GLENN: All right. So I met the and for anybody who listens to this program and has listened for a long time, you have to understand that the way I do my research, and I'm at the very beginning of my research on some things that I'm working on, is I'm not coming to you with the way I believe it absolutely is. I'm at the beginning of my research, but I want to share with something that I found last night doing my research in the early progressive movement starting around the 1880s, and it was really coming from you know, we didn't have a Ph.D. program here in America. And what happened was all of our intellectuals went over to Germany at the time of Marx and Meche and everything else, and they went and they got their education over there and then they came back over here. So our intellectuals, while Europe was Germany, in fact, in the 1850s, German artist was painting the George Washington crossing the Delaware to try to inspire people over in Germany to have a revolution like the American Revolution. You have the Statue of Liberty being built over in France trying to convince the French to have an American Revolution, to be more like America. Our intellectuals here went over to Germany into their Tweed Suitville and listened to the ramblings of people who were saying, well, now, wait a minute, maybe Meche has a point, God is dead. Well, now, wait a minute here, let's look at Marx and Engels, they have got some really progressive thoughts here. And they brought that infection back here.
So while the people of Europe are struggling to break free and be more like us, we're now having our intellectuals go over there and come back here and say we should be more like the intellectuals of Europe. See what happened?
So it's called the Age of Reform, and we had all kinds of problems over here in the United States and it was because business and government like the railroads getting in bed with each other. The age of reform bloomed at the turn of the century but owned its heritage to the intellectuals of the 1880s reform movement. This is what I'm reading last night. The reformers embodied a world view. Listen to this. That saw a man as inherently perfectible. Only his environment, especially the roles cast on him by society, prevented him from obtaining that perfect state. So in other words, you could be perfect. You can be anything. But it's what society does about you or says about you that's stopping you. You see?
STU: This is why they are always trying to correct every historical ill.
GLENN: Level the playing field.
STU: Right, yeah.
GLENN: Whereas many of the intellectuals of the late 19th century came from mainstream Christian religions, few listen to this few, if any, trace their roots to the more fundamental doctrines of the Baptist or traditional Methodists. Instead they were the intellectual heirs of Emerson and Unitarianism but with a decidedly secular bent.
In other words, they went to church, but it was a Unitarian church and it was a secular Unitarian church. The reformer Jane Adams, for example, these are the seeds of the progressive movement. The reformer Jane Adams, for example, had a Quaker background. Quakers, what are Quakers? You know one thing about Quakers. What are they?
STU: Passivists?
GLENN: Okay. Antiwar. Had a Quaker background. Absorbed little Christianity. Quote, she said, Christ didn't help me in the least, end quote. After her father died she fell into a horrible depression. Adams gained no support from Christianity. "When I'm needing something more, I find myself approaching a crisis and I look weather wistfully to my friends for help." Henry Demarest Lloyd whose series in the Atlantic monthly in the 1880s made him the original muckraker. He was born to Dutch reform minister turned bookseller. Lloyd himself was religious, though well educated and you are going to see this over and over and over again though well educated at Columbia University. Columbia University was the head of the snake on the progressive unit. It is all of this nastiness comes right out of Columbia University. Like most of the early reformers, he had received a first class education. Let me say it again: Like most of the early reformers, he had received a first class education. Indeed, the reformers almost always came from families of wealthy means. They were people who seldom experienced hardship firsthand. Think of the famous progressives that we know about. Kennedys. I just had another one here. Who was this? Rockefellers.
PAT: Vanderbilts.
GLENN: Teresa Heinz. John Kerry.
PAT: Soros.
GLENN: Look at the, look at the people that are always defending. Look at the ones, look at the people in Hollywood. The uber wealthy. Mabel Dodge Luhan, the daughter of Buffalo banker attended all the best schools before coming to the conclusion that she could not trust her thoughts, only her senses. Lincoln Steffens' father was an affluent merchant who could afford to send his son to universities in Europe where he acquired a taste for expensive clothes and dabbled in philosophy. Upton Sinclair and Jack London proved exceptions to this rule. Sinclair's family came from wealth on his mother's side but Sinclair's father ruined former southern aristocrat had descended into alcoholism and supported the family by selling liquor, then hats. Unlike most of the other reformed intellectuals, Sinclair actually worked selling dime novels to put himself through... Columbia University, before turning out the muckrakers call to arms the Jungle. London, a socialist, adventurer, sailor, gold seeker and famous novelist whose Call of the Wild became a classic had grown up poor and had as a youth worked a wide range of jobs. More typical than any of these writers is Ida Tarbell, considered the original muckraker whose father Frank had a thriving oil tank building business, providing her with first class education, blah, blah blah. Another aspect of the social gospellers is worth mentioning here, that listen to this. Some two to three million fathers absent from the home because of the Civil War. Hundreds of thousands of fathers were dead, literally millions of young boys were raised in households of women only. Rather than learning masculine behavior, they had been raised by their mother who taught nurturing and caring. In the process turning to the ways of their mothers and took Christianity out of the home to save the world. It is not a stretch to suggest that the causality list of Gettysburg and Chancellorsville produced a feminized progressive world view among the emerging generation of reformers. Best known for his association with social Darwinism, Sumner's views were spent more complicated, blah, blah blah, embracing views of overpopulation. He expressed concern for the negative impact of charity and government policy, blah, blah blah, blah blah.
You are seeing the roots in all of it: Overpopulation. What was Cass Sunstein? Overpopulation. This was in the 1880s. In the 1980s progressives are still talking about overpopulation. When that doesn't become popular, what do they do? They talk about environmentalism. Teddy Roosevelt, environmentalism. Teddy Roosevelt goes into the national parks and he says you can't use any of these rivers, you can't divert these rivers, you can't use them for irrigation for your fields, and farmers lose their farms. People go hungry because environmental first it's overpopulation. Then it's save the planet, we're destroying the planet, to the expense of people. It just repeats itself over and over and over again. To the intellectuals that are overeducated, they look down on anybody who is undereducated. A lot of them are coming from Columbia University. A lot of them are godless. I mean, it's playing itself out over and over again. These people haven't changed. A lot of them are the people who have come from wealthy families or are wealthy now. And elite. How many times have you asked, why are these the ones who are so for it? The Kennedys. Why are the Kennedys, why were the Roosevelts? I mean, if you look at Teddy Roosevelt, you want to talk about a life of privilege, Teddy Roosevelt. The next one up in line was Woodrow Wilson. A life of privilege! Then the next one up? Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a life of privilege. Then the next one? The Kennedys. A life of privilege.
You ask yourself, how do these people, how do these people do it? What are they thinking? They enjoy the good life because you have to go back to de Tocqueville and democracy in America. Here's a French guy coming over here trying to study us, and how do we how is America doing this, what is happening here? And he finds the answer. But then the second part of the book is a warning. There are going to be those who become so wealthy, they are going to want an elite upper class and they are going to want to kick the door closed on everyone else. The path that they blazed, they are going to want to make sure that they protect it by kicking the door closed for everyone else. And that is exactly what's happening. Look at what they're doing now, the progressives, in Washington, D.C. They're kicking the door closed on opportunity for anyone who's not currently in the ruling class. Not currently in the moneyed class.
Look, I grew up poor. I happen to have some money now, but let me tell you something. I'm no different than you. If you're poor today, you can be rich tomorrow. It's America. That's the dream. And anybody who tries to tell you differently is a liar. Anybody who tries to tell you differently doesn't understand the principles of America or they're trying to kick the door closed so you don't go in because they have this stupid idea that there's not enough money or success for all of us. There is. You just have to do it. You just have to follow your heart. You have to follow your mind. You have to understand the American system. You have to believe it. Not everybody's going to get rich, but that's not everybody's dream. When did the American dream become, we're all going to be rich? When the progressives started changing history. The American dream was not that everybody would have a big house and two cars and everything else. That was FDR. The American dream was being able to pursue your hopes and your dreams. It is the pursuit of happiness that was the American dream. When we restore that, Americans will once again lead the world and once again there will be artists in Germany painting our founding fathers or the refounders of America. There will be people in France that say, look at them, we should build yet another statue to these, to this idea that these people have once again reinstated because it will change us. And at the same time once again there will be somebody that tries to kick the door closed so nobody else can get in.
