My rational mind tells me that libertarian ideas would govern us best, but my heart has always been with the populists, preferably the rabble rousing ones.
It is too bad our official history is written by people like Richard Hofstader, who wrote, "Populist thought often carries one into a world in which the simple and unmitigated villainies of a rural melodrama have been projected on a national and international scale." Was he including such turn of the century populists as William Jennings Bryan and Hamlin Garland, who founded the Boston Anti-Poverty League? Garland's slogan was "Free trade, free land, free men". I guess it was the free land part that upset the elites. He was a believer in the system of Henry George, but was otherwise libertarian. Another turn of the century populist, Tom Watson, published a newsletter called "The Jeffersonian". Woodrow Wilson had it, and other anti-war publications, banned from the US mails.
Or maybe he meant America Firsters like Senator Burton Wheeler, Senator Robert Taft, Senator Gerald Nye, the socialist Norman Thomas, or progressive journalist John Flynn. Or maybe he meant John F. Kennedy, Sargent Shriver, and Gerald Ford. He may have meant ee cummings and Sinclair Lewis. Who knows what this supposedly renowned historian meant. What is clear is this country has a rich history of populist movements, but to read modern historians' perspectives, one would gather that they were all malevolent and fascistic, or they didn't have much public support. A reading of contemporary texts clearly indicate otherwise. |
