Woodrow Wilson: The Devil?

Ignoring your idea of Wilson being a 'so-called progressive', since when was Henry Ford ever considered a political progressive? Sure, he supported the NAACP, but his violence towards organised labour must make him a conservative Midwest Democrat.

But then I'm asking you why you think he's in the same category that normally includes Bryan, Wilson and TR, so I guess I'm asking you to chase your tail, farwalker.

I studied this stuff at uni just a decade ago. Has there been such a huge shift in the historiography since then?

LATE EDIT: At best Ford strikes me as a being a conservative who had some credentials as a reformer, like Newton Baker, Wilson's secretary of war and former good governance mayor of Cleveland.

Sorry for the late reply, busy weekend.
Ford is considered a progressive by many historians, because of his decision to pay workers a living wage in order that they may afford the products they were producing. I would whole-heartedly dissagree but I'm only an amateur historian :)

I admit studies go back to the mid-nineties so I may not be up to date on the latest revisions to "what has always been".

On another note, I find it interesting how a discussion on the relative merits of an american president some 90yrs ago devolved into a argument about which European tribal society was right to commit mass-murder on the other. Oh well....
 
Ford is considered a progressive by many historians, because of his decision to pay workers a living wage in order that they may afford the products they were producing.

The early 20th century American history I studied in university was pretty othodox in that it (that is, the syllabus prepared by my middle-aged Australian professor, who I don't think had lived & studied in America for many decades) focussed on the political leaders and mass movements as being representative of just who was or wasn't a 'progressive'.

I think we learnt that Bernard Baruch was the only businessman who existed in the world of US power and reform.

I suppose my lecturer was biased towards a post-WWII liberal view of American history, where big business was not considered to have made any significant contribution to US public policy (or perhaps big business wasn't mentioned much so that criticism of it could be limited to the Gilded Age and the Wall Street Crash? Which is a Rockefeller-liberal approved historicism, when you think of it. It means that no plutocratic tendencies could possibly exist in the land of the free after about 1900.)
 

Susano

Banned
On another note, I find it interesting how a discussion on the relative merits of an american president some 90yrs ago devolved into a argument about which European tribal society was right to commit mass-murder on the other. Oh well....
you should look if they have any reading comprehension coruses in your area. You seem to need them.
 
you should look if they have any reading comprehension coruses in your area. You seem to need them.

Only if you sign up for the spelling courses :rolleyes: Or were you inviting me to sing in a chorus?:D

No need to get snippy Susano. I'm in no way qualified to give any kind of opinion about who was more oppressing to who in late 19th century Eastern Europe, I haven't paid much attention to it because it always boils down to the same thing: There were Germanic-speaking people and Slavic-speaking people all over the damn place and pretty well intermixed and they've been argueing and killing each other over who stole their uncle's vegetable patch 300 years ago (that is when they weren't living beside each other perfectly peacefully, which was most of the time).

Its sad and depressing and there are to many people who get far too worked up about it.

EDIT: This is my hundredth post, yippee for me!
 
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I'm sorry for bumping this thread but I just read a great book called the Politics of War by Walter Karp that has a very interesting point of view about Wilson. The books is about the Spanish-American War and the First World War and how those wars affected American politics. The author is harshly critical of Wilson, who the author does not consider a true progressive. Up till Wilson's run for governor of New Jersey, he opposed progressive principles He opposed regulation of the trusts and of corporations and supported the rule of bosses. He changed his tune because he needed the support of progressive Republicans to get elected and attackeed boss rule, despite Wilson, himself, being backed by the New Jersey Boss James Smith. Wilson supported the bare minimum of reform legislation when he was elected and when he was running for re-election. Karp argues that conservatives in both parties wanted the U.S. to enter the war in Europe so that they could use the war to crush the reform movement that, which they opposed.

While Wilson condemned the inhumanity of German's U-Boat warfare, he never condemned Britains blockade of Germany which prevented food from reaching German civilians. Wilson wanted to have a voice at the peace conference so that he could enact his program of world peace and become a great statesmen. The author asserts that Wilson was a meglamaniac and delusional and states that Wilson's to prevent a punitive peace at Versailes caused him to nearly go mad and resulted in his stroke.
 
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