Radical ideas of the “New Freedom”
Radical: Woodrow Wilson 1856 – 1924
Woodrow Wilson’s policies as President of the United States can be viewed as extremely radical. Wilson , who was a white supremacist and apologist for slavery, slipped passed Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft, who split the Republican vote, to take the Democratic win in 1912. Once elected, he sprinted to pass extremely progressive policies to anchor himself as a new leader of the American Progressive Era.
Woodrow Wilson is the only United States President to have received a PHD. Wilson was seen as an intellectual with radical views on the flaws in the government that our founders created. He claimed that the Constitution was cumbersome and open to corruption. He was a proponent to the English system of Parliament which he believed was better for pointing out the corruption. He targeted the “Checks and Balances” as a failed and the cause for all the problems in the governance of the American people.
Like many radical politicians to follow, Wilson believed that the Constitution was an outdated document and needed to be re-written. He claimed that science was what was going to make America great and need to be the main focus of the country. Wilson believed that the American people are an extremely diverse and a system should represent them and the idea of a Republic was not beneficial for the American people.
Federal Reserve System - 1913
Wilson’s most known American policy was the implementation of the Federal Reserve as a resurrection of the expired Second Bank of the United States. With a crisis as the prime motivator for Republicans and Democrats, Woodrow convinced the Democrats to work with the Republican plan to help stave off another crisis. The Federal Reserve Act would allow Congress to print money as they saw fit to pump cash into a future troubled economy.
Federal Trade Commission – 1914
This agency was developed to protect the consumer. The Commission would regulate businesses to help eliminate monopolies and eliminate other anti-competitive practices. Although the legislation made the system of laws much clearer for businesses, it made way. Many believe that the law was passed as a major concession to big labor as a railroad labor strike was on the horizon. Within the legislation, Wilson demanded an increase in wages and a cut in work hours. The result was no strike.
World War I
Woodrow Wilson ran the campaign for his second term on the slogan "He kept us out of the war". Ironically he would be forced into the war only after numerous German submarine attacks in 1917. With a new war effort, Wilson directed his domestic support for the war within the American Federation of Labor (AFL). With the wages souring due to high demand for workers and no rationing, the white collar workers suffered.
American Protective League
One of the most controversial organizations that operated under Wilson was the sanctioned American Protective League. This organization was a quasi-private organization that carried out warrantless searches and interrogations to spy on Americans involved in anti-war behavior. The group operated through the US Justice department and were accused of seeking out anarchists, pacifists, and labor movements.
League of Nations
Wilson was a great influence to the League of Nations but would fail to get the Untied States involved due to the Senate overruling the measure for sovereignty loss fears. The important aspect of Wilson’s gravity towards a united globalized approach to peace was his influence from Immanuel Kant’s “Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch”. The idea was very corrosive to the views of the American founding fathers. The League of Nations would eventually fail. The intentions would later be picked up by the formation of the Untied Nations in 1945.
Many current day Progressives share the same ideological beliefs that Woodrow Wilson was aligned with. The current day Progressive is driven by a pragmatic epistemology inspired by the likes of Immanuel Kant, Charles Darwin, and Georg Hegel. The influences of these three philosophers had huge influences on Marx and Engels and define the singularity of pragmatic thought which is clearly visible to current day elitists, radicals, and communist fringe groups.
