Education Increases Ideological Prejudice

Sean Stevens of Heterodox Academy has written a summary of  a study, which appears in the December 2017 (81:4) issue of Public Opinion Quarterly,  by PJ Henry and Jaime Napier of NYU.  The study finds that while education reduces ethnic, racial, and anti-immigrant prejudice, it increases ideological prejudice.  Stevens suggests that the results require rethinking about why education reduces prejudice in some areas but increases it in others.

The study is based on data in the American National Elections Studies survey. The authors study a 40-year period, from 1972 to 2012.  Henry and Napier base the study on self-reports of ideology and measures of feelings toward people with left- and right-wing ideologies.  They find that education is weakly associated with left orientation, and the effect comes mostly from college graduation.  In other words, people who are able to see through four years of college tend to be more left oriented, either because they are better able to stand the environment or because they learn to be left oriented in college.

Increased education is found to correlate with increased ideological prejudice for both left and right, but the effect is stronger for leftists. When the authors control for time, they find that the effect has significantly increased over time for leftists but not for conservatives.

Stevens notes that the results call into question the notion that education promotes tolerance toward those who are different.  Rather, it seems to promote certain patterns of tolerance in specific areas, often called politically correct.  In other areas, which are not within the rote, left-wing, politically correct catechism, education does not improve tolerance of others' beliefs.

Americans Likely to Vote Against Incumbents

Mike Marnell, crusading publisher of the Lincoln Eagle of Kingston, NY, sent me a link to a recent Marist Poll which found that about equal proportions of Americans are likely to vote for (42%) and against (43%) incumbents.  This is better than last year, when only 37% said that they would vote against incumbents and 51% said that they would vote for them.  The poll also found that 56% say that the nation is headed in the wrong direction.  That seems high for a republic.  The poll also found that 55% of Democrats say that they will support an incumbent while 52% of Republicans say that they will vote for someone else.

The Marist blog posts a table which shows the distribution of the population that feels the country is headed in the wrong direction. Liberals feel that the country is headed in the right direction and independents, Republicans and conservatives feel it is heading in the wrong direction.

This seems hopeful for the nation at large, although Mike is concerned that the predominance of Democrats in New York will prevent improvement here.  I have been thinking of buying some land in a more civilized locale, like West Virginia.  According to this site a two bedroom house in West Virginia on 22 acres costs $165,000.  Why would anyone want to live in New York any more?

Symmetry of Waste: Why Aren't Big Government Advocates Pragmatic?

For much of its history, proponents of "state activist liberalism," have claimed that expansion of government is "pragmatic."  This claim was set against three historical patterns.   First, the American ideology until the early twentieth century was freedom.  Expansion of the state could be posed as a more modern alternative.  Second, the pragmatism of William James and Charles Sanders Pierce was popular in the early twentieth century and state activist liberals used its rhetoric.  Third, the public became alarmed at economic developments in the late 19th century, specifically the development of large railroads and trusts that seemed to have economic power.   The large businesses claimed to exercise the right of free contract and laissez-faire in a tone that reflected social Darwinism.  In fact, the railroads and Standard Oil depended on government support.

The response to concerns about big business was big government. This meant legislation like the Sherman Anti-trust Act and the Interstate Commerce Act which aimed to regulate trusts and railroads.  These steps were extended during the Progressive era, when Theodore Roosevelt proposed the Federal Trade Commission and the regulation of trusts.  In his speeches, Roosevelt proposed most of the social legislation that was subsequently adopted during the New Deal.

However, the claim of pragmatism is that what works will be maintained and what fails will be terminated.  One of the earliest laws, the Sherman Anti-trust Act, did not work.  In fact, the Sherman Anti-trust Act resulted in firms growing larger each decade because it illegalized collusion among small firms, providing an incentive for mergers and takeovers. 

Without tracing the ensuing history, government was repeatedly extended, especially in the 1930s, 1960s and 1970s.  Yet, no one ever asked whether any of the programs worked or not.  No one asked whether the Fed was responsible for the greater economic instability and higher unemployment of the twentieth century than of the 19th century.  No one asked why welfare programs induced rather than reduced poverty and dependency.  No one asked why only three percent of government programs are terminated but 80 percent of businesses fail in their first five years.  Failure is an essential component of innovation.  Most ideas fail, and to find a good, workable idea many prototypes must be tried. But government programs never fail, hence they are not tested by reality.  They are not pragmatic.

It is not just that advocates of big government do not reject programs that fail.  Advocates of big government do not even QUESTION whether or not the programs that they advocate work.  There are no mechanisms in place to test whether social security, for example, works better than another alternative; or whether the post office is the optimal mode of mail delivery.  Not only is the information not known, the questions are scrupulously avoided.  To ask pragmatic questions is heresy to "state activist liberals."

In order to understand the reason why questions about program efficacy are avoided one needs to follow the money.  Government functions by borrowing money.  Banks make a profit off the lending.  The Federal Reserve Bank exists to expand the money supply so that the banks can profit by lending to the state. 

Banks do not care if the reasons for their lending work.  They want bigger government because they can lend more. Moreover, expansion of the state leads to monetary expansion and monetary expansion further subsidizes banks' profit margins.  This is so because increased government borrowing leads to crowding out of private sector borrowers.  Interest rates rise, the economy slows and the Fed can justify expansion of the money supply (lowering interest rates) to "stimulate" the economy to "help small business."  The result is that the Fed purchases treasury bonds from banks, and the monetary base expands.  The banks create a multiple of the reserves out of thin air, and business borrows.  Banks collect interest.  Much of the expanded money is diverted to privileged hedge funds, Wall Street and corporations.

In order to create the non-pragmatic version of "state activist liberalism" the government relies on two institutions: the media and the public schools.  The public schools fail to educate children, causing the majority to lack the basic cognitive skills needed to read, write, do basic math or follow a news story.  The graduates of American public schools are sub-literate, sub-numerate and lacking in basic reasoning skills.  At the same time, the graduates are ideologically trained to believe in government; in socialism and in state expansion. "Social justice education" is one of the fundamental goals of the banker-oriented education system.

The more capable, elite students are taught to scrupulously obey direction.  They are trained that the opinions of information sources such as newspapers and television are authentic while the opinions of friends or one's self are invalid.  They are trained to trust mass media rather than common sense.  The "other direction" that David Riesman described in the 1950s was a function of the financification of the US economy.

I've rarely met a "liberal" or left winger who was capable of thinking for him or herself. Rather, they parrot a newspaper or television station.   Many conservatives parrot radio and television talk shows.  Naturally, the newspapers and television stations are financially responsive to or owned by banks or other Fed-related institutions. 

There is a complete absence of pragmatism among both "conservatives" and "liberals".  "Conservatives" applauded the absurd Bush prescription drug plan and the Iraqi and Afghanistan Wars while "liberals" applauded the bailout, the stimulus and the absurdly designed Obama health care law.  Neither ends the other's programs.  The "liberals" have not ended the wars, which they claimed to oppose, and the "conservatives" have not cut back on the massive waste in Washington.  There is a perfect symmetry of waste.  The interest paid to the banking system mounts.

Letter to the Olive Press

Dear Editor:

One of my neighbors took some offense at my recent characterization of Democrats as thieves in the pages of the Olive Press. My neighbor is not a thief, and that is probably true of a majority of the 36% of Americans who are registered Democrats. Nevertheless, I stand by my letter. For there are two kinds of Democrats: (a) thieves and (b) those fooled by (a). Category (b) Democrats might blame 2,500 years of propaganda. In Open Society and Its Enemies Karl Popper argues that Plato was the first to propagandize for collectivism by identifying collectivism with altruism. But collectivism has almost always helped the rich at the expense of the poor, not the reverse. Thus, "limousine liberals" advocate a class- and self-interested view.

The (a) category goes back to the days of Boss Tweed and "Plunkitt of Tammany Hall". In 1932 Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) extended the federal edifice that the Progressive Republicans led by Theodore Roosevelt (TR) had established. The crux of the New Deal was FDR's abolition of the gold standard, which permitted the Federal Reserve Bank unlimited power to create ("print") money. The chief function of the Federal Reserve Bank has been and still is to expand the money supply by printing new reserves and then depositing them in money center banks who have the power to print a multiple of the money, as much as six times, of which they lend a disproportionate share to Wall Street. If you doubt that a disproportionate share goes to Wall Street, check out Roger Lowenstein's When Genius Failed about Long Term Capital Management (LTCM). The banking system had lent this early hedge fund 100 billion dollars when it collapsed. One hundred billion that time was more than one percent of the entire economy but LTCM employed only about 200 people. This kind of thing has accelerated during the Bush-Obama administration, with Obama donating untold trillions to his supervisors on Wall Street.

On the local level, the corruption of the Democrats never disappeared, even with the diminution of Tammany Hall in the 1930s under the Mayor Fiorello Laguardia (R-NY). Today, government employees, school teachers, and businesses who receive contracts, that is, category (a) Democrats, unabashedly steal from their neighbors. Category (b) Democrats, confusing collectivism with altruism, confuse the schoolteachers', government employees' and contractors' greed with altruism.

At the level of federal government operations, the edifice that TR and FDR created opened the door to special interest politics. No one knows how much of the federal government's operations budget actually performs any valid "service". Newspapers avoid questions like this, preferring to cheer for the bailout and Obama. My guess is less than 20% goes to any public interest purpose. 80% of your federal taxes are squandered.

Today we are facing a health reform bill, that category (b) Democrats have been told will help the poor. It will not. If you compare the performance of health industry stocks over the past two years with the stock market in general, the fall in the health stocks has been two thirds smaller than in the stock market generally, 8% versus 23%, since January 2008. The stock market thinks that the health reform bill will be a boon to the health industry. This will not be the case for the general economy. New regulations will increase costs; health benefits will be reduced; and the uncovered poor will be forced to buy coverage. It makes category (a) liberals happy to know that people making $50,000 per year will have to pay $6,000 for coverage. For these will be forced to sell their homes and live in city projects while category (a) limousine liberals can buy their houses as investments as they congratulate themselves about their liberal consciences.

Sincerely,

Mitchell Langbert

Elitism in American History

Progressivism and social democracy are democratic liberal doctrines that introduce the possibility of an activist, authoritarian state that they aim to limit. Progressives of the early twentieth century management of large business enterprise, although many such as Herbert Croly and Theodore Roosevelt argued for expansion of state action into the social welfare realm. The social democrats under the New Deal discarded the Progressives' interest in efficiency and instead focused on social welfare. Hence, American public policy debate became that that countered those interested in greater efficiency with those interested in increasing welfare transfers. The advocates of greater efficiency tended to emphasize management solutions in the tradition of the Mugwumps. Hence, their emphasis on low taxes was accompanied by an interest in limiting waste in government. These views seem to overlap with the Jeffersonian philosophy of limiting centralized federal government but the Progressives' most basic belief was that efficiency in overseeing big business could not be achieved without centralization of state power. Hence, their philosophy is fundamentally statist and centralizing and so is very much in the Federalist tradition. The social democrats too are descendants of Federalism. The anti-Federalist Jeffersonians and their Jacksonsian descendents believed that centralized institutions such as the central bank and Hamiltonian schemes to support business expansion were opposed to the interests of taxpayers and small holders. It is true that in Jefferson's day there were relatively few workers, but those supported Jefferson. Jefferson opposed the same common law that was used in the Philadelphia Cordwainers' case against unions, and the Jacksonian democracy saw a renewed support for the union cause in the form of the decision of Commonwealth v. Hunt, which changed American legal attitudes in unions' favor. However, the eighteenth century's anti-Federalists nineteenth century's Jeffersonians had a very different point of view from the twentieth century's social democrats. First, the anti-Federalists and Jeffersonians opposed the central bank. Second, they opposed government support for business. Third, they opposed taxation (the Federalists advocated taxes such as the Whiskey tax, not the anti-Federalists). Thus, the spirit of pro farmer and by extension pro worker laissez faire was fundamental to the earliest political debates in America. The elitism of the Federalists was associated with support for big business and big government. The claim that the state's power would be used to support workers and the poor had not occurred to the Federalists at that point. Part of the reason was that the Federalists were individualists who opposed political parties and factions, hence manipulative or political doctrines such as social democracy would not have occurred to them. There were indeed early rumblings of interest in governmental support for workers, such as during Jefferson's 1807-08 Embargo Acts, which caused unemployment in the cities. Some workers demonstrated for expansion of city employment to counter the unemployment that resulted from the embargoes.

The elitist philosophy of Federalism did not die with the Federalist movement in 1800. Federalism died in part because of internal fighting among Hamilton, Adams, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney and other prominent Federalists. Much of their struggle had to do with the abrasive personalities of Hamilton and Adams and their unwillingness to think in terms of a unified party (Hamilton preferred Jefferson to Adams and Adams preferred Jefferson to Hamilton and Pinckney). However, the Jeffersonian Democratic-Republicans eventually broke into two parties, the Whigs of Henry Clay and the Democrats of Andrew Jackson. Of these, the Whigs trailed the Federalists and were precusors to today's Republicans while the the Jacksonians retained the anti-Federalist impulse, were pro-worker, pro-union and anti-elitist. The Whigs believed in big government and support for business, and in central banking. In contrast, the Democrats believed in states' rights and were relatively, but not perfectly laissez faire in orientation. Hence, the history of elitism can be traced directly from the Federalists to the Whigs to the Republicans. It is tragic that the anti-elitist philosophy of Jacksonian democracy became associated with slavery because of its states rights emphasis. Without the issue of slavery, the American debate would have been more clearly along class lines, with the general public supporting Jacksonian democracy and laissez faire, and the business and plantation elites supporting Federalist, Whiggish and then Republican big government and centralization. But the states rights and slavery issue confounded this alignment to a degree.

The transformation in the party orientation of elitism began to occur in the late nineteenth century. In 1884 the elite Republican Mugwumps bolted the Republican Party in favor of the candidacy of Grover Cleveland. Cleveland was a traditional Jeffersonian-Jacksonian candidate, favoring the gold standard and low taxes. The Mugwumps, supported the laissez faire philosophy, perhaps contributing to its identification with the wealthy. However, the Mugwumps also supported rationalization of government and civil service. Even more important, the Mugwumps represented the college-educated elite of the late nineteenth century. Whereas only about five percent of the American public had attended college in the 1880s, over 50 percent of the Mugwumps had attended college. The Mugwumps were very interested in shoring up professionalism in academia, education, social work, law and medicine. They were the first professional interest movement in American history. Thus, some Mugwumps did favor some forms of government intervention, such as improvement of housing standards, and virtually all favored the Pendleton Act and attempts to improve the management of government at the federal as well as the state level. The Mugwumps were predecessors to the Progressives and were the earliest advocates of enhanced focus on rationalizaton of government and support for the professional (and implicitly) economic interests of the professional classes. Thus, American reform took the form of an alliance between professionals interested in narrow interests of their specific professions coupled with rationalization of government. The impulse toward social democracy came in part from the fixation on professional problems, not from a socialistic or equalitarian impulse. Thus, specialists in housing reform and social work began the emphasis on government intervention to improve municipal housing. It was a narrowly defined professional response. The response had two implications: one broad and one narrow. The broad response was to legitimate needs in the cities that the economy would address only slowly as productivity improved and people became wealthier. The narrow response was that the professions gained in power, prestige and access to resources as the broad response gained currency. Hence, the pattern of government programs that combined rationalization with social welfare began to take root with the Pendleton Act. American elites, both in business and in the professions, found that they had much at stake in state largess, and so the American political debate, which became increasingly a debate among elite economic interests (business and rationalizers versus the professions) began to take the shape that it has today.

Democratic versus Achievement Motives in American History

David M. Tucker. Mugwumps: Public Moralists of The Gilded Age. Columbia, Mo.: University of Missouri Press, 1998. 139 pp.

David M. Tucker's Mugwumps: Public Moralists of the Gilded Age is an excellent overview of the Mugwumps. It is sympathetic to its subject, unlike others who have written about the Mugwumps. Phrases like "Old Right" abound in the post-war libertarian literature, but the image often is vague. Tucker's book shows that the 19th century classical liberals, known as independent Republicans, were former abolitionists, not bigots in any sense of the word (the few that turned out to be, such as Henry Adams ceased to be considered Mugwumps and became associated with Populism), and were very conscious of their libertarian ideology, their commitment to Adam Smith, the Manchester liberals and John Stuart Mill, with whom several corresponded. The Mugwumps were:

-A small movement, no larger than today's Libertarian Party as a percentage of the voting public, and probably smaller
-sharply differentiated from the two major parties in terms of their commitment to liberal or libertarian ideas, specifically tariff reduction (which the Democrats tended to support and the Republicans tended to oppose); hard money and the gold standard (which neither party really supported); and opposition to imperialism
-support for the newly formed (under the Pendleton Act) federal civil service, which they thought would end corruption in government and reduce the opportunity for spoils, which led the public to support corrupt government (in other words, they wanted to end special interest capture of government)

The book is very well written (although at times there could have been slightly better transitioning and linkage of ideas) and of serious interest to libertarians, conservatives, and those with an interest in the decline of morals in business and government.

Although the Mugwumps were the first post-industrial libertarian movement, they also were at the root of today's progressive-liberalism, as Richard Hofstadter has pointed out. The effectiveness of their tactics, the use of social control and groupthink to effectuate a uniform party platform, served as a model to the next generation's emphasis on big government, imperialism and state intervention in the economy. Most of all, Mugwumps pioneered the use of groupthink as a political tactic. This has been copied not only by the progressive-liberals but also by today's Libertarian Party, which borrows the Mugwumps' appellation for the Republican Party, "the party of principle".

Tucker's perspective on the Mugwumps is sharply from John R. Dobson's Politics in the Gilded Age which I blog here. Tucker has more respect for the Mugwumps.

David Riesmann has argued that in the twentieth century Americans turned from a 19th century inner directedness that involves a goal and future orientation to an other directedness that involves a focus on peers, influence from popular media, fashion and interpersonal relationships at work. But the tension between these two impulses was already evident in the 1870s.

Several of the Mugwumps, such as Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge, sacrificed their Mugwump ideals for conformity to the Republicans' political demands. They refused to join the other Mugwumps in exiting the Republican Party in 1884. Both Roosevelt and Lodge had much more successful political careers than the other Mugwumps because they put politics over principle, and they did so by adopt the other-directed progressive-liberal ideas of the early twentieth century. Theodore Roosevelt may be thought of as the first other-directed American.

A few of the Mugwumps, such as Henry Adams, who rejected Mugwumpery in favor of anti-Semitism, Populism and free silver (Tucker suggests that the Adamses' exit from Mugwumpery was related to their failure in real estate speculation in Spokane and Kansas City and their hope for a silver inflation). Henry Adams became a Populist who blamed Jewish bankers for his business failings.

The most effective Mugwumps were those who played off the two-party system, favoring one or the other party depending on who was following the most libertarian course. They became famous for this in 1884, when they contributed to the defeat of James G. Blaine in favor of Grover Cleveland, who was a largely libertarian president.

The Mugwumps ran only two independent candidates in their roughly 35-year history: Horace Greeley of the Liberal Republicans in 1872 and John M. Palmer of the National Democrats in 1895. Neither fared well. There is a lesson for the Libertarian Party here. The LP would function more effectively as an election spoiler than as an independent political party.

The Mugwumps (or Independent Republicans) were mostly upper class northeasterners, mainly from New England and New York. They tended to have been educated in religious, Protestant schools and to have had a strong moral sense. Many were former abolitionists. They were not religious themselves, but their grounding and education was. They were concerned with the decay of morals in American politics, and were inclined to foresake personal gain and office on behalf of their ideals, which did not match their economic interests. In other words, many of them benefited from paper money and inflation, but they opposed it on moral grounds, and the same is true of tariffs. Many left wing historians, who lack grounding in economics and ethics, look for class or personal motives in the Mugwumps' position. Ironically, support for inflation, free silver, greenbacks and Keynesian economics is very much the position that favors the upper class, banking interests, Wall Street, hedge fund billionaires, large coroporations and corporate executvies. It was Theodore Roosevelt who benefited from his cynical adoption of progressive-liberalism, the ideology of the American upper class from 1900 to 2007. EL Godkin, Carl Schurz, Horace White and the other Mugwumps paid dearly for their idealistic commitment to morality in politics. The fact that historians have often treated them shabbily suggests shabbines in academia more than anything else.

The Independent Republicans had one advantage over today's libertarians and conservatives: the intellectual support of mainstream universities. Relatively few Americans were capable of thinking through monetary issues even in the 1870s. Today, probably even a smaller percentage of the population is willing to expend the effort to do so. However, when the Mugwumps could say that their ideas had the backing of Harvard economists, the public was much more likely to defer. In this sense, they provided a role model to today's progressive-liberals, who dominate our society through their control of higher education. This intrigues me because it suggests a tighter link between the ideology of higher education, economic interests and what Howard S. Katz calls "the paper aristocracy" than I used to think.

The Mugwumps had limited data on which to base their arguments, and they fell into a number of errors. The most grievous Mugwumps fell were their support for the establishment of the Federal Reserve Bank and their belief that the civil service would end special interest politics and government corruption. Their emphasis on the Fed came from three factors: (1) they believed that the Fed would be constrained by the gold standard, which Roosevelt abolished in the 1930s; (2) they believed that separating money from politics would reduce the temptation to inflate (they overrated the institutional separation of the Fed from Congress; (3) they did not anticipate Keynesian economics, which provided an ideological rationale for the inflationist view which (not to blame them, who could would have known?).

Their notions of morality led to their belief in free trade, the gold standard and honest government, notably via civil service reform. Their advocacy of sound money and free trade, which they explicitly linked to the elimination of special privilege, favoritism for the rich (the debtor class, according to their arguments, being the chief beneficiaries of paper money, then as now) was explicitly rooted in their moral sense. They saw individual achievement, self sufficiency and hard work as moral principles that protectionism and paper money would debase.

Then as now there were powerful forces arrayed against moralist and hard money positions. There was strong western agitation for greenbacks and then silver inflation by landowners (much as the subprime crisis today has been a strong motivation of reallocation of wealth to wealthy investment bankers and landowners), and politicians were inclined to support the demands for inflation. In fact, there were several greenback and free silver bills passed, that Mugwump agitation was able to stop, and some that the Mugwumps could not stop.

The Mugwumps saw the debate as one involving moral principle against personal gain. Those who favored personal gain over morals joined the regular party ranks. Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge, are cited as two examples of reformers who chose to emphasize their careers as opposed to their morals. When James G. B

Gain in democracatic politics is linked to popular appeal. Hence other directedness results from focus on public opinion. However, the advances in American society came not from the political but from the creative, scientific, engineering and management fields, which do not depend on public opinion. Theodore Roosevelt was among the first other-directed, twentieth century men. In choosing personal gain and political advantage over moral belief, he set the stage for the progressive-liberalism of the twentieth century, its moral vacuity and the economic decline that will result from focus on relationships and opinion rather than achievement.

Opiate of the Masses

Merv of PrairiePundit posts Mark Steyn's article about capitalism and change (thanks to Larwyn). He notes that whereas the presidential candidates say that they favor change:

"it's capitalism that's the real "agent of change. Politicians, on the whole, prefer stasis, at least on everything for which they already have responsibility. ts."

But the change thatReInflateoCrat politicians advocate is not make believe. Politicians do create change. Progressive-liberal or political change is reactionary and exploitative. The name "progressive-liberal" refers not to progress or liberalization for the public, rather progress and liberalization for its privileged beneficiaries: lawyers, big business, academics and hedge fund managers.

In aiming to "deconstruct" American values, progressive-liberals aim to supplant them with values that serve their ends. Progressive liberals aim not only to staunch general progress and technological advance, which threatens established economic interests, but to intensify income inequality; shore up inept businesses; protect inefficient health care; make the poor poorer; and make the rich richer. All of this is done in the name of making the economy more efficient; reducing income inequality; providing general health care; and helping the poor. Progressive-liberalism is a vicious philosophy.

Universities have played a critical role in reinforcing exploitative political change . In the 1970s Milovan Djilas argued that communism and left wing ideology served the interests of a new class of journalists and intellectuals.

In America, political use of intellectuals to advocate and support economic exploitation of the poor takes on a specific pattern. American academics argue for cultural change that reinforces their power. They attack religious institutions and traditional values, and argue for a pattern based on groupthink, the "liberal Borg", whereby the New York Times sets an agenda which progressive-liberal cult members mindlessly follow. The progressive-liberal groupthink mentality is a social control process that serves specific economic interests. The new class, academics and journalists, is paid for this pattern with academic jobs, funding and the like.

The effect of the academics' purposed cultural domination and hegemony is to distract the public from state violence and exploitation. The public is made poorer by inflationary policies of the Federal Reserve Bank, while the media advises them that inflation is low. The dollar is artificially propped up and some jobs leave the country, and the media tells the public that free trade is to blame. There is massive waste in government, and the public is told that taxes are too low.

All the while, academia distracts from its exploitative purposes by raising crank political issues: terrorism is justice; defending America is imperialism; crime is justice; taxation creates wealth; free trade makes us poorer, and so on.

The Republicans have been too often part of this process. Republicans, such as Theodore Roosevelt, supported progressive-liberalism. This element never left the Republican Party. In those days, the Democrats were free traders and the Republicans supported exploitative tariffs. Support for hard money was a minority voice in both parties. It was not until 1896 that the Republicans became the hard money party.

It is primarily because of capture of academia that the progressive-liberals have been triumphant in the last century. Now that their ideas have been discredited, it is even more crucial to them to retain control of academia. Without the reinforcement of academic propaganda, it will be difficult for the progressive-liberals to appear to be anything other than what they are: the ideologists of corruption, narrow special interest and economic decline.

Conservatives need to state their case. The Republican Party is not necessarily a conservative or moderate conservative party. It has been a corrupt or progressive-liberal party for much of its history. Conservatives must ponder the way forward.

Liberals Should Be Called "Suppressives" Rather Than "Progressives"

I have recently blogged about Peter Levine's book New Progressive Era and note that although Levine claims that public deliberation ought to replace free markets, public deliberation is impossible because progressives dislike speech that disagrees with their own and because progressives' choices, which are mostly erroneous, become institutionalized. Upon institutionalization, discussion about them is foreclosed. Some examples are the rat-infested New York City subway system; the near-bankrupt social security system; and the income-inequality and poverty-generating Federal Reserve Bank.

As well, a key problem with progressivism is the willingness of progressives to distort facts, to lie, in order to secure programs or institutions that are bound to fail. The public finds it difficult to debate when, for instance, the Fed claims it is managing the "federal funds rate" rather than increasing the money supply (or more to the point, counterfeiting). Likewise, the public finds it difficult to debate about "social security" when its proponents claim that it is a fair insurance program rather than primarily a welfare or transfer program.

Perhaps the worst lies of all concern the names that the "progressives" call themselves. When I was growing up in New York,the high crime rates were attributable to "limousine liberals". Liberals became associated with the ACLU, welfare, corruption and incompetence. Rather than divulge the truth, today's liberals call themselves "progressives". It would be much more conducive to intelligent dialogue for all of us, and much fairer, to call liberals "suppressives".