Pat Buchanan: The birth of nationalism, populism

Donald Trump is the current leader of populism, or nationalism, or whatever you want to call it. Populism has come around from time to time in our history, but the current incarnation of it is fear that the country as founded is at stake, and something has to be done to stop it.  But the current incarnation did not start with Trump, it started back in the early 1990s with Pat Buchanan.

Pat Buchanan was born on November 2, 1938, to a Catholic family. His dad worked at an accounting firm, and his mother was a nurse and homemaker. He had six brothers and two sisters. He attended Georgetown and earned a Bachelor's Degree in American Studies. He was drafted in 1960, but was exempted from military service due to arthritis. He received a Master's Degree in Journalism and was hired at the St. Louis Globe-Democrat at the age of 23.

In 1964 he was promoted to assistant editor and supported Barry Goldwater for President. He later wrote of Goldwater's defeat: ""The conservative movement has always advanced from its defeats... I can't think of a single conservative who was sorry about the Goldwater campaign."

He was an adviser and speech writer for Richard Nixon. He coined the term "silent majority" to refer to those Americans who do not express their political views openly. He first used it in a memo to the president. Nixon later used the phrase in a speech he wrote himself and gave in 1969. Some believe this speech encouraged the silent majority to stop being quiet and support Nixon, thereby encouraging many democrats to vote for Nixon.

Buchanan had isolationist views that Nixon did not approve of. Buchanan was a conservative, but the type of conservative he was is called paleoconservative. Here is a rundown of what this is:

Paleoconservative: This is one of the two main branches of the conservatism. They are pro-capitalist conservatives who believe the role of government is to act as isolationists, whereby putting America first and not involving itself in foreign wars unless to defend America. They like to preserve American Culture. They believe that American borders need to be protected to protect America from foreign invasion and to prevent foreigners from entering the Union illegally. They do not agree it is America's responsibility to fund foreign social programs and it is not the role of government to put capitalism aside to pay for a welfare state (as neoconservatives do). They believe the American government should focus on an American identity, traditional values, civil society, and federalism. Unlike neoconservatives, they oppose social entitlement programs. They were critical of the Iraq war and the Bush administration.

Now, that sounds a lot like Donald Trump's views. But Buchanan was anti-establishment long before Trump. The idea that members of Washington are controlled by special interests rather than the people was an idea proposed by Buchanan. Part of his agenda when he ran for President in 1992 was in opposition to the North American Free Trade Agreement, because he believed this would benefit special interests and American Corporate Interests over the people.

Buchanan was opposed to American Corporate Interests aligning with political interests. Most politicians enter politics, and then find that the way to get elected, and re-elected, is to align with corporate interests. This is how they fund their campaigns. And when they get elected, they have to pay back those corporations who supported them.

Trump believes that the main reason the republican party supports amnesty for illegal aliens is because they are essentially in bed with corporations, and these corporations would benefit from amnesty. So they fund republican campaigns on the premise that, when elected, those politicians will support amnesty. Yet Trump notes that not only is this bad for politics, it's bad for America.

The fear is that illegal aliens make no promise to assimilate into American culture, and so this may act to break up the culture that was formed when this country was founded. So he wants to build a wall and send home illegal immigrants to preserve and protect culture, but also to end corruption in Washington.

This is what is meant when people refer to republican establishment. They are referring to republicans who are controlled by corporate interests. They do not do what is best for the country, or for their respective states, they do what corporations want in order to get re-elected, or in order to serve their own interests.

This would explain a lot. It would explain why George W. Bush supported Ted Kennedy's No-Child-Left-Behind-Act, rather than getting rid of the Department of Education, which Trump proposes to do. It would explain why Bush never vetoed any liberal spending bill.

So Buchanan, like Trump, believed politicians are in bed with corporations.  That NAFTa was what corporations wanted, not what the people wanted. And Buchanan was ultimately proven right, as many American industries have moved factories overseas where they don't have to pay high wages and benefits packages required by agreements with Worker's Unions. It's also one of the reasons for the high unemployment rate.

Now, you might be saying that the unemployment rate right now is only 5.5%.  However, there are currently 96 million people who are working age and have quit looking for work, and so they aren't even accounted for in the 5.5% unemployment number. So, in reality, we actually have a higher unemployment number than during the Great Depression. We are in a depression, we just don't have soup lines -- we have food stamp lines, and welfare lines. People who are not working are living cozily in their homes, talking on their iphones and watching their smart TVs and eating pot roasts and Campbell's Soup.

Ending Free Trade Agreements and raising Tariffs is something Trump is supportive of in order to bring jobs back to America.

A perfect example of an establishment republican is John Kasich. He started his political career when the Republicans and Conservatives won the House during the 1994 mid-term elections. This was supposed to be a continuation of what Reagan started in the 1980s. This was supposed to be 

Some people think the anti-establishment movement began with the Tea Party in 2010 that was in opposition to Obamacare. This is true to some extent, but the true grandfather of the modern nationalist movement, the populist movement, is Patrick Buchanan.

It actually has roots earlier than that. It started in the 1960s when the breakdown of American culture started. It began with the creation of the Department of Education. This was created because, while American education was good, liberals believed they could make it better. So they gave eight people in Washington the power to reshape education.

Prior to the 1960s parents were in charge of what their kids were taught. They wanted their kids to learn about the founding of our country and conservative/ libertarian principles, and American Exceptionalism. They wanted people to learn about Christian values and about God. They wanted their kids to live under the same culture that they did.

But, in order to advance the liberal agenda, those eight members in Washington decided it was better to unify schools, to make them all the same. So now, rather than each school teaching what local parents wanted, they started teaching that global warming was real, that the world was over populated, The idea here is if you stop teaching conservative/ Christian values, people will naturally default to liberalism. And this is exactly what has happened.

You see, this is what corporate interests want. This is not what the people want. Some people rose up against this in the 1960s, and they were laughed at as radicals. Buchanan gave them a voice in 1992 when he ran for president, and now this movement is coming to a culmination through Donald Trump. Still, we must give credit where credit is due: the father of the modern incarnation of the nationalist-populist movement is the one, the only, Pat Buchanan. 

Grover Cleveland: the last classical liberal

Grover Cleveland (1837-1908)
President (1885-1889 & 1893-1897)

Grover Cleveland was the last classical liberal, which means that he believed in securing liberties by limiting the size and scope of government.* He was the last president to truly respect the Constitution by not pushing forth legislation for political gain.

Stephen Grover Cleveland was born in Caldwell, New Jersey, 1837, to Reverend Richard Cleveland and his wife.  He and his four brothers grew up in a well-disciplined household, although there was always time to play at the end of each day.  His disciplined and Christian upbringing would later play an integral role during his political career.

Called "Big Steve" when he was little, he would take a job at a law firm in Buffalo, New York, that he would use as a launching platform for a brilliant career.  He spent many hours reading books and studying law.  He also worked hard at the age of 19 to help Democrat James Buchanan become president.  Little did he know at the time that the next democrat president to be elected would be 28 years later, and it would be him.

He entered politics in an era where many politicians tried to use natural disasters and charities for political gain, and where politicians used their positions to advance their own careers and the careers of their friends.  In 1870 he was asked to run for Sheriff in Erie County, and on January 1, 1871, he became Sheriff at the young age of 33.  He used his free time in this position to study law, but he also took his position very seriously.

His secretary would put papers on his desk and he was expected to sign them.  Instead of just signing them as his predecessors would, he read them all over carefully.As noted by Betsy Ochester, "Grover Cleveland: Encyclopedia of Presidents:"

He began examining th record of past sheriffs.  He learned that the companies that supplied food, firewood, and other supplies to the jail were connected to political leaders and that they were cheating on their deliveries.  They billed the county for a large quantity, but delivered only a fraction of that amount.  Cleveland began counting each load of wood and each bag of coats in a delivery to make sure he received as much as he paid for.  If he got shortchanged, he complained publicly, whether the supplier was a Republican or Democrat.  

After a year on this job, the hard working and honest lawyer and politician returned to practice law until he was asked to run for Mayor of Buffalo, New York.  He was nominated on January 1, 1882, at the still young age of 44.  He immediately set out to clean up the city of Buffalo.  Many bills crossed his desk, and when he thought a bill was unfair to the populace, or if he thought it infringed on their natural rights, he vetoed it, thus earning him the nickname "veto mayor."

According to Robert Higgs of the Independent, Cleveland was "A lawyer who lacked a philosophical temperament or education.. (and) derived his devotion to the limited government from his reverence for the U.S. Constitution. An honest man—an extraordinarily honest man for a politician—he took seriously his oath to 'preserve, protect, and defend' that document."

While many people today believe that something must be done to solve problems, Cleveland believed the opposite was true.  And his efforts as an honest, hard-working, natural rights protecting, the mayor made him the ideal candidate to run against the republican candidate for governor of New York in 1882.  He won a landslide election and was nominated on New Year's Day 1883.

As with the city of Buffalo, there was a lot of corruption in the New York City government, and it was hoped that an honest and hard working politician would clean up the mess.  That is exactly what Grover Cleveland did.  He immediately detailed a plan for reform, cutting useless government positions, and cutting unfair taxes.

One story has it, as told by Rochester, that Cleveland opened his office to all...

...People streamed through the door steadily.  Faithful Democrats came expecting government jobs, but Cleveland was determined to fill jobs on the basis of merit, not to reward past service to the party.  If a person suggested he wanted a political reward for a contribution to the campaign, Cleveland would narrow his eyes to slits and say in an icy voice, "I don't know that I understand you."

As when he was mayor of Buffalo, whenever a bill came to him that he believed infringed on personal liberties, he vetoed it, earning him the name "veto governor."

His success as governor earned him national attention, and he was asked to run against republican presidential candidate James G. Blaine in 1884.  Cleveland was thought to be the ideal candidate to run against Blaine because Blaine was suspected of being involved in corrupt dealings during his long career.

In the end, Cleveland won in one of the closest elections in history, gaining only 200,000 more votes than Blaine, although he won the electoral college by a score of 219-182.  He was inaugurated president in March 1885, becoming the first democrat president to be nominated since James Buchanan 28 years earlier.

Higgs said that Cleveland believed "governmental expenditure should be kept at a minimum, and only to carry out essential constitutional functions,  He cut tariffs that had been raised by republicans, and he scaled back 'phony pensions' that had been created for political gains.  He said, 'When a man in office lays out a dollar in extravagance, he acts immorally by the people.'"

During the late 1870s, minors in western states were digging up excess amounts of silver.  Certain members of Congress wanted to allow the U.S. Treasury to purchase some of this surplus.  At the time money was backed only by gold, but the idea was that if they could also back it with silver the supply of money would increase, thus making it easier for individuals and businesses to borrow money.

In 1878 the Bland-Allison Act, which required the U.S. Treasury to buy between $2 million and $4 million of silver each month, passed Congress and was signed by then president Rutherford B. Hayes. Rutherford opposed this action tooth and nail, although, once president, he didn't think it was his role to become involved in such matters, so he stayed out of the debate.

What he did get involved in was trying to fix problems with the pension program for veterans who fought in the Civil War.  Many congressmen were presenting thousands of private bills to Congress asking that the pension is granted, and most were signed based on emotion for political gain without ever having been read.

Cleveland believed this was wrong.  In fact, rather than just sign, he made sure to read each pension closely, refusing to sign any that he thought were dishonest.  In fact, one pension was for a person who broke an ankle prior to the Civil War, and so he vetoed it without question.

He once again became famous for vetoing many bills that he believed violated constitutional restraint, therefore earning him the nickname 'veto president.'  He would end up vetoing 584 bills, and only seven were overridden by Congress.

What he did do, however, was become the first president to acknowledge his respect for the labor force, noting that Congress should have respect for "the welfare of the laboring man."  He would later sign a bill into law making trade unions legal.

His respect for the labor force was made clear in his opposition to high tariffs, or a tax on imported goods. Republicans believed high tariffs were essential to protecting American businesses from foreign competition. They argued that high tariffs were "protective," meaning that they raised the prices of foreign goods to encourage the purchase of American goods.

Democrats such as Cleveland, on the other hand, believed high tariffs only encouraged foreign nations to raise their tariffs, and they also increased the cost of goods for Americans, making it so they couldn't afford to purchase essential items, such as sugar.  So they preferred tariffs to be lower in order to reduce the cost of goods in order to benefit consumers.

This issue was not resolved prior to the election of 1888, and this failure was partly to blame for his loss to Benjamin Harrison in 1888. While he won the popular vote by 100,000, he lost the electoral vote by a score of 233-168.

During the next four years Cleveland enjoyed life in the private sector, but he continued to pay attention to what was going on in Washington.  He was paying attention when Harrison signed the McKinley Tariff Act of 1890, which raised tariffs.  And he was also paying attention when the president signed the Sherman Silver Purchase Act that same year, which required the Treasury to purchase $4.5 million in silver each month.

Also concerning Cleveland was that Congress was trying to pass a bill authorizing unlimited coinage of silver.  Cleveland was advised not to complain publicly about this for fear that it might negatively influence is future political ambitions.  But Cleveland was a man of principle, and instead of staying silent, he dismissed the warnings saying, "I am supposed to be a leader of my party.  If any word of mine can check these dangerous fallacies, it is my duty to give that word, whatever the cost may be to me."

He would send an article that was published in newspapers across the land and became known as the "Silver Letter."  In it, he predicted disaster if "we enter upon the dangerous and reckless experiment of free, unlimited, and independent silver coinage."  Cleveland was happy to hear that the bill failed.

So in 1892 Cleveland was primed for another run against Harrison, thus making the presidential election of 1892 the only time in history between two candidates who had both served as president.

Cleveland would once again win the popular vote, this time by a margin of 500,000.  He won the electorate by 277-145, thus making him the only president to be elected to two non-consecutive terms, and also making him the only president counted twice when the presidents are listed in order.  The victory also allowed democrats to regain control of both chambers of Congress.

Almost as soon as he was nominated for a second term, the Panic of 1893 occurred, leading to the depression of 1893-95.  Despite pressure on Cleveland to take federal action to fix the economy, President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, at a Senate Committee in 1893, said:

I believe in general that the government is best which governs least, and that interference with trade or manufactures is very undesirable. Yet I recognize the fact that evils may and do exist which require correction by the force of law.

Almost everyone believed the cause of the panic, and ensuing depression was the Sherman Silver Purchase Act.  While it initially created an economic boom, it resulted in an economic downturn and the Panic of 1893.  Also blamed for the economic recession was the McKinley Tariff Act.  Since Cleveland was opposed to both of these from the beginning, he had no problem repealing them.

Despite public pressure to sign legislature that would help the unemployed and reboot the economy, he took no further executive action.  Regarding this inaction, historian Joy Hakim, in her series "A History of Us," said:

President Cleveland didn’t believe it was his job to do anything about the unemployed. Most leaders agreed with him. Employment and working conditions were thought to be the responsibility of business.

In 1894, Ohio Businessman Jacob Coxey arranged an "Industrial Army" that marched into Washington to protest Cleveland's inaction.  He championed for laws protecting the labor force and even recommended a program that would create government jobs for the unemployed.

During the Civil War, Lincoln signed a bill imposing an income tax on individuals to help pay for the war. In 1872, Ulysses S. Grant allowed this tax to expire. By 1894, that national debt had grown so high that Cleveland worked with Congressman William Wilson on a Revenue Act that would reduce tariffs by 15%. The bill made it through Congress.

However, he had trouble getting this bill through the Senate, where democrats held only a slight majority. Arthur Pue Gorman, a Democrat Senator from Maryland, would end up working with James Jones, a Democrat Senator from Arkansas, and introduced a version of the Bill that became known as the Wilson-Gorman Act.

This bill would end up having over 600 amendments. It made it so that only wool and copper were on the free list, meaning there was a tariff on all other imports. It did, however, reduce the McCinley Tariff to 42%, although this was only a 6% reduction. The bill also called for a flat income tax rate of 2% on income greater than $4,000.

Cleveland was an ardent champion of lower tariffs. In fact, this was his campaign pledge, and one of the reasons he was elected by the people to a second term. He was disgusted by changes made in the Senate and read a letter to Congress hoping to get them to reconsider. He said that such opposition was "party perfidy and party dishonor."

Still, Gorman stubbornly resisted making any further changes. Cleveland refused to sign the bill. However, he did not veto it either, because he considered it better than the McKinley Tariff Act that it replaced.

This was considered a triumph for Gorman. It was considered a huge defeat for Cleveland.

However, the bill would ultimately be challenged in a case that was called the Pollock -vs- Farmer's Loan And Trust Company. It made it all the way to the Supreme Court and was ruled unconstitutional in 1895 (which is good, because it was.). At this time, the Federal government did not have the Constitutional right to impose taxes to increase revenue. The only way it could raise revenues was through tariffs.

Even while he was a pro-consumer president, Cleveland believed it was the role of government to help the unemployed and not the government.  And he was not alone, as this was the common perception at the time.  It was mainly for this reason that most of Jacob Coxey's ideas were essentially ignored until FDR was elected president in 1933.

It was also for this reason that the Cleveland depression lingered on, and by 1896 public opinion of Cleveland had soured.  This caused a public riff within the democratic party,  leading to a rejection of Cleveland and the nomination of William Jennings Bryan (at age 36, he was the youngest presidential nominee in history), a leading voice in the populist movement.

While Cleveland left office an unpopular president, history vindicated him somewhat as his popularity rose after his death in 1908, but the overwhelming consensus by most historians is that he was not one of the best presidents.

Yet considering the evidence presented here, historians are not always right. Grover Cleveland was a "veto president" who championed for protecting personal liberties (natural rights) by ardently respecting the Constitution.  For this, we ought to respect Grover Cleveland as one of the great presidents of all time.

Oh, and I must add one more thing. Grover Cleveland's lai zzz-fair approach to government worked. Shortly after William McKinley's inauguration, the economy started to come around again. Yet it was too late to save the classical liberal approach.  No longer did presidents sacrifice their political ambitions for the good of the nation and the protection of personal liberties.

*The term classical liberal is a modern term to describe the movement that championed for securing liberties by limiting the power and scope of government from colonial times until the 1930s.  By the 1930s the term "liberal" remained popular, although the movement (or faction) had ceased to gain hold of any political party, moving aside in favor of the populist and progressive movements.  After the progressive movement started to lose popularity in the 1940s, leaders of the movement adapted the more popular term liberal.  Since the term "liberal" had been absconded, modern "liberal" or "classical liberal" factions were forced to use terms like "conservative" "Tea Party" and "libertarian."So while liberal traditionally means defending freedom through limited government, it now means pretty much the opposite.  

Liberty is freedom; progressive is sacrificing liberty

I think that a sense of liberty has been lost in the United States.  As our nation was formed based on the idea that a government was absconding personal liberties, America was founded on the idea of liberty.

So, what is liberty? Liberty is the natural right to exercise human rights in any manner a person chooses so long as it does not interfere with the exercise of the rights of others.  This means keeping the government out of our lives, as so to protect our personal liberties, i.e. natural rights.

History has proven that this is the only successful method of unleashing human energy and creativeness that build prosperous nations and protect people from systemic violations of human rights.

This was the definition of liberty accepted by Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, John Adams, James Monroe, James Madison, Ben Franklin, John Hancock, Alexander Hamilton, Charles Carroll, James Wilson, John Witherspoon, Benjamin Rush, Francis Hopkinson, George Washington, William Penn, along with a vast number of others.

The founding fathers, therefore, believed in the liberal philosophical system, republicanism, and capitalism.

Liberty, therefore, requires, if not demands, a responsible, limited government. The founders made this possible by creating a system of checks and balances, and through the creation of the founding documents that limit the scope of government, telling what it cannot do, not what it can do.  The idea here was to protect personal liberties, and make it so no government shall trample on natural rights, or the rights we are all born with.

In the early 1930s the term liberal was absconded by the progressive movement to shed a positive light on their movement.  This change was necessary to shed a positive light on their otherwise unpopular agenda.

The liberal movement continues to this day, although the progressives teach that it is controversial as opposed to common.  Yet, as we all know, it is progressivism that is controversial, not liberalism.

To believe in liberty is not to believe in any social or economic outcome, which is what progressivism does.  It requires acceptance of the disorder that results from the personal decisions that are made when the government does not intervene.

Progressives (a.k.a socialists, liberals, Marxists) believe in a dream.  They believe in a Utopia; a world where everyone has equal outcomes, which mainly refers to an equal share of the wealth.

In a progressive world, if your neighbor makes more than you, he must give you the difference no matter how hard you work. This is called redistribution of wealth.  In essence, progressives believe laws must be made to make this perfect world possible. They believe you must sacrifice some of your liberties for the good of the collective.

It is for this reason that Congress has succeeded at making laws "for your own good" requiring you to put money aside for retirement, healthcare, welfare, and charitable donations to causes that most people would not donate to.  This is what progressivism does. They do not care about your personal liberties, so long as you are sacrificing it for the general good.

However, in order to move the liberty movement forward, the name liberal could no longer be used.  Modern terms for this movement are conservative, libertarian, and tea party.

Liberty is not being watched everywhere you go. Liberty is being able to choose to drink soft drinks instead of milk, and being able to choose the size you sell or purchase.  Liberty is being able to decide for yourself what insurance policy you want to buy.  Liberty is being able to send your kids to the school of your choice. Liberty is being able to pray in school if you so choose, and being able to dress as you want, and voice your opinion without being stymied by a Fairness Doctrine.

Liberty is equal opportunity to succeed, yet not equal outcomes.  Liberty is the rich being able to keep what they earn. Liberty is being able to donate to the charities of your choice, not the charities of Uncle Sam's choice.  Liberty is the opportunity to rise into a better state of living, not creating for someone a better state of living at the expense of others.

Liberty can only be taken away by the government, and that is exactly what the progressive ideal is.  Liberty is what all people yearn for, and what millions of people have died for.  Liberty is also very fragile, as the success of the progressive movement has so openly shown.  Liberty is not runaway spending and personal debt.

When liberty is under attack, everything we hold dear to us is at risk. Governments, by their very nature, notoriously compete with liberty, even when the stated purpose for establishing a particular government is to protect liberty. Governments trample on liberty, and therefore progress, creativity, and prosperity.

In the past 100 years, progressives have been slowly, by the process of assimilation and a great public relations campaign, succeeding at taking away our personal liberties.  They have done this by making laws that tell them what they have do do, and by increasing the scope of government.

Thus, in order to protect liberty, we must limit the power and scope of government.  The simplest and most effective method of doing this is to teach our children the true meaning of liberty, and that it is a natural right that can only be extracted by government.

Our children must be constantly reminded of the thousand year struggle to learn and understand liberty, as for 99% of our history only the top 1% enjoyed the benefits of knowledge at the expense of the other 99%.  This is what makes America so exceptional, as it reverses this trend.

Our children must be taught not to be deceived into believing that government can make them safe from harm, provide fairly distributed economic security, and improve individual moral behavior.

History has shown over and over again that when governments are given a monopoly on the use of force to achieve these goals, that this power is always abused.  Perhaps there are no better examples of this than the collapse of democracies in both ancient Greece and Rome.

Perhaps most important, our children need to be taught to love and respect the founding documents which are intended to protect and preserve liberty.

Today, the seeds of progressivism that were planted in the early 19th century have grown to a full and flourishing tree, and an all out assault on our personal liberties.  We are, therefore, in need of a new revolution, only this time not to create a free nation, but to preserve one.

Fewer workers are supporting more takers, a system bound to fail

There's a nice article over at cnsnews.com Terence Jeffrey called "86M Full-Time Private-Sector Workers Sustain 148M Benefit Takers."  I think that title pretty much says it all.

Basically, the article notes that there are 86 million workers paying the bill so that 148 million non-workers or part-time workers can take entitlements from the government.  

The direction we are headed in right now is in the direction of more takers, meaning that fewer people will be working and more will be taking.  As this happens, the taxes of those who work will have to rise in order to support such a system.  

Sometimes it appears that the goal of progressive leaders
is to take from the haves and give to the have nots
in order so that everyone has equal pay. 

As you might imagine, this type of system is not sustainable.  At some point in the future it's going to collapse.  Only Congress continues to kick the can down the road, because they don't want to be the bad guys to tell the takers that they need to quit taking.  So nothing ever gets done; nothing ever gets fixed.  

Of course then we have Obama come in and he gives every poor a free phone, and subsidized healthcare, and this exacerbates an already inflamed problem.  

In a way, I think it needed to get worse so that people wake up and smell the fumes of an eroding system.  For years people knew this was going on, but they chose to look the other way.  

This is why the tea party exists.  This is why it's so important to remember what this country was built on, and to get back to the basic principles of independence and personal accountability that this country was formed on.  

Surely you can call me a doom and gloomer for being a realist and stating the truth here, but so be it.  If America is ever going to rise to the heights it was during the 1980s and 1990s and early 2000s, we are going to have to upset some people with truths.