I do not want republicans to move to center and negotiate with the party that lost, as Obama suggested to Jimmy Fallon

So, Donald Trump is the 45th President of the United States. Hillary Clinton lost. Obama's agenda was repudiated. Still, there are those who champion for the Trump administration to move to the center and to negotiate with democrats.

Before the election a democratic friend of mine wanted me to watch a video of Obama on the Jimmy Fallon show.

Fallon: "Do you think the republicans are happy with their choice? 

Obama:  "Um, we are! But I don't know how they're feeling.  That was too easy. But, the truth is, actually, I am worried about the republican party... But democracy works, this country works, when you have two parties that are serious and trying to solve problems. And they've got philosophical differences, and they have fierce debates, and they argue, and they contest elections. But, at the end of the day, what you want is a healthy two-party system. And you want the republican nominee to be somebody who could do the job if they win. And you want folks who understand the issues, and where you can sit across the table from them and you can have a principled argument and ultimately can still move the country forward. So, I actually am not enjoying, and I haven't been enjoying over the last seven years, watching some of the things that have happened to the Republican party, 'cause there's some good people in the Republican party. There are wonderful Republicans out in the country who want what's best for the country and may disagree with me on some things, but are good, decent people. But what's happend in that party, culminating in this current nomination, I think, is not actually good for the country as a whole. It's not something Democrats should with for. And my hope is that, once we get through this cycle, there's some corrective action, and they get back to being a center-right party and the Democrat party being a center-left party, and we start figuring out how to work together. 

As soon as the video was over, I said to my friend:

"That's exactly what I don't want. I don't want more government. I want them to oppose democrats. I want them to reject their agenda. I don't want every time there's a problem to solve it with more government. More government is the antithesis of what the founders wanted. They wanted limited government. More government takes away liberties. I want republicans to oppose new laws, new regulations, and new taxes. I don't want more regulations. I want to get rid of the department of education, not add to its power. I want to give education back to the states so that parents and teachers can decide what kids learn, as opposed to eight liberals sitting in a room in Washington. I want to get rid of the IRS. I want to take power away from government agencies like the EPA so we can get rid of regulations based on global warming hoax that is burdensome to the economy. I don't want to move the liberal agenda forward, I want to stop it. I voted for republicans to stop Obamacare, not negotiate with democrats so it can keep functioning. I want them to cut funding for it. I want them to place bills on his desk repealing Obamacare. I want them to place bills on his desk getting rid of global warming regulations. But they don't do that. They do move to the center. Rather than opposing amnesty, they come up with their own amnesty program. The bottom line: I'm tired of that. I want them to oppose the party whose agenda has caused all the problems our country faces. So having someone like Trump IS actually good for the country as a whole, someone who calls a liberal a liberal and a liar a liar and who wants to stop the liberal agenda at all costs to make America great again... to take it back to where it was before Obama succeeded in fundamentally transforming it, moving it forward from a capitalistic nation to a socialistic-like nation."

I was on a roll. And as I went on my friend sat stiffly on the couch, crossed his arms, puckered his lips, and pretended to ignore me. I guess I offended him, as he was convinced I would agree with Obama about moving to the Center.

Teddy Roosevelt: The first progressive president

Teddy Roosevelt's administration marked a shift in American politics toward a more active president with greater powers.  In essence, he turned the executive into the "bully pulpit."

Most presidents from Thomas Jefferson to William McKinley believed the role of government was limited, and that individuals were better at making decisions than government.  This all changed with the death of William McKinley.  Teddy Roosevelt became president, and he used his energy to increase the powers of the executive, making it possible for future presidents to allow government to intercede in nearly every aspect of our daily lives.

In August of 1898 he returned home from Cuba the most popular man in the United States, and it was mainly for this reason that republican leaders in New York asked him to run for governor.  He was young had tons of energy, and turned out to be a brilliant politician.  It was hear he is thought to have said," said, "Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far."  His campaign used his war heroics, even going as far as to have Rough Riders speaking on his behalf, to help his chances.

He was 25-years-old when he was inaugurated as governor of New York in January of 1901.  He became an ardent reformer, or what later would be called "progressive," and later "liberal."  He called for:

• Laws limiting the long working hours of children
• Better conditions for workers in factories (sometimes called sweatshops)
• Signed a law imposing taxes on corporations

William Plat was a former U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate member from New York who was considered the "Political Boss" of the republican party.  He helped Roosevelt gain the governorship, and by 1900 he was tired of him.  He said, "I don't want him raising hell in my state any longer."  

Roosevelt was up for reelection.  The Boss came up with the perfect solution: he began a campaign to have Roosevelt nominated as William McKinley's vice president.  This would turn out to be perhaps the biggest blunder in the history of American politics.  McKinley, with Roosevelt riding on the ticket, easily defeated William Jennings Bryan.

Okay, so I alluded to the fact that Roosevelt would "fundamentally transform" the republican party into a progressive party.  Well, the same was true of the democratic party. It is probably for this reason that Grover Cleveland is often considered as the last classical liberal.  William Jennings Bryan had transformed the democratic party to becoming more progressive (big government) party.  So perhaps the transition was inevitable.  

Regardless, McKinley was now president.  But not for long.  On September 6, 1901, McKinley was shot by an anarchist and by September 13 the president was dead.  This officially made Roosevelt the "Accidental President."

The irony of this news was that, along with the death of McKinley, so too was the death of limited government.  Roosevelt proceeded to fundamentally transform the executive.  He gave it powers that previous presidents believed were unconstitutional (and rightly so). 

Yet because of books like Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle," the American people came to realize (or at least to figure) that individual corporations were not going to regulate themselves, and the state's could not be trusted to create regulations fast enough.  So men like Roosevelt believed this was the job of the federal government.

His progressive agenda became known as the "Square Deal."  It incorporated three core principles that are still staunchly used by liberals today.  

1. Regulating Corporations
2. Protecting Consumers from the Free Market
3. Safeguarding Natural Resources from Overuse

To accomplish these, he increased the powers of the executive by becoming the first president to create agencies that would be given the authority to regulate, or make rules or laws for individuals and individual corporations, without the approval of Congress.  The first of these was the establishment of the Department of Commerce and Labor in 1903, which gave consumers a voice in Washington. 

He distrusted wealthy business owners, and so he started by breaking up monopolies that were created by the formation of trusts. These monopolies were formed when stockholders from various companies turned their stock over to a trustee in exchange for a trust certificate guaranteeing them a dividend.  The companies were run as though they were one company, and therefore this allowed them to set prices as high or low as needed to drive the competition out of business.  

The test case for Roosevelt was J.P. Morgan's attempt to combine three railroads and to combine them into a single corporation called Northern Securities Company.  Roosevelt had attorney general Philander Knox bring suit charging that this was a violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890.  The Supreme Court decided in Roosevelt's favor, thus giving the government the authority to break up other trusts, such as those in the beef, cattle, and oil industries. 

Roosevelt said he was only out to get trusts that he saw were abusing workers or overcharging customers. So, essentially, the federal government decided what trusts could continue to exist.  During Roosevelt's eight years 40 trusts were dissolved. He became known as the "trust buster." 

In 1902 he used what was now referred to as the "bully pulpit" to settle a dispute between business and labor.  In May, 15,000 workers went on strike to protest low wages and unsafe working conditions in coal mines. The mine owners hired non-union replacement workers.  Ticked off, the striking workers terrorized the replacement workers.  

Since coal was a essential for a functioning economy -- it was used to generate electricity, heat, power railroads, and heat homes, businesses, and schools -- the strike caused schools to close, coal prices to quadruple, and families to freeze during the winter.  It also resulted in riots as people fought to obtain coal from the few remaining locomotives that carried it.  

Previous presidents supported state's rights, and the rights of individual corporations, and therefore, if they got involved, they would support the corporations.  Roosevelt decided to take a different approach.  Even though he had no legal right to interfere, he invited both sides to Washington.  An arbitrator came up with a plan the strikers accepted but the mine owners rejected. 

So he tried speaking softly, now he got out his big stick.  He unconstitutionally ordered U.S. troops to prepare to take over the mines.  Workers were allowed to go back to work, and an arbitrator worked out an agreement that required a 10 percent wage increase, reduction in workday hours, and safer working conditions. Of course in order to do this coal prices were raised 10 percent.  

The people were happy that the president took away some of the liberties of the coal operators to the benefit of the common worker.  Roosevelt's popularity skyrocketed.

Modern libertarians won't like his next move, but many conservatives would.  For years people had wanted to create a channel across Panama so ships wouldn't have to travel thousands of miles around the tip of South America.  The Colombian government had rejected this idea.

However, a group in Panama had wanted to break away from Columbia and form their own government. Roosevelt decided he would support these radicals obtain their independence in exchange for the right to a Canal Zone where a canal could be dug out.  After ten years of construction, the Panama Canal opened in 1914.

Did Roosevelt have the Constitutional right to tinker in national affairs for his own personal gain the way he did? This is a question that made Roosevelt's actions so controversial.  The answer is still debated to this day.  However, this action created a precedent for future presidents to act upon.

During the 1904 election, Alton B. Parker, a judge from New York, ran as a conservative against liberal William Randolph Hearst for the democratic nomination.  Parker won the nomination, although was no match against the popular Roosevelt.  Parker received only 140 electoral votes to Roosevelt's 336.

Roosevelt would gloat about the results: "I have the greatest popular majority and the greatest electoral majority ever given a candidate for president."  But then he went on to say that he would not run for reelection in 1908.  This was a decision he would come to regret.

By 1906 various investigative reporters were reporting on abuses in the workplace. Roosevelt often responded to these reporters, calling them "Muckrakers."  One example of such "muckraking" was the book "The Jungle," by Upton Sinclair, which reported on the unfair and uncleanly working conditions in the meat packing industry.

They also gave Roosevelt an opportunity to solve more problems, and buy more votes for his party (or for the progressive cause, if you will).  He acted by creating regulations that would create more consumer protections and better working conditions.  Keep in mind here that Sinclair was a socialist, and he was after the workers more so than the consumers.

To get started, he encouraged Congress to pass the Pure Food and Drug Act in June of 1906.  This act mandated that food prepared in factories be properly labeled and and safely produced.  It lead to the formation of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which had the ability to set regulations on the workplace without the permission of Congress.

The FDA went on to:

• Ban foreign and interstate traffic in adulterated or mislabeled food and drug products
• Direct the U.S. Bureau of Chemistry to inspect products and refer offenders to prosecuters
• Required active ingredients be placed on the label of a drug's packaging 
• It required that drugs could not fall below purity levels established b the U.S. Pharmacopeia or the National Formulary.

The actions of Roosevelt here were very popular. However, how good were they actually in retrospect? Conservatives would argue that cleaning up the meat packing industry should have been left to the states, not the federal government.  Likewise, creating laws and regulations is the job of Congress, not the executive branch.

By the turn of the century many railroad owners recognized their costs were increasing, so they decided to take advantage of the increased demand for their services by increasing their rates.  Passengers and shippers were unhappy with this, and the fact that railroads were giving free passes to loyal shippers.

So in 1903 he signed the Elkins Act, named for Senator Steven B. Elkins.  It strengthened the Interstate Commerce Committee (ICC) that was created in 1887 when Grover Cleveland signed the Interstate Commerce Act.  Now the ICC had the ability to impose fines on railroads for offering rebates, and punish shippers who accepted the rebates.

In 1906 he signed the Hepburn Act, named after its sponsor, republican William Peters Hepburn.  This act fortified the Interstate Commerce Committee, giving it the authority to set maximum rates, to restrict use of free passes, and the ability to enforce the regulations it created.  It also brought other businesses that transport goods and services under the control of the ICC, including terminals, storage facilities, pipelines, ferries, and trucking.

Both of these acts benefited consumers at the expense of the railroads. These Acts were justified under the false pretense that railroads were rich and could afford it. What the new laws did was retard the growth of the south, which the railroads could no longer afford to subsidize.  This was one of the unintended consequences of government interventions into the marketplace "with good intentions."

In essence, Roosevelt did something that would cause many of the founding fathers, and most of the previous presidents, roll over in their graves: he turned the government into a giant watchdog. Many people were fearful of what a large central government might do to personal liberties.  One newspaper wrote that Roosevelt's programs were "the most amazing program of centralization that any President of the United States has ever accomplished."

History would show that they were justified in their fear.  Roosevelt, in essence, opened a Pandora's Box, setting precedents that nearly every president after him used to their advantage to push forth an agenda and to obtain votes. Before Roosevelt, this was never done out of fear of what might happen if they did.

Fearing that Roosevelt's agenda might harm the country, conservatives decided to take Roosevelt's promise not to run for reelection to heart.  They started to work to delay his agenda any way they could, hoping that the next president wouldn't be so "progressive."

Congress was successful, although the president sometimes found ways to push forth his agenda (similar to what Obama would later do) to push forth his agenda anyway: by using executive orders.  One of his executive orders blocked the misuse of natural resources (forests, wildlife areas, vital waterways, natural wonders like the Grand Canyon).  He also assembled a conference of state and territorial governors to discuss conservation.

Surely these are all nice things.  Surely it's great to see the federal government preserving natural resources.  it's great to see all the natural parks and forests from being destroyed.  Still, many wondered if this was proper use of the executive branch.

All of Roosevelt's actions were noble, but they all increased the power and scope of government.  They created regulations, each of which took away another personal liberty.  Plus they were expensive, and would require sacrifices by the populace.

This was one of the reasons tariffs stayed generally high during his term in office, and he refused to even hear arguments about tariffs while he was president. This was also the reason why Roosevelt became the first president to push for a progressive income tax system.

Among his last actions was to utilize the precedent created by the McKinley administration (a time when he was vice president) to show the mite of the U.S. military, and the ability of the U.S. to be a world power. Japanese immigrants in California were the subject of discrimination.  Leaders in Japan made clear their disappointment.  Roosevelt responded by sending 16 battle ships (The Great White Fleet) on a goodwill cruise around the world.  This would be the "greatest display of naval power ever brought together in one squadron."

While protectionists would consider this a bad move on his part, I think it was good.  It, along with the actions of Mckinley, helped clear the path to the United States becoming a Superpower.

During his last two years in office Roosevelt worked hard to push forth more progressive programs, but Congress decided not to act on any of them because they knew Roosevelt would be out of office in 2008. They figured his successor wouldn't be so progressive, or at least have the energy, and things would return to normal.

Roosevelt personally selected his secretary of war, his friend William Howard Taft, to be the leader of the next administration.  Roosevelt believed Taft was the best person to continue on pushing forth the progressive agenda.  Little did he know that Taft was not a supporter of the progressive agenda at all, and was actually a conservative.

So, while many today associate the democratic party with the progressive movement, the father of the movement was actually Teddy Roosevelt -- a republican.  He is the father of modern liberalism.  He created the "activist president," thereby setting the precedent for the president to be active during times of peace as well as times of war. 

Why socialism, liberalism and progressivism always fails

One of the biggests myths that liberals believe is that there's only so much money to go around. They believe that people who make lots of money do so at the expense of others. This explains why rich people are so often referred to as "greedy" and "selfish" and "materialistic" by the left.  And it's so not true.

Now, surely, in some cases it might be true.  But in most cases, just because someone is well off does not make them greedy.

This also explains why the left constantly barrages people who succeed.  They do not like it when companies make profits.  Instead, they believe any money over what is needed to make a living should be spread out among all the other people equally.

This explains why they want taxes for the rich and not for the middle class and poor.  They want to punish those who succeed by taking the money they worked so hard to earn and doling it out to the poor.  In other words, they believe they know how to spend other people's money better than they do.

Actually, liberals believe that, left to their own devices, that people who succeed are naturally greedy, selfish, and materialistic; that they will naturally put themselves before the state, And, they believe, this is wrong.

This is why they hate capitalism so much, because capitalistic societies create opportunities for the few to benefit off the many, or so they falsely believe.

A perfect example to help me make my point is Dan Price, CEO of Gravity Payments.  He read somewhere that $70,000 was an ideal salary.  If you earn this salary you can have a nice house and car and have plenty of money left over to live a good life.  There's no need to make more than that.

Here's a guy who made over a million a year.  He decided to give himself a huge pay cut to $70,000 a year, and he gave this same salary to all his workers.  In other words, he decided, as so many on the left do, that it's unfair that one person makes millions of dollars while all the people who are the workers make so much less.  So he redistributed the money among all who work for him.

Guess what?  This happened back in April.  Not even four months later he announced that it was an utter failure. He had people who worked for the company for many years, were very loyal to the company, and they were upset that people who were newly hired were making as much as they were. Some of them -- some of his best employees -- quit.  It was a devastating blow to his company.

When you dole out money equally you expect that every person will do an equal amount of work.  In the ideal world, this might happen.  But in the real world this is impossible.  In the real world you are always going to have people say: "I'm going to make $70,000 no matter what I do, so I'm not going to go out of my way to do anything."

Why did this system fail? Because it assumes that everyone is equal.  Dan Price assumed that if everyone else made the same money he did that they would have the same passion that he does.  He believed the liberal myth that equality would bring fairness and happiness.  And he was wrong.

The fallacy here is that if everyone was equal, if everyone made the same amount of money, that everyone would do the same amount of work, and everyone would be equally happy.  This is the euphoria liberals think they can create. This is the biggest myth of liberalism that exists out there.

Sure, in their ideal world everyone is equal.  But in the real world people know that no two people are alike.  We are all unique. We all have our own goals, desires, and ambitions.  Some of us naturally work harder than others.  Some of us are early to work every day, and others are late no matter how hard they try.

Not only that, contrary to what the left tries to force on us, no one wants to be the same as someone else. We all yearn to be individuals; we all yearn to be unique.  Surely I might want to be like my dad, and I might want to be like the CEO running my company, or I might like to emulate one of my better coworkers.  Still, I don't want to be considered the same as everyone else. We all want to be unique.  We all want to be missed when we are gone because no one else can do what we do.

That reminds me of a sign I saw in the nursing report room a while back: "No one notices what you do until you are gone."  This means that when you are no longer here, people realize how valuable you were.  All these years, for instance, they just assumed the storage room miraculously was stocked every day.  Now that you aren't around they see that it was you, all along, who stocked.

When my grandma passed away, the general consensus among us grandkids was that this was a woman who could never be replaced. If you are healthy psychologically, then you are special to the world in this way too. You cannot be replaced.  You are unique, You are an individual.  You don't want to be lumped in with a bunch of slackers, half-baked, half-caring people. You want to be thought of as the cream of the crop, and you can't be if everybody's making 70 grand.

Worded another way, if we all make the same income(a so called fair wage), and we all have the same healthcare, and we all have the same education, and we all have the same everything else, then we are nothing more than sheep.  We are herded by the great big Sheppard who lives in Washington D.C. who goes by the name of Uncle Sam.

The problem with this analogy is people are not sheep.  We all yearn to be unique We all yearn to be special. We all yearn to offer some special gift. We all offer a special gift. If everyone is the same, then we are no longer needed. To assume we are all the same is to assume we are all easily replaceable, and that goes against nature

It is for this reason that liberalism, progressivism, socialism, Lenonism, Marxism... always fails.

There are many people in this world that are so special that they will never be replaced.  This is human nature.  We are not the same, and cannot be treated the same. So any attempt to make us the same assumes that we all produce the same, and that's simply not true. It's human nature. To try to perfect human nature will always lead to chaos.

And that's exactly what happened at Gravity Payments after Dan Price decided to give everyone who worked for the company the same wage of $70,000.  Because there are so many different levels of talent and ability, the system set in place never had a chance. It was socialism pure and simple. Everyone was treated the same. Nobody was considered more important than anyone else. They are interchangeable. When one person retires or quits or dies, another can simply fit in to fill the empty pair of shoes, or so the

Marxist assumes.  Such a system is doomed to fail no matter how many times it is tried.Sure it might sound good and make you feel good, but it never works. It has never worked.

The main problem with socialism is best summed up by Rush Limbaugh:

The main policy or main flaw with socialism side from run out of somebody else's money at some point is that we're not the same and we are not equal. There is no such thing as fairness. Fairness is always arbitrary depending on who has the power to define it, and there certainly is no equality. There's equality of opportunity, equality of chance, equality before the law, but these people talk about equality in terms of outcomes, and there's no such thing.

You put a system of socialism in place where you have equality of outcome, and you're always gonna have some renegades, some entrepreneurs who are gonna say, "Screw this," and they're gonna bust out, and they're gonna do what they do, and they're not going to be shackled by silly rules like this. And then you have, on the other end of it, people who are gonna say, "I'm gonna get 70 grand a year, man, and I don't have to do anything special? I just have to show up?" and that's all they're gonna do. Because slackers are everywhere.

If you're not going to be compensated or rewarded for merit-based behavior, then there's no reason to be concerned about merit-based behavior. So that goes out the window, too.

Why did Dan Price's system fail? Because it was pure, unadulterated socialism. Call it liberalism or progressivism or whatever you want, it has failed every single time it has been tried. Yet because it smells good and sounds good, the best and brightest among us will continue to fall for it.

Further reading:

• Articulating Ideas: Idealism versus Realism
• Articulating Ideas: What is Fascism?
• Washington Times: Dan Price, Seattle CEO Who Set Company Minimum Wage at $70K, Now Struggles to Make Ends Meet
• Hot Air: CEO Who Raised Workers’ Minimum Pay to $70K Hits Predictable Problems
• National Review: It Turns Out That Equality Can Feel a Lot Like Unfairness
• Rush Limbaugh: CEO Who Made $70K His Company's Minimum Wage Admits It's a Disaster

Traditional Americans now seen as radicals?

I had a good thought in a blog post the other day that deserves a post of its own.  I said, "The republican establishment and the democratic party has moved so far to the left that it makes traditional Americans look radical."

Think of that.  We are the people who love God, hold on to our Bibles and our guns, love and respect our Constitution, don't want laws or actions taken that take away our liberties, and we have morals and values and principles that are unchanging.  Yes, we are dogmatic.

When I'm debating my liberal friends, both in the republican and democratic parties, they now just say these things when they disagree with me.  They have the president on their side, so they have no reason to hide the fact that they are socialist.  But they don't say I'm a traditional American, because they think they are.

This explains why we have a partisan divide in this country more so than anything Mitt Romney says.  We have a partisan divide because the two parties representing us have gone radical; have gone socialist.

The irony of this is that it was socialistic type governments that the founding fathers escaped by coming to America.  It was totalitarian dictatorships and monarchies that they yearned to run from.  Liberals have succeeded in not teaching this, so the millennials have not learned it.

Because conservatism is not taught, liberalism is the logical default.  This, my fellow readers, is why socialism is accepted today in this country more so than ever before.  It's because traditional Americans are now called radicals and what they say is said to be controversial.

Progressives stole the name liberal, we want it back

The progressives took the word liberalism and claimed it for themselves. Liberalism is the choice that unites most of us. That's the one where we all come down together and say, "Look, we can live with each other."

From the time of the founders to the 1940s liberalism was most people were called.  Liberalism stood for limited government to protect and defend liberty.  Progressives stole that term and claimed it for themselves to shed a positive light on their agenda of creating a large government that tramples on liberty. 

Why did our "classical liberal" ancestors allow this to happen? We need to take it back.  We need to start calling liberals progressives again.  And we need to call conservatives and libertarians liberals again.  This makes sense, because progressive and liberal are opposites.  

We need to take the term liberal back and allow the people to see progressives for what they really are: people who think they know what's best for you, so they create laws to force their agenda on you.  But this requires you to sacrifice your freedom and liberties."

You can't say to people, "Marijuana is bad for you, so we need to create a law banning you from manufacturing and selling it, without taking away their liberty to choose.  You are basically deciding for them what is good for them, and forcing them to be perfect.  What this does is create a dark market for marijuana."

For crying out loud, did we learn nothing from prohibition.  During prohibition it was illegal to import, transport, produce or sell alcohol in the U.S. What resulted was an underworld that made men like Al Capone rich.  It showed on a full scale level that governmental attempts to perfect the world create nothing but chaos.  

Yet we continue to allow it.  We continue to let progressives win at every level in the country.  We continue to let it continue even though only 14 percent of Americans admit to supporting their agenda.  They have infiltrated our nation. They have made it acceptable to allow government officials to say things like, "Hey, you should wear a seat belt.  So let's make a law that will fine you if you don't." 

"Hey, we feel that throwing more money at education will make it better.  Why don't we put the federal government in charge of it and throw lots of money at it." That happened in the 1960s and all it did was make education in the U.S. worse. They create regulations and programs aimed at fixing things because it sounds like a good idea, people buy into it, and then they make them worse. 

The same thing with the war on poverty. Trillions of dollars have been thrown into entitlement programs in this country aimed at ending poverty since Johnson's War on Poverty began in the 1960s, and all it resulted in was more people in poverty. 

If you need a good example just look at Detroit.  

These are the same progressives who stole the name liberal and claimed it for themselves.  We need to take it back and let them wallow in their progressivism. We need to let people see them for what they are: people who want to create big government at the expense of liberty. 

Liberalism is the exact opposite of what they are. We are liberals.  But we will be satisfied with people calling us classical liberals.  That's what we are.  That's what I am.  

As it is, we settle for the name conservative, constitutional conservative, liberatarian conservative, or simply libertarian.  That is what we are.  But what we really are is classical liberals, or simply liberals.  But we can't call ourselves what we really are, because progressives stole and obliterated the meaning of it. 

The reason this is important is because you have about 20 percent of people in the democratic party who don't want to be conservatives, and so they stay in the democratic party. 

They may not agree with us on everything, but they think like we do.  But they don't want to become conservatives because they think that's what Ronald Reagan was and they don't want to be that. But if we call ourselves classical liberals, we can draw all of them together.  They may not agree with us on everything, but all classical liberals believe liberty should come before state, and people should not be allowed to vote their freedoms away, regardless what the cause or belief or theory.

Most people understand classical liberalism.  They see progressives calling themselves liberals and they say, "I'm a liberal just like them."  But what they don't understand is that what they are championing for is not what they think it is. 

They have no clue they are championing for progressivism, which is a sister of socialism, communism, Fascism, Fascist Socialism, and all those types of governments.  Yet what they truly yearn for is classical liberalism.  

People in Europe think of Conservatives as the opposite of classical liberalism, or the opposite of freedom.  They think of us as Nazis and Fascist.  Yet this is not true, because we are the true liberals.  We are the classical liberals.  But because the progressive movement stole our name, they have succeeded at re-branding themselves in a better light. They have pulled the wool over the eyes of the world, so to speak.  

We need to recreate the image of freedom in the world.  We need to recreate what we are, we need to call ourselves classical liberals.  This way we can collect all the classical liberals into one party and take our country back.  

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.

Progressives succeeded in changing a republic into a democracy

In order for the progressive movement to be a success,
progressives needed to take power away from the individual.

The founders of the United States wanted to form a republic rather than a democracy because they knew that democracies can lead to chaos, and they didn't want the new nation to be chaotic. The founders knew that democracies never work.

W. Cleon Skousen, in his book, "The 5000 year leap: Principles of Freedom 101," reminds us of this.  He said:

"There are many reasons why the Founders wanted a republican form of government rather than a democracy. Theoretically, a democracy requires the full participation of the masses of the people in the legislature or decision making processes of government. This has never worked because the people become so occupied with their daily tasks that they will not properly study the issues, nor will they take the time to participate in extensive hearings before the vote is taken. The Greeks tried to use democratic mass-participation in the government of the city-states, and each time it ended in tyranny."

The authors note that while a democracy becomes "increasingly unwieldy and inefficient as the population grows," a republic "governs through elected representatives and can be expanded indefinitely."

James Madison, one of the main authors of the Constitution, knew the limits of a democracy.  A republic, he said...

...derives its power directly or indirectly from the great body of the people, and is administered by persons holding their offices during pleasure for a limited period, or during good behavior.  It is essential to such a government that it be derived from the great body of the society, not from an inconsiderable proportion or a favored class of it; otherwise a handful of tyrannical nobles, exercising their oppressions by a delegation of their powers, might aspire to the rank of republicans and claim for their government the honorable title of republic.

The United States was a republic, and considered as such, until the progressive movement of the early 1900s. Early proponents of the progressive movement realized there were essentially two things standing in the way of moving forth their agenda: republicanism and the U.S. Constitution.  They aimed to tackle both these issues with a public relations campaign, or by twisting facts.

To understand this, we must first understand the history of the progressive movement.  Progressives believe that an ideal, or perfect, or Euphoric, world is possible. This is a world where there where every person has an equal share of the profits, where everyone who wants a job has one, and where everyone has health insurance.  We must realize that this is a dream.

To move America forward to this dream world laws must be made, and the people responsible for making these laws are experts in Washington.  Of course, these experts must all be progressives. These experts must make laws for the good of society, or for the good of all, or for the collective.  

The gist of this agenda is the assumption that people, as individuals, are not capable, or not willing, to do what is necessary to move forth the agenda. People, left to their own devices, are selfish, and will not give to charity and will not share the wealth.  So they must be forced.  

So you can see that this would not be popular in an republican America where individualism was taught.  So, these progressives started a campaign to change this view.  

Since a republican government limited their ability to push forth their agenda, the term "republic" was taken hostage.  It was at this time people, mainly progressives, started referring to their progressive programs as liberal, and their progressive programs as democratic.  They did this in order to make them sound more appealing.  They would say things like "this is for the good of society," or "for your own good."

For example, in 1921 socialists in the United States started calling themselves, "The League for Industrial Democracy." It has a much more appealing taste to Americans, and appeared much more likely to suck people in. 

During WWII, Woodrow Wilson added to the confusion when he hailed

"Make the world safe for Democracy."

This strategy worked.  Teachers and journalists prove the effects of this campaign by teaching that America is a democracy.  Even George W. Bush fell victim to this when he hailed that he was encouraging Muslim nations to become democracies.  

The second effort was to make the term socialism appealing withing the borders of the United States.  In order to to this they used the name "progressive" instead of "socialism."  Progressive was a much more appealing term.  Later, as this term lost its appeal, the name was changed to liberal.

Prior to the progressive movement the term liberty referred to the exercise of human rights in any manner a person chooses so long as it does not interfere with the rights of other people.  Liberal, therefore, which dates from the Middle Ages to about the 1930s, referred to freeing society from the shackles of the state.

In 1930 it was abducted by the progressives/liberals and now means "open to new behavior or opinions and willing to discard traditional values." The term made it possible for the progressives to convince people that is was okay to change, or in some cases ignore, the laws of this nation, including the Constitution, in order to push forth their agenda.  

Evidence of the success of this campaign is seen in every day life in America. The influence of government has dangerously expanded far greater than the founding fathers ever envisioned, nearly to the point that presidents such as FDR and Obama have gained near king-like powers.  

Bottom line:  A successful push to destabilizing the meaning of the terms "republic" and "liberal" allowed progressives (i.e. socialists, liberals) to convince Americans to ignore or change the Constitution, thus allowing them to push forth their agenda. 

The era of the hypocritical liberal

There is a long list of libertarians and conservatives who have said for years that many liberals, those who think capitalism is unfair and want to make laws to limit people from enjoying the benefits of it, are hypocritical.

For instance, Al Gore champions the cause that capitalism is the cause of global cooling/ warming/ change, while at the same time flying around the globe in a CO2 emitting jet.  Obama does the same.

Curtis Kalin, in his June 24, 2014, article at cnsnews.com, "The Era of the Limo
usine Liberal," sort of hits the nail on the head of this discussion. Share on email

Hillary Clinton is not the only prominent, rich liberal who is having trouble articulating their vast concern for the poor and income inequality. Recently, there has been a rash of major liberal figures downplaying the fact that American capitalism has been quite good for them, while attempting to hamstring it for the rest of America.

Of course, this debate began anew after former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made her infamous comment that she was “dead broke” after leaving the White House, despite her ownership of multiple homes. Clintondoubled down on the sentiment in an interview with The Guardian, saying she’s not “truly well off,” even though her net worth is around $100 million.

Hillary isn’t even the only member of her family who sounded tone-deaf on their wealth. Her daughter, Chelsea told The Telegraph she’s tried really hard to care about money, but just can’t:

“I’ve tried really hard to care about things that were very different from my parents. I was curious if I could care about [money] on some fundamental level, and I couldn’t.”

Enter Vice President Joe Biden, whose salary has been paid for by taxpayers since he was elected to the U.S. Senate at age 29, said he
doesn’t own asavings account, even though he kind of does.

Back in 2012, inequality crusader Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who lives in a $5 million house and whose stock portfolio totals around $8 million, boasted about her wish that no member of Congress own stocks.

And finally, anti-capitalist movie-maker Michael Moore was asked by yours truly via Twitter in 2011 why he produces movies trashing the same economic system that made him a very rich man. Let’s just say after four minutes of trying, Moore really never cogently explained that conflict of interest.

It seems the era of the “limousine liberal” has returned. Self-proclaimed crusaders for the poor who rake in millions while attempting to undermine the very system that allowed for their wealth.