Voices For American
Direct Democracy
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Voices For American Direct Democracy |
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Reinventing II
© 2007 by Stephen Neitzke -- stephen
@ddleague-usa.net
Reform Era, Part 1, circa 1877 to 1892 -- millions of southern farmers used co-op economics, and later the "populism" of the People's Party, to combat the post-Civil-War "crop lien system" that enslaved millions of independent farmers to predator elitists.
1. See especially Professor Lawrence Goodwyn's 1976 book, Democratic Promise: The Populist Moment In America. His subsequent 1978 abridged version, The Populist Moment: A Short History Of The Agrarian Revolt In America, contains an "Introduction" that is a must-read for any pro-democracy activist. Both books were published by Oxford University Press.
Reform Era, Part 2, circa 1896 to 1918 -- citizen majorities in twenty-six states, totaling tens of millions of citizens, rammed direct democracy governance components down the anti-democracy throats of their elitist state constitutions.
2. See especially, Thomas E. Cronin's 1989 book, Direct Democracy: The Politics Of Initiative, Referendum, And Recall, Harvard University Press. Although Cronin overworks an anti-democracy bias, the book is still a good read for the overview of Part 2's issues, personalities, and organizations.
Having won most of the political battles, Urban Progressives then won all of the court-room battles over whether their reforms met the Constitution's requirement for a republican form of government.
The US Reform Era was the greatest democracy movement of all time. There is no other democracy movement in recorded history that even comes close.
The US Reform Era should be a matter of pride for all non-predator Americans. The broad strokes of the Era's history should be known by every school child. Instead, predator elitism has effectively buried the Reform Era's history with dirty tricks in education, publishing, and law.
Happily, the academic parasites of the superrich, those professional historians, political science, and sociology teachers and writers who are "Madisonian scholars" -- i.e., cheerleaders for pure representative govt and adversaries of any direct democracy, who employ omissions, distortions, sophistry, vacuous arguments, and outright lies to make the superrich's corruption machines look good -- have not been able to completely eradicate the Reform Era's history. They've certainly tried. Very few history books that cover American politics from 1898 to 1918 -- the period of direct democracy increases in 26 state constitutions -- give any mention of direct democracy increases.
Proving this claim is very easy. Go to any library, public or college/university, and start pulling period history books off the shelves. Look for mention of direct democracy increases in state constitutions and the citizen organizations that forced those increases. Look especially for details of 1912, when citizens in five states gained constitutional provisions for citizen lawmaking. Those states were Idaho, Nebraska, Nevada, Ohio, and Washington.
Look especially for Ohio details. All inside the calendar year of 1912, ordinary citizens in Ohio forced a constitutional convention, formulated over forty constitutional innovations -- including citizen lawmaking's initiative, feferendum, and recall petition processes -- and approved all the constitutional convention's work in a state-wide referendum. Even the barest mention of Ohio's 1212 political drama is omitted from most period history books.
Despite shortcomings and failures, US civil society at the end of the Reform Era was the most politically sophisticated civil society in our history. No US civil society before or since has held that high a level of political sophistication.
Comments? Please Email
Stephen Neitzke, DDL Founder
stephen@ddleague-usa.net
Dura lex, sed lex.
Common
Ground
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Page last revised Tue 31 Jul 2007
