Carthur27,
I just got around to reading your amazing response to my post. Amazing because you responded not to anything I said, but rather to something you seem to imagine a leftist nut would say. And you ARE assuming that I am a leftist, which will get a huge laugh from my friends (especially the leftist ones) when I tell them about this (go ahead—guess why!).
First, I didn't say that g_whales assumed anything. Don't know where you got that. And to point out that "most of his post is in the form of a question" has no relevance to what I said not only because his questions were rhetorical, but also because he actually ANSWERED his questions. And it was to those answers that I and others on this board responded.
So calm down and take another look at the relatively cautious things I said, and not at what you imagine a person who is prone to extremism thinks. You didn't lay a hand on me. For instance, even if it were true (and decades of scholarship says it's not) that "the only thing resembling any form of welfare was private charity usually coming from a Christian church," recall that Christian churches in western Europe were far more often STATE and not private institutions (remember the Thirty Years' War? It began as a religious war between nation-states). And yes, as you state, there was a great deal of indifference to human suffering in the west before WWI. And yes, "people commonly starved to death" in Europe. But those facts have nothing to do with the fact that a number of good folks, however ineffective their efforts, tried to help, especially through state-supported Christian charities. So to point out that much of those efforts were, as we say today, "faith based" does not justify your overreaction to my mild observation that “something resembling 'state welfare' preceded socialism by centuries in virtually all western civilizations." Indeed, you didn't refute me; you merely provided evidence to support my claim.
Also, you say that my "comments on the Progressive Era being driven 'in large part by small businessmen' are ludicrous." Then you provide but ONE example to support your claim that “populist politicians who were supported by giant competitors to those 'monopolies' (BTW, why the quotes around the word “monopoly”?) constituted the ONLY kinds of progressives. Well, my friend, as historians have been saying for a few thousand years, it's more complicated than that. You seem to have read a little about American history; good for you (I mean that sincerely). But why not dare to widen your scope and investigate the decades-old debate about this complex subject. I promise it won't hurt.
Finally, you apparently and mistakenly believe that to call someone a "leftist" or "liberal" is to insult them. Any historian who believes in democracy will tell you that centuries of spirited competition between liberals and conservatives in the marketplace of ideas has helped strengthen democracy in ways that both sides benefited from. Sometimes conservatives have been right on the issues, and sometimes liberals have been. In any event, much (note: I'm not saying "all") of the strength of the democratic tradition comes from an admirable mutual tolerance of conservatives and liberals alike. In other words, rather than insisting on the kinds of total victory we've seen in totalitarian states, our liberals and conservatives get to survive to debate another day. The prospect of hate-filled, intolerant leftists or right-wingers (like yourself) totally vanquishing their ideological opponents should scare the hell out of all thinking persons. I'm not saying that you want that, but your curious one-sidedness makes me suspect that you do. Hope I'm wrong about that, but I'm right about everything else in this post.
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