Restoring Balance And Harmony (Part One)

(Editor’s note:  This is the first segment in a new multi-part series which begins here today. …)

The Founding Fathers’ plan for the new central government is nearly flawless.  The power of the government derives from the people and is distributed to three equal but independent authorities.  The legislative branch is to make the nation’s laws.  The executive enforces them.  And the judiciary interprets their legality.  By a system of checks and balances, each authority a check on one or both of the others, a separation  of powers virtually ensures that no one individual citizen or branch can amass inordinate status.

Many thorny political issues which simply cannot be foreseen will arise in the future.  But the US Constitution is a remarkably flexible undertaking.  It is said to be a living, breathing, organic document that is built to stand the tests of time that have befallen the noblest efforts of bygone eras.  And despite the predictions of European cynics who consistently predict its demise, the great American experiment in democracy now well into its third century remains a remarkable success by any reasonable measure.

But with praise aside, 21^st century America society is not akin to utopia on earth.  Ordinary citizens complain through hardened experience that what was once a land of opportunity is now hardly recognizable as such.  While excuses abound, explanations are not simple.  At present, wealth concentration in the hands of the privileged few is at a higher point than at any time in our nation’s history.  Wealth concentration and monopolistic tendencies do foreclose opportunity.

The numbers tell a chilling story.  The 400 richest Americans today possess more wealth than the bottom half of the US population (150+ million) combined.  This primary economic factor is morally indefensible.  It is apparent that our economic system is failing to provide a fair shot for the many, confounding us from completing our great unfinished business.  As a result, American society is plagued with unrest, imbalance and disharmony.

How did we arrive here is a key question.  And can it be fixed?  In order to answer these questions fully, we must trace the root cause of society’s unrest to the beginning. 

In the Founding Fathers’ vision, the three branches of government are created equal.  But in reality each branch is hardly considered to be on an equal footing.

The Founding Fathers’ familiarity with the British parliamentary system places the legislative branch at the helm of the ship, setting the national course.  Indeed, the Founding Fathers design a sophisticated steering mechanism, meant to be operated by the legislative authority, or Congress.  Execution of the plan depends upon Congress to steer the ship by the making of laws for the public good in its sole and ultimate discretion.

By contrast, the executive branch is viewed as little more than a puppet of Congress, although George Washington places a distinctive stamp on the office.  In reality, the power of the so called President is virtually non-existent. The executive acts merely as a rubber stamp of the proposed legislation passed on to it by Congress.  The executive “veto” power provided for in the Constitution dare not be exercised.

And as for the poor judiciary branch, nobody really seems to know, or care, what the proper function of that branch is actually supposed to be.  Considered the weakest of the three branches, the authority of the judiciary to interpret the Constitution is not yet clear.  Exactly zero cases are decided by the US Supreme Court in its first 18 months of its existence.  So lightly is the Court regarded and slight its prestige that when the government moves from Philadelphia to its new home in Washington, DC in 1800, no provision is made for it to be housed.  Neither is money provided nor plans drawn up.

Andrew Jackson later changes the conception of the executive branch in a high profile manner, putting the executive on an equal footing with Congress.  Similarly, John Marshall defines the judicial branch, establishing itself as the arbiter of constitutional authority and affirming the Constitution as an instrument of the people.  Under Marshall’s leadership, the Court is molded into a major force. 

As the power and stature of the executive and judiciary authorities increase over time, the legislative branch, in turn, begins a slow yet precipitous decline.  Ominous warnings sounded by such distinguished citizens as Benjamin Franklin go unheeded.  And so the wounds to the legislative authority are largely self-inflicted, in a decline that can be foreseen.  As a result, the ship’s steering mechanism is damaged and fractured, with no accountable authority setting navigational direction.  Disharmony becomes the rule.

In the second segment we identify and begin to analyze the specific causes of legislative decline which lie at the heart of early 21^st century unrest.

-Michael D’Angelo

A Blueprint for America's Future (Part Four)

(Editor's note:  This is the final segment in our four part series under title of A Blueprint for America's Future.  The prior segment (part three) highlights the psychic interlude which interrupts the weeks leading up to the 1912 general election. ...)

T.R. delivers a final speech in New York City in the days before the general election. 

Occasionally he attempts to raise his right arm, then winces and drops it.  The pain is intense from the wound as a result of the recent assassination attempt. Nevertheless, T.R. rises to a memorable occasion:

Friends, perhaps once in a generation, perhaps not so often, there comes a chance for a people of a country to play their part wisely and fearlessly in some great battle of the age-long warfare for human rights.  The doctrines we preach reach back to the Golden Rule and the Sermon on the Mount.  They reached back to the commandments delivered at Sinai.  All that we are doing is to apply those doctrines in the shape necessary to make them available for meeting the living issue of our own day.

The end result might have been a nation of individuals, cooperating intelligently instead of competing recklessly, with the requisite character to understand duty --- a democratic society that could reach new heights in both moral and material progress.  But it is not meant to be.

In the ensuing national general election, T.R., now the political third party outsider on the Republican left, actually outpolls the incumbent president (Mr. Taft) on the Republican right.  But it is to be little consolation.  The Republican Party vote is thereby split.  The election is thrown to the candidate who commands the center, former president of Princeton University and Gov. of New Jersey, Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat. [i]  Progressivism is to take on the newly developing image of the Democratic Party.

Twenty years, one World War and a Great Depression later --- the roots of the New Deal experiment may be traced here --- to T.R. in 1912.  Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal agenda of 1932 adopts much of the 1912 Progressive Party platform in what will be the lynchpin of his four term presidency.   The New Deal conceives the social safety net, a constitutional delegation of power to the general welfare.  Hereafter, people come to expect the help of their government, especially in time of need.  Passage of its landmark twin pillars, the Social Security Act and National Labor Relations Act, furnishes the pathway for entry into middle class life for millions of American citizens, mainly immigrants.

In 1960, President John F. Kennedy’s New Frontier follows. The torch is passed to a new generation of Americans.  Mr. Kennedy’s vision drives the important legislation of the day, including the historic Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act of 1964, the Immigration Act of 1965, Medicare/Medicaid and the onset of the Great Society steered by Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty. With the passage of the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, National Public Radio (NPR) is born, millions of listeners having come to rely upon NPR over the past 50 years.

President Reagan, an ardent New Deal proponent in his younger days, moves with good intentions to scale back the size and scope of the federal government. Once again, individual initiative has its day, unbridled by the constraints of government. But history teaches that individual initiative works best only within the framework of a collective social responsibility. One for all, and all for one, as the saying goes.

Presidents Clinton and Obama are direct lineal descendants of these historical figures in American History.  The enactment of President Obama’s signature 2010 Affordable Care Act, together with meaningful progress in the environmental battle to arrest the ill effects of global warming, stand as landmark achievements.

In closing, the accomplishments of the past 100 years have been many and must not be discounted.  But some insist we've yet to match the substance and passion of T.R.'s 1912 legacy.  With 2017 now upon us, that's worth remembering.

-Michael D'Angelo

---

[i]  The national vote tally in the presidential election of 1912:

Candidate:               Party:        Popular Vote:       Electoral Vote:     Voter Participation:

Woodrow Wilson      Democratic     6,293,454 (41.9%)       435                58.8%

Theodore Roosevelt  Progressive     4,119,538 (27.4%)         88

William H. Taft         Republican     3,484,980 (23.2%)           8

 Eugene V. Debs        Socialist            900,672 (6%)                -

A Blueprint for America's Future (Part Three)

(Editor's note: This is the third segment in a multi-part series titled A Blueprint for America's Future. The underlying theme highlights the iconic presidential election of 1912, which some believe contains the true blueprint for America's future. The second segment covers Theodore Roosevelt's transformation of faith, acceptance of the nomination for his new "Progressive" or "Bull Moose" Party and vision for a moral society.)

As October 1912 reaches its midpoint, the political calendar reflects that US presidential election day is still about three weeks away.  This provides sufficient time for mystical interlude.  For if superior wisdom accepts that reason lies on one side of the purely psychic --- and faith on the other --- that interlude would project into the psychic realm.

A twenty-six-year-old unemployed recluse named John Schrank lives above a New York City saloon which had employed him once.  This is before Theodore Roosevelt, then police commissioner, had gone on a Sunday-closing crusade.  Schrank has been unable to get a job.

Shortly after President McKinley had been assassinated in 1901, elevating T.R. to the presidency, Schrank has a dream.  His shabby surroundings are transformed into a funeral parlor full of flowers.  An open coffin lies before him.  President McKinley sits up in it and points to a dark corner of the room.  Peering out, Schrank makes out the figure of a man dressed as a monk.  Under the cowl Schrank recognizes the bespectacled features of T.R.

“This is my murderer,” McKinley says.  “Avenge my death.”  Schrank awakens from his nightmare and checks his watch.  It is 1:30 A.M.  He goes back to sleep.  The appeal would not be renewed for another eleven years.

Fast forward to September 1912.  John Schrank sits writing poetry in his two-dollar-a-week apartment in downtown Manhattan.  It is the anniversary of the McKinley assassination.

When night draws near

And you hear a knock

And a voice should whisper

Your time is up. …

As Schrank doodles, he feels the ghost of the dead president lay a hand on his shoulder.  It does not stop his pen.

Refuse to answer

As long as you can

Then face it and be a man.

Later, it is revealed that the appeal of McKinley’s ghost has been renewed at the same hour of the same night of the week as the earlier episode.

Back in the real world, T.R. is scheduled on October 14, 1912 to give an important speech on Progressivism in Milwaukee.  On the way to the hall he takes his customary right-hand seat in his roofless, seven-seat automobile.  His escorts fan out to take their seats.  Acknowledging the crowd, T.R. stands up to bow.  At that moment, no more than seven feet away, Schrank fires. 

The bullet lays embedded against T.R.’s fourth right rib, four inches from the sternum.  Heading straight toward the heart, its upward and inward trajectory has to pass through T.R.’s dense overcoat into his suit jacket pocket, then through a hundred glazed pages of his bi-folded speech into his vest pocket, which contains a steel-reinforced spectacle case three layers thick, and on through two webs of suspender belt, shirt fabric, and undershirt flannel, before eventually coming into contact with skin and bone.  Even so, the force has been enough to crack the rib.  T.R.’s personal doctor points out that the spectacle case has deflected the bullet upward.  Had it gone through the arch of the aorta or auricles of the heart, his patient would not have lived 60 seconds.

A witness to the shooting marvels at the freak coordination of all these impediments.  Had Schrank’s slug penetrated the pleura, T.R. would have bled to death internally in a matter of minutes.  “There was no other place on his body so thoroughly armored as the spot where the bullet struck.”   As if by some miracle, T.R. survives the attempt, and actually recovers quickly.

At times Schrank claims he is penniless.  Other times, he claims he had inherited Manhattan real estate from his father, a Bavarian immigrant.  Whatever his finances, he has enough cash to purchase a gun and pursue T.R. for two weeks through the Deep South and on across the Midwest --- intending but failing to shoot him in at least five cities before Milwaukee.  “I intended to kill Theodore Roosevelt, the third termer.  I did not want to kill the candidate of the Progressive Party.”

Schrank later claims that he was neither insane nor a socialist.  T.R. is inclined to agree.  “I very gravely question if he has a more unsound mind than Eugene Debs (the Socialist Party candidate for the presidency).”

Pleading guilty to T.R.’s shooting, with qualifications, Schrank is committed to the hospital for the criminally insane and remains there until his death on the anniversary of his first vision of the ghost of McKinley thirty-one years earlier.

-Michael D'Angelo

(Editor's note: The fourth and final segment closes this multi-part series with the results of the 1912 general election --- and its aftermath.)

A Blueprint for America's Future (Part Two)

(Editor's note:  This is the second segment in a multi-part series titled A Blueprint for America's Future. The underlying theme highlights the iconic presidential election of 1912, which some believe contains the true blueprint for America's future. The first segment traces Theodore Roosevelt's exit from the Republican Party and the foundation of his new "Progressive" or "Bull Moose" Party.)


Many times, over the years, T.R. compares the machinery of politics to the workings of a kaleidoscope. 

At times brilliant colors and harmonious patterns can be seen, sometimes carefully shaken into shape, sometimes forming of their own accord.  At the slightest hitch, however, brilliance and harmony can fall into jagged disarray, leaving the viewer with clashing colors, shapes and shafts of impenetrable black.

T.R. knows that his third party candidacy is a long shot and that he would not likely win.  But he sees it as his duty.  “My public career will end next election day,” T.R. tells a visitor in the days preceding his new party’s own nominating convention.

He asks his wife to say what she thought of his situation.  A house guest relates that “She was quite radiant with trust and affection, as she expressed her faith that the path through honor to defeat was the one to take.”

T.R.’s transformational embrace of faith cause critics to suggest at the Progressive National Convention in August 1912 that Progressivism is a religion.  He nurtures the theme that he is engaged in Holy Work.

Familiar church hymns ring through the course of the proceedings, which are also held in Chicago, as the delegates sing and chant, surging the religiosity in the hall to the point of delirium.

Onward Christian soldiers, marching as to war,

With the cross of Jesus going on before.

In his acceptance speech for the party nomination, entitled A Confession of Faith, T.R. repeats what he had stated earlier at the Republican National Convention, to a tumultuous response: “I say in closing what in that speech I said in closing: We stand at Armageddon, and we battle for the Lord.”  A New York Times reporter writes that “It was not a convention at all.  It was an assemblage of religious enthusiasts.”

The mocking prophecy of Eliju Root, US Senator, R-NY, and formerly T.R.’s Secretary of War and then Secretary of State, appears to have been fulfilled: “He aims at a leadership far in the future, as a sort of Moses and Messiah for a vast progressive tide of a rising humanity.”

Jane Addams, a proponent of women’s suffrage, says that “I have been fighting for progressive principles for thirty years.  This is the biggest day in my life.”  The convention commits the Progressive Party to a vast program of social, economic and environmental reform.  T.R. has made Progressivism a “moral” issue, entitled to use a superlative when he calls the program “much the most important public document promulgated in this country since the death of Abraham Lincoln.”  The Progressive motto is to be “Pass prosperity around.”

In his vision of a moral society, ethically based, T.R. poses that the

Material progress and prosperity of a nation are desirable chiefly so long as they lead to the moral and material welfare of all good citizens.  Just in proportion as the average man and woman are honest, capable of sound judgment and high ideals, active in public affairs, --- but, first of all, sound in their home, and the father and mother of healthy children whom they bring up well, --- just so far, and not farther, we may count on civilization a success.

The soldier, or ordinary citizen, has to have the right stuff in him.  He has to have “the fighting edge, the right character.  The most important elements in any man’s career must be the sum of those qualities which, in the aggregate, we speak of as character.”

We must have the right kind of character --- character that makes a man, first of all, a good man in the home, a good father, and a good husband --- that makes a man a good neighbor.  You must have that, and, then, in addition, you must have the (right) kind of law and the (right) kind of administration of the law which will give to those qualities in the private citizen the best possible chance for development.

It comes as no surprise that the platform of the Progressive Party of 1912 amounts to a re-drafting of T.R.’s New Nationalism program.  It is not matched again for initiative and specificity in detail until the platform of the Democratic Party in 1964.

-Michael D'Angelo

(Editor's note: The third segment in this multi-part series takes the reader on a spiritual journey, as events --- which may only be described here as psychic --- unfold in the weeks leading up to the 1912 general election ...).

A Blueprint for America's Future (Part One)

(Editor's note:  This is the first segment in a multi-part series under title of A Blueprint for America's Future. The underlying series theme highlights the iconic presidential election of 1912, which some believe serves as the true blueprint for America's future.)

2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, the first woman nominated by a major national political party for the American presidency, has invested her campaign with the slogan: “Stronger Together: A Blueprint for America’s Future.”

Some students of US history do well to trace this blueprint to the platform of the Democratic Party in 1964.  Others may take it back further to 1932 and Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “New Deal” agenda.  Still others link the blueprint to its genesis in the iconic three-way presidential election of 1912, Theodore Roosevelt challenging the democratic process to higher ideals.

Several twists and turns bring America to the place it is then situated, as the political calendar turns to 1912.  By the end of his presidency in 1908, T.R. is the Republican heir to Abraham Lincoln’s grand old party and champion of Progressive Era reform.  But against this responsibility he views with consternation the presidency of his hand-picked successor, President Taft, who has ominously transformed into the nation’s top reactionary in the ensuing period between 1908 and 1912.

A series of articles which can be reviewed here traces T.R.’s political transformation to a more spiritual basis during Mr. Taft’s presidency.  Alarmed by Mr. Taft’s passiveness and political about-face, T.R. is compelled to renew the contest, seeking the Republican Party nomination once again in the 1912 election.

The 1912 Republican primary contest is vicious on every level.  It pits President Taft, the conservative, whose powerful base champions the status quo, against T.R., the upstart, whose base favors the continuation of progressive change.

T.R finishes the Republican primary contest in strong fashion, about as well as can be hoped for.  He sweeps through and wins each of the last five voter primaries, including Mr. Taft’s home state of Ohio.  But T.R. finds, as is typically the case, that it is nearly impossible to wrest the nomination from an incumbent president.  At the nominating convention in Chicago, the Republican Party wages an epic, internal civil war battle, whose effects reverberate to the present day.

T.R. concludes his speech at the Republican national convention in an attempt to sway the delegates with the following language:

Assuredly the fight will go on whether we win or lose.  What happens to me is not of the slightest consequence; I am to be used, as in a doubtful battle any man is used, to his hurt or not, so long as he is useful and then cast aside or left to die.  …  We fight in honorable fashion for the good of mankind; fearless for the future; unheeding of our individual fates; with unflinching hearts and undimmed eyes; we stand at Armageddon, and we battle for the Lord.

Never before has T.R. used such evangelical language, or dared to present himself as a holy warrior.  It is also said that never before has he heard such cheering.  Intended or not, he invests progressivism with a divine aura.

But obtaining the Republican Party’s nomination is not to be, coming as no surprise when President Taft’s conservative base carries the day to secure the nomination, beating back the progressive tide.  But the Republican Party that T.R. knew has lost the liberal conscience of Abraham Lincoln’s party.  And everyone knows that the Republican National Committee has decided to field a losing candidate (Mr. Taft) in November (1912), rather than gamble on one (T.R.) who would “radicalize” its “traditional” platform.

In turn, T.R. makes a monumental decision.  He precipitously bolts from the Republican National Convention --- and the Republican Party --- to form the new Progressive Party or “Bull Moose” Party.  The decision is occasioned by what T.R. sees as his compelling sense of duty, his conscience and his station.  Progressive would now contain a capital “P.”


-Michael D'Angelo

(Editor's note: The second segment in this multi-part series covers the 1912 Progressive Party --- or "Bull Moose" --- National Convention and the drafting of its historic progressive platform for the ensuing general election.)