Woodrow Wilson, generations before Obama was born, enunciated the same political premises and practiced the same abuses of executive power as Barack Obama does now.
The Annotated Woodrow Wilson
Or, Barack Obama’s Ideological Uncle.
The other day, reading through the comments on Daniel Greenfield’s November 7th FrontPage article, “The Leftist and Islamic War on the Family,” one reader Woodrow Wilson:
“The purpose of the education system should be to make children as “unlike” their parents as possible,” Woodrow Wilson, U.S. President.
Intrigued, and unfamiliar with that statement by Wilson (I had read his speeches years ago), I asked the reader for the source of the quotation. The reader replied with ad hominems and did not supply a source. Mr. Greenfield, however, instead directed me to a number of sites showing that Wilson wrote variations of that sentiment, but not precisely the verbatim one as reported by the other reader. One of Mr. Greenfield’s suggestions was the Teaching American History site which features Wilson’s 1913 essay, “What is Progress?” In that essay, the sentiment goes:
“It was for that reason that I used to say, when I had to do with the administration of an educational institution, that I should like to make the young gentlemen of the rising generation as unlike their fathers as possible.”
“What is Progress?” is regarded as one of Wilson’s most definitive works. However, I found it a rambling discourse, replete with homilies, metaphors, and non sequiturs, on why he was not so much a “progressive” as a bona fide socialist in search of a credible rationalization for being one that would not scare off his auditors. Like Obama, Wilson was no friend of the Constitution.
Nor has been the federal government. All states are dependent in varying degrees on federal largesse, from Delaware (the least) to Mississippi (the most). See the WalletHub charts here. Not so ironically, Republican Red States are among the most dependent – see the Cheat Sheet here for details – while Democratic Blue States are among the least. Regardless of which party has the biggest appetite for the cocaine, this is not what the Founders had in mind when they devised the Constitution to separate federal and state powers. Republicans have always gone along with ensuring that the states become addicted to federal money to facilitate highway construction and other “public works.”