharing or distribution of federal money to the states. His American System "was predicated on the basis of a harmony of interests" 9P. 138). The Whigs argued for class harmony and mutuality of interests.
Lyman Beecher
Lyman Beecher represented the evangelical dimension of the Whigs. "The tradition of Edwardsean eschatology had been transmitted to Beecher via Timothy Dwight, Edwards's grandson, who became president of Yale during Beecher's undergraduate years. The continuity of evangelical thought remained unbroken during the time of the Whig party; the providential interpretation of history that one finds in Edwards' accounts of the Reformation or the Glorious Revolution appears in the writings of Whigs as late as the 1840s...Like Edwards--and John Quincy Adams--Beecher believed in postmillennialism, the doctrine that the Second Coming will occur at the end of the thousand years of peace...The Second Coming was not far off...One last big effort would do it--or rather two: the establishment of foreign missions to complete the conversion of the world and the moral renovation of American society to give Christ a beachhead for His return." (p. 152)
p. 152-3: the one hopeful source that the Whigs had was postmillenial theology. Their other sources were the classical writers and some economists who were pessimistic. The secular authors the Whigs read "espoused a limited view of the possibilities for human achievement...The evangelical movement supplied Whiggery with a conception of progress that was the collective form of redemption: like the individual, society as a whole was capable of improvement through conscious effort. Nineteenth century evangelicism, even more than eighteenth century evangelicism, demanded the moral regeneration of society, not simply of the individuals within it. Again, there are hints of Progressivism.
p. 154 "When Lyman Beecher declared that 'the stated policy of heaven is to raise the world from its degraded condition' he had in mind not only its spiritual but also its intellectual and material condition..."
p. 156 "In his 'Lectures on Political Atheism'...Beecher begins by arguing that Christianity is the ally of social progress and liberty...Biblical Christianity, that is Protestantism, promotes schools, morality, economic enterprise and relative social equality..."
The Whigs' ideology was institutionalist and evolutionary, as was that of Progressives like John R. Commons and John Dewey. The Democrats saw institutions as threatening liberty. (p. 182) "Whigs, however felt that institutions provided the structures that made freedom meaningful. Institutions could evolve to cope with changing circumstances; they could serve as intermediaries for redemption, as the benevolent societies did. Whig institutionalism was by no means incompatible with antislavery...European conservatives in the nineteenth century sometimes found that progressive legislation suited their purposes, as Bismarck and Disraeli well illustrate. Lord John Russell put their policy nicely: 'There is nothing so conservative as progress.' This attitude--that a measure of progress is desirable to forestall more drastic upheavals--was certainly not unknown among the American Whigs...'True conservatism,' a party spokesman affirmed, operates not by indiscriminate resistance to change, but the intelligent and seasonable combination of Order and Improvement."
(p. 182) "The economic, social, cultural and moral proram of the Whigs can be characterized in a broad sense as that of a modernizing elite, a bourgeois elite that was open to the talents of an upwardly mobile Lincoln or Greeeley...the modernizing of social organization during this time was pioneered to a great extent by paternalists...(Jackson) and his Democratic Party were primarily defending a society of independent yeoman and artisans, who were threatened by the kind of modernization the Whigs envisaged...As exemplars of Whigs who were deliberate modernizers, Horace Greeley and William Henry Seward serve well."
I disagree with Howe there. Although the Whigs claimed to advocate modernization, the most important modernizing steps occurred outside of the "American System" of Clay and Lincoln. These included the inventions of the late nineteenth century which occurred despite government not because of it. Because historians tend to emphasize institutions, philosophers, ideologues and political structures they fail to see the spontaneous change that occurs because of the Jacksonian impulse. This institutionalist bias in history results in mistaken and destructive policy conclusions that are drawn from failure to grasp the role of markets. Getting back to Howe:
(p. 187) "Greeley favored workers' cooperatives, supported the ten-hour day, and joined the printers' union; yet anything that smacked of class conflict was abhorrent to him. He advocated collective bargaining but felt that it should lead to binding arbitration rather than strikes. Since capital and labor did not seem to Greeley to have opposing interests, arbitration commended itself to him as peaceful, rational and just.
"Social reform did not, for Greeley, necessarily mean opposition to the interests or wishes of capitalists. He supported limited liability and the Whig Bankruptcy Act of 1841, admired the Lowell textile mills, and endorsed industrialization in general...Greeley belonged to a generation that could think of business itself as a moral cause." (p. 188)
"It makes it easier to understand Greeley if we note his remarkable similarity to the 'progressives' of the early twentieth century. Like them, he wanted to rationalize the existing social order and make it more humane. Through the Tribune he advocated such protprogressive casues as a national presidential primary, an income tax, the abolition of capital punishment, and the direct election of United States Senators...Almost alone among American newspapers, the Tribune gave thorough coverage and serious attention to the women's rights movement...Like most Whigs, Greeley retained a strong sense of the moral qualities of rural and small town life, even while favoring industrialization" (p. 195).
William H. Seward was a Whig who supported subsidies to business. Like Warren G. Harding, who supported subsidies to the merchant marine 80 years later, "He endorsed subsidies for the Collins Steamship Company to help it compete against the British Cunard Line...Seward's interest in American commercial activity in the Pacific was not without prcedent among the Whigs. Daniel Webster, when he was secretary of state, extended the scope of the Monroe Doctrine to include the Hawaiian Islands.
The Whigs combined an interest in "improvements" with a fundamental conservatism, and they emphasized "protecting property, maintaining social order, and preserving a distinct cultural heritage." Whigs and pro-bank Democrats were called "conservatives" in the 1830s, a usage that does not seem altogether different from the way the term is used today. "As a party, the Whigs wanted conservatism and progress to blend their harmonious action" (p. 210). Daniel Webster, one of the best-remembered Whigs, "has aptly been called a broker-state politician who thought of government policy in terms of adjusting the claims of propertied interests to government favors...In his mind, social organization legitimated encouraging economic modernization through special favors to property."
Again it is a serious mistake to confuse policies that encourage modernization with modernization itself. The abolition of the central bank may have caused more modernsization than the conscious policies of the Whigs. Conscious policies may be destructive if our minds are not capable of grasping the complexities of market phenomena, a contribution of Friedrich A. Hayek and Ludwig von Mises in the 1920s and 1930s.
Abraham Lincoln was especially attracted to internal improvements. "Of all items in the Whig program, internal improvements held the greatest appeal for the young Lincoln.He shared the typical Whig aspiration for humanity to triumph over its physical environment. His first political platform, announcing his unsuccessful candidacy for the legislature in 1832, stressed the need for internal improvements, adi to education, and easy credit in promoting the development of the West...Lincoln was also an orthodox Whig on the crucial tariff and banking issues...In the 1830s and 1840s Lincoln consistently defended both state and national banking. To him, the assault on the Bank of the United States was part of a general breakdown of respect for property and morality that was also manifesting itself in lynch law...Lincoln was still arguing for the constitutionality of a national bank as a congressman in 1848 and even raised the issue several times in his great debates with Douglas a decade later."
"Believing that only those who paid taxes should vote, he opposed universal manhood suffrage. In an aggressively male society, he advocated votes for women."
Quoted, p. 266, from Robert Kelley "Ideology and Political Culture from Jefferson to Nixon", American Historical Review, 82, June 1977, 545.
Lincoln was a big supporter of Henry Clay. When the Republicans replaced the Whigs, the new party system "revealed a recombination of the cultural elements that had made up the old one. Douglas Democrats had come to endorse economic development, while Republicans now endorsed the westward movement. On strictly economic issues, there was little difference between them save for the tariff." (p. 289)
Lincoln synthesized elements of Jacksonian political thought with Whiggery. "Lincoln took over what was best in Jacksonian Democracy, the commitment to the rights of the common man." Lincoln reasserted the importance of the Declaration of Independence and "the proposition that all men are created equal" became a positive goal for political action" (p. 291).
*William Appleman William, The Contours of American History. Chicago: Quadrangle Paperbacks, 1966, p. 38.
**Herbert Hoover, American Individualism. New York: Doubleday, Page and Co., 1922, p. 21.
This is a fine book. Interesting, highly informative, fun to read. Howe's writing is lucid. Books like this inspire us to learn. Howe's insights about the American Whig Party, their ideas, religion and culture are wonderful, and he covers a lot of ground. He uses a biographical approach that covers a wide range of Whig Party politicians beginning with John Quincy Adams (who became a Whig after his presidency and during his post-presidency Congressional tenure) and ending with Abraham Lincoln, not only the best-remembered Whig but also the best-remembered 19th Century politician, except perhaps for Jefferson. Of course, the Whig Party expired in 1856 and Lincoln gained the presidency as the first Republican, but his allegiance to Henry Clay never diminished.
I read the book because I became curious about the continuity of American elitist and pro-Central Bank ideology between the 18th and twentieth centuries. This book makes clear that there are many linkages between the Whigs and the Progressives, hence the New Deal (which is my own conclusion, not Professor Howe's). Nancy Cohen makes clear the link between the Mugwumps and the Progressives, and in his concluding pages Howe mentions that the Whigs mildly reasserted themselves via the Liberal Republican Party in the 1872 election, which is often referred to as an early phase of the Mugwumps' activism. Although Howe characterizes the Whigs as the "country" party, it is clear that many former Federalists became Whigs in the 1830s. It also is clear that the economic elite was associated with the Whigs just as they had been with the Federalists, niceties about political ideology aside. Thus, there is a clear line from the Federalists to the Whigs, then to the Mugwumps and then to the Progressives. The speeches of Theodore Roosevelt, himself a one-time Mugwump, make clear the connection between his own ideas and those of Franklin Roosevelt's.
One of the nice things about this book is that Howe covers the religious and evangelical elements in the Whig philosophy along with the economic and political. It is fairly clear that the evangelical social concerns, linked of course to abolitionism, form the basis of today's social democrats' concerns. The evangelical religious impulse developed in several ways, one of which was through Social Gospel Christianity, through to Progressivism and then the social welfare elements of the New Deal. The emotional commitment of social democrats to their programs can be explained in this evolution of religious feeling that has been displaced into social democracy.
This book, written as a solid piece of history, does not suggest that there is a continuous party that has favored economic centralization from the Federalists to the New Deal Democrats. But it seems clear from the evidence. For most of its history, with the exception of the Mugwump period, the centralization party has favored a central bank, public works (which were characteristic of not only of Hamilton's Federalist program but also of Henry Clay's American system, of Theodore Roosevelt's ideas and of the New Deal) and business. The Whigs, the Mugwumps and the Progessives were ambivalent about big business, although their moral concerns seem to have been easily displaced. There is little doubt that the tariffs that the Whigs implemented were in large part responsible for big business in America. The Mugwumps, at least in some instances, were willing to repeal the tariffs but the Progressives amounted to a reassertion of more aggressive Whiggery than had existed since the end of the Civil War. In the Mugwump period the urban elite became hostile to corruption of some big business. In turn, the Progressives and New Dealers in increasing progression used anti-business rhetoric to cloak their centralist orientation. The centralizing party favored tariffs in the Hamiltonian and Clay periods, then divided over tariffs during the Mugwump period. The anti-tariff position won thereafter to the extent that reductions in tariffs did not hurt American business interests.
American history occurs in cycles, with each cycle involving various combinations and variations on the issues of economic centralization, central banking, protectionism, and support for industry. Progressivism aggressively asserted the centralizing position against the late nineteenth century elitists' deviant laissez-faire philosophy. I call it deviant because in all other periods other than the late nineteenth century American elites have opposed laissez-faire in favor of corporatist, centralizing mercantilism, Progressivism and finally so-called "liberalism". It is a tribute to the power of laissez-faire that a movement that was backed primarily by working-class and small farmer Jacksonians from say 1825to today really, and had the backing of economic elites only during the post-bellum period that ended in the late 1890s, continued to provoke so much distress from university-trained economic elites, business and banking interests, organized labor and other proponents of elitist centralization through to the present.
Like the Whigs, the Progressives were advocates of a return to the corporatist mercantilism of the 17th and 18th centuries represented by Anthony Ashley Cooper, the Earl of Shaftesbury in the 17th century and Sir James Steuart in his "Inquiry into the Principles of Political Oeconomy", published in 1767. As William Appleman Williams aptly points out in his classic Contours of American History :
"...it is possible to gain a vital insight into that contemporary liberalism which defends the right of private property and asserts the supremacy of individual liberty while at the same time advocating the general welfare. For although such liberals show superficial similarities to the mercantilists, they are considerably removed from that conservative tradition of the common good. Such liberals usually label Karl Marx a heretic and consider socialism a heresy, but the reverse is much closer to the truth. The liberal tradition stems from the triumph of laissez-faire individualism over corporate Christianity. Marx and other socialists reasserted the validity of the original idea in response to the liberal heresy. That is indeed one of the basic explanations of socialism's persistent relevance and appeal in the 20th century."*
Williams's point can be expanded a bit, because not only socialists but also Whigs and Progressives rejected the laissez-faire heresy.
As opposed to laissez-faire, the Whig Party (p. 16) "advanced a particular program of national development. The Whig economic platform called for purposeful intervention by the federal government in the form of tariffs to protect domestic industry, subsidies for internal improvements, and a national bank to regulate the currency and make tax revenues available for private investment...The Democrats inclined toward free trade and laissez-faire; when government action was required, they preferred to leave it to the states and local communities. The Whigs were more concerned with providing centralized direction to social policy...The most important single issue dividing the parties, and the source of the most acute disappointment to the Whigs after President Harrison had been succeeded by Tyler, concerned the banking systemm. Jackson's veto of the recharter of the Second Bank of the United States in 1832 became the point of departure for a generation of political partisanship". By 1860 Abraham Lincoln favored reinstitution of a central bank but was unable to effect it, and a central bank was not reinstituted until 1913, under Woodrow Wilson, who was the first of several Democratic Party Whigs.
Howe goes on to point out (p. 17):
"The banking-currency issue (that is, the right of banks to issue their own paper money) mattered at the state as well as the federal level. Many states redrafted their constitutions during the Jacksonian period and had to decide whether they would authorize state banking monopolies (usually mixed public-private corporations), specially chartered banks, free banking, or no banks of issue at all. As time went by, the parties tended to polarize with respect not only to rechartering a national bank but to the function of banking in general. The Democrats generally became more committed to hard money (specie or government-issued currency), while the Whigs became defenders of the credit system (in which banks were the issuers of currency)."
"When Democratic "Martin van Buren complained during the Panic of 1837 that people looked to the government for too much," (Whig) Henry Clay retorted that the people were "entitled to the protecting care of a paternal government." This is very much in the tradition of mercantilism.
But while on economic issues the Democrats were anti-inflation and pro-democracy, on the race issue the Democrats were pro-slavery and racism while the Whigs were less racist and more anti-slavery.
Howe argues that (p. 20):
"there is danger in calling the Whigs champions of the positive liberal state. It makes them sound too much like twentieth-century liberals. Actually, the differences between the Whigs and twentieth century liberals are more important than the similarities. Whig policies did not have the object of redistributing wealth or diminishing the influence of the privileged. Furthermore, the Whigs distrusted executives in both state and federal government (they had been traumatized by the conduct of Jackson), whereas twentieth century liberals have endorsed strong executives more often than not. For all their innovations in economic policy, the Whigs usually thought of themselves as conservatives, as custodians of an identifiable political and cultural heritage. Most deeply separating the Whigs from twentieth century liberals were their moral absolutism, their paternalism and their concern with imposing discipline...the Whigs proposed a society that would be economically diverse but culturally uniform; the Democrats preferred the economic uniformity of a society of small farmers and artisans but were more tolerant of cultural and moral diversity."
Taking the last point first, economic diversity is not an issue of importance today, but cultural uniformity is. Perhaps invisibly to Howe, twentieth century social democrats have aimed to foist a cultural uniformity on America. In the mid twentieth century they claimed that liberalism reflected the national consensus. By the 1980s they advocated political correctness. Political correctness is a moralistic impulse with Whiggish religious roots. Moreover, although the twentieth and 21st centuries have rejected the sexual morality and Aristotelian virtues characteristic of the Whigs and earlier, they have replaced these with a host of politically correct moralities with which they replace faith and tradition, to include animal rights, global warming and similar causes.
It fascinates me that Howe's argument begs the argument of Murray Rothbard, Ronald Radosh and Martin J. Sklar in New History of Leviathan that twentieth century liberalism did not aim to redistribute wealth but only used social democratic rhetoric to re enforce elitist goals. In terms of culture, there is no doubt that 20th and 21st century liberalism repudiates 19th century Whiggish elitism as well as 19th century Democratic Party racism in favor of a revised elitist philosophy based in part on similar impulses, such as claiming special status for the educated, especially the professions. Changing technology and extensions of knowledge created new economic interests in the late nineteenth century that changed the emphasis of the Whigs' descendants, the Mugwumps, into emphasizing the role of the professions, Whiggish forms of government intervention in support of the professions and rationalization of industry and government (which the Whigs would have supported). Naturally, economic conditions altered the form elitist centralization took just as religious and moral emphasis and alliances shifted.
But on the following page Howe puts the statist essence of the Whigs into focus (p. 21):
"Because of their commitment to 'improvement', Whigs were much more concerned than Democrats with providing conscious direction to the forces of change. For them, real progress was not likely to occur automatically; it required careful, purposeful planning...Whig morality was corporate as well as individual; the community, like its members, was expected to set an example of virtue and to enforce it when possible. A third recurring theme in Whig rhetoric was the organic unity of society...the Whigs were usually concerned with muting social conflict."
Seventy years later, when Frederick Winslow Taylor advocated a "mental revolution" between labor and management as part of his system of scientific management that aimied to rationalized industry, like a good Whig Progressive (and Herbert Croly specifically endorsed Taylorism) he was arguing for the organic unity of society.
The Whigs liked to draw an analogy between the human body and the political system (p. 29): "An essential feature of the analogy for the Whigs was the parallel between regulating the faculties within an individual and regulating the individuals within society. Faculty psychology tgaught an ideal of harmony within diversity...The model ruled out laissez-faire as a social philosophy, emphasizing instead the mutual responsibility of individuals and classes. The ideal society, like the ideal personality, improved its potential in many directions. Economic development promoted a healthy diversity, which 'furnishes employment for every variety of human faculty.' The conception implied an active, purposeful central government, administering the affairs of the nation according to its best judgment for the good of the whole and all parts of the whole."
This explains the difference between the Whigs and their later descendants, the Progressives and the New Dealers, as to the importance of the chief executive. By 1900 the federal government was becoming too complex to permit a legislature to make managerial decisions. Hence, advocates of centralization had to choose between no centralization and a strong legislature or centralization and and a strong executive. Obviously, centralization was more important to the centralizing party than was a weak executive. As a practical matter, centralization is impossible without a strong executive once government reaches a certain level of size and complexity. Since the Whig/Progressive/New Deal Party has been focused on expanding government to satisfy the economic interests of the professional and managerial classes, the issue of a powerful executive is a trivial one compared to the issue of increasing size and complexity of government. You can't have both.
Moreover, the Whigs anticipated today's liberal New Deal Democrats in their claim that the educated had the right to special privileges and that the educated ought to rule over the uneducated (p. 30):
"John Locke had written that people who lacked the opportunity to cultivate their higher faculties (such as women and the poor) could not become fully rational and therefore justly held subordinate positions within society...The American Whigs were less explicit than Locke, but they shared his general view that those who had not had the opportunity of education should defer to the leadership of those who had received it..."
Today, the claim of elite privilege by the educated has reached a fever pitch. I doubt that a single Congressman or member of the President's cabinet lacks a college degree. This is so even as the intellectual demands of a college education have dwindled to next to nothing and college graduates today know less than high school graduates of 100 years ago. Compare this with an observation by Herbert Hoover in 1922**:
"That our system has avoided the establishment and domination of class has a significant proof in the present administration in Washington. Of the twelve men comprising the President, Vice-President, and Cabinet, nine have earned their own way in life without economic inheritance, and eight of them started with manual labor."
Andrew Jackson and the Democratic Party violated the "politics of deference" characteristic of early American society through extending the spoils system to all classes (p. 31). This tradition continued through Hoover's time, but the Progressives and their New Deal descendants put in place policies that were less democratic. This repositioning of elitism to focus on education rather than on the traditional land and wealth criteria occurred during and before the Mugwump period. The Mugwumps emphasized the rationalization of civil service, a concept which the Progressives developed into scientific management.
To support business, Whigs supported tariffs and the central bank (p. 32). These stands appealed to wealthy business interests but not to the poor. In order to appeal to the poor, the Whigs emphasized ethnic (specifically, WASP) identity politics, and moral issues that cut across social classes. Part of this involved the evangelical Second Great Awakening as well as appeals to basic morals (p.33):
"The Whig party's electoral campaigns formed part of a cultural struggle to impose on the United States the standards of morality we usually term Victorian. They were standards of self-control and restraint, which dovetailed well with the economic program of the party, for they emphasized thrift, sobriety and public responsibility...They looked upon the Democratic voters as undisciplined."
The Whigs extended this moralism to a belief in central planning and opposition to free markets (p. 34):
"Running through Whig political appeals was the concept of consciously arranged order. This was characteristic of their reliance on government planning rather than the invisible forces of the marketplace. It was characteristic of their reliance on government planning..."
The Whigs emphasized public education, in part through the activities of Horace Mann, a Whig (p. 36): "A believer in uniformity and conscious planning, Mann wanted more centralization in school systems. Democrats, resenting higher taxes and loss of control, frequently opposed Mann and other Whig educational reformers."
In contrast to Democrats, who aimed to end economic privilege through systemic reform such as the abolition of the central bank (p. 37):
"Whig reforms were frequently altruistic efforts to redeem others rather than examples of self-help. Whigs supported Dorothea Dix's campaign for federal aid to mental hospitals; Democrats opposed. Whig prison reformers sought to make prison a place of redemption as well as retribution...Democratic prision reformers, on the other hand, were usually concerned with economy, efficiency and deterrence."
The parallels to Progressivism and the New Deal seem clear.
The Jacksonian Democrats were the ones who oppressed the Indians. For instance the Cherokee case, where the rich lands of the Five Tribes in Georgia led to their expulsion via the famously tragic "trail of tears" was a partisan Democratic policy. "Chief Justice John Marshall delivered the judgment of the United States Supreme Court in Worcester et al. v. Georgia on March 3, 1832. He found Georgia's action unconstitutional: the state had no right to legislate for the Cherokee Nation...But Georgia defied the Court's decision...and went ahead with the expulsion of the Indians. Jackson made it clear that he would never enforce the Court's mandate, and loopholes in federal appellate procedure enabled him to avoid doing so. Meanwhile, he used the Army to facilitate the dispossession of the Indians, not to protect them." Chief Justice Marshall was, of course, a Whig.
In part because of their emphasis on moral development that coincided with their belief in economic development, Whigs emphasized history to a greater extent than Democrats (p. 72). Whigs believed that a generation could bind a later generation, lending acceptability to long term mortgages. Again, we seen a hint of future big government social democracy. For instance (p. 72) the Whig William Henry Seward recommended a series of internal improvements in New York.
Thomas J. DiLorenzo of the Ludwig Von Mises Institute quotes a Edgar Lee Masters's biography of Lincoln that states that the internal improvements of the Whigs involved a considerable degree of corruption:
"Henry Clay was their champion, and he represented 'that political system which doles favors to the strong in order to win and to keep their adherence to the government. His system offered shelter to devious schemes and corrupt enterprises.' They advocated 'a people taxed to make profits for enterprises that cannot stand alone.' The Whig party had 'no platform to announce, because its principles were plunder and nothing else.' These men 'adopted the tricks of the pickpocket who dresses himself like a farmer in order to move through a rural crowd unidentified while he gathers purses and watches.'...Lincoln in the 1830s succeeded in having the legislature allocate $12 million in an absurd make-work scheme to turn Illinois into one vast system of government-subsidized canals and railroad lines...The scheme was a colossal failure as virtually all of the money was stolen or squandered. Lincoln's law partner, William Herndon, called the scheme 'reckless and unwise' and a disaster that 'rolled up a debt so enormous' that it impeded Illinois' economic growth for many years. 'The internal improvement system, the adoption of which Lincoln had played such a prominent part, had collapsed,' Herndon wrote in his biography of Lincoln."
These points contradict some in Howe's book, but Howe does not address the issue of corruption in the actual implementation of the public works projects that Whigs like Lincoln did implement. It is not surprising that corruption was involved, nor is it surprising that ideologically the Whigs might not have addressed this issue despite or rather because of the moralism in their belief system. On the other hand, Howe's evidence does not support DiLorenzo's claim that the Whigs did not have a platform. On some issues, such as treatment of the Indians, Whig opposition to the Mexican War (which was a Jacksonian plicy) and abolition, there was considerably more overlap between the Whigs' position and the libertarian one that DiLorenzo advocates. Nor is it fair to dismiss the mercantilist view as one that intentionally encouraged corruption. The economic development of Britain between 1600 and 1840 was one of the dramatic feats of economic development in the history of the world, and it occurred under a primarily mercantilist ideology. It might have been better to have adopted the ideas of Murray Rothbard in 1600, but it also might have been better if jets and cellular phones had been available to Clay, Biddle and Lincoln.
Like Libertarians, Jacksonian Democrats feared the emergence of a plutocratic elite. However, the Whigs saw a threat "in the perversion of the political process by demagogoues taking advantage of the loss of an independent spirit among the people" (p. 76) and they saw Jackson himself as a demagogue. Like the Federalists, the Whigs emphasized not democracy but balance. In their view (p. 77) "the purpose of government is not to implement popular will but to balance and harmonize interests." Balanced government, of course, is the theme of the Federalist Papers. The Whigs emphasized the national origin of the Constitution. They did not believe that the Constitution originated with the states. The federal government is mixed, neither wholly federal nor wholly consolidated.
(p. 77) "The most salient characteristic of American Whig political thought was that it remained within the tradition of the "commonwealthmen," that remarkable group of English and Scottish writers...Two favorite writers in the tradition were James Harrington and Viscount Bolingbroke."
(p. 78) "That the Whigs who advocated industrialization and economic development should have identified with a political heritage called 'country' may seem at first anomalous. Actually, however, the word 'country' was understood more in opposition to 'court' than in opposition to 'city'. Within the English 'country party' not only landed gentlemen but also bourgeois Protestant Dissenters were prominent...As a group that included both townsmen and commercial farmers, and as inheritors of the religious tradition of English Dissent, the Whigs found the country-party tradition congenial."
p. 90 "Both Whigs and Democrats claimed to be heirs of the Republican Party of Jefferson though both in fact contained some some former Federalists. Ex-Federalists like Daniel Webster became willing to cite Jefferson as an opponent of executive power once they had become Whigs. The closest ideological predecessors of the Whigs seem to have been not the Federalists but the 'moderate' or 'nationalistic' wing of the Republicans. This group combined, as the Whigs did later, a country-party respect for consitutional balance, legal tradition and executive restraint with belief in federally sponsored economic development and government 'for' rather than 'by' the people. The archetypal representative of this brand of Republicanism, and the patron of Whiggery, was James Madison. It is well known (or it should be) that Jefferson disapproved of Jackson's candidacy in 1824; it is even more significant that Madison and Gallatin, who were still alive in 1832, when the issues of the Jacksonian era had been clearly drawn, supported Clay for president that year."
"The Whig defeat in 1844 entailed consequences of imponderable magnitude, leading as it did to war with Mexico and exacerbated sectional antagonism. War was traditionally an evil in country-party ideology, dreaded not only for its cost in blood and money but because it provided an occasion for executive aggrandizement. President Polk's devious and provocative conduct, both before and afterthe beginning of hostilities, provided plenty of confirmation for such fears" (p. 92)
Howe provides fascinating biographies of two Whig entrepreneurs: Nathan Appleton and Henry Carey. Appleton founded various textile mills, including most famously an early joint stock company called the Merrimack Manufacturing Company. Appleton named the company town "Lowell" after a deceased partner. The firm made early forays into human resource management on a dramatic scale:
"The company built homes for the households of its male supervisory employees and boardinghouses for its unamrried female operatives; it supplied the town with a school, a hospital and a library, whose resources made possible the magazine the employees put out, the famous Lowell Offering. It was by no means sufficient for the proprietors to provide what they thought were wholesome working and living conditions at Lowell. They desired to preserve the morals of the people there to be gathered. With this in mind, they built or subsidized eight churces, exercised strict supervision over the workers' private lives and founded a savings bank...Lowell Massachusetts represented social innovation as much as technological innovation. In its original conception, it was to be not only a company town but also an experimental utopia...Lowell illustrates the Whig desire to remake the world...most of the workers were isolated from their families and lived regimented lives of hard work, chastity and diligent uplift...the workers would be women...By hiring women the Merrimack Manufacutring Company could pay lower wages than British industry was paying men..."
(p. 104) "In reply to Democratic charges that corporations were conspiratorial and elitist, Whig defenders of corporations (mixed or private) insisted that they conferred great benefit on savers of modest means by allowing them to participate with the rich in the profits of incorporated business. This was why John Quincy Adams could speak of the 'truly republican institution of joint stock companies.'"
Appleton and his associates founded a private banking system based in Boston. As a result, New England was not dependent on the bank of the United States for a uniform circulating medium. "Member banks in many New England towns would desposit sufficient funds to guarantee their notes at the Suffolk Bank in Boston. In consideration for the use of their money, the Suffolk Bank would redeem the notes of the out-of-town banks at par instead of discounting them. Thus a uniform circulating medium and banking reserve requirements were maintained within the region..." (p. 106).
Henry Carey (p. 109) "identified himself with what might be called the commercial wing of Jeffersonian Republicanism, advocating internal improvements, a protective tariff, a national bank, and reconciliation with the Federalists--in short, the Madisonian Platform." Carey was a moral philosopher and economist (p. 111) "who believed America would be a better place to live if it could industrialize." He believed that "genuine full employment was both the means to economic progress and, for Carey, the end of economic progress. Carey was a feminist and argued that economic development held out considerable promise to women (p. 112). He believed in a mixed economy, capitalism combined with government intervention (remember, this was the 1830s--the idea that a mixed economy was "progressive" was a claim of the 1900's-1930s, 70-100 years after Carey). "Government policy should add...what is today called social overhead--a transportation network and an educational system. To keep the economy expanding, the burden of taxation should not be oppressive, but in the United States in Carey's time there was little danger of this. Carey laid the most stress on a plentiful money supply and a protective tariff to prevent this money from being drained off...Taken together, trhese policies would secure investment capital, increase productivity and raise wages..."
"Carey looked to technology to solve the differences between capital and labor" (P. 113). Carey's philosophy had Christian and moral overtones (p. 114). He believed in progress and opposed Malthus and the Manchester school. He advocated a culture of progress (by which he meant economic as opposed to political progress).
Whigs may have been the first advocates of suburbanization. "Whiggery was an outlook more appropriate to villagers or townsmen than to either frontiersmen or city dwellers....in many parts of the country where the Whig party was strongest it was asociated with a longing to recreate the early New England town settlement." (p. 116). Whig candidates generally outpolled Democrats in the cities (p. 117). "The Whig desire to preserve rural values within an urban context eventually led to important developments in urban park and cemetary landscape architecture, culminating after the Civil War in the genius of Frederick Law Olmstead". Olmstead was a Mugwump associate of EL Godkin.
Le Corbusier is generally recognized as the ideological forerunner of Robert Moses, but Moses seems to bear some things in common with the Whigs, specifically, the notion of the need to introduce country-like super-blocks would seem to echo Olmstead's concept of a park within a city (although when Olmstead designed Central Park it was on the northern end of the city). Moses would seem to have fulfilled the Whiggish tradition, both in terms of being a master public works builder and one who introduced urban America to the suburbs through highway building and superblocks.
Carey opposed trade, viewing it as parasitic and exploitative. He viewed the Irish potato famine as indicative of the problems that trade can cause (p. 118) "The same Carey who praised the small-to-medium-scale capitalism of the town deplored the large-scale capitalism of the metropolis. A trading economy corrupted its own society...Within cities a submerged 'proletariat' appeared...The trading classes lived by appropriation of wealth created by others." The Whig ideology had an anti-capitalist flavor at times, which parallels Progressivism seven decades later. Carey believed that the evils of trade could be overcome with a protective tariff. Protectionism led to "a diversified economy" which would "provide a healthy human environemnt for varied talents." A diversified economy secured people's independence against intimidation. (p. 122) "The great triumph of Carey's life came with the passage of the Morrill Tariff of 1862, commencing a century of American protectionism that would last until the Kennedy round of economic conferences. Yet instead of a decentralized 'middle zone' of opportunity and morality, economic consolidation and further urbanization characterized the high tariff era. The idea that protection was only a transitional phase for infant industries was ignored." This brings us back to the Rothbard/Radosh thesis. Were the Whigs merely fools to advocate tariffs to encourage "a diversified economy" instead of big business, or were they merely front men for big business interests?
Henry Clay
"Henry Clay believed in stability and order" (p. 123). (p. 139) "The Bank issue brought into sharp focus the conflict between the two views of the nation's destiny: Clay's vision of economic development planned centrally by a capitalist elite and the Democratic vision of a land of equal opportunity. Even after the Bank's charter finally expired in 1836, banking and currency remained the subject of bitterest partisan debate." (p. 146) "The conjunction of commerce with Christianity was typical of the Whig version of imperialism". Clay adopted the ideas of Henry Carey. He (p. 137) advocated revenue sharing or distribution of federal money to the states. His American System "was predicated on the basis of a harmony of interests" 9P. 138). The Whigs argued for class harmony and mutuality of interests.
Lyman Beecher
Lyman Beecher represented the evangelical dimension of the Whigs. "The tradition of Edwardsean eschatology had been transmitted to Beecher via Timothy Dwight, Edwards's grandson, who became president of Yale during Beecher's undergraduate years. The continuity of evangelical thought remained unbroken during the time of the Whig party; the providential interpretation of history that one finds in Edwards' accounts of the Reformation or the Glorious Revolution appears in the writings of Whigs as late as the 1840s...Like Edwards--and John Quincy Adams--Beecher believed in postmillennialism, the doctrine that the Second Coming will occur at the end of the thousand years of peace...The Second Coming was not far off...One last big effort would do it--or rather two: the establishment of foreign missions to complete the conversion of the world and the moral renovation of American society to give Christ a beachhead for His return." (p. 152)
p. 152-3: the one hopeful source that the Whigs had was postmillenial theology. Their other sources were the classical writers and some economists who were pessimistic. The secular authors the Whigs read "espoused a limited view of the possibilities for human achievement...The evangelical movement supplied Whiggery with a conception of progress that was the collective form of redemption: like the individual, society as a whole was capable of improvement through conscious effort. Nineteenth century evangelicism, even more than eighteenth century evangelicism, demanded the moral regeneration of society, not simply of the individuals within it. Again, there are hints of Progressivism.
p. 154 "When Lyman Beecher declared that 'the stated policy of heaven is to raise the world from its degraded condition' he had in mind not only its spiritual but also its intellectual and material condition..."
p. 156 "In his 'Lectures on Political Atheism'...Beecher begins by arguing that Christianity is the ally of social progress and liberty...Biblical Christianity, that is Protestantism, promotes schools, morality, economic enterprise and relative social equality..."
The Whigs' ideology was institutionalist and evolutionary, as was that of Progressives like John R. Commons and John Dewey. The Democrats saw institutions as threatening liberty. (p. 182) "Whigs, however felt that institutions provided the structures that made freedom meaningful. Institutions could evolve to cope with changing circumstances; they could serve as intermediaries for redemption, as the benevolent societies did. Whig institutionalism was by no means incompatible with antislavery...European conservatives in the nineteenth century sometimes found that progressive legislation suited their purposes, as Bismarck and Disraeli well illustrate. Lord John Russell put their policy nicely: 'There is nothing so conservative as progress.' This attitude--that a measure of progress is desirable to forestall more drastic upheavals--was certainly not unknown among the American Whigs...'True conservatism,' a party spokesman affirmed, operates not by indiscriminate resistance to change, but the intelligent and seasonable combination of Order and Improvement."
(p. 182) "The economic, social, cultural and moral proram of the Whigs can be characterized in a broad sense as that of a modernizing elite, a bourgeois elite that was open to the talents of an upwardly mobile Lincoln or Greeeley...the modernizing of social organization during this time was pioneered to a great extent by paternalists...(Jackson) and his Democratic Party were primarily defending a society of independent yeoman and artisans, who were threatened by the kind of modernization the Whigs envisaged...As exemplars of Whigs who were deliberate modernizers, Horace Greeley and William Henry Seward serve well."
I disagree with Howe there. Although the Whigs claimed to advocate modernization, the most important modernizing steps occurred outside of the "American System" of Clay and Lincoln. These included the inventions of the late nineteenth century which occurred despite government not because of it. Because historians tend to emphasize institutions, philosophers, ideologues and political structures they fail to see the spontaneous change that occurs because of the Jacksonian impulse. This institutionalist bias in history results in mistaken and destructive policy conclusions that are drawn from failure to grasp the role of markets. Getting back to Howe:
(p. 187) "Greeley favored workers' cooperatives, supported the ten-hour day, and joined the printers' union; yet anything that smacked of class conflict was abhorrent to him. He advocated collective bargaining but felt that it should lead to binding arbitration rather than strikes. Since capital and labor did not seem to Greeley to have opposing interests, arbitration commended itself to him as peaceful, rational and just.
"Social reform did not, for Greeley, necessarily mean opposition to the interests or wishes of capitalists. He supported limited liability and the Whig Bankruptcy Act of 1841, admired the Lowell textile mills, and endorsed industrialization in general...Greeley belonged to a generation that could think of business itself as a moral cause." (p. 188)
"It makes it easier to understand Greeley if we note his remarkable similarity to the 'progressives' of the early twentieth century. Like them, he wanted to rationalize the existing social order and make it more humane. Through the Tribune he advocated such protprogressive casues as a national presidential primary, an income tax, the abolition of capital punishment, and the direct election of United States Senators...Almost alone among American newspapers, the Tribune gave thorough coverage and serious attention to the women's rights movement...Like most Whigs, Greeley retained a strong sense of the moral qualities of rural and small town life, even while favoring industrialization" (p. 195).
William H. Seward was a Whig who supported subsidies to business. Like Warren G. Harding, who supported subsidies to the merchant marine 80 years later, "He endorsed subsidies for the Collins Steamship Company to help it compete against the British Cunard Line...Seward's interest in American commercial activity in the Pacific was not without prcedent among the Whigs. Daniel Webster, when he was secretary of state, extended the scope of the Monroe Doctrine to include the Hawaiian Islands.
The Whigs combined an interest in "improvements" with a fundamental conservatism, and they emphasized "protecting property, maintaining social order, and preserving a distinct cultural heritage." Whigs and pro-bank Democrats were called "conservatives" in the 1830s, a usage that does not seem altogether different from the way the term is used today. "As a party, the Whigs wanted conservatism and progress to blend their harmonious action" (p. 210). Daniel Webster, one of the best-remembered Whigs, "has aptly been called a broker-state politician who thought of government policy in terms of adjusting the claims of propertied interests to government favors...In his mind, social organization legitimated encouraging economic modernization through special favors to property."
Again it is a serious mistake to confuse policies that encourage modernization with modernization itself. The abolition of the central bank may have caused more modernsization than the conscious policies of the Whigs. Conscious policies may be destructive if our minds are not capable of grasping the complexities of market phenomena, a contribution of Friedrich A. Hayek and Ludwig von Mises in the 1920s and 1930s.
Abraham Lincoln was especially attracted to internal improvements. "Of all items in the Whig program, internal improvements held the greatest appeal for the young Lincoln.He shared the typical Whig aspiration for humanity to triumph over its physical environment. His first political platform, announcing his unsuccessful candidacy for the legislature in 1832, stressed the need for internal improvements, adi to education, and easy credit in promoting the development of the West...Lincoln was also an orthodox Whig on the crucial tariff and banking issues...In the 1830s and 1840s Lincoln consistently defended both state and national banking. To him, the assault on the Bank of the United States was part of a general breakdown of respect for property and morality that was also manifesting itself in lynch law...Lincoln was still arguing for the constitutionality of a national bank as a congressman in 1848 and even raised the issue several times in his great debates with Douglas a decade later."
"Believing that only those who paid taxes should vote, he opposed universal manhood suffrage. In an aggressively male society, he advocated votes for women."
Quoted, p. 266, from Robert Kelley "Ideology and Political Culture from Jefferson to Nixon", American Historical Review, 82, June 1977, 545.
Lincoln was a big supporter of Henry Clay. When the Republicans replaced the Whigs, the new party system "revealed a recombination of the cultural elements that had made up the old one. Douglas Democrats had come to endorse economic development, while Republicans now endorsed the westward movement. On strictly economic issues, there was little difference between them save for the tariff." (p. 289)
Lincoln synthesized elements of Jacksonian political thought with Whiggery. "Lincoln took over what was best in Jacksonian Democracy, the commitment to the rights of the common man." Lincoln reasserted the importance of the Declaration of Independence and "the proposition that all men are created equal" became a positive goal for political action" (p. 291).
*William Appleman William, The Contours of American History. Chicago: Quadrangle Paperbacks, 1966, p. 38.
**Herbert Hoover, American Individualism. New York: Doubleday, Page and Co., 1922, p. 21.
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