Progressive Liars: The 12-Part Series

Glenn has warned about progressivism for more than a decade. So what is progressivism and who are progressives? This 12-part series explores those questions, backed up with research and facts from Glenn's new book Liars: How Progressives Exploit Our Fear for Power and Control.

At its core, progressivism is an insatiable thirst for control. The endgame of progressives is to build a massive all-controlling welfare state that holds us hostage to their preferences. After all, they know what's best.

Progressive leaders are masters of lies and deception, using fear to control and subjugate free people. Frighteningly, their efforts often involve the loss of free will, murder or mutilation of their fellow human beings --- always in the name of a better world. Ever hear the expression, "My way or the highway"? It might as well have been coined by a progressive.

Share this series with everyone you know. The centuries-old history of progressivism must be exposed and taught to all freedom-loving people.

Listen to the full series:

Progressive Liars Part I: Fear and Hope

Chicago coliseum, July 9, 1896: Thirty-six-year old William Jennings Bryan put forth the Democratic Party’s proposed national platform to a cheering crowd that frantically waved red bandannas in a sign of solidarity. Bryan became convinced that victory was his. A new monetary policy based on the coinage of silver, free silver, had proven to be an even more enticing message than he had expected. The new supply of money would relieve crippling debt for the impoverished voters Bryan sought to mobilize. As he neared the climax of his remarks, he mustered every last ounce of energy and unleashed some of the most famous lines in American political rhetoric:

If they dare come out in the open field,” he thundered, “And defend the gold standard as a good thing, we shall fight them to the uttermost, having behind us the producing masses of the nations of the world and having behind us the commercial interests and the laboring interests and the toiling masses.

Bryan’s speech launched the era of progressivism, featuring the biggest liars in American history. These liars achieved their so-called progress using fear and hope, two uniquely human feelings, to impose their will upon mankind.

Progressive Liars Part II: German Roots

To find the roots of progressivism, one has to go back to Germany in the 1500s, and the Protestant Reformation against the Catholic Church by Martin Luther. Was Luther a progressive? Hardly, but his ideas about man’s relationship with God have morphed and metastasized the past 500 years into something unrecognizable from what he originally intended. Luther’s declaration that man could have a personal relationship with God without enlisting a papal leader inadvertently started the ball rolling toward progressivism.

More than two centuries later in the late 1700s, German professor George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel would use his disbelief in God for a similar purpose — to better humanity. After surviving an epidemic, Hegel’s views on God were irrevocably changed. Hegel concluded that experts and knowledgeable persons should rule — not God — with the most perfect government and unlimited authority over the individual. Through the State and its rulers, man would essentially become God on earth. This was the foundational principle that eventually became known as progressivism.

Progressive Liars Part III: Margaret Sanger

Margaret Sanger, the so-called mother of birth control and founder of what has become modern day Planned Parenthood, believed in a policy of improvement to “create a race of thoroughbreds.”

In 1922, Sanger wrote:

Those least fit to carry on the race are increasing most rapidly. People who cannot support their own offspring are encouraged by church and state to produce large families. Many of the children thus begotten are diseased and feebleminded. Many become criminals. Funds that should be used to raise the standard of our civilization are diverted to the maintenance of those who should have never been born.

In 1926, Sanger presented her views to a women’s chapter of the Ku Klux Klan, which led to more speaking engagements to similar groups. How did an American woman arrive at this kind of thinking? As with many progressive leaders, a traumatic childhood event helped shape her radical beliefs about preventing birth among certain “undesirables.”

Progressive Liars Part IV: Woodrow Wilson

In 1912, there were at least two massive disasters for the United States of America: The sinking of the Titanic and the election of progressive Woodrow Wilson. Just a month after the completion of the grim Titanic recovery operation, Woodrow Wilson addressed the prestigious economic club of New York at a hotel bearing the name of one of the Titanic’s most prominent victims.

Speaking to business leaders at the Time Squares Hotel Astor, Wilson pushed back against the complaints that his ideas opposed the free enterprise system. He believed that wealthy families such as the Astors had turned the American Republic into their own fiefdom. The rich, he said, had to be reined in and their wealth confiscated for the public good, if necessary:

The very thing that government cannot let alone is business.

Government cannot take its hands off business. Government must regulate business because that is the foundation of every other relationship.

The tragic sinking of the Titanic, a ship that its owners boasted was unsinkable, was the consequence of a hubristic, humanist assumption about man’s ability to control natural law and to defy the will of God. And so was the candidacy of Woodrow Wilson.

Few presidents have displayed such open contempt for the Constitution they swore to preserve, protect and defend. Even fewer had such severe disdain for women, minorities and anyone else who deviated from Wilson’s view of the “perfect citizen.”

Progressive Liars Part V: Prohibition

Wayne Wheeler, raised on an Ohio farm, became the leading force behind America’s prohibition movement — and he was merciless in his crusade. Frightening childhood experiences with drunk farmhands scarred Wheeler’s adolescence, convincing him that only full-scale abolition across America would bring safety and comfort to the collective. For Wheeler, the perfect world required absolute control over the individual.

Perhaps the most powerful force in the nation regarding alcohol, Wheeler led the Anti-Saloon League, coining the term “pressure group” to explain the league’s tactics. By 1903, the Anti-Saloon League forced all 70 of their political targets out of office. In 1915, Wheeler became general counsel for the Anti-Saloon League of America and one of the most effective lobbyists of his time.

Thanks in large part to Wheeler’s efforts, the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution went into effect in 1920, banning the manufacture, sale and transportation of intoxicating liquors in the United States. Once law-abiding American citizens were now breaking federal law by drinking, blurring the lines between right and wrong. Instead of creating a new perfect world, the law opened the door for bootleggers and organized crime to make millions of dollars from the illegal distribution of liquor.

With the new constitutional amendment, Wheeler believed alcohol consumption to be treasonous, and came up with the sick idea of poisoning whisky and releasing it into the public. Under Wheeler’s poisonous plan, the government identified people drinking illegally when they became sick or died — and it was wildly effective. Up to 50,000 Americans paid the ultimate progressive price, essentially murdered by Wayne Wheeler and the U.S. government.

Progressive Liars Part VI: FDR Part I

Franklin Delano Roosevelt famously said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” He should have added one thing: progressivism.

The nation had scarcely regained its footing from the constitutional crisis created by FDR’s hero Woodrow Wilson, a man who oversaw the internment of over 170,000 American citizens without probable cause or due process. In subsequent years, FDR would follow Wilson’s blueprint, authorizing the physical removal of all Japanese Americans into internment camps.

FDR knew he could take Wilson’s revolutionary but academic critique of America and mold it into something practical and concrete. With the term “progressivism” waning in the 1920s under small-government Presidents Harding and Coolidge, FDR also knew he had a branding problem. This led to his purposeful rebranding of progressive ideology during the 1932 Democratic National Convention:

Ours must be a party of liberal thought, of planned action on enlightened international outlook and on the greatest good to the greatest number of our citizens.

It was a noble lie. FDR’s new liberalism betrayed the classic liberal thought of John Locke, Adam Smith and America’s Founding Fathers. This new interpretation of American politics and governance elevated the state above the individual. Rights no longer came from the individual, much less God, but directly from the government — everything that classical liberals had rejected about the divine right of monarchs and the state’s tendency to trample individual liberty.

Progressive Liars Part VII: FDR Part II

Liberals, the media and academia worship at the altar of FDR and the anti-constitutional, gigantic government he created. They teach our children that his policies ended The Great Depression of the 1930s, but the exact opposite is true. Roosevelt’s disastrous policies actually extended the depression by years.

After implementing his socialized agenda known as The New Deal, which included the legalized Ponzi scheme of Social Security, the United States was still mired in the deepest and worst depression in its history. Roosevelt spent and regulated like a drunken sailor, and he paid for it by vastly expanding and steeping the tax code. What was only 400 pages at the start of FDR’s administration ballooned to more than 8,200 pages by its end. Designed to make individuals and businesses pay their “fair share,” it stifled economic growth and reshaped the economic promise of America from individual achievement to redistributive equality. FDR turned what would have been a depression into The Great Depression through his social and financial engineering.

From 1933 to 1940, the average annual unemployment rate averaged 18.6 percent. In 1937 and 1938, the economy collapsed into a double-dip recession. From 1937 to 1938, industrial production declined by 33 percent. National income hemorrhaged at 13 percent. Wages went down by 35 percent and an estimated four million workers lost their jobs.

Roosevelt won reelection in 1940 by promising to keep American boys out of the fight against Adolf Hitler. That eventually became another broken promise — and his saving grace. America’s participation in World War II kickstarted the economy, finally ending the misery brought on by The Great Depression.

Progressive Liars Part VIII: FDR Part III

Infatuated progressive scholars credit Franklin Delano Roosevelt with ending The Great Depression when, in fact, American manufacturing kickstarted the economy enough to negate the damage done by his massive government programs. Scholars and leftists alike also ignore his internment of over 100,000 Japanese-Americans during World War II, just as his progressive hero Woodrow Wilson had done with Germans and Italians during World War I. Most of these loyal Americans never got their homes back. Unfortunately, the loss of liberty under FDR didn’t stop there.

Under cover of war, President Roosevelt illegally authorized agents to wiretap the phones of not just aliens who threatened national security, but also potential political enemies and even political friends. Roosevelt’s spying targets included former President Herbert Hoover, 1940 Republican presidential opponent Wendell Wilke and critical journalists. FDR also requested a tax audit on The New York Times and had the heads of various agencies, including the FBI and the Department of Justice, investigate several newspaper publishers in a failed witch hunt for Nazi ties.

As World War II wound down, FDR proposed a second Bill of Rights, arguing true individual freedom could not exist without economic security and independence. He may have once claimed the only thing to fear was fear itself, but in reality, he wanted Americans to fear a host of things. Fear after all, opened the door to things people otherwise wouldn’t think possible. Additionally, FDR warned that if Americans let his wartime reforms go away, they might as well have lost the war.

Incredibly, this strategy is successfully employed by progressives in government over and over again. Legislation during a crisis lives on like a cockroach, able to survive even in the worst of conditions. In FDR’s wartime America, rights were to be granted no longer by our creator, but the federal government.

Progressive Liars Part IX: LBJ Part I

Like the state he loved, Lyndon Baines Johnson was a large and imposing man. His head, ears and hands, even his voice, seemed to overwhelm those around him, traits that helped him make deals with timid, cowering colleagues. In the aftermath of President Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, Johnson, who had never cared much for JFK’s policies, decided to remodel the Kennedy presidency after his two idols: Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt. After Kennedy’s assassination, LBJ finally had the chance to live up to the legacy of his “second daddy” and make the spirit of Roosevelt proud.

LBJ had “a specific objective” in mind that guided his presidency from the start: Outdo Franklin Roosevelt as the champion of everyday Americans to become the next generation’s FDR. He would be what he called “their daddy,” whether they liked it or not. Wilson had successfully organized progressivism as a political force and FDR built new progressive economic institutions during The Great Depression. LBJ would build on that legacy by spreading progressivism into mainstream America at a time of similar tumult and disorder. He would set in motion the destructive forces of nihilism, hedonism and blasphemy that marked the 1960s, a decade that would change America fundamentally, forever.

Progressive Liars Part X: LBJ Part II

Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society was the New Deal on steroids. It was the most destructive anti-Democratic and anti-entrepreneurial program of the 20th century. Johnson’s vision was utopian, statist and reckless, but the grief of a nation reeling from an assassinated president, and the general sense that America was spiraling out of control, spurred LBJ to act.

The Great Society started with Johnson’s disastrous War On Poverty. In reality, it wasn’t a War On Poverty at all. It was a war against prosperity and success. Like all progressives, Johnson believed in economic leveling. Instead of lifting everyone up through commerce or capitalism, he forced people into an economic purgatory where mediocrity was the norm and striving for greatness was discouraged.

Under LBJ, the nation witnessed the true creation of the welfare state, based on massive entitlement programs and predicated on the government’s ability to drive the populace to an ambition-destroying focus on inner meaning and quality of life, instead of character, ambition and success. This created a crisis of conscience and confidence in people, making them both susceptible to undermining traditional norms and predisposed to reliance on the state to handle things that were too hard for them.

LBJ laid the groundwork to create an environment of self-actualization — through the government, conservation programs, federal patronage of the arts, public broadcasting and more. These were not meant to foster national elevation or celebrate America’s greatness. They were created as a corporate secular replacement of religion, as sources of spiritual fulfillment for the masses. Replace God with government, and you control not just people’s minds, but their hearts and souls. Using these fears, he persuaded millions of Americans to abandon their traditional values of hard work and self-reliance in exchange for the soullessness of self-actualization.

Progressive Liars Part XI: Stuart Chase and System X

You know progressives like Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson, but you may not know Stuart Chase, the man called the progressive prophet. An American economist born in 1888, Chase was influenced by Fabian socialists, as well as communist social and educational experiments being conducted in the Soviet Union in the 1930s. At the conclusion of his 1932 book, A New Deal, Chase wrote, “Why should the Soviets have all the fun remaking the world?” What sort of government and economic system did progressives like Stuart Chase want to adopt if they considered constitutionalism and the free market passe? A strong centralized government controlling everything — the government, the banking system, education, employment, food, housing, medical care — so the people wouldn’t make poor decisions for themselves.

Chase had just one problem as he envisioned his utopia on earth. He couldn’t come up with a name for it. Socialism, fascism and state capitalism just didn’t seem to fit the bill. Like any good Fabian, he shied away from calling socialism by its name. Instead, he labeled America’s future system “something called X.” And as Chase believed, System X was already displacing the system of free enterprise all over the world.

Progressive Liars Part XII: Barack Obama

Chicago, Illinois, July 1995, the future president of the United States stood in the living room of a radical domestic terrorist. They were in Hyde Park, a Chicago neighborhood of tree-lined streets, dotted with handsome old stones and brick houses. In this highly segregated city, Hyde Park stood out as a vibrant, racially diverse, but monolithic melting pot. There couldn't be a more fitting place for the future commander-in-chief to live, just mere blocks away from former domestic terrorist Bill Ayers and Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.

Hyde Park, home to the prestigious University of Chicago, was also just a few blocks from Chicago's notorious South Side. The ivory tower of elitist academics loomed over crippled communities, riddled with drugs, gangs and broken homes. The slums and Section 8 housing projects were homes to some of the highest murder rates in the civilized world, the wreckage caused by decades of leftist rule.

This would be the environment in which radical community organizer Barack Obama received the advice that endeared a nation and helped secure him the presidency of the United States: If you really want to change things, you've got to drop the radical pose for the radical ends.

Listen to all serials at glennbeck.com/serials

What do clay pots have to do with to preserving American history?

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Editor's note: This article was originally published on TheBlaze.com.

Why should we preserve our nation’s history? If you listen to my radio program and podcast, or read my columns and books, you know I’ve dedicated a large part of my life and finances to sourcing and preserving priceless artifacts that tell America’s story. I’ve tried to make these artifacts as available as possible through the American Journey Experience Museum, just across from the studios where I do my daily radio broadcast. Thousands of you have come through the museum and have been able to see and experience these artifacts that are a part of your legacy as an American.

The destruction of American texts has already begun.

But why should people like you and me be concerned about preserving these things from our nation's history? Isn’t that what the “big guys” like the National Archives are for?

I first felt a prompting to preserve our nation's history back in 2008, and it all started with clay pots and the Dead Sea Scrolls. In 1946, a Bedouin shepherd in what is now the West Bank threw a rock into a cave nestled into the side of a cliff near the Dead Sea. Instead of hearing an echo, he heard the curious sound of a clay pot shattering. He discovered more than 15,000 Masoretic texts from the third century B.C. to the first century A.D.

These texts weren’t just a priceless historical discovery. They were virtually perfect copies of the same Jewish texts that continue to be translated today. Consider the significance of that discovery. Since the third century B.C. when these texts were first written, the Jewish people have endured a continued onslaught of diasporas, persecutions, pressures to conform to their occupying power, the destruction of their temple, and so much more. They had to fight for their identity as a people for centuries, and finally, a year after the end of the Holocaust and a year before the founding of the nation of Israel, these texts were discovered, confirming the preservation and endurance of their heritage since ancient times — all due to someone putting these clay pots in a desert cave more than 2,000 years ago.

I first felt a prompting to preserve our nation's history back in 2008, and it all started with clay pots and the Dead Sea Scrolls.

So, what do these clay pots have to do with the calling to preserve American history? I didn’t understand that prompting myself until the horrible thought dawned on me that the people we are fighting against may very well take our sacred American scriptures, our Declaration of Independence, and our Bill of Rights. What if they are successful, and 1,000 years from now, we have no texts preserved to confirm our national identity? What kind of new history would be written over the truth?

The destruction of American texts has already begun. The National Archives has labeled some of our critical documents, like our Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights, as “triggering” or “containing harmful language.” In a public statement, the National Archives said that the labels help prepare readers to view potentially distressing content:

The Catalog and web pages contain some content that may be harmful or difficult to view. NARA’s records span the history of the United States, and it is our charge to preserve and make available these historical records. As a result, some of the materials presented here may reflect outdated, biased, offensive, and possibly violent views and opinions. In addition, some of the materials may relate to violent or graphic events and are preserved for their historical significance.

According to this statement, our founding documents are either “outdated, biased, offensive,” “possibly violent,” or a combination of these scathing descriptions. I’m sorry, the Declaration of Independence is not “triggering.” Our Constitution is not “outdated and biased,” and our Bill of Rights certainly is not “offensive and possibly violent.” They are glorious documents. They should be celebrated, not qualified by such derogatory, absurd language. Shame on them.

These are only the beginning stages of rewriting our history. What if they start banning these “triggering” documents from public view because they might offend somebody? Haven’t we torn down “triggering” statues before? What if we are no longer able to see, read, and study the actual words of our nation's founding documents because they are “harmful” or “possibly violent”? A thousand years from now, will there be any remnant to piece together the true spirit behind the nation that our founders envisioned?

The Declaration of Independence is not “triggering.”

That is why in 2008, I was prompted to preserve what I could. Now, the American Journey Experience Museum includes more than 160,000 artifacts, from founding-era documents to the original Roe v. Wade court papers. We need to preserve the totality of our nation’s heritage, the good, the bad, and the ugly. We need to preserve our history in our own clay pots.

I ask you to join with me on this mission. Start buying books that are important to preserve. Buy some acid-free paper and start printing some of the founding documents, the reports that go against the mainstream narrative, the studies that prove what is true as we are continually being fed lies. Start preserving our daily history as well as our history because it is being rewritten and digitized.

Somebody must have a copy of what is happening now and what has happened in the past. I hope things don’t get really bad. But if they do, we need to preserve our heritage. Perhaps, someone 1,000 years from now will discover our clay pots and, Lord willing, be able to have a glimpse of America as it truly was.

Top 10 WORST items in the new $1.2 TRILLION spending bill

Kevin Dietsch / Staff | Getty Images

Biden just signed the newest spending bill into law, and Glenn is furious.

Under Speaker Johnson's leadership, the whopping $1.2 TRILLION package will use your taxpayer dollars to fund the government through September. Of course, the bill is loaded with earmarks and pork that diverts money to fund all sorts of absurd side projects.

Here is the list of the ten WORST uses of taxpayer money in the recently passed spending bill:

Funding venues to host drag shows, including ones that target children

David McNew / Contributor | Getty Images

Money for transgender underwear for kids

Funding for proms for 12 to 18 year old kids

Bethany Clarke / Stringer | Getty Images

Border security funding... for Jordan and Egypt

Another $300 million for Ukraine

Anadolu / Contributor | Getty Images

$3.5 million for Detroit's annual Thanksgiving Day parade

Icon Sportswire / Contributor | Getty Images

$2.5 million for a new kayaking facility in Franklin, New Hampshire

Acey Harper / Contributor | Getty Images

$2.7 million for a bike park in White Sulfur Springs, West Virginia, a town with a population of less than 2,300 people

$5 million for a new trail at Coastal Carolina University

$4 million the "Alaska King Crab Enhancement Project" (whatever that means)

FRED TANNEAU / Stringer | Getty Images

There is no doubt about it—we are entering dark times.

The November presidential election is only a few months away, and following the chaos of the 2020 election, the American people are bracing for what is likely to be another tumultuous election year. The left's anti-Trump rhetoric is reaching an all-time high with the most recent "Bloodbath" debacle proving how far the media will go to smear the former president. That's not to mention the Democrats' nearly four-year-long authoritarian attempt to jail President Trump or stop his re-election by any means necessary, even if it flies in the face of the Constitution.

Meanwhile, Biden is doing worse than ever. He reportedly threw a tantrum recently after being informed that his polls have reached an all-time low. After Special Counsel Robert Hur's report expressed concerns over Biden's obviously failing mental agility, it's getting harder for the Democrats to defend him. Yet he is still the Democratic nominee for November, promising another 4 years of catastrophic policies, from the border to heavy-handed taxation, should he be reelected.

The rest of the world isn't doing much better. The war in Ukraine has no clear end in sight, drawing NATO and Russia closer and closer to conflict. The war in Gaza is showing no sign of slowing down, and as Glenn revealed recently, its continuation may be a sign that the end times are near.

One thing is clear: we are living in uncertain times. If you and your family haven't prepared for the worst, now is the time. You can start by downloading "Glenn's Ultimate Guide to Getting Prepared." Be sure to print off a copy or two. If the recent cell outage proved anything, it's that technology is unreliable in survival situations. You can check your list of supplies against our "Ultimate Prepper Checklist for Beginners," which you can find below:

Food

  • Canned food/non-perishable foods
  • Food preparation tools
  • Go to the next level: garden/livestock/food production

Water

  • Non-perishable water store
  • Water purification
  • Independent water source

Shelter

  • Fireplace with a wood supply
  • Tent
  • Generator with fuel supply
  • Go to the next level: fallout shelter

Money

  • Emergency cash savings
  • Precious metals

Medicine

  • Extra blankets
  • Basic first aid
  • Extra prescriptions
  • Extra glasses
  • Toiletries store
  • Trauma kit
  • Antibiotics
  • Basic surgery supplies
  • Potassium Iodate tablets

Transportation

  • Bicycle
  • Car
  • Extra fuel

Information

  • Birth certificates
  • Insurance cards
  • Marriage license
  • Immunization records
  • Mortgage paperwork
  • Car title and registration
  • House keys, car keys
  • Passports
  • Family emergency plan
  • Prepping/survival/repair manuals
  • Go to the next level: copy of the Bible, the U.S. Constitution, and other important books/sources

Skills

  • Cooking
  • Gardening
  • Sewing
  • First Aid
  • Basic maintenance skills
  • Go to the next level: farming/ranching
  • Self-defense training

Communication

  • Family contact information and addresses
  • HAM radio

Miscellaneous

  • Flashlights and batteries
  • Lamps and fuel
  • Hardware (tools, nails, lumber, etc)
  • Extra clothes
  • Extreme weather clothes and gear
  • Gas masks and filters
  • Spare parts for any machinery/equipment

Is Trump's prosecution NORMAL?  This COMPLETE list of ALL Western leaders who served jail time proves otherwise.

PhotoQuest / Contributor, The Washington Post / Contributor, Win McNamee / Staff | Getty Images

Mainstream media is on a crusade to normalize Donald Trump's indictments as if it's on par with the electoral course. Glenn asked his team to research every instance of a Western leader who was jailed during their political career over the past 200 years—except extreme political turmoil like the French Revolution, Napoleonic Wars, Irish Revolution, etc.—and what we discovered was quite the opposite.

Imprisoning a leader or major political opponent is not normal, neither in the U.S. nor in the Western world. Within the last 200 years, there are only a handful of examples of leaders in the West serving jail time, and these men were not imprisoned under normal conditions. All of these men were jailed under extreme circumstances during times of great peril such as the Civil War, World War II, and the Cold War.

What does this mean for America? Are Trump's indictments evidence that we are re-entering times of great peril? Below is a list of Western leaders who were imprisoned within the last 200 years. Take a look and decide for yourself:

Late 1800s

The Washington Post / Contributor | Getty Images

Jefferson Davis: The nearest occurrence to a U.S. President to serve jail time was in the case of Jefferson Davis, the first and only president of the Confederate States of America. Jefferson was captured in Georgia by Northern Soldiers in 1865 and locked up in Fort Monroe, Virginia for two years. He was offered a presidential pardon but refused out of his loyalty to the confederacy.

Early 1900s

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Eugene V. Debs: Debbs, a Midwestern socialist leader, became the first person to run for president in prison. He was locked up at a federal penitentiary in Atlanta having been convicted under the federal Sedition Act for giving an antiwar speech a few months before Armistice Day, the end of World War I. Many of his supporters believed his imprisonment to be unjust. Debs received 897,704 votes and was a distant third-part candidate behind Warren G. Harding, the Republican winner, and James M. Cox, the second-place Democrat. Harding ordered Debs’s release from prison toward the end of 1921.

Nazi sympathizers and collaborators: After the end of World War II in 1945, several European leaders who had "led" their countries during the Nazi occupation faced trial and imprisonment for treason. This list included Chief of the French State Philippe Pétain, French Prime Minister Pierre Laval, and Minister-President of Norway Vidkun Quisling. The latter two were also executed after their imprisonment. President of Finland Risto Ryti and Prime Minister of Finland Johan Wilhelm Rangell were also tried and jailed for collaborating with the Nazis against the Allied Powers.

Late 1900s

The Washington Post / Contributor | Getty Images

The end of the Cold War: The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 was one of the pivotal moments that brought the Cold War to a close and marked the end of Communist East Germany. With the fall of the wall and the collapse of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), the former leaders were brought to trial to answer for the crimes committed by the GDR. General Secretary Erich Honecker and General Secretary Egon Krenz were both put on trial for abuse of power and the deaths of those who were shot trying to flee into West Germany. Honecker was charged with jail time but was released from custody due to severe illness and lived out the rest of his life as an exile in Chile. Krenz served 4 years in jail before his release in 2001. He is one of the last surviving leaders of the Eastern Bloc.

Lyndon LaRouche: Larouche was a Trotsky evangelist, public antisemite, and founder of a nationwide Marxist political movement, became the second person in U.S. history to run for President in a prison cell. Granted, he ran in every election from 1976 to 2004 as a long-shot third-party candidate. When he tried to gain the Democratic presidential nomination, he received 5 percent of the total nationwide vote. Even though in 2000 he received enough primary votes to qualify for delegates in a few states, the Democratic National Committee refused to seat his delegates and barred LaRouche from attending the Democratic National Convention.