Progressivism, the Great Depression and the New Deal: 1901-1941

Two thumbs way down.

Brothers Christopher Collier and James Lincon Colier eliminate everything from their presentation of the Progressive Movement which would cast any bad light upon the movement. Any reference to Eugenics from Theodore Roosevelt to FDR is expunged. The mass sterilization of "unfit" Americans is left out of their record.

The Racism of the Progressive movement is not recorded in the Coliers' small volume. And, indeed, most of the descendants of Progressivism in today's Liberal movement try to hide this heritage which still forms the basis of their classist division of American politics.

Further, the Colliers fail to discuss how FDR's programs, from the CCC to the Blue Eagle in the National Recovery Act had terrorized the citizens of the United States contrary to the limits placed on the Federal Government by the Constitution.

The authors fail to discuss the fact that Progressivists were at the root of the Prohibitionist movement and the source of gangster movements during prohibition.

FDR's threat to pack the Supreme Court with pro-Statist judges is left undisclosed.

Also, the authors failed to include the fact that the Communist Party was at the root of the movement to unionize labor through the end of the 19th Century and throughout the 20th Century in the period they discuss.

This volume was designed for instructing Jr and Sr. Highschool students in the benefits of the Progressive movement of the early 20th Century. 

Repeated throughout the volume is the Marxist ideology that the source of good for the common citizen had to be Big Government and that in America the "wealth was not being fairly shared." (P. 17 and throughout)

Instead they present a negative picture of Capitalism and "laissez-faire" policy. The individual citizen, his or her own desires, personal trade and property do not matter to these authors.

What they do present is a fictional recreation of a world that did not exist, where Progressivism actually cares for the individual (despite massive data to the contrary), and where Progressivism helped the country out of the Depression (despite the economic facts of history). The authors' negligence in discussing Social Darwinism leaves this reader to conclude that they yearn for the Marxist and racist eugenic and economic policies of the early 20th Century.