Obama

Friday, January 29, 2010



Hi All,



I was watching Hilary Clinton and she said she was an old time progressive. I know that since the Reagan era that the word liberal has come under attack and many democrats have started calling themselves progressives. I decided to do some research to find out more about these names and discovered some interesting things. First off, the word liberal as used by the founders meant someone who would follow the constitution and champion the rights of the individual. The constitution is filled with limitations on government so as to protect the individual from an oppressive government which is what the revolution was all about. This worked fine until a Republican president Theodore Roosevelt and a Democratic president Woodrow Wilson felt the constitution needed some improvement. They felt that individuals needed help from the government in determining how they lived their lives. These two presidents set the stage for the Progressive movement that became popular in the early part of the century. Over a 20 plus year period they made some changes that they thought would improve the lives of individuals at the expense of individual freedoms and in time the people objected and the Progressives went underground and they became the new liberals but their brand of liberalism was much different. Some of the changes they brought about were the income tax, the League of Nations and prohibition.



The progressive ideas remained hidden until FDR came along and he was the next to bring these ideas to life. He too did not like all of the restrictions that the constitution placed on government so he decided he wanted a second Bill of Rights where the government would replace individual responsibility. He wanted the government to guarantee the right to have a job, the right to have a home, the right to have health care, the right to an education and the right to recreation. He ran into some problems with the courts and tried to stack the court with judges who thought more like he did but he was not able to pull this off. He wanted congress to pass a law stating that all judges over age 71 had to retire and he wanted six new judges added to the court but the congress would not go along with him.



After FDR passed the progressive movement once again went under cover only to come alive again when President Clinton tried to bring about universal health care but it died on the vine.



Today there is some interest in President Obama’s ideas on the constitution as he has said he is not comfortable with the restrictions it places on the federal government. He feels somewhat like FDR in that the constitution should allow the federal government to confer more rights to individuals. He is a kind of modern version of the progressive.

Thomas Jefferson said, "The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first." Is progressivism breaking the chains?


This is the concern of those who are trying to figure out what President Obama is all about. Finding out what makes him tick should have been done before the election but the press was so enamored with his oratory they left that little detail to be investigated after the election. Now many are asking themselves the question, what is this guy all about?

Jack Novick