It's all at the link...a Platform for a Progressive Party

[HereSince1628]

Of 1912! The rhetoric sounds remarkably familiar, and surprisingly many of the planks still look like they'd be part of a progressive agenda today. Their preamble:

- - - - - - - - -

The conscience of the people, in a time of grave national problems, has called into being a new party, born of the nation’s sense of justice. We of the Progressive party here dedicate ourselves to the fulfillment of the duty laid upon us by our fathers to maintain the government of the people, by the people and for the people whose foundations they laid.

We hold with Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln that the people are the masters of their Constitution, to fulfill its purposes and to safeguard it from those who, by perversion of its intent, would convert it into an instrument of injustice. In accordance with the needs of each generation the people must use their sovereign powers to establish and maintain equal opportunity and industrial justice, to secure which this Government was founded and without which no republic can endure.

This country belongs to the people who inhabit it. Its resources, its business, its institutions and its laws should be utilized, maintained or altered in whatever manner will best promote the general interest.

It is time to set the public welfare in the first place.

<the whole kit and kaboodle at the link>

http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=607

[StandingInLeftField]

1. Very timely.

It's interesting to see how many of the planks of the platform were instituted over time, and how many of those in place now are under attack. Bookmarked and copied.

[HereSince1628]

4. 1912 followed a period of business and industrial excess

a similar situation to our own circumstance.

[Doctor_J]

2. All of these great ideas are meaningless until we do something

really drastic about the media in this country. and I mean really, really drastic

[Common Sense Party]

6. Such as? n/t

[Doctor_J]

9. Some things that can't be posted here

[Common Sense Party]

11. All these ideas are meaningless unless we all do something to the

media, but that something can not be mentioned.

Gotcha.

We're all right behind you.

[pampango]

3. Interesting how the broad issues stay the same even if the specific concerns of 100 years ago

have changed.

Also interesting that the Progressive Party split from the republican party of the day leaving an Old Guard behind.

"The debate over the tariff split the Republican Party into Progressives and Old Guards and led the split party to lose the 1910 congressional election. In the 1912 presidential elections, because of the split votes amongst Republicans in most states, Democratic candidate Woodrow Wilson was elected as president."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payne%E2%80%93Aldrich_Tariff_Act

[HereSince1628]

5. TR's run on progressive issues pushed the dems toward progressive

positions.

Today we seem to see the game completely in terms of winning elections, rather than winning the prevailing philosophy. Currently the scions of the DLC, the corporatist democrats to the right of the Party, continue to argue about unity needed to win elections. Their messaging is working, though the guiding philosophies of the party drift further to the right.

[robcon]

7. The only way to move to progressive positions is to win elections

News flash: Bernie Sanders, Dennis Kucinich and Allan Grayson are unelectable.

[HereSince1628]

8. As I said, winning elections is currently seen as the only way

to have a victory in the arena of American politics.

[felix_numinous]

10. I wish we could drop the name 'Progressive'

--these values are 100% All American. I feel very strongly that this is the way to package these concepts.

We cannot allow basic human and workers rights to be marginalized, by allowing ourselves to be seen as fringe of the fringe instead of CLAIMING our right to stand DEAD CENTER where we belong. Otherwise this movement will continue to be labeled otherwise.


WE have to CLAIM ourselves as AMERICANS, fighting for all, by not playing the revisionist game right from the start!! We cannot allow ourselves to be shoved aside.

Other than that I am completely in agreement that we need to declare independence from the corporatists.

[ashling]

12. Drill, Baby, Drill?

ALASKA

The coal and other natural resources of Alaska should be opened to development at once. They are owned by the people of the United States, and are safe from monopoly, waste or destruction only while so owned.

We demand that they shall neither be sold nor given away, except under the Homestead Law, but while held in Government ownership shall be opened to use promptly upon liberal terms requiring immediate development.

Thus the benefit of cheap fuel will accrue to the Government of the United States and to the people of Alaska and the Pacific Coast; the settlement of extensive agricultural lands will be hastened; the extermination of the salmon will be prevented and the just and wise development of Alaskan resources will take the place of private extortion or monopoly.