When Sawyer pressed him to do favors for the lumber and railroad industries, La Follette’s stubborn streak returned. He was not yet a passionate crusader, but he took immense pride in his own virtue. Rebelliousness fused with self-righteousness, an explosive combination. He angrily rejected Sawyer’s demands.
.. The party schism was different from any that had preceded it, and the press struggled to label the factions. It did not occur to people to call the two sides progressive and conservative.
.. In 1896, La Follette arrived at the Republican state convention with enough pledged delegates to win the gubernatorial nomination. As if to prove his point about corruption, Stalwart opponents bribed some of his delegates into switching sides, depriving him of victory. In 1898, it happened again. Defiant and undeterred, La Follette prophesied that “temporary defeat often results in a more decided and lasting victory than one which is too easily achieved.”
.. In contrast to Roosevelt’s pragmatic approach, he believed that temporary defeat was preferable to compromised legislation, which would sate public demand for reform without making genuine progress. “In legislation no bread is often better than half a loaf,” he argued. “Half a loaf, as a rule, dulls the appetite, and destroys the keenness of interest in attaining the full loaf.” Legislative defeat, on the other hand, served a useful political purpose. He would use the defeat of a popular bill to bludgeon his opponents in the next election, and he would keep assailing them with it until they yielded or lost their seats.
Soothing Words on ‘Too Big to Fail,’ but With Little Meaning
Historically, finance’s share of the economy has been at about 4 percent. Today, it’s about twice that. And the peak occurred not in pre-bubble 2007, but in post-crash 2010, at just under 9 percent, according to research from Thomas Philippon of New York University. That represents a shift of more than $600 billion of wealth a year, as Wallace C. Turbeville, a former investment banker-turned-financial reformist, has pointed out.
The Other Arab Awakening: Twitter in Saudi Arabia
King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, who in Gulf Arab terms is a real progressive, remains widely popular, but his government bureaucracy is seen as unresponsive and too often corrupt. That’s why Saudi Twitter users have recently created these Arabic hashtags: “#If I met the King, I would tell him”; “#From the people to the King: education is at risk” and “#What Would You Like to Say to the Minister of Health?” (after repeated hospital mishaps).
Egyptian Military’s Assault on Protesters
The images in Egypt are excruciating to behold, both in a literal and philosophical sense. In what appeared to be more of a direct military assault than a police-style crowd-clearing exercise, Egyptian forces reportedly killed nearly 150 people, most of them supporters of ousted President Mohamed Morsi who were engaged in nothing more offensive than a series of sit-ins. Suddenly, in one awful day, the exercise of the democratic rights and ideals that are so dear to America’s self-image–and which have formed the heart of U.S. foreign policy since the end of the Cold War–were rendered all but irrelevant to many Arabs, especially because of Washington’s mild response