The Union Party’s Triumvirate of Demagogues: Dr. Francis Townsend, Gerald L.K. Smith, and Father Charles E. Coughlin.
In 1935, the presidential aspirations of Senator Huey Long (D-La.) were no secret. He had even written a book titled My First Days in the White House. Long was one of FDR’s most formidable political rivals and him running for president in 1936, potentially tanking Roosevelt’s reelection, was thought of as an actual threat. Long’s scheme was long-term: he didn’t intend to win in 1936, rather he intended to prematurely end FDR’s political career and he believed that whatever Republican won the White House would prove by 1940 to be unpopular and Long could steamroll him. He had argued before the Supreme Court before, which impressed Chief Justice William Howard Taft to the degree that he said of him that of the attorneys who argued before the court he was “the most brilliant lawyer who ever practiced” (Bishop). Roosevelt once famously wrote of him that he was “one of the most dangerous men in America”. Long’s influence has also been attributed by some historians to have considerably motivated his second New Deal, which went in a more redistributionist direction than the First New Deal, and this narrative is backed by FDR being reported as having admitted in private that he was attempting to “steal Long’s thunder” (Snyder, 117). However, this all came to a screeching halt when he was shot at the State Capitol on September 8, 1935, and died two days later. Officially, Carl Weiss was the assassin, but its possible that he was accidentally shot by his bodyguards while they gunned down Weiss. This was a serious blow to political populists, but his director of the Share Our Wealth society, Gerald L.K. Smith, aimed to continue Long’s legacy. Smith decided to team up with radio broadcaster Father Charles E. Coughlin and Townsend Plan advocate Dr. Francis Townsend. In this arrangement, according to historian Glen Jeansonne (1997) “Coughlin was the senior partner in the triumvirate because his movement was the largest and most volatile. Smith was the junior partner because he relied on the others for forums and mailing lists. But while Smith was temporarily weak, he had assets which made him potentially the strongest of the three: he was bold and fearless, unlike the aged and infirm Townsend, and he was better at speaking to a live audience than either Townsend or Coughlin. Smith was also the most ambitious and the most likely to use demagoguery and even violence to achieve his nebulous goals” (61-62). While these three men were compelling figures for people who sought answers for the Great Depression outside of FDR’s New Deal, none of them were up for running for president. Some possible contenders for this role were Senator Burton K. Wheeler of Montana, who would later become a foe of Roosevelt, the staunchly independent Senator William E. Borah of Idaho, or Governor Floyd Olson of Minnesota. Neither of the senators proved willing to follow through, with Borah trying to win the Republican nomination and Olson by 1936 would be dead from stomach cancer.
The Union Party was named such by Coughlin based on Abraham Lincoln’s Union Party, stating, “In 1864 when Lincoln proposed to abolish physical slavery there was established a ‘union party’! In 1936, when we are determined to annihilate financial slavery, we welcome the ‘union party’ became it has the courage to go to the root of our troubles” (Parsons, 58). The Union Party was for higher tariffs and non-interventionism in foreign affairs in the plank that America must be “self-contained and self-sustained”, Father Coughlin’s inflationary monetary views, adoption of the inflationary third Frazier-Lemke Farm Mortgage bill, old-age benefits, and a limitation on annual income (Parsons, 67).
The man who was ultimately picked was Rep. William Lemke (R-N.D.), an agrarian populist who had sponsored the Frazier-Lemke Farm Mortgage Act in 1934, which was subsequently overturned by the Supreme Court. The ticket had a lot of trouble gaining support from major sectors. Organized labor did not support this party, opting to stick with Roosevelt, which may have been a motivation for Coughlin and Smith’s later turns against organized labor. No major newspapers endorsed the Union Party. even had difficulty keeping unification within its own small group. It was also becoming increasingly clear that Smith was trying to take Dr. Townsend’s movement out from under him (Jeansonne, 50). He often looked shabby, was balding, often had stubble on his chin, and lacked charisma and public speaking ability, choosing to focus on facts and statistics rather than on rhetorical flare (Jeansonne, 55). While this was a more logical approach, it was a far less engaging approach than what Coughlin, Smith, and Townsend had to offer and he was not the centerpiece of the campaign. Who the centerpiece of the campaign was, incidentally, an issue throughout, with Smith and Coughlin competing for top billing. Dr. Townsend himself was by this time nearly 70 and wasn’t a commanding presence. Father Coughlin would denounce Roosevelt as “Franklin Double-crossing Roosevelt”, a “liar”, and a “great betrayer”, which he would subsequently regret as intemperate and he came to conclude it was more his advisors to blame than him (Gallagher, 22-23). However, Coughlin’s rhetoric would get more and more wild as the campaign progressed. This included in separate occasions calling Roosevelt “anti-God” and his cabinet as “Hull, the internationalist and number one communist. Then comes Ma Perkins, Ickes, Morgenthau, Tugwell, Mordecai Ezekiel – all communists” (Parsons, 77). Such an amping up of rhetoric was a bid for attention within the Union Party. As historian Glen Jeansonne (1997) wrote, “[Gerald L.K.] Smith brought out the worst in Coughlin, who was driven to excess as he tried to compete with him. His speeches became increasingly demagogic and his credibility declined” (56). Smith was the ultimate of the three demagogues, having an incredible talent for public speaking but this was combined with off-the-wall statements. In one speech, he said, “A nursing baby, they say, is content while it’s taking milk; you set in your places and take it while I pour it on, and I’ll tell you when to clap. I come to you 210 pounds of fighting Louisiana flesh, with the blood memory of Huey Long who died for the people of this country still hot in my eyes…and I’ll show you the most historic and contemptible betrayal ever put over on the American people…our people were starving and they burned the wheat…hungry and they killed the pigs…led by Mr. Henry Wallace, secretary of Swine Assassination…and by a slimy group of men culled from the pink campuses of America with friendly gaze fixed on Russia” (Jeansonne, 55). He also was apocalyptic in his rhetoric and linked FDR to two incompatible groups. Namely, international bankers and communists, and warned that if elected it would be the last free election in America (Jeansonne, 57). However, there was one speech that went way too far for Lemke and Dr. Townsend. On October 20th, Smith announced the formation of a movement to “seize the government of the United States” and that “ten million patriots” would lay down their lives to save the US from an international communist conspiracy, and that four hundred wealthy individuals would give the movement 1% of their income to “make America vigorously nationalistic” (Jeansonne, 59). Even before the election occurred, all three men were pursuing separate courses in the campaign.
Although Coughlin and others hoped the ticket would cut into Roosevelt’s support, it really only slightly cut into the support of Roosevelt as well as Republican Alf Landon, making its net impact negligible, and it didn’t even win 1 million votes. Dr. Townsend didn’t even vote for Lemke, rather Republican Alf Landon (Grossman). Coughlin regretted the 1936 campaign as ill-conceived. He held in 1972 that he had been persuaded by “a lot of nincompoops” to do so (Gallagher, 21). One might say things would have gone better for such a third-party run had Huey Long not been killed in 1935. After all, the Roosevelt campaign estimated that if he ran, he would win 10% of the vote in 1936. However, he would likely have been indicted for tax evasion, which would probably have depressed his support (I would in past years have said certainly rather than probably, but I’ve learned not to underestimate support for demagogues) depressing these figures (Feuer herd). Dr. Townsend would withdraw from politics and as Social Security started paying out benefits, the influence of him and his plan fizzled. Smith and Coughlin would become known as anti-Semites and Nazi sympathizers in their demagoguery, with Coughlin being out of politics after 1942 and Smith, although never giving up on trying for influence, was condemned to increasing obscurity.
References
Feuerherd, P. (2017, September 15). Huey Long: A Fiery Populist Who Wanted to Share the Wealth. JSTOR Daily.
Retrieved from
https://daily.jstor.org/huey-long-a-fiery-populist-who-wanted-to-share-the-wealth/
Gallagher, R.S. (1972, October). Father Coughlin: The Radio Priest. American Heritage, 23(6).
Retrieved from
https://www.americanheritage.com/father-coughlin-radio-priest
Grossman, R. (2016, July 15). The third-party run of 1936: Union Party barely unified in fight to oust Roosevelt. Chicago Tribune.
Retrieved from
https://www.chicagotribune.com/opinion/commentary/ct-third-party-president-1936-flashback-perspec-0717-md-20160715-column.html
Jeansonne, G. (1997). Gerald L.K. Smith: minister of hate. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press.
Parsons, M.H. (1965, July). Father Charles E. Coughlin and the Formation of the Union Party 1936. Master’s Theses. 4999.
Retrieved from
https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=6035&context=masters_theses
Snyder, R.E. (1975, Spring). Huey Long and the Presidential Election of 1936. Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association, 16(2).
Mad Politics: The Bizarre, Fascinating, and Unknown of American Political History 
Awesome summary, Mike; the Union Party is a key example of why “anti-Communism” isn’t exclusively right-wing. The notion that red-baiting has only been limited to the “far right” is silly when one considers that just within the last few years, neo-Marxist liberals have gleefully likened the turtle- er, I mean, Republican senator Mitch McConnell to Russian Communists. And key notorious figures in the Progressive Movement were simultaneously on the rabid end of anti-Communism and also on the left wing of populist-reformist pushes, for instance KKK congressman William D. Upshaw supporting the creation of a U.S. Department of Education to counter “Bolshevism.” In fact, creating a Department of Education was a top priority of the Second Ku Klux Klan! While the context surrounding education a century ago was certainly different compared to our current era, I find it near-hilariously ironic when squared with the fact that modern leftists so vociferously despise school vouchers, whose advocates strongly emphasize its benefits for poor ethnic minorities by giving inner-city black and Hispanic parents an opportunity to send children to schools other than failing public institutions. It’s very… oddly funny that various championed causes of modern leftism — birth control, abortion, labor unions, minimum wage laws, campaign finance reform, and broad “progressivism” — have actual historical ties to systemic white supremacy. Too bad this info is seldom, if ever explained in public schools. Even worse are the average neo-Marxist media outlets branding conservatives “racist” for invoking the abortion-black genocide argument. Meanwhile, PolitiFact’s Sanger apologetics have dived right into trivializing the KKK.
My World History teacher told our class that the Nazis were far-right because they were militant “anti-Communists.” (he didn’t bother reading my counter-essay explaining the 1932 Berlin transport strike) I guess Stalin was also nothing more than a far-rightist due to his far-reaching persecutions of dissident anarchists, libertarian socialists, social democrats, and Trotskyites. Who would’ve thought the Comintern operatives were all along serving the forces of rightist reaction? I guess that’s just “real Communism” for you; oh well.
Ah, I’m getting a bit off-topic; back more to the Union Party: it’s almost… disappointing that the party just incompetently fell apart. While obviously it’s good that antisemitic demagogues like Smith and Coughlin were ultimately shut out of the mainstream, sometimes it’s intriguing to wonder how differently history would’ve turned out if, for example, the Union Party gained more political traction and actually posed a serious threat to FDR in 1936. (that reminds me: in a random college dissertation a professor sent me titled “Theodore G. Bilbo’s Senatorial Career: The Final Years,” the author expresses disappointment that Bilbo died out “so soon” in 1947 instead of being alive by ’48 to either side with Truman or Thurmond; certainly quite a viewpoint only the super politically/academically-minded would fully understand!) Something kind of interesting I find about the antisemitic loon Gerald L. K. Smith is that he was active in both the Union Party and the openly ultra-racist (and supposedly “far-right”) Southern Committee to Uphold the Constitution (SCUC), during the same broad campaign season. SCUC leaders John Henry Kirby as well as Vance Muse (the standard scapegoat used by modern pro-labor propagandists to accuse anti-union efforts like right-to-work laws of being “racist”) early on attempted to form an alliance with… Huey Long. (“The Big Rich,” p. 132; “The Texas Right,” p. 73) And it was right-wing Northern industrialists under the Liberty League who bankrolled the super-populist, apparently anti-gold standard (Kirby and Talmadge railed against “Federal Gold”) SCUC (which was in fact seen as the Southern counterpart to the Liberty League), whose key member Smith was an organizer of Share Our Wealth and leader of the leftist Union Party. Quite the culmination of a validated horseshoe theory, to say the least, eh? The politics of depression lead to the rise of strange demagogues and diverse groups of colorful rabble-rousers, and unfortunately not for the better of society.
Thanks! The neo-Marxists (and some on the right such as Steve Bannon and Tucker Carlson) see Putin as some grand exemplar of social conservatism, motivating hostility and sympathy respectively. Unfortunately, too many people have let American culture war politics influence their views on Russia and Ukraine. Also, yeah, I agree that the Nazis were more left-wing than a lot of people of a left-wing persuasion want to acknowledge because they weren’t doing things quite in the way they would. History is full of left-wingers persecuting other left-wingers for not pushing the “correct” view of socialism. Marxism isn’t the only form of socialism out there as the concept of socialism existed before him and there were historically Americans who regarded themselves as socialist with zero influence from that malignant Santa Claus impersonator.
Regarding the Department of Education, it had some popularity among not only them but also a number of conservatives and Presidents Harding and Coolidge! Although conservative support was not uniform in the 1920s, many people whose conservatism is unquestioned were in support, such as Senator James Wadsworth of New York, whose opposition to the New Deal was uncompromising and support for state’s rights went beyond that of many Republicans in his day. There also were some figures on the progressive wing of the GOP who opposed, such as Smith Brookhart of Iowa. Below is a vote from 1925 on a proposal to consider the creation of the “Department of Education and Relief”:
https://voteview.com/rollcall/RS0680197
I admit to not understanding why there is so much support for abortion among most black political leaders (aside from their affiliation with the Democratic Party) given the personal social conservatism of many black people (perhaps this is a good subject for a future post?) and the conception that more black people in the world = racism strikes me as incoherent as the conception by left-wingers of fascist libertarians and the phenomenon of “anarcho-communists”, the latter who kid themselves that their conception of equality can be in place without the use of police power.
When it came to public education, it was widely thought that the teachings in public schools were going to reflect Protestant values and it was before the time of the overarching federal bureaucracy of alphabet agencies under FDR and the Supreme Court striking down school prayer in Engel v. Vitale (1962) and Bible reading in the School District of Abington Township v. Schempp (1964). It strikes me that all efforts at blocking independent education from public school reek of radicals (of any stripe) who want a captive audience to propagandize to. Kids by and large don’t know better than to question ideologically partisan propaganda, and I remember a few such instances in high school. In freshman year, I was shown a video in a biology class which I most remember for painting a misleading picture that the US was running out of landfills by using as an example a garbage barge that had trouble finding a place to dump its garbage. I remember there was a specific reason in that case, but I don’t recall at the moment what it was. Another thing I remember was that history textbooks in high school made absolutely zero mention of the Venona Documents when discussing the “Red Scare”, and they had been declassified since 1995. That was my realization that there were actors out there for who the narrative counts for far more than truth, and in the field of public education (at least in California 2001-2005), they were going to bat for the left. I have no doubt the situation has deteriorated since, just like everything else I have heard about high school since being out.
The Great Depression indeed produced a lot of characters, outlandish and corrupt (often simultaneously), and there certainly were some points in which the right and the populists made common cause: against US membership in the World Court in 1935, against intervention in World War II up until Pearl Harbor (communists too were against until Operation Barbarossa), anti-Communism, and against FDR’s court packing plan of course. A number of people with histories as populists went against FDR in many respects, such as former Congressman Milford Howard of Alabama, former Senator Marion Butler of North Carolina, and newspaperman Elmer J. Garner, whose writings were also blatantly anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic, and anti-British.
My best guess on Bilbo is that he would have supported Thurmond. Many Mississippi politicians were backing him, and the VP candidate was Mississippi Governor Fielding Wright. Bilbo’s politics by that time and the political environment of Mississippi would have had him go to Thurmond.
As for Smith (who I have learned a lot more about reading over Glen Jeansonne’s biography of him on the Internet Archive), he had a number of contradictions in his career. He claimed to oppose fascism and Nazism even though he briefly joined William Dudley Pelley’s Silver Shirts and believed Hitler’s lie that he and the Nazis were Christian and thought that he was “misunderstood”, credited himself with pressuring FDR to signing into law “soak the rich” tax bills but later called for the end of the income tax, he staunchly opposed the UN until Nixon was president (he curiously accommodated Nixon a lot on internationalist foreign policy), and he believed that communists and international bankers were on the same side as part of his belief in “Judeo-Bolshevism” (which is news to both). He was staunchly opposed to drinking, being a teetotaler himself, but overlooked this in people he supported. This included Huey Long’s heavy drinking and the alcohol-related deaths of Eugene Talmadge and Joseph McCarthy (both of which he blamed on their opponents).
Yeah, that’s an excellent point about views on Russia/Ukraine being shaped by cultural issues. The “enemy of my enemy is my friend” thinking pattern appears to be pervasive, and especially with how extreme both the left and right are drifting, it’s easy to see otherwise normally-repulsive regimes as citadels of patriotic moralism if only a few issues are narrowed in on. (i.e. “Russia opposes the gay agenda so they must be good!” — next you know, those “right-wing” populists will become neo-Comintern Stalinist shills)
The reason the main stream of socialism has so much modern vitriol against third positionist movements like Fascism and Nazism is, contrary to popular belief, not (at least from a historically grounded perspective in analyzing propaganda originating from the top-down) because they’re on opposite sides of the political spectrum, but because the “main” faction of Marxist socialism in the 1910s-20s viewed the breakaway Fascist movement as “traitors.” The Italian Fascists, more pragamatic in outlook and willing to compromise some Marxist means in order to achieve Marxist ends, were about to “steal the thunder” from the internationalist Marxists who failed to institute a Communist Paradise™, and so the “old line” Marxists invented the propaganda narrative that Fascists were not “real Socialists” but rather the tool of “far-right reactionists.” Now, at least from what I’ve read extensively in analysis of Hegelian dialectic, one can validly make the case that Fascism is “far-right” because all socialism is a tool of the reactionary elite to keep the business and working classes fighting each other instead of uniting in a common cause of uplifting the masses out of poverty and thwart the self-serving elite class (a video by the YouTuber TIKhistory on British Fascism seems to cover this well in the case of the Liberal Party in Britain). I also remember watching a lecture by the conspiratorial SDA preacher Walter Veith probably quoting or generalizing a statement about Marxism being a plot to restore feudalism, though that generally gets into a slew of… conspiracy theories. (personally, I’m interested in too many of them at this point, though they’re probably worth mentioning elsewhere and another time after conducting more research) At the end of the day, I think I would align with a right-wing approach to classical liberalism, favorable towards natural hierarchies as an outgrowth of liberty and freedom, as too much experience has taught me that while some conservatives out there are well-meaning, many are paternalistically cold, uncharitable, and unsympathetic when they could be helpful to those lagging behind in society (I used to identify solidly as a conservative).
Yeah, I agree on the issue of abortion, and I’d contend that the reason is because wokeism is an ideology of elitist hypocrisy: it’s an effort to subdue ethnic minorities into an enslaved plantation ideologically, castigating someone for not thinking a particular way because of their skin color (but apparently that’s “antiracism” for you nowadays). And so, abortions for black women is presented as “feminist empowerment” even though the disproportionate rates are a demonstration of de facto genocide. Consider this: wokeism pioneered racial identity politics that in its fullness also fuels the alt-right.
Anarcho-Communism? I’ll take that with a side of Judeo-Nazism if you don’t mind! (on a side note, there are indeed some people out there delusional enough to think Nazism is/was a Jewish plot, and I recall having trouble deciding whether to be flabbergasted or laughing my head off when seeing that)
As for a Department of Education and public education when looking broadly… hmm… what’s interesting is that previously in the Reconstruction/early Gilded Age era, it was the pro-civil rights Republicans who favored mandatory public education (anti-Catholicism shaped mainstream GOP politics and Catholics voted for Democrats in the 19th century) which Dems overwhelmingly opposed. It appears that the cultural Protestantism which shaped elements of conservative Republicanism in the mid- to late 1800s later devolved into the bigoted elements of the Progressive Movement by the 1910s-20s. When looking at such issues that seem to draw broader support or opposition from both the left and right broadly, the fact that the background context changes over time can make designation of “left” and “right” highly difficult. For instance, various government-sponsored initiatives in Reconstruction Southern governments by the Republicans were opposed by the Democrats, yet the First KKK was also a revolutionary reprisal against free labor ideology because a free-market capitalism allowed black people to compete with the old slaveholder class economically instead of being subjugated into de facto slavery on the plantation. What is the line of distinction for government programs between Hamiltonian conservatism and statist welfare leftism? There’s nowadays historians arguing that TR’s Progressivism was nothing more than classical conservatism in the mold of Alexander Hamilton. Clearly the old leftists were never real leftists to begin with — “real” progressive statism has never been tried before! Anyways, back to the education issue, thanks for pointing out what I missed; I suppose it’s more complex than I thought, and just like how nativism in general was employed by both right-wing Brahmin elites (especially Henry Cabot Lodge) and also Progressives and labor unions.
Yeah, high school curricula mention absolutely zilch about the Venona Project. Also, they, and many liberals as a whole, are prone to confusing the HUAC’s Hollywood blacklist as the fault of Joseph McCarthy when that spree was organized by Martin Dies, if I remember correctly. McCarthy’s allegations of Communism were against the Army and State Department, and if there’s any reason I’m skeptical of liberal claims that McCarthyism was an “unproven witch hunt,” it’s that propaganda sites like Wikipedia continue to label individuals including John S. Service as “victims of McCarthyism” despite them absolutely proven to have been subversive Comsymp agents/collaborators.
Hold up, Marion Butler, the leader of the NC Populist Party crushed along with the GOP by the Progressive, white supremacist Democrat revolutionaries in the Wilmington insurrection, later opposed FDR? Interesting. The “old leftist” opposition to FDR definitely fascinates me. As for Bilbo, yeah, I agree that he almost certainly would’ve supported Thurmond had he lived to 1948. The reason “The Final Senate Years” brings this up as a possible point of dispute is that Bilbo apparently stated previously in the 1940s that he would oppose third-party efforts against the national Democrats. I still think that had he lived to witness the Dixiecrat movement, he would backtrack and enthusiastically support Thurmond, as race trumped economics for the hardline segregationists. Labor unions were supported when they accommodated Southern white supremacy, and vehemently lashed out against when the insurgent CIO took over from the nativist old guard of the AFL, from my general impression.
One thing that bothers me is leftist revisionists lazily painting Bilbo as “turning right-wing and becoming a conservative.” The reality was that Bilbo maintained his old-leftist views and opposed “interfering” aspects of modern liberalism, such as price controls. “The Final Senate Years” labels Bilbo’s support for the National School Lunch Act as an “aberration,” though he was an enthusiastic supporter of Henry Wallace as representing, in his own words, “the ideals and policies of President Roosevelt, the world’s greatest humanitarian and Democrat.” (The Final Years, p. 114) Now yes, I believe Bilbo did vote for the motion which limited Wallace’s authority (that limitation reduced Southern opposition to the nomination), though one could argue that Bilbo wanted Wallace nominated so bad that he was willing to compromise in order to achieve such ends. And Wallace, interestingly, was pro-civil rights. So then… maybe Bilbo could’ve supported his old friend Truman after all in 1948? Perhaps not, as Bilbo gradually became bitter towards Truman despite being old pals previously, if I remember well.
Oh, Gerald L. K. Smith lived all those contradictions too? What I found interesting is that the “you can’t multiply wealth by dividing it” quote evidently came from Smith despite him once leading… the Share Our Wealth campaign. This reminds me also of William Randolph Hearst, an old Progressive leader and eventual Nazi sympathizer who by the 1930s began supporting business interests against labor. As to the exact explanation, I think the “old leftist vs. new leftist” part only serves as a partial explanation, as the shift away from a broad populist view towards paternalistic ones, especially economically, is part of something… more. Either that, or just a general pattern of political hypocrisy expediently based on the present context. And since this year’s about over, I’d like to wrap up a point on that with my repulsion for the TikTok hearing many months ago that serves as a dangerous warning of undemocratic totalitarianism: if lawmakers cared so much about “the children,” why don’t they ever go beyond lip service and fix the education system from kids being forced too often to attend low-quality public schools full of bullying and mindless indoctrination? Moving forward, I see the analysis of political history as interesting though unfortunately as a farce in most of the outer picture shown to the masses and even what’s researchable for us enthusiasts and nerds. Maybe I’m just way more easily conspiratorial in thinking pattern than the average person due to different life experiences. Anyways, heading into the new year, there will still be much more political drama to witness before the world is over with.
This IS Very Interesting & Thoughtful.
May I Ask A Contemporary Question, Will Nikki + The Left Carry NH Primary?! Dave
Hey Dave,
Thanks! I doubt Haley will win in NH. The polls have to be dramatically wrong for this to happen, and they were pretty close to what happened in Iowa. I think the portrayal of Haley as some creature of the left though is pretty unfair given her record as governor as well as her calling for going even further than DeSantis on what the MSM mischaracterized as the “Don’t Say Gay” law. But politics is full of unfair portrayals, and she does need to get better on not going along with MSM framing.
Hey LT,
Sorry for the wait on a response, I have been a little preoccupied. I have watched some of TikHistory’s videos and he provides an interesting viewpoint (as well as hilarious coverage of an astoundingly bad book that alleges Hitler was a British agent), of particular revelation was that Hitler was essentially a communist in 1919 and that he was covering his ass in his Mein Kampf writings on his past. The ideological confusion surrounding fascism is only heightened in Britain by Sir Oswald Mosley serving as an MP in both the Conservative and Labour parties (notably, he was Labour after Conservative) before founding the British Union of Fascists. Regarding Lodge and immigration, there is an article I encountered that asserts that Lodge and the GOP embraced immigration restriction as an issue to make inroads with the working class.
On hierarchies, I am for a loose hierarchy, one that is the product of market forces and thus one in which your position can change regardless of the family you were born into. When it comes to other conservatives, I admit I can have a bit of resentment for the older ones (although I think this is a complaint against the “Boomer generation” more than anything else), as some of them without doubt participated in the easy housing market and then proceeded to, through their votes on local housing policy, slam and bolt the door on younger generations having similar access to protect and grow their investments. Sure, their children will probably benefit down the road, but that’s cold comfort to those aspiring young who don’t have the benefit of their parents owning such homes.
The Hollywood blacklist came about at the behest of Hollywood executives based on HCUA hearings, but the Hollywood Ten hearings occurred during the 80th Congress under Chairman J. Parnell Thomas (R-N.J.). The Hollywood Ten, incidentally, were all communists per admissions of Edward Dmytryk and Lester Cole in his autobiography, particularly active in the party were John Howard Lawson and Dalton Trumbo. Dies was focusing on government, and I wonder if he gets done dirty by the traditional telling of American history, because he was addressing a real problem in the government, a problem the traditional tellers of history REALLY don’t want to admit lest they give those who were aware of communist infiltration in government credit for anything.
I read some time ago that Marion Butler seemed to support some aspects of the New Deal, such as its approach on agriculture, but opposed others. He certainly didn’t like the National Industrial Recovery Act, and some of the old-time progressives didn’t like that law either given its suspension of anti-trust laws to legalize the NRA cartels. Hearst was certainly a progressive figure in the days of Theodore Roosevelt, but was quite an unproductive member of Congress, publicly supporting measures he knew would never get through in Joe Cannon’s House and his attendance record is so dismal you can’t judge him ideologically by votes!
Oh yeah, that TikTok hearing was a bit of a trainwreck…legislators are addressing a serious problem, but they cared more for grandstanding than understanding and actually getting the technology right. They either needed to bring forth an expert or bring forth one of their own legislators who specializes in this. Legislators, from what I understand, typically have one, maybe two specialties and for others they need to rely on their party’s experts, lobbyists, and staffers. As of the Iowa caucus, it sure looks like we’re in for one hell of a year, again Biden vs. Trump. Party bases are not listening to the voters, so the contest is, I think, going to be whose base is more out of touch with the voters. Whatever the outcome, party partisans will claim the election to be unfair and allege some sort of cheating that makes the victor illegitimate. For Republicans, it’s going to be “voter fraud”, and for Democrats, it’s going to be “voter suppression”, the latter I find a loaded term that describes policies that are simply not geared towards maximum ease for voter turnout. By their application of the term “voter suppression”, many policies in the past would count as this and some present policies, such as a secret ballot. That could count as “voter suppression” because voter turnout did go down after the institution of secret ballots in the late 19th century, but it also served the noble aims of reducing the potential for coercion and reducing the power of corrupt political machines. I fear 2024 will bring much political violence in the aftermath of the election as our sides have been taught to hold those on the other in contempt, often over numerous accusations many may be completely unaware of. Although I regard myself as staunchly politically conservative, really strongly so on economics and budgets and a little less so on social policy, I am also a believer in agreeing to disagree for the sake of stability if nothing else and I despise chaos and disorder.
YES, Martin Dies Does Tend To Be Neglected IN That He Was
Right About Communism IN Many Cases (NOT All). He Also Set The Stage
For People Like Pat McCarran, Joe McCarthy, AND Richard Nixon. For Dies, See The Martin
Dies Story, & The Trojan Horse In America (His Books). Since Robert Stripling Worked
With Nixon, He Was A Texas Boy Dies Brought To Washington As An Aide. You Should Include
Dies As A Texas Legend (IN His Way). HE Would Be Up IN Arms Over The Current INVASION
OF Texas. All Kinds Of Military Age Men (Many Chinese), Drug Smugglers, Human Traffickers,
Spies, Terrorists, ETC. THE Policy OF O Grab Me. TRULY. Note That Dies WAS A Democrat
Like HIS Father Before HIM In Congress. Third Generation Martin Dies Was Texas Secretary
Of State & A Member Of The Texas Senate. How Bout That?
Keep Up The Good Work Mike N LT. Best Wishes From Dave IN Texas Near The Alamo.
Welcome Your Thoughts On Past, Present, & Future Matters. Happy Saturday!
TRUMP Rally In Vegas Today. 25 RED States Plus RFK ARE Supporting Texas.
The Donald Wants States To Send Their National Guards To Assist TEXAS.
Notice Who IS Silent.
Thanks Dave! I have no doubt Dies would be apoplectic about the tremendous border failure of the Biden Admin. He was one of those legislators who wanted to temporarily halt immigration during the Great Depression, a proposal that no serious political actor is putting on the table today. Dies had quite an interesting turn from New Deal Democrat to Texas Regular (you might call them “Never Roosevelt” for 1944). Trump is certainly on message regarding the border… border states should be able to pick up where the Admin. is deficient in duty to the American public, and regulating who comes in is such a duty.
Thanks, Dave; regarding Dies, you do raise some good points, as he effectively moved to quash Communist operatives. Regarding the modern border chaos that past Democrats would undoubtedly disapprove of, it’s important to remember that modern leftism is rooted in the neo-Marxist “tradition” (if you’d like) of the New Left and VERY different from “old” leftism. From Reconstruction up until the end of the Progressive Movement, right-wing big business interests, whose influence in the Republican Party was seen as aristocratically excessive, supported increased immigration to maintain cheap labor, indirectly opening up increased economic opportunities to blacks and immigrants. Strikes in the Gilded Age and Progressive Movement were often led by white unionists, and violence against strikebreakers were heinously brutal and racist reprisals against black and immigrant laborers.
Of course, on the issue of border security itself, opposing “open borders” should ideally just be common sense and not even left vs. right. It’s easy to view past Democrats as “conservative” because of how contorted our modern system of political designation has descended, seeing any opposition to the latest neo-Marxist agenda as “right-wing.” We see increasingly that individuals who identified strongly with the left around a decade ago — Tulsi Gabbard, most notably — are now darling idols of the right.
Back to Dies for a bit, I haven’t researched much on his racial record, but it looks like he was about the same as the average Southern Democrat or possibly slightly worse, seeing that the KKK spoke glowingly of his congressional activities. Then again, I believe his committee did take some action in the Brown Scare to investigate, expose, and discredit various Nazi bums.
As for today’s messes, perhaps it would be helpful to consider the possibility that, if a “New World Order” agenda does exist, maybe its final culmination will not be this “leftist-globalist-Marxist” NATO/UN-type system, which most of the world now despises, but instead a “reactionary” right-wing set of conglomerate governments which deceive the masses into believing they are anti-NWO but in fact the opposite. Deception is indeed known as deception for a reason. If you’re interested in this topic (and believe me, I for one think it’s more relevant than ever to grasp sufficiently), my email is substitute1984 AT gmail DOT com. (if you do send me an email, please also reply back here promptly for verification purposes so I know it’s you; if not, you can ignore this part)
Oh, I didn’t actually watch the TIKhistory video about Hitler being an alleged British agent until you mentioned it. I’d say a major problem with many conspiracy theorists out there is that they aren’t very good at making their thesis sound credible. If their sources, if even existent at all, are so obliviously of no better quality than day-old gossip from an average clique of high school girls, they may as well just preach to a wall.
Yeah, the modern housing crisis is definitely a high hurdle for this generation of youth (which I’m a part of) to overcome. (personally for me, since I now see biblical prophecy as arriving towards fulfilled completeness culminating in the Second Coming in a few years, I’ll be content with renting)
Lodge and the Republicans ended up supporting immigration restriction for working-class inroads? I know the Johnson-Reed Act did pass by a very bipartisan vote with both leftist (labor union) and rightist (Senate sponsor Reed was an Old Guarder) support. Political ideology in the 1920s was definitely… interesting.
The Hollywood Blacklist was justified after all? Huh, I can’t say I’m that surprised. I vaguely remember being told many years ago how those brilliant Hollywood producers were the victims of a reactionary witch hunt campaign by congressional demagogue loons. It’s too bad the history textbooks are written by the Comsymps.
Marion Butler’s positions sound about in line with the old Populists: supportive of “traditional” progressive reforms to broadly aid the working class/”common people,” but stringently opposed to conspicuously corrupt, centralized bureaucracy. And I didn’t know previously that the NIRA actually suspended antitrust laws; no wonder the “old” progressives opposed it.
I personally see the events of the TikTok hearing and the turn of this year’s presidential election as increasing signs of upcoming syncretic totalitarianism (to summarize, as my full explanatory theory would be ridiculously long) that will mark the beginning of the end. That ridiculous TikTok witch hunt embodied a Hegelian “synthesis”: the left and right normally snipe at each other, but for their own respective reasons united in a common goal: increased government of technology. If you noticed closely in the long hearing, the GOP and Dems never objected to each others’ arguments. The GOP pitched militant right-wing anti-Communism, at least one Democrat castigated TikTok for allegedly censoring black cultural content, and both sides used the “think of the children” argument with loads of emotionally charged, fallacious logic. If TikTok as a company is responsible for a teenager dying from a viral dangerous trend, are beach owners responsible if a kid drowns because their parents weren’t paying attention? Shou faced one nasty GOP representative after another only to receive barely less of a cold shun from the Democrats who lined up, each exhibiting their troglodyte monologue diatribe credentials with slightly different flavors — it was the stench of either moldy strawberries or moldy blueberries. However the culmination a final “New World Order” would exactly look like, I think it definitely would require the joint cooperation of both the left and right, who will bury the hatchet and unite in vicious opposition towards a common enemy that is scapegoated for the world’s woes. The TikTok hearing demonstrated how that can quickly materialize at the D.C. establishment level.
I still remember quite well my seventh grade days many, many years ago when I railed against the rapidly increasing use and reliance upon advanced technology as a threat to the future of society due to the lack of moral improvement. The only individual I recall who truly listened to me fully then and gave thoughtful consideration was my computer teacher, ironically enough. And we see today that as AI advances, it opens the way for easy promulgation of abusive exploitation, the outcry over which in turn demands government regulation of that new technology. Once you recognize the Hegelian sewer whirlpool of thesis –> antithesis –> synthesis and recognize how both directions result in the same end agenda, it’s hard to support any side anymore (IMO at least). Of course, I’ve spent too much time researching political history to let the knowledge sit idle without some occasional extensive analysis.
No worries about the late response; just about everyone’s getting super busy nowadays, from what I notice. Even three years ago seemed much more exciting to live in…
Thanks Guys, I Might Add That Dies Was An Important Member
Of The Conservative Coalition (Republicans, Southern Democrats & A Few Others) After The
Court Packing Bill Of 1937. There Were Actually 3 Generations Of Martin Dies IN Texas
His Father Seems To Have Fallen Out With Woodrow Wilson Over The First World War!
Wish You Would Publish A Story About This. Cactus Jack Garner Said That The
Dies Committee Might Change American Politics More Than Any Other Committee
Of Its Time. OR Generation. Garner Served With The First Two IN Congress. Happy Ground
Hog Day, Dave IN Texas. Convoy Coming Here, Mike & LT…Lawrence Taylor, Ha Ha.