The Progressives--A Long Range Plan--Summation Of The Early Era

Have you heard Americans asking how did we get into this situation and when did it begin? Gas and home heating oil prices out of control with no end in sight. Food prices, that's food prices, going through the roof here in America. Minority groups running the country and yes, I am talking about environmental groups and government control freaks.

I believe a lot of what is going on today is happening because we took a wrong turn with the ascendancy of Theodore Roosevelt to the office of the presidency and moved into high gear under Woodrow Wilson. Principally what these two men did was initiate a centralized government program that has taken the power of government out of the hands of the American people and put it into the hands of the politicians who have now made politics a profession controlled by lawyers. We have returned to the era of the monarch.

One can readily make the case that a lot of things done by the early Progressives were certainly for good causes. Lives of the poor and down- trodden were supposedly improved. But we must ask at what cost? From the moment Teddy Roosevelt began ignoring the Constitution and broke up companies to purportedly save the little guy and his family, we were on that proverbial slippery slope. We are now at the point where our elected representatives are telling us what our rights are. Didn't we fight a war in 1776 to change that?

The second impact was the cost of the nationalization of our government. While Washington, DC remained a relatively quiet community during the early Progressive period everything changed with the Depression and World War II. Buildings were built. People were hired. We were on a crisis/war time footing and the enemy had to be defeated. We had to come together to defeat these two evils and in the process government size and cost grew and we haven't seen any sign of a return to the ideas and principles of our Founding Fathers primarily that we the people are in charge. It seems that we are willing to surrender to a collective form of government. "In God We Trust" will be replaced with "Can't We All Get Along" as stated by the drunken but noble Rodney King.

After Woodrow Wilson we enjoyed a decade of prosperity under Republicans. Unfortunately that bubble of the Roaring Twenties fell on hard times. It has been reported that Calvin Coolidge did not run for office in 1928 because he did not want to be there when things fell apart. Supposedly he was asked why didn't he say something and he responded, correctly, that no one would have listened to a president calling wolf. Herbert Hoover was elected and became the fall guy for the Great Depression that in turn would re-open the door for liberal Democrats with the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt.