When the Democrats Went Mad The Democrats weren’t always the party of Big Government statism. Robert Spencer
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm-plus/when-the-democrats-went-mad/
Nowadays it is taken for granted that if you’re a “progressive,” you’re in favor of extensive federal control over the economy, under the guise of concern for common people. The idea that moving toward statism and ever more government control constitutes “progress” is a Marxist notion that is rooted in the idea that history is moving inevitably and inevitably toward the Communist state. In America, one of the public figures who was primarily responsible for the popularization of this idea was a charismatic and yet thrice-failed Democrat presidential candidate, William Jennings Bryan.
In 1896, the Democrats were going through a revolution. The Republican platform committed the party to the gold standard, which prevented the production of so much currency as to lead to inflation. A minority of Republicans and a significant majority of Democrats, however, supported the free coinage of silver, which would lead to inflation and thereby make it easier for farmers to pay off their debts. That rapidly rising prices were rendering the life savings of Americans essentially worthless did not trouble the silver advocates, who cloaked their case in the language of support for the plight of the common man.
President Grover Cleveland supported the gold standard, but toward the end of his second term, he was deeply unpopular, and the silver forces among the Democrats were restive. At the Democratic National Convention, Bryan, a handsome and vigorous thirty-six-year-old congressman from Nebraska, electrified the delegates with a speech in favor of the free coinage of silver that is one of the most celebrated pieces of oratory in American history. “You come to us,” Bryan declared, “and tell us that the great cities are in favor of the gold standard; we reply that the great cities rest upon our broad and fertile prairies. Burn down your cities and leave our farms, and your cities will spring up again as if by magic; but destroy our farms and the grass will grow in the streets of every city in the country.”
Bryan sounded notes of class warfare that would become ever more common in American politics: “We do not come as aggressors. Our war is not a war of conquest; we are fighting in the defense of our homes, our families, and posterity. We have petitioned, and our petitions have been scorned; we have entreated, and our entreaties have been disregarded; we have begged, and they have mocked when our calamity came. We beg no longer; we entreat no more; we petition no more. We defy them!” In conclusion, he thundered: “You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.”
In a frenzy of enthusiasm over this populist appeal, the Democrats nominated Bryan for president. This marked a sea change for the Democrat Party: the party that had always favored a limited central government now began to advocate for a massive increase in federal welfare programs.
The campaign was a study in contrasts. With indomitable energy, Bryan traversed the country, making speeches that aroused a fervor among his supporters that was positively messianic. Those who loved him saw Bryan as the man who would lead them out of their poverty and despair to the promised land of earthly prosperity. One Bryan supporter in Kentucky expressed the sentiments of many when he wrote to the candidate, “I look upon you as almost a Prophet sent from God.”
The Republican candidate, William McKinley, was not nearly as exciting, and wisely did not try to be. Advised to imitate Bryan and begin a hectic national speaking tour, McKinley declined: “I might just as well put up a trapeze on my front lawn and compete with some professional athlete as go out speaking against Bryan. I have to think when I speak.” The Republican candidate stayed at his home in Canton, Ohio, addressing supporters who gathered on his lawn from his front porch.
Although Bryan outdid him in passion, rhetorical skill, and the zeal of his following, in the end, McKinley’s followers proved to be greater in number. The “Boy Orator of the Platte,” with all his class rhetoric, alarmed businessmen large and small, and they turned out in force to affirm their support for sound money and protectionism. McKinley won with 271 electoral votes to Bryan’s 176.
Bryan’s following, however, was too invested in their hero to see this defeat as decisive. Bryan won the Democratic nomination again in 1900 and 1908, but was beaten both times. In 1912, however, the leftists ran a colorless professor, New Jersey Governor Woodrow Wilson, who echoed many of Bryan’s pet programs. In gratitude for Bryan’s support after his victory, Wilson made him secretary of state. The Democrats by then were well on their way to becoming the statist authoritarians of today.
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