06-10-2015, 11:50 PM
(06-10-2015, 04:44 AM)StLucieBengal Wrote: I really like what you said here.... On wilson being a pacifist. Here is where Wilson went wrong Imo..... He was an academic, so he had theory to work from ... No real life expiernwce to apply... He also thought he knew best how people should live... And he thought he could fix people's lives by making decisions for them... That it would fix their problems. In doing that he was actually stealing their freedom. He did have the best intentions .... But so did hitler, lenin, and others.... And when you sell supplies to nations at war ships will be sunk especially when your sending supplies on commercial ships with civilian passengers. So they knew what they were doing .... He could have stayed out of it.... But he thought he was smart enough to fix the worlds problems with his theories.... Which is why he forced himself into the war by forcing russia to stay in the war as a condition on their loan instead of letting them pull out of WW1 to crush lenin's resistance. He didn't mean for lenin to come to power, but by forcing russia to stay in he gave Lenin the opening to do so....
As far as progressives..... Whether they are democrat or republican.. They share the belief that they should "spread democracy around the world" which is fine but both use the military to accomplish this..... Both spend money domestically as well.... Bailouts, healthcare, etc. Quantitative easing has screwed us since Hoover.....
I have such a disdain for progress policies not because i am conservative on many issues.... But they have stripped away our rights little by little.... And that's a liberal thing. No way a classic liberal supports these policies, they stand for everything liberals have fought against ....
Progressives has spent 100 years taking over labels like liberal and conservative.
Take the GOP for example. NeoCons are the modern progressives. The evangelicals take on a more Teddy Roosevelt progressive mindset by trying to force their view of life decisions on us instead of letting us all live our lives. They are terrible with their own regulations.
Last true conservative president .... Calvin Coolidge. .... Mr Roaring 20's ... Because he rolled back plenty of the Roosevelt, Taft, Wilson shenanigans. I think Reagan could have been but a democrat house and senate never let him have his way all the way.
As far as the last Classic liberal president .... Maybe Kennedy..... To be fair I haven't really taken a hard look back to see.
Coolidge really? Doesn't surprise me I guess. Carnegie and Schwab were his personal heroes, and he did have a booming economy in the short run, but at the expense of the lower classes. All of his social programs were negative (with the exception of some minor road building) including his refusal to work on behalf of black Americans and their civil rights, and his strict and discriminatory immigration policy. Completely off his radar were the millions of American poor, elderly, urban blacks and American farm workers. It was said that "he was a president for the 'haves' and not the 'have-nots'." His small town simplistic self-help philosophy were inadequate for the 20th century. Though signs of trouble in the stock market were evident by the late 20's he did nothing to avert the crisis. Instead, at the last moment, he announced his decision not to seek a second full term. So in retirement he watched the economy come apart under his successor Herbert Hoover. Coolidge was quoted by a newspaperman "I am no longer fit for these times, we are in a new era to which I do not belong."
I guess we have different definitions on what a good president is or was.
