Q: Which author do you most often reference?
A: I’m fond of Woodrow Wilson quotes.—Congressman James Langevin (The Hill)
Woodrow Wilson is also Langevin’s publicly professed Idol — Michael Riley (golocalprov.com)
Congressman James Langevin (D-2, Rhode Island) has represented the Ocean State for twelve years. A committed progressive in a liberal state, his views on abortion have wavered, yet he never waives an opportunity to expand state power to “help people.” Langevin also has a peculiar penchant for the quotes of President Woodrow Wilson.
Wilson was the first Progressive President in the White House. The doctrines of Progressivism in the early 20th Century stressed the mutability of human nature, the perfectibility of mankind through the proper use and expansion of the state. Following the teachings of German philosopher Georg Friedreich Hegel, Wilson and his fellow Progressives were convinced that a concentrated oligarchy of academic elites functioning as benevolent bureaucrats would right the wrongs of a fallen world and make the United States a strong nation.
Inevitably, their doctrines resisted the limited government essentials of the United States Constitution, as the Framers wisely recognized that since men are not angels, they should have as little power as possible, or face as many frustrations imaginable in their acts of governance. And Woodrow Wilson was no angel. A rabid racist, both anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic, Wilson purged the Executive Mansion of black people. He rigidly enforced segregation during his administration. Wilson pursued wars abroad against the same German state which he sought to emulate in the United States. While Americans were fighting Germans in Europe, German-Americans faced unprecedented (and undeserved) discrimination at home. He jailed political dissidents. Even Helen Keller, the deaf-mute who spoke more eloquently than most, regularly protested the Wilson administration.
Wilson despised the Constitution, treating the Founding Charter of our country as forever flawed, an aberration for a modern world, in which the right-thinking people would have more control and a better handle on governing men, rather than a government based on the consent of the governed.
Since Rep. Langevin loves Wilson quotes so much, I wonder how he would comment on some of these less pithy (and rather pitiable and patently impalatable) comments?
About Presidential power, Wilson commented:
“The President is at liberty, both in law and conscience, to be as big a man as he can . . .if Congress be overborne by him. . . it will be from no lack of constitutional powers on its part, but only because the President has the nation behind him, and the Congress has not.”
Congress is elected by the nation. Of course they have the nation behind them (at least, in theory). The Constitution invests in the President the power to execute the laws of the land, but not to make them (that’s your job, Langevin!).The President takes an oath to defend the Constitution, which includes protecting the freedom, citizenship, and vote of all Americans (including the black ones)
About state sovereignty, Wilson shared:
The old theory of the sovereignty of the States has lost its vitality. . .We are impatient of state legislatures because they seem to us less representative of the thoughtful opinion of the country than Congress is.
While Congress is getting nothing done, red states are receiving more residents, more wealth, and more power. Today, the reality is quite the reverse: the states are impatient with an improvident, exorbitant Washington which taxes and takes and takes its toll on taxpayers.
Following protests surrounding the sudden dismissal of a black civil servant regarding unequal treatment in the White House, Wilson responded:
Segregation is not humiliating, but a benefit, and ought to be so regarded by you gentlemen.
Here’s a modern-day translation for Wilson’s celebration of “separate but equal”: “You people should get used to your place.” Yikes!
From Wilson’s heavily biased chronicle A History of the American People:
The white men were roused by a mere instinct of self preservation… until at last there had sprung into existence a great Ku Klux Klan, a veritable empire of the South, to protect the Southern country.
Perhaps Rep. Langevin would like to explain his fascination with a man who not only served in the White House, but applauded people who wore white hoods (and terrorized black people, then burned crosses on their lawns)?
Director D. W. Griffith based his heavily racist film Birth of a Nation on Wilson’s prejudiced polemic. Wilson loved the film so much, he granted the picture a private screening in the White House. About the film, He commented :
It is like writing history with lightning; my only regret is that it is all so true.
Wilson believed that the Southern states were overrun by African-American zombies who would rape a white woman without delay? And this man was an academic from Princeton, too (New Jersey should disown any connection with this wretched man)
Langevin is an Obama fan, too. He reads President #44’s The Audacity of Hope. Langevin loves quoting Wilson, yet Wilson would be appalled at the audacity of a black man being President, let along being present in the White House. Very disturbing