American People Hire High-Powered Lobbyist To Push Interests In Congress

WASHINGTON—Citing a desire to gain influence in Washington, the American people confirmed Friday that they have hired high-powered D.C. lobbyist Jack Weldon of the firm Patton Boggs to help advance their agenda in Congress.

Known among Beltway insiders for his ability to sway public policy on behalf of massive corporations such as Johnson & Johnson, Monsanto, and AT&T, Weldon, 53, is expected to use his vast network of political connections to give his new client a voice in the legislative process.

Weldon is reportedly charging the American people $795 an hour.

Unlike R.J. Reynolds, Pfizer, or Bank of America, the U.S. populace lacks the access to public officials required to further its legislative goals,” a statement from the nation read in part. “Jack Weldon gives us that access.”

“His daily presence in the Capitol will ensure the American people finally get a seat at the table,” the statement continued. “And it will allow him to advance our message that everyone, including Americans, deserves to be represented in Washington.”

Weldon says he hopes to spin the American public, above, as a group worth Congress' time.
Weldon says he hopes to spin the American public, above, as a group worth Congress’ time.

The 310-million-member group said it will rely on Weldon’s considerable clout to ensure its concerns are taken into account when Congress addresses issues such as education, immigration, national security, health care, transportation, the economy, affordable college tuition, infrastructure, jobs, equal rights, taxes, Social Security, the environment, housing, the national debt, agriculture, energy, alternative energy, nutrition, imports, exports, foreign relations, the arts, and crime.

Sources confirmed that Weldon is already scheduled to have drinks Monday with several members of the Senate Appropriations Committee to discuss saving the middle class.

If you have a problem, say, with America’s atrocious treatment of its veterans, you can’t just pick up a phone and call your local congressman,” Weldon told reporters from his office on K Street Monday. “You need someone on the inside who understands how democracy works; someone who knows how to grease the wheels a little.”

Weldon said that after successfully advocating on behalf of Goldman Sachs and BP, he is relishing the opportunity to lobby for the American people, calling it the “challenge of a lifetime.” The veteran D.C. power player admitted that his new client is at a disadvantage because it lacks the money and power of other groups.

“The goal is to make it seem politically advantageous for legislators to keep the American people in mind when making laws,” Weldon said. “Lawmakers are going to ask me, ‘Why should I care about the American people? What’s in it for me?’ And it will be up to me and my team to find some reason why they should consider putting poverty and medical care for children on the legislative docket.”

“To be honest,” Weldon added, “the American people have always been perceived as a little naïve when it comes to their representative government. But having me on their side sends a clear message that they’re finally serious and want to play ball.”

According to Washington heavyweights, hiring Weldon is an immediate game changer and should force politicians to take citizens’ concerns seriously for the first time in decades. Moreover, sources said, Weldon will be able to help lawmakers see the American people as more than just a low-priority fringe group.

“Jack is very good at what he does,” said Joseph Pearlman, a headhunter for the McCormick Group who specializes in placing lobbyists. “He can take an issue that is nowhere on the congressional radar, like the pursuit of happiness, for example, and make it politically relevant. The next time Congress passes a bill dealing with civil rights or taxes, I wouldn’t be surprised if the U.S. populace is mentioned somewhere in the final language.”

Though Weldon has only been on the job for three days, legislators have already seemed to take notice.

“Before today, I’d actually never heard of this group,” Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) told reporters. “But if Jack says they’re worth my time, I’ll take a look and see if maybe there are some areas where our interests overlap.”

“But I’m not making any promises,” he added. “I’m a very busy man.”

Ten reasons why a ‘Greater Depression’ for the 2020s is inevitable

After the 2007-09 financial crisis, the imbalances and risks pervading the global economy were exacerbated by policy mistakes. So, rather than address the structural problems that the financial collapse and ensuing recession revealed, governments mostly kicked the can down the road, creating major downside risks that made another crisis inevitable. And now that it has arrived, the risks are growing even more acute. Unfortunately, even if the Greater Recession leads to a lacklustre U-shaped recovery this year, an L-shaped “Greater Depression” will follow later in this decade, owing to 10 ominous and risky trends.

The first trend concerns deficits and their corollary risks: debts and defaults. The policy response to the Covid-19 crisis entails a massive increase in fiscal deficits – on the order of 10% of GDP or more – at a time when public debt levels in many countries were already high, if not unsustainable.

Worse, the loss of income for many households and firms means that private-sector debt levels will become unsustainable, too, potentially leading to mass defaults and bankruptcies. Together with soaring levels of public debt, this all but ensures a more anaemic recovery than the one that followed the Great Recession a decade ago.

A second factor is the demographic timebomb in advanced economies. The Covid-19 crisis shows that much more public spending must be allocated to health systems, and that universal healthcare and other relevant public goods are necessities, not luxuries. Yet, because most developed countries have ageing societies, funding such outlays in the future will make the implicit debts from today’s unfunded healthcare and social security systems even larger.

A third issue is the growing risk of deflation. In addition to causing a deep recession, the crisis is also creating a massive slack in goods (unused machines and capacity) and labour markets (mass unemployment), as well as driving a price collapse in commodities such as oil and industrial metals. That makes debt deflation likely, increasing the risk of insolvency.

A fourth (related) factor will be currency debasement. As central banks try to fight deflation and head off the risk of surging interest rates (following from the massive debt build-up), monetary policies will become even more unconventional and far-reaching. In the short run, governments will need to run monetised fiscal deficits to avoid depression and deflation. Yet, over time, the permanent negative supply shocks from accelerated de-globalisation and renewed protectionism will make stagflation all but inevitable.

A fifth issue is the broader digital disruption of the economy. With millions of people losing their jobs or working and earning less, the income and wealth gaps of the 21st-century economy will widen further. To guard against future supply-chain shocks, companies in advanced economies will re-shore production from low-cost regions to higher-cost domestic markets. But rather than helping workers at home, this trend will accelerate the pace of automation, putting downward pressure on wages and further fanning the flames of populism, nationalism, and xenophobia.

This points to the sixth major factor: deglobalisation. The pandemic is accelerating trends toward balkanisation and fragmentation that were already well underway. The US and China will decouple faster, and most countries will respond by adopting still more protectionist policies to shield domestic firms and workers from global disruptions. The post-pandemic world will be marked by tighter restrictions on the movement of goods, services, capital, labour, technology, data, and information. This is already happening in the pharmaceutical, medical-equipment, and food sectors, where governments are imposing export restrictions and other protectionist measures in response to the crisis.

The backlash against democracy will reinforce this trend. Populist leaders often benefit from economic weakness, mass unemployment, and rising inequality. Under conditions of heightened economic insecurity, there will be a strong impulse to scapegoat foreigners for the crisis. Blue-collar workers and broad cohorts of the middle class will become more susceptible to populist rhetoric, particularly proposals to restrict migration and trade.

This points to an eighth factor: the geostrategic standoff between the US and China. With the Trump administration making every effort to blame China for the pandemic, Chinese President Xi Jinping’s regime will double down on its claim that the US is conspiring to prevent China’s peaceful rise. The Sino-American decoupling in trade, technology, investment, data, and monetary arrangements will intensify.

Worse, this diplomatic breakup will set the stage for a new cold war between the US and its rivals – not just China, but also Russia, Iran, and North Korea. With a US presidential election approaching, there is every reason to expect an upsurge in clandestine cyber warfare, potentially leading even to conventional military clashes. And because technology is the key weapon in the fight for control of the industries of the future and in combating pandemics, the US private tech sector will become increasingly integrated into the national-security-industrial complex.

A final risk that cannot be ignored is environmental disruption, which, as the Covid-19 crisis has shown, can wreak far more economic havoc than a financial crisis. Recurring epidemics (HIV since the 1980s, Sars in 2003, H1N1 in 2009, Mers in 2011, Ebola in 2014-16) are, like climate change, essentially manmade disasters, born of poor health and sanitary standards, the abuse of natural systems, and the growing interconnectivity of a globalised world. Pandemics and the many morbid symptoms of climate change will become more frequent, severe, and costly in the years ahead.

These 10 risks, already looming large before Covid-19 struck, now threaten to fuel a perfect storm that sweeps the entire global economy into a decade of despair. By the 2030s, technology and more competent political leadership may be able to reduce, resolve, or minimise many of these problems, giving rise to a more inclusive, cooperative, and stable international order. But any happy ending assumes that we find a way to survive the coming Greater Depression.

Nouriel Roubini is professor of economics at New York University’s Stern School of Business. He has worked for the International Monetary Fund, the US Federal Reserve, and the World Bank.

Eastern Democracy was based on Imitation, which confesses others are Superior

08:28
uh the the thesis of the book we were
asking
why is it that democratization produced
a politics of grievance and resistance
and resentment and one the simplest
answer
is that uh democratization was imitation
and imitation
uh uh is associated with the confession
that the other is superior you’re
inferior
and of course that produces resentment
but more
particularly if i could give you just
one i think uh
very revealing example
of how this uh how this developed let’s
take hungary as an example
the hungarians took standard model
thatcherit
privatization which uh uh developed in
the west
they tried they applied it in a society
with no private capital
the consequence of this was in a way we
should have seen it ahead of time
was that managers took the assets of
their enterprises
and uh used that to buy the enterprises
for themselves
creating their own private wealth and uh
this was the beginning of the
development of an appalling inequalities
in these uh in east european societies
post-communist societies unjustifiable
inequalities which were resented but not
only that
the the language of liberalism which is
the language of human rights individual
rights
was not able to capture or to articulate
the grievance uh experienced by those
who watched the public patrimony of
their country
put into the pockets of individuals who
were insiders
so the privatization of polypatrimony
was a uh was was experienced as an abuse
as a
10:09
as a as a crime but it couldn’t be
10:12
articulated in the language
10:13
of individual rights of liberalism and
10:16
indeed
10:17
the language of liberalism particularly
10:18
the language of private property rights
10:20
be uh beca banned blessed or justified
10:24
this process which was widely viewed as
10:27
illegitimate and unjustifiable and and
10:30
of course
10:31
personally painful if you are your best
10:33
friend
10:34
you have two friends uh uh they’re very
10:37
equal one day
10:38
in a couple years one of them is riding
10:40
around in limousines
10:41
the other can’t afford a bus ticket one
10:43
is eating at fish restaurants every
10:45
night the other
10:46
can’t afford a piece of fresh fruit that
10:48
produces resentment so the
10:50
the the westernization process created
10:53
traumas in these societies which we
10:55
didn’t foresee and didn’t predict
10:57
but that was the seedbed for this
11:00
populist revolt against the liberal
11:02
order
11:03
now for those of us who grew up during
11:04
the cold war this is going to sound
11:05
passing strange but there are many on
11:07
the right
11:08
in eastern and central europe that
11:10
consider the european union to be the
11:12
new
11:12
soviet union how can that be
11:15
yeah this is a very strange development
11:17
interesting and kind of
11:18
complicated so the first thing is that
11:21
reform elites
11:23
in eastern europe were very eager to uh
11:26
to join in the accession process to the
11:29
european union
11:30
and therefore accepted the post-national
11:32
rhetoric
11:33
of the european union that if you
11:35
remember was really developed to help
11:37
germany
11:38
overcome its nationalistic past so it
11:40
was a very post-national language
11:42
and that um meant that this these reform
11:46
elites
11:47
were leaving behind in their own country
11:50
national symbols
11:51
national traditions they kind of didn’t
11:53
speak about them
11:54
and therefore when resentment uh or when
11:57
when the west entered into crisis
11:59
particularly in 2008
12:01
and the western model seemed to be less
12:04
than it was cracked up to be
12:05
and to present problems um a counter
12:08
elite emerged
12:09
in eastern europe in central eastern
12:11
europe mostly of provincial origins
12:13
who blamed everything that went wrong
12:17
on the fact that they the reform elite
12:19
had abandoned the nation
12:20
had abandoned national traditions so
12:22
this was a uh
12:24
the the accession process was a viewed
12:26
as a
12:27
betrayal of national authenticity
12:31
uh in in addition there’s another very
12:34
interesting factor which is that the
12:35
european union was
12:36
asking all in and hungary become
12:39
democratic
12:39
you must learn how to become democracies
12:42
like we in the west
12:43
at the same time brussels was saying we
12:46
are going to write all of your laws
12:48
so while you’re becoming democratic
12:50
actually your laws are going to be
12:51
written in brussels
12:52
this produced also resentment and a
12:54
feeling that there is something
12:56
uh perverse or uh arrogant about
12:59
brussels obviously brussels is not
13:02
moscow it doesn’t have a boot
13:04
on their throats but it did it does did
13:06
convey
13:07
a sense of uh superiority judgmentalism
13:10
and then i i need to uh emphasize that
13:13
although
13:14
the west did not impose democracy and
13:18
liberalization
13:19
it did judge the progress of
13:22
democratization and liberalization
13:24
and in a way westerners when they
13:26
visited eastern europe i saw this a lot
13:28
i worked there of course in the 90s
13:30
uh it was as if it’s in the way tourists
13:33
visit a zoo you know
13:34
you go to the zoo you look at the
13:36
primates you say well
13:38
uh they’re like us but they’re lit
13:40
missing something they don’t have an
13:42
opposable thumb
13:43
or they don’t have the rule of law so
13:45
you’re kind of saying you’re you’re kind
13:46
of a copy of us but you’re not a very
13:48
good copy
13:49
and probably you’ll never be much good
13:51
so there was a feeling of
13:52
being looked down upon uh which also
13:55
stirred resentment uh and let me just
13:59
say one other thing about
14:00
i think authenticity the sense these
14:02
populists are claiming that they
14:04
are those in touch with the authentic
14:06
tradition which has been
14:08
lost by westernization and
14:10
democratization so
14:12
in 1989 uh it’s clear that the
14:16
nationalists were allied with the
14:19
liberals in the revolt against moscow’s
14:21
empire
14:22
so in poland there was a lot of
14:24
basically trying to get away from russia
14:25
was a very important motivation now they
14:28
didn’t
14:29
speak the language of nationalism at the
14:31
time probably because it was not a
14:32
language welcome in brussels
14:34
but also because this was the period of
14:36
milosevic you know the bloody side of
14:38
nationalism and milosevic was a
14:40
communist communist so a man like
14:42
kaczynski would never
14:43
echo milosevic so there was the language
14:46
of nationalism was subdued
14:49
and when after 2008 2014 the immigration
14:52
crisis
14:53
these populist knees near felt freed
14:56
from having to
14:57
to cover their nationalism with the
14:59
language of liberalism so
15:01
it it it had felt like a kind of cage
15:04
in which they were trapped and they
15:06
broke out of it
15:07
and returned to this kind of nativist uh
15:10
way of feeling which had always been
15:12
there but had been muffled so it was
15:15
that’s part of the why populism seems
15:18
authentic to them
15:19
well let’s extend your metaphor a little
15:22
further if we want to talk about the
15:24
number one primate in the zoo boy this
15:26
is a terrible analogy
15:28
uh should we ask about russia here why
15:30
didn’t i i mean
15:31
the the many of the central and eastern
15:33
european countries did sort of flirt
15:35
with
15:35
liberal democracy for a while before
15:38
adopting illiberal democracy that they
15:40
have today but russia never did
15:41
why why did russia never try it well i
15:44
mean first of all you have to remember
15:45
that in the soviet union
15:46
elites have been have found it very easy
15:49
to
15:50
fake democracy have fake elections
15:52
because they’ve been faking communism
15:53
for at least two decades before
15:55
uh they were sort of dressed up this way
15:58
let’s pretend we’re having to
15:59
have elections these are all rigged of
16:01
course uh
16:02
and uh we know he’s going to win and
16:04
there’s not really any competition
16:06
that was very easy for them to do they
16:07
also in russia by the way
16:10
they they had a communist training told
16:12
them that democracy is just
16:14
a trick by which elites uh deceive their
16:17
publics
16:18
and hold on to power capitalism is just
16:20
really an elite project to
16:22
exploit the working classes and so on so
16:25
they were
16:25
very comfortable with that idea of
16:27
capitalist democracy
16:29
but in the end basically uh russia
16:33
was so injured i mean the main thing to
16:36
understand about the russian
16:37
situation is they lost huge part of
16:40
their territory
16:41
uh a huge number of their population
16:43
they lost their superpower status it was
16:45
a
16:46
it was a huge injury to the self-image
16:48
of russians which was not true in
16:49
eastern europe that they didn’t
16:51
eastern europeans didn’t have this
16:52
imperial swagger this imperial
16:54
claims that they were you know on the
16:57
top of the world
16:58
uh and actually exporting their own
17:01
model
17:01
elsewhere so that was a very strong and
17:04
i think the so the russians for
17:06
a couple decades were pretty happy with
17:08
just faking democracy and
17:10
but in the end as putin came to power
17:13
the resentment of being treated as
17:16
second-class
17:16
citizens as being looked down upon as
17:18
being taught lessons
17:20
by the west boiled over and uh the
17:23
russians
17:24
went from this like faking a democracy
17:28
to a what we call aggressive imitation
17:31
uh that is
17:32
imitation of the west which is designed
17:35
to humiliate the west
17:36
uh which is designed to show that the
17:38
west is hypocritical so for example
17:41
in the speech he gave putin gave
17:44
justifying the annexation of
17:46
crimea he basically imitated word for
17:49
word
17:49
uh western speeches about the
17:51
independence of kosovo
17:53
human rights national self-determination
17:56
and so forth but this was
17:57
very much a kind of imitation meant to
18:00
expose the west’s
18:01
hypocrisy and uh yes i think that’s
18:05
i think that’s a good uh way to
18:07
understand the putin regime which is not
18:09
people often uh act as if putin is a
18:12
great strategist and it is true that
18:13
he’s played
18:14
beforehand well but he’s not a great
18:16
strategist his
18:17
his main aim which is not strategic and
18:20
is not
18:21
helping russia redevelop itself is to
18:24
expose the west as hypocritical that’s
18:26
his
18:26
obsession uh and i think that’s a
18:29
blind alley that’s a dead end maybe a
18:31
blind alley but most days of the week
18:33
it’s not that hard to do
18:34
whoops there’s my little editorial
18:36
comment uh let me try this
18:39
do we have to come to the unhappy
18:40
conclusion therefore
18:42
that liberalism as we understand it is
18:45
really not exportable
18:47
to cultures that are if i can put it
18:49
this way wired differently
18:51
from those of us in the west i think
18:54
one of the big lessons of the 2003 war
18:58
in iraq
18:59
is that uh trying to impose a
19:02
democratic system after a six-week
19:04
military campaign
19:05
in a country where three-quarters of the
19:06
population married their first cousin
19:08
and so
19:08
it’s a completely different social world
19:10
you can’t just you know uh
19:12
impose something like this and that that
19:15
was such a lesson even though
19:16
our uh uh international internationalist
19:21
humanitarian internationals uh went over
19:24
there
19:25
with the uh crude and i think uh
19:28
defenseless uh idea that the only
19:31
legitimate authority with whom we are
19:33
going to deal are going to be authority
19:35
that’s elected
19:36
i think it’s very good to help so the
19:38
listeners to contrast what
19:40
how we behaved in afghanistan and how
19:42
the americans behaved in afghanistan and
19:44
how they behaved
19:45
in iraq and afghanistan we had been
19:47
there for decades we
19:49
knew all the warlords we didn’t say to
19:51
the warlords you must be elected
19:53
before we negotiate with you but in iraq
19:56
the religious leaders the tribal shakes
19:57
were set aside we had this
19:59
fake ideological belief that we have to
20:02
create authority by elections which of
20:04
course is a
20:05
is a uh it is based on historical
20:08
ignorance
20:09
democracy is a tiny spot in human
20:11
history
20:12
it has cute enormously complicated
20:14
preconditions
20:16
it doesn’t we we’re confusing the
20:18
absence of obstacles with the presence
20:20
of preconditions we thought if you get
20:21
rid of saddam
20:22
you’re going to have democracy just like
20:24
if you get rid of communist elite you’re
20:26
going to have democracy
20:27
and this was an illusion it’s a
20:29
democratic ideology that
20:31
idea was uh is is is it
20:34
uh uh ex exposes a kind of disgraceful
20:38
historical ignorance which was uh at the
20:41
basis of much of american foreign policy
20:44
in the post-cold war era we’ve got about
20:46
five minutes to go here so let me try a
20:48
couple more questions with you
20:49
your book now suggests that we’ve
20:51
entered an age of illiberal
20:53
imitation how do you see that
20:56
well it’s a strange uh fact that uh
21:00
president trump seems to be uh uh
21:03
accepting putin’s uh a strategic goal of
21:07
dismantling the european union
21:09
of destroying all of the international
21:11
organizations created by the united
21:12
states after world war
21:14
ii uh and he’s at war not only with the
21:17
wto the who in
21:19
all the world america made seems to be
21:21
uh uh
21:22
the liberal world order seems to be
21:24
something that trump himself
21:26
is uh attacking so that is a a kind of
21:29
imitation of and he’s using the rhetoric
21:32
nationalist rhetoric anti-immigrant
21:33
rhetoric
21:34
of orban and kaczynski uh and the
21:38
anti-western
21:39
uh language and also by the way
21:42
uh he’s the first american president who
21:45
has not said we deserve to rule the
21:47
world because we’re morally superior
21:49
i mean that’s a kind of not a very
21:52
likable uh uh position to take but every
21:55
american president has taken that
21:57
basically
21:58
trump says no no we’re just like
21:59
everyone else uh
22:01
well what i was personally don’t you
22:03
think
22:04
is that again be a tough case for him
22:06
personally to make it
22:07
imitate him personally yes i would say
22:10
but he of course
22:11
his basic uh thing is he resents
22:14
this is sort of the trump world view is
22:16
he resents terribly
22:18
the countries that imitate our uh
22:21
economic productivity
22:22
or or are horning in on our market share
22:25
and so on so
22:26
he’s a person who has claimed i think
22:28
the first american president ever
22:30
to say that america is the greatest
22:33
victim of the americanization
22:34
of the world so that’s part of it but i
22:37
wouldn’t like uh to say a word about
22:40
uh the current crisis we’re in and i’m
22:43
i’ve been asking myself and my colleague
22:45
yvonne krustev
22:46
we’ve been speaking about this as well
22:48
what does the was the current pandemic
22:51
tell us about the trauma of liberalism
22:54
and the the competition between
22:56
liberalism and populism
22:57
uh because in a way uh the
23:01
the previous crises of liberalism 19
23:04
uh the uh 2001 in which it turned out
23:07
that
23:08
defending human rights the whole uh idea
23:11
of defending human rights as the primary
23:12
value
23:13
seemed to give way to the battle against
23:15
terrorism in which rights were viewed as
23:17
a trojan horse for our enemies
23:19
2008 which really showed that our
23:22
economic elite
23:23
i didn’t know what it was doing so that
23:25
also uh really hurt our prestige to uh
23:28
2014
23:29
in which the migrant crisis uh made
23:32
people feel like open borders
23:33
were a threat to western civilization
23:36
and so on all these things have
23:37
combined and and we’re under a
23:40
uh we’re living in a time where those
23:43
three crises have seemed to be
23:45
accumulating in the present one
23:46
and weakening the liberal commitment to
23:50
globalization and so forth
23:51
openness uh at the same time
23:54
every political order has its own
23:57
disorders and populism
23:59
is producing its own discontents and
24:01
these populist leaders
24:02
bolsonaro trump authoritarians like
24:05
putin
24:06
strangely enough they are very afraid of
24:09
this crisis
24:10
they are not you know taking hold of it
24:12
and using it
24:13
to uh to uh uh to their benefit
24:16
uh there’s a way in which this kind of
24:19
crisis has
24:20
uh had is is challenging any kind of
24:23
regime
24:24
the archaeon regimes we saw that in
24:25
china where they’re hiding evidence
24:27
we see it in the west some some
24:29
democratic societies have done well some
24:31
authoritarian societies have done okay
24:33
it doesn’t seem to fit well into our
24:36
ideological
24:37
uh polarities so i think that’s and the
24:39
way i would put this in the end the
24:40
question open to us
24:42
is now in the future is is the pandemic
24:45
going to
24:46
increase our reliance on science and
24:49
rationality
24:50
belief in fact consciousness or is it
24:53
going to
24:54
uh create a uh is the panic
24:57
of and fear going to lead to more
25:00
conspiracy theories
25:01
uh and more xenophobia uh uh
25:04
migrant bashing uh so we’re on a knife’s
25:08
edge
25:08
i think and the the fate of the liberal
25:11
model and the liberal commitment to
25:13
rational decision making
25:14
uh and uh the uh uh
25:17
and its competition with these populist
25:21
myth makers
25:22
sloganeers who are always trying to sell
25:24
something has not been decided
25:26
i definitely do not think the populists
25:29
have the upper hand
25:30
i think the populists are also
25:32
struggling and they’re
25:33
not finding this an easy crisis to deal
25:36
with
25:36
so although i don’t believe that the
25:39
west is covering itself with glory
25:41
either
25:42
uh the whale and liberal regimes are
25:44
also struggling because
25:46
uh the the disease is hard to understand
25:49
and it’s hard to master
25:50
i i definitely don’t believe that uh the
25:54
current crisis is going to
25:56
really decide the question in favor of
26:00
of the populists well why don’t i
26:02
freelance then and just uh re-title your
26:05
book the light that’s failed
26:07
so far and we’ll leave it there uh
26:10
i want to thank you very much professor
26:11
holmes for joining us on tvo tonight
26:13
congratulations again on your gelber
26:15
prize
26:15
uh for anybody who wants to pick it up
26:17
yvonne krastieff and stephen holmes
26:18
collaborated on the light
26:20
that failed are reckoning take good care
26:22
and thanks for joining us on tvo tonight
26:25
thank you steve
26:30
the agenda with steve pakin is brought
26:32
to you by the chartered professional
26:33
accountants of ontario
26:35
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26:38
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26:40
protect the public
26:41
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26:44
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26:45
we are cpa ontario and by viewers like
26:49
you
26:49

George Washington: Role Model for Giving Up Power

89:48
is going on here if we could have pulled
the soldiers in the Army and Potomac at
Gettysburg right after Gettysburg and
said what did you accomplish here they
would have talked all about Union that
is what they would have talked about
first to last first to last it was a war
about Union it was a war about Union
that also killed slavery and most white
Americans eventually supported
emancipation but they but not for the
reasons we’d want them to they don’t
care about black people
wish they did they didn’t they saw
emancipation as a tool to defeat the
rebels to punish what they considered
oligarchy slaveholders they didn’t think
slaveholders believed in democracy they
saw them as oligarchs they call them
oligarchs all the time the South is not
what the founders had in mind and they
could work it out in their mind that
even though a lot of the founders are
prominent slaveholders the documents and
the traditions that they bequeath
unionists in the loyal States would have
said the oligarchic slaveholding south
is totally out of step with this they
are inimical to the intent of the
founders and if they succeed in tearing
the nation apart oligarchs everywhere
can point to the United States and say
see we told you people are not capable
of self-government look at them they
can’t even have a presidential election
can’t even do that they rip their nation
apart that’s what’s at stake that’s what
and if the Union gives you those things
what is your obligation as a male a
white male of military age your
obligation is you pick up a musket and
you go do your small R Republican duty
and who is your model there who is the
model for disinterested Republican
service Stuart’s Washington George
Washington didn’t even take a salary
during the American Revolution and
George Washington did something twice
that absolutely blew people’s minds at
the time he didn’t do it once he did it
twice at the end of the Revolutionary
War
he gave up power he was the
Generalissimo they couldn’t believe it
in Europe he what did he show he’s not
Julius Caesar he’s not Oliver Cromwell
he is a man with small our Republican
virtue he went back to Mount Vernon then
he’s made president he would have been
president for life if he wanted to be
FDR had to think about it Washington
didn’t they would have just elected he
until they hauled him out of the
Executive Mansion but he did it again
he gave up power a second time and it
just absolutely mystified most people in
Europe how that could happen
didn’t mystify Americans they said this
is that’s the point
he’s the point he’s the model so in our
own little way each of us were all
members of the third Vermont in our
little way we are emulating George
Washington