POLITICS 2016 ELECTION The Progressive Party of 1912 was an American political party formed by former President Theodore Roosevelt, after a split in the Republican Party between him and President William Howard Taft.
Bernie Sanders says he’s a socialist democrat AND a progressive. In 1991, Sanders co-founded the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
More recently Hillary Clinton says she’s a progressive too.
Katie Reilly: Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are arguing over who’s more progressive. Sanders says she only is “some days.”
A long-simmering feud between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders over who is the real “progressive” in the Democratic presidential race broke into the open Wednesday, with the two rivals trading barbs on the campaign trail and in social media.
It started after Sanders, speaking Tuesday in New Hampshire following Clinton’s narrow win in the Iowa caucuses, said Clinton is only a progressive “some days.”
“Except when she announces that she is a proud moderate, and then I guess she is not a progressive,” Sanders said.
Clinton fired back Wednesday on Twitter: READ MORE HERE – http://time.com/4206675/hillary-clinton-bernie-sanders-new-hampshire-primary-progressive/
So what does it mean to be a PROGRESSIVE? Teaching American History: Progressive Party Platform of 1912.
August 7, 1912
“The conscience of the people, in a time of grave national problems, has called into being a new party, born of the nation’s sense of justice. We of the Progressive party here dedicate ourselves to the fulfillment of the duty laid upon us by our fathers to maintain the government of the people, by the people and for the people whose foundations they laid.
“We hold with Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln that the people are the masters of their Constitution, to fulfill its purposes and to safeguard it from those who, by perversion of its intent, would convert it into an instrument of injustice. In accordance with the needs of each generation the people must use their sovereign powers to establish and maintain equal opportunity and industrial justice, to secure which this Government was founded and without which no republic can endure.
“This country belongs to the people who inhabit it. Its resources, its business, its institutions and its laws should be utilized, maintained or altered in whatever manner will best promote the general interest.
“It is time to set the public welfare in the first place.”
The Old Parties
“Political parties exist to secure responsible government and to execute the will of the people.
“From these great tasks both of the old parties have turned aside. Instead of instruments to promote the general welfare, they have become the tools of corrupt interests which use them impartially to serve their selfish purposes. Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people.
“To destroy this invisible government, to dissolve the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day.
“The deliberate betrayal of its trust by the Republican party, the fatal incapacity of the Democratic party to deal with the new issues of the new time, have compelled the people to forge a new instrument of government through which to give effect to their will in laws and institutions.
“Unhampered by tradition, uncorrupted by power, undismayed by the magnitude of the ta
sk, the new party offers itself as the instrument of the people to sweep away old abuses, to build a new and nobler commonwealth.”
A Covenant with the People
“This declaration is our covenant with the people, and we hereby bind the party and its candidates in State and Nation to the pledges made herein.”
The Rule of the People
“The National Progressive party, committed to the principles of government by a self-controlled democracy expressing its will through representatives of the people, pledges itself to secure such alterations in the fundamental law of the several States and of the United States as shall insure the representative character of the government.
“In particular, the party declares for direct primaries for the nomination of State and National officers, for nation-wide preferential primaries for candidates for the presidency; for the direct election of United States Senators by the people; and we urge on the States the policy of the short ballot, with responsibility to the people secured by the initiative, referendum and recall.”
Amendment of the Constitution
“The Progressive party, believing that a free people should have the power from time to time to amend their fundamental law so as to adapt it progressively to the changing needs of the people, pledges itself to provide a more easy and expeditious method of amending the Federal Constitution.”
Nation and State
“Up to the limit of the Constitution, and later by amendment of the Constitution, if found necessary, we advocate bringing under effective national jurisdiction those problems which have expanded beyond reach of the individual States.
“It is as grotesque as it is intolerable that the several States should by unequal laws in matter of common concern become competing commercial agencies, barter the lives of their children, the health of their women and the safety and well being of their working people for the benefit of their financial interests.
“The extreme insistence on States’ rights by the Democratic party in the Baltimore platform demonstrates anew its inability to understand the world into which it has survived or to administer the affairs of a union of States which have in all essential respects become one people.”
READ THE ORIGINAL PLATFORM HERE: Progressive Party Platform of 1912 | Teaching American History
EQUAL SUFFRAGE
CORRUPT PRACTICES
PUBLICITY AND PUBLIC SERVICE
THE COURTS
ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE
SOCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL JUSTICE
DEPARTMENT OF LABOR
COUNTRY LIFE
HIGH COST OF LIVING
HEALTH
BUSINESS
PATENTS
INTER-STATE COMMERCE COMMISSION
CURRENCY
COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENT
CONSERVATION
GOOD ROADS
ALASKA
WATERWAYS
PANAMA CANAL
TARIFF
INHERITANCE AND INCOME TAX
PEACE AND NATIONAL DEFENSE
TREATY RIGHTS
THE IMMIGRANT
PENSIONS
PARCEL POST
CIVIL SERVICE
GOVERNMENT BUSINESS ORGANIZATION
GOVERNMENT SUPERVISION OVER INVESTMENTS
CONCLUSION
“On these principles and on the recognized desirability of uniting the Progressive forces of the Nation into an organization which shall unequivocally represent the Progressive spirit and policy we appeal for the support of all American citizens, without regard to previous political affiliations.”
Source: American Progressivism: A Reader, eds. Ronald J. Pestritto and William J. Atto (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2008), 273-287.
