American Paranoia: How the First World War triggered a wave of xenophobia and a Red Scare

In 1912 Woodrow Wilson was an unlikely Democratic candidate for the presidency, a sometime law professor and president of Princeton who had only served in public office for two years, as governor of New Jersey. But then it would be an unusual election, with a three-way fight. When the incumbent, William Howard Taft, defeated Theodore Roosevelt, his predecessor in the White House, for the Republican nomination, Roosevelt ran as a “Progressive”, splitting the Republican vote and allowing Wilson to win the presidency with little more than two-fifths of the popular vote.

American Paranoia: How the First World War triggered a wave of xenophobia and a Red Scare

The Monroe Doctrine Is Soaked in Blood

The Monroe Doctrine was first discussed under that name as justification for the U.S. war on Mexico that moved the western US border south, swallowing up the present-day states of California, Nevada, and Utah, most of New Mexico, Arizona and Colorado, and parts of Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Wyoming. By no means was that as far south as some would have liked to move the border.

The Monroe Doctrine Is Soaked in Blood

James Bradley, Author of Flags of Our Fathers, #1 New York Times Best-Seller, Speaks Out Against the U.S. Military Encirclement of China

James Bradley, Author of Flags of Our Fathers, #1 New York Times Best-Seller, Speaks Out Against the U.S. Military Encirclement of China

The China Mirage ends with a warning for today. Bradley writes that, “from those early days [19th century] until now, America has dispatched its hopeful sons and daughters to faraway Asia in search of a mirage that never was. And never will be.” That mirage is the idea of China as moldable in American hands. Now, according to Bradley, we have entered another disappointment phase as an ascendant China has gone about its business of expanding its economy and hence its worldwide influence. The danger is that Washington will not get over its disappointment. Bradley in fact describes the current situation—where the U.S. encircles China—as akin to dry tinder ready to spark a war.

Critics of Biden as being a ‘progressive’ are mistaken. Understanding what ‘progressive’ means isn’t so easy.

The difference between “progressive” and “liberal” gets to the core of what politics in the real world is actually about, and of whether the nation is being controlled by the public (a democracy), or instead is controlled by the tiny percentage of the population who are enormously wealthy (an aristocracy — a capitalistic dictatorship, or also called “fascism” — so that the public are actually the nation’s subjects, instead of the nation’s citizens). Whereas progressivism is 100% supportive of democracy, liberalism is supportive of control by an elite, but one that supposedly represents the interests of the public. There is a big difference between progressivism and liberalism. Most simply phrased: Aristocrats always control the public by employing the popular mythology so as to motivate the majority to accept their own subordination to the aristocracy; and, whereas liberals support that, progressives don’t. This deception by the aristocracy minimizes the amount of physical coercion that will be needed in order for them to control the public. Progressives reject any mythology, and oppose any aristocracy. Liberals simply do not. Conservatives are the aristocracy. The noblesse oblige conservatives are the liberal aristocrats who say that they serve the public interest, but the other aristocrats say that they have no such obligation, and that their being an aristocrat proves their worthiness. And that is the way things function, in the real world. The ‘news’-media are important in deceiving the public so as to enable the aristocracy to control, and this is the reason why aristocrats buy ‘news’-media even regardless of whether those ‘news’-media are directly profitable: owning the ‘news’-media is providing a major service to the entire aristocracy, and therefore becomes repaid to such an owner in many other ways — all aristocrats want to please that member. It’s gratitude to a fellow-aristocrat, and that check can be cashed in many different ways.

Critics of Biden as being a ‘progressive’ are mistaken. Understanding what ‘progressive’ means isn’t so easy.