Rediscover Populism

REDISCOVER POPULISM

Contrary to the myth propagated by the media and the RICO-enabled
Democratic Party leadership, populism is not dead. In fact, since the
late 1800s it's been the one thing that has repeatedly worked for
progressives. The real divide in this country is not between Democrats
and Republicans, blue states and red, conservatives and liberals,
faith-based and sectarian, or socialists and capitalists, but between
little folk and big shots, between ordinary citizens and their leaders.
The Democratic elite don't want you thinking about this because it gets
its money from the latter even while pretending to represent the former.


American populism has a long past. As early as 1676, the farmers in
Virginia were upset enough about high taxes, low prices and the payola
given to those close to the governor that they followed Nathaniel Bacon
into rebellion. One hundred and ten years later, farmers of
Massachusetts complained that however men might have been created, they
were not staying equal. Under the leadership of Daniel Shays they took
on the new establishment to free themselves high taxes and legal costs,
rampant foreclosures, exorbitant salaries for public officials and other
abuses.

The populist thread weaves through the administration of Andrew Jackson,
an early American populist who recognized the importance of challenging
the style as well as the substance of the establishment value system. It
was a time when it was easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a
needle than for a banker to get into the White House, a problem bankers
have seldom had since.

It was the end of the nineteenth century, though, that institutionalized
populism, and gave it a name. The issues are familiar: economic
concentration, unfair taxation, welfare and democracy. Critics are quick
to point out that they also included racism and nativism and it has been
traditional for liberal historians to emphasize these aspects. On
balance, however, populists have done better than liberals in producing
real progress.

As a party, the populists were not particularly successful, but it
wasn't long before the Democrats bought many of their proposals
including the graduated income tax, election of the Senate by direct
vote, civil service reform, pensions, and the eight hour workday. It's
not a bad list of accomplishments for a party that got just 8.5% of the
popular vote in the only presidential election in which it ran.

The New Deal borrowed both populist ideas and populist spirit. Hence,
things like Social Security or minimum wage. In fact, the most striking
difference between liberals of the Roosevelt, Truman, and Johnson eras
and post-Reagan liberals is that the former emphasized programs that
large numbers of Americans could enjoy, while the latter emphasized the
rights of minorities increasingly as though they were incompatible with
more heterogeneous progress. There was, of course, nothing inconsistent
with, say, civil rights and a war on poverty as Lyndon Johnson easily
proved.

Democratic liberals need to face up to their retreat from broadly
popular programs as they have become an almost church-like minority
rather than a vigorous, populist voice for the majority.