Are these guys really back on the “Difference Between Man and the Animals” kick? 

There is another point: In this fight, you can never quit, because the alternative is so horrible. To accept the conception of man as evil, is, to give up on the human race, and then, we are all animals. And one of the things that I have learned, from working with Lyndon LaRouche for nearly 40 years, is: If we make the commitment to never ever stop fighting, as long as there is one of us left, we are not going to be defeated. And when you get to a time like this, where everything else has failed, that quality of leadership will move the population. […]

And Lincoln is an example of the good person, who would never stop fighting. So, one of the things people are learning from Lyndon LaRouche, besides the beautiful developments in science and Classical culture, is, that a person who is a real leader, never stops developing himself, and never gives up. And that’s why I know, we’ll eventually win this fight, because we’re not going to quit.”  — Harley Schlanger

Hm.
Time to Prepare for the new Dark Age.

Man versus Animal.  It’s a peculiar thing.  We’re constantly running the same ground over and over and over again.  So, I’ll cue this up again, again:

Years ago, someone — college aged — posted something on youtube.  An interview with a LYMer manning a table just outside an Art College (or maybe the UW) in Seattle.  It was this passive allowance with mock agreement on whatever the LYMer said, a phony phone number exchanged, all leading to an agreement to a meeting / encounter that never happened.  There was a line in the video that was quite good — the interviewer asked, “What do you think of the students’ art here?”  The LYMer answered with a feh, and a statement that “They aren’t even interested in launching a new Renissance!”

Cue two paragraphs marked by some Larouchie who checked out the local library’s copy of “Dialectical Economics” sometime over the past three decades with “Bucephalus Blue Award Winner”, and if this is familiar it’s because I posted it here already.:
Does the increasing productivity of labor as we know it signify that the need for human productive activity will vanish? Will humanity become a daisy-clad mass of strolling Lotus-eaters? Quite the contrary. At first we will have escaped one predicament to encounter one more awesome and demanding. To one who views the matter from that standpoint, we freely concede that man is increasingly to become a prisoner of the effort to meet his new needs for existence. However, from a human point of view, the significance of this fact is at precise odds with that attributed to it by the bestialized hippy of present-day advanced capitalist culture. What human being would wish to become a dog before the hearth? Only the view of oneself as a beast could inspire the hope of freedom from labor. There is no need to worry that man would persist long in the state of bestialization desired by the Mansion Family. He would soon cease to exist. To be human is to locate one’s identity for society in the activity of perfection; to rise to a condition in which that perfection is advancing at a more rapid rate, in which more human quality is demanded of one, in which one increasingly gains social identity because of one’s human powers, is to fulfill everything that an actually human person could desire.  At this point we should recognize that we have struck upon evidence that socialist society is not the final, perfected form of human society.  It is merely the beginning of a series of human societies distinct from the bestialized forms from which we now have the potential to emerge.  The fact that material existence upon socialist society must have a mediated form, even though that mediation is a classwide institution, is […]

Etc. etc.

Steve, January 1997, on this blog.:  Maybe the most important philosophical question LaRouche addresses is “What is the difference between the human and the animal”. Do you know how he answers that? If you do, then a lot of the other stuff will become more clear.

A reach over toward Huxley, or more properly a kidnapping of Huxley.  I gather a mark of the Animal is that s/he takes Spa Treatments and Nature Walks.
The Man, evolved as he is (as seen on circa 2003  21st Century Science and Technology back page that I made note of on this blog already) uses a more efficient juicer to make orange juice, as opposed to squashing the orange with his hand in the way of the monkey.

 An element of “Rules for thee but not for me” creeps in to this elitism framework.  It’s seen in the dismissal of junk pop culture as debased.  Then I see a member of the Larouche Wikipedia Team quote “Professional Wrestler” Rowdy Roddy Piper.
Various crude sexual references as insult seem to imply a bestilization all its own.

The equation seems to have taken an odd turn with regard to politics.  Cheney was a “Beast Man”.  Obama and Rand Paul are merely “Fascists”.

Also, tipping is for the animals.  Do NOT trust LaRouche! They were supporting Hillary Clinton for president!
They lie. He is an economist, and his people can’t even leave a GD 15% tip!
Watch Josh Reeves’ documentary: THE SECRET RIGHT
Is that a documentary that EXPOSES the paltry amounts given by various Extremist groups?

That poster is confusing. Is he supposed to be stupid (lazy eye) or terrifying (Hitler mustache)?

Both, I guess.

“It seems wasteful, not to mention terribly unfair to Hitler, that Obama gets to be the only thing that’s like Hitler.  Honey, Republicans and LaRouchites can’t be hogging all the crazy,” Juanita explains.

OR
If Bush=Hitler it is really good that other evil nazis will possibly get elected to the Senate.
LaRouche pamphleters seem remarkably ready to call the police on anyone that debates their erroneous politics. Glad I didn’t fall for it!
Particularly if you like spas and nature hikes.

Group members held a banner reading, “End Obama’s Depression, Invoke the 25th Amendment.” They also held aloft a sign with a picture of Obama with Hitler-esque features (Eat your heart out, Jon Stewart) with a caption that echoed their song’s lyrics.

Between songs, they were eager to explain their position. According to them, President Obama is incapable of remedying the economic problems the country is facing. Obama has taken the side of the “big Wall-Street agenda” and is actually preventing the country from breaking out of the recession.

Despite their sign’s caption, a representative named “Tim” said they were not seeking impeachment, saying that it’s “a long process, and we want to be nice about it.”

Or, Not an Animal.
This is a mixed message.  You have a sign asking to impeach the President.  But when asked, you state that you no longer are seeking impeachment.

“Hey man, can I get a picture of you in front of  your sign?” I asked “Eric Thomas” (the name I was given and largely doubt).
“What? Is this for the news?” he asked.
“Yes.” Looking at me with a sense of distrust he asked, “Okay, which one?”
“The Sheet,” I respond.
“Alright, but I don’t really want any attention.” I look at him slightly baffled. Pointing at his sign that depicts President Obama with a Hitler mustache, I say, “But you have a sign reading ‘Impeach Obama’ on Main Street? Anyway, why do you want him impeached?”
“Actually, we don’t want him impeached anymore. Our focus has changed.” Now I’m really confused. “We want him out faster than that. We want him [removed from office] in a day,” he says to me with confidence.

So.  Are they behind in their signage?
Isn’t this a demand for Instant Gratification that serves the Animal more than the Man?

Some analysis of Kesha Rogers’s performance.  I could shift back to see what LPAC said about Rogers’s victory.  I think it went something to the effect that she is now a Major Political Figure — singing Christmas Carol themed Obama Impeachment songs being the job of Major Political figures.
Meantime, Rachel Brown lost the primary because the Boston Vault depressed the vote.

Here’s what Earl Browder said in 1940 about how well the Communist Party did in an election.

We want an accurate and objective estimate of our own party and ts position in American society, the trends of its development.  In order to get such an objective estimate, at least the elements of an objective estimate, perhaps as good a beginning as any could be made with an analysis of the special election in the 14th Congressional District of New York.  Now, what did this election show?  It showed, first of all, that while there did exist a potential majority of the people against both old parties, the situation had not matured to crystallize that majority behind the Communist Party at the moment.  And no matter how many voters may have been bought or stolen from us, that fact stands out as unchallengeable.
But when we proceed to a closer analysis of what happened, we find the following, in comparing 1940 with the last general election in 1938: whereas that year when we were in a bloc with the American Labor Party and the New Deal and when our vote was decisive in defeating Dewey and electing Governor Lehman, and we were going with the stream.  We received 11.6 per cent of the vote cast in the 14th Congressional District — on February 6, 1940, after five months of the most strenuous united attacks upon us by every other political camp, when the American Labor Party leadership together with the Democratic Party were waging a war of extermination against us, what happened as a result of this change of forces?
First, the American Labor Party disappeared from the scene entirely. […]  The Democratic Party dropped 45 per cent of its total vote or almost 20 per cent of its proportion of the total vote — from 69 per cent to 57 per cent, while the Communist Party advanced from 11.6 per cent to 13.6 per cent.  In other words, we were the only political organization which advanced its proportion of votes in this district.  The Republicans stood still — in proportion.
This testing of forces took place under the maximum concentration of fire of all other camps against us.  That was the only issue in the campaign — to defeat the Communists, and they really had the jitters about whether they could do it or not.  When we bear in mind that none the less we not only maintained our strength, but advanced, I think we can say realistically that our party has held its ranks solid, has multiplied its effective work, and extended its influence deeper among the masses.  That is unquestionable.
— Earl Browder, text of the report to the National Committee on Feb 17, 1940.

 Tremendous up-surge, I suppose.

 Now to move past Glenn Beck Territory, and cue letter response .

@kappy0405 You’re still crazy Alex Jones, Daniel Estulin, Webster Tarpley, Gerald Celente, David Icke and Lyndon LaRouche are all crazy. Fuck them and the horse they rode in on.

Webster Tarpley is never going to go after Rand Paul.  His bread is buttered with this sphere of influence, see Alex Jones.  I suppose this Paulite is consistent in understanding Tarpley’s philosophy, though.

Someone should tell these commenters that there was a SNL parody done in the 1980s, though not when he was popular so much as … novel and known.

If he knew it was coming, why didn’t he profit from it like that other guy?? Also, if he’s so knowledgeable about the economy, why did he have to commit credit card fraud on a larger scale than ever before??

According to LaRouche supporters this is because Jones is trying to cover their real message of freedom up.
As far as I know this isnt the case. I do like some of what LaRouche says, some of it not so much. They both seem genuine.

Say…
Your description of the LaRouche group reads as if it came directly from Wikipedia, the world’s least reliable source
Last looking at wikipedia seen here.

Worst sources exist.

Jewish-born Germacentric, Lyndon LaRouche […]
Duggan made the fatal mistake of getting too close to the true connection between LaRouche and the Frankists. Their program calls for the brainwashing of Jews to hate themselves and they don’t cotton to rebels. Here is how that is accomplished through the Israeli higher education system, as reported by Caroline Glick this week in the Jerusalem Post.

Ugh.

“Moved by this review, exclusively and preciously American, I present to you today a leader who is a compositve of the virtues of all these so deservedly enshrined in our party pantheon — William Howard Taft — as wise and patient as Abraham Lincoln, as modest and dauntless as Ullysses S Grant, as temperate and peace loving as Rutherford B Hayes, as patriotic and intellectual as James A Garfield, as courtly and generous as Chestar A Arthur, as learned in the law as Benjamin Harrison, as sympathetic and brave as William McKinley, as progressive as his predecessor, with a moral stamina, breadth of view, and sturdy manhood all his own.”
 — Ohio Newspaper Publisher Warren G Harding, Republican Convention 1912, as Theodore Roosevelt was bolting the well controlled Convention.

Harding could not not have known that the the Whiskered Age was at an end, which I guess boded well for Harding’s future as yet unknown Presidential ambitions.
This was 1912.  They were closer to Garfield’s assassination than we are today to Kennedy’s assassination, and about as far from Lincoln’s as we are today to Kennedy’s.  Dreams crushed, and all presidents became matyrs to causes not yet realized — as for the fourth, I can’t quite understand McKinley’s “sympathetic and brave”.  At the time, the standard take on Lincoln was something about set to reconcilate with the South, if not for the Radical Republicans who would follow and stampede Andrew Johnson.  If I have this right, Garfield received an undeserved post-death reputation as a man who would reform the Spoils System –  I gather “intellectual” covers his Mathematical Theorem.  …
… though, as Sarah Vowell points out, his papers show a President aggrivated by his presidential tasks who just wanted to be left alone in his study with his books, so consider that before we lament too much the Rise of the Stupidity…
 Kennedy receives the central conspiracy theory position as a man about to stop the Vietnam War.  Undeserved, unless you study and read that much into his American University Speech as against his “Missile Gap” campaign lies.  Kennedy stands on better ground with (albiet belated) respect to Civil Rights, passed by Lyndon Johnson against a Southern Dixiecrat with faltering power, the roadblocks crumbling as public opinion was moving apace.

Kevin Drum, coming to the inevitable:
Over the past century, American liberalism has mostly progressed in three very short, sharp spurts. The first was the Progressive Era, which saw the bulk of its legislative achievements in the decade between 1911 and 1919. These included the creation of the FTC, the Federal Reserve, the income tax, the Clayton Antitrust Act, the direct election of senators, voting rights for women, the breakup of Standard Oil, and the state-level reforms exemplified by Hiram Johnson in California.
Likewise, the bulk of the New Deal agenda was enacted in the six years between 1933 and 1938: the Glass-Steagall banking act, the Wagner Act, the WPA, Social Security, the Fair Labor Standards Act, deposit insurance, rural electrification, HOLC and the FHA, and a wide range of other smaller initiatives.
The sixties were similar: virtually all of the great legislative achievements we associate with that decade were enacted between 1964 and 1970: the Civil Rights Act, Medicare, the Voting Rights Act, passage of the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act and the EPA, the creation of OSHA, the Truth in Lending Act, and a wide range of legislation associated with the war on poverty.
Obviously there are exceptions. Among others, the FDA was created in 1906, the GI Bill was passed in 1944, and the ADA was passed in 1990. And judicial progressivism has followed a schedule all its own. Still, the fact remains that the vast majority of significant liberal legislation in America has been enacted in three short spurts totalling about two decades out of the past century.
But the last one of these spurts ended 40 years ago, and the Obama Era, such as it was, lasted a mere 18 months. That’s despite the fact that Democrats had big majorities in both the House and Senate, George Bush had seemingly degraded the Republican brand almost beyond salvaging, and conservative policies had produced an epic financial collapse that should have provided a tremendous tailwind for substantial progressive reform. And yet: 18 months. That was it.

It’s a strange dividing of years, and we can slice the time tables down to 18 months with sputtering “achievements” here, there, everywhere.  1911 through 1919 starts with the administration of William Howard Taft, who threw away his “progressive” remnants when Roosevelt broke with him, and ends with the second Wilson term at war in Europe, where the Red Scare was unleashed in the United States (and during all of the administration, setting back civil rights a generation by extending Jim Crow).  We’ve an uneven 1964 – 1970 term, where the Watts riots dissipated further domestic reforms under President Johnson — and Johnson could no longer garner any federal money for slum clearance.  Somehow we weave back into the Nixon Administration, which is appropriate to Drum’s point.
Mind you — er — Reform is dizzying.  But throw the term around every which way, and eventually it’ll have a broad hold of meaning.

Ted Rall is on a book tour for his “UnAmerican Manifesto”.  He hits the high points, argured against voting in this last mid-term election in order to allow space for a less confined political thinking, as Obama is “George W Bush without the Opposition.”  (Leftward Opposition)

Interesting, skip back to 2003:
I’m a charter member of the 2004 ABB (Anybody But Bush) society. Whether the nominee turns out to be a right-winger (Clark, Lieberman) or a colorless bore (Edwards, Kerry, Gephardt), I’ll vote for him over Bush, in the same spirit with which the late Afghan warlord Ahmed Shah Massoud reportedly toasted a meeting of anti-Soviet factions during the ’80s occupation: “First we kill the Russians. Then we kill each other.” But I have a preferance

Hm.
He was right about Chris Ware – to an extent (I prefer the island issue (novella?) of Jimmy Corrigan to the graphic novel, and everything else mines about the same inert arena of alienation), though I was unsure if the parody cartoon he published would be understood by the whole of his syndication audience.

The author of this book, about the emerging Democratic Majority (phrase plucked out from a book by a couple of “New Democrats” released in 2001 or 2002), was on his book promotion tour this past summer.  It marks a sort of wishful thinking.  He points out that the 2010 midterms is the least significant of the data points, though held that the Democrats would maintain a slim control of Congress — which still marks it as a data point that fell through.
It is worth seeing how, as it disrupts a narrative of a relatively seamless Obama first term.  Two items of consideration — Loewe argured that Obama’s campaign had created a powerful fund-raising apparatus and machinery.  Never mind the ever rolling K Street machinery of ever-changing front group organizations that would easily outod said fund raising machinery. 
— Also see some enforced “epistemological closure“. —

More importantly, we see Loewe lose out when he urges that Democrats in Congress, buttressed as they are by the Blue Dogs, need to resist the urge and short-cut of making Bi-partisanship one’s central virtue.  And so goes the dance of the most vulnerable party members.

But hey.  1970, and Kevin Phillips’s Nixonian “Emerging Republican Majority” was not coming to fruition… for lovers of the letter “R”.

Item the First:  The Microbiological Research Institute of the State Academy of Sciences of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has made nutritive powder with Grifola frondosa, a mushroom belonging to Polyporaceae.
The mushroom contains bioproducts raising immunity in human body, lowering cholesterol in blood and stabilizing blood sugar and blood pressure.
The powder, easy to manufacture in any place, is very efficacious for radiation damage, liver disorder, digestive trouble, hypertension, diabetes and skin disease.
The O-Il Pharmaceutical Factory has made nutritive pills with asteroid.
The drug, with a large amount of minerals and vitamins, is not only good for mental and physical fatigue but potent for liver disorder, vascular trouble, gastric and duodenal ulcers and obesity.
It also prevents aging and improves retentive faculty, while giving no sideeffect.
Its manufacturing technology was highly appreciated at the 11th National Exhibition of Inventions and New Technologies held some time ago.

Item the Second:  A national vocal and instrumental solo contest of officials and members of the General Federation of Trade Unions of Korea took place at the Namhung Youth Chemical Complex.
The contest drew more than 100 union officials and members selected at the contests held in the capital city of Pyongyang and provinces, cities and counties.
The participants fully displayed the skills they have trained through their brisk mass cultural and artistic activities.
They successfully represented with rich voice such songs as immortal classic masterpiece “Where Are You, Dear General?”, “Looks of Korea” and “Song of Pace-setters of Chollima Movement”, songs from five revolutionary operas and folk songs.
They also skillfully played solos with such instruments as kayagum, accordion and harmonica.

Okay.  You have to go back a day to see some suggestions of current tensions.

The Science and Encyclopedia Publishing House of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has brought out new books.
“U.S. Imperialists’ Crime-woven History of Aggression on Korea”, made up of four chapters, contains detailed data exposing their aggressive moves perpetrated against the Korean people through centuries. The book proves that they are a sworn enemy of the Korean people.
“History of Korean Land System” (Vol. 3) cites the landownership and land management in Korea under the Japanese imperialists’ rule to prove that the feudal relations were intentionally maintained and strengthened in the countryside in that period due to their colonial policy.
“The Nation’s Wisdom, and Weights and Measures” introduces measuring units used by the Korean people from the ancient times to modern times and explains their role in the economic, social and cultural development of the country.
It also shows that they had a great influence on Japan in the system of weights and measures and cultural development.
“History of Ancient Korea”, “Kuryo History”. “Silla History” (Vol. 1) and “History of Ri Dynasty” (Vol. 10), series of “Divisional History of Korea”, have also been published.

AND

After kicking off the war maneuvers for a war of aggression against the DPRK codenamed “Hoguk” the south Korean puppet group perpetrated on Nov. 23 such reckless military provocation as firing dozens of shells inside its territorial waters around Yonphyong Islet in the West Sea of Korea. The revolutionary armed forces of the DPRK took such decisive military step as reacting to the reckless military provocation of the puppet group with a prompt and powerful physical strike.

Nevertheless, the puppet group dared make an uproar over “a provocation” from someone and cry out for “punishment” like a thief crying “Stop the thief!” To crown all, it announced that it would indefinitely put off the inter-Korean Red Cross talks slated to take place on Nov. 25.

On sole virtue of being communist, East Korea is an excessively drab, unfunny, grey and dreary nation. The capital is noted for a persistent, dismal drizzle of precipitation, like England or the space under a Frenchman’s groin. This is the effect of a combination of the North Korean Cold Current and the East Korea Warm Current, which combine to form the West Korea Lukewarm Current.

The heroic capital of East Korea is GeoffP City named after the Great Leader of East Korea. Just North of GeoffP City is a huge heroic facility for disposal of handicapped people rounded up in the capital. Obviously letting The Great Leader live in the same city as handicapped people is an insult to The Great Leader. Dead and handicapped people are burned east of GeoffP City often leading to huge columns of black smoke in the East eradicating the need for a compass.

After all the excitement of the capital city the rest of East Korea is rather boring (but heroic), with the People’s Forests in the southwest and the People’s fish in the People’s ocean, and the People’s Garbage Dumps and People’s Barbed-Wire Fences around the People’s Impenetrable Borders to…uh…keep out the Imperialist Running-Dog South Koreans and the Not-Imperialist-But-Brother-Communists-We-Don’t-Like North Koreans. In between these features are several secret facilities of the illuminati. They are shown on the map with invisible pixels. You can make them visible by sprinkling your screen with the pee of a virgin, or the tears of a Gypsy (slang for Roma). The East Korea Warm Current passes north along the eastern coastline.

On most maps the Great Nation of East Korea is depicted as ocean. Obviously these maps are produced by denialists.

Attention everybody!  Sarah Palin has let it be known, via the Sean Hannity program, that she will not do an interview with Katie Couric.  And why not?

When asked about the matter during the prime time appearance — which comes on the eve of the release of her new book, America By Heart — Palin responds, “Why waste my time? No.”

The former Alaska governor and rumored 2012 White House hopeful suggested there’s no incentive for her to do an interview “with a reporter who already has such a bias against whatever it is that [she] would come out and say.”

Palin went on to take aim at the news coverage disseminated by the larger media industry. She cited her own credentials as grounds for assuming the role of critic in the world of journalism.

“I want to help clean up the state that is so sorry today of journalism,” explains the conservative favorite. “And I have a communications degree. I studied journalism — who, what, where, when, and why — of reporting. I will speak to reporters who still understand that cornerstone of our democracy, that expectation that the public has for truth to be reported. And then we get to decide our own opinion based on the facts reported to us.”

It’s… interesting.  Recall that interview.  A little surreal to be sure, lampooned by Saturday Night Live with a simple literal and unexaggerated recreation.  Couric’s interview was unfair to be sure, unfairly light and trivial — but navigatable by any real pol.

The entire Republican Establishment appears to want no part in a Politico — NBC (not MSNBC, mind you, NBC) Republican Presidential Debate.  “It should be held at the Reagan Library.”
Which is a, fine for them.  Though they reacted in anger with the Democrats’ boycotting of a Fox debate in 2008.
And I’m not going to be the one to set perimeters, but I don’t think it speaks well if they do the equivalent of knocking every question in every debate down to a panel of National Review, Weekly Standard, and Newsmax writers.

But considering how these things are going, maybe they should just run a long twitter-fest.  (Though, it appears the only way other Republican presidential candidates can get a headline is by referencing Sarah Palin in a tweet.)

Or a Dance-off of some sort?

We’ve come to that depressing moment in some item of “epistemological closure”.  Harp on sound-bytes all you want, they generally have words surrounding them that theoretically add texture to the discussion.  A tweet is a structurally enforced sound-byte.

I don’t know what you can say about Palin’s “Alaska” program, though it’s gotten past its “Curiosity” audience.
I can’t find the exact quote, but evidentally she said on one of these sort of non-political sort of image creating shows something about doing something or other — slaughering fish maybe? — just to catch the ire of liberals.  Anyway, in this day and age, when any sound-byte nugget falls out of the cracks and is passed by, what is the point of watching?

By the way, she can beat Obama.

Or, no she can’t.  Theoretically a terminally bad economy will be the perfect situation to propel her into the White House.  But should she win the nomination, she’d face the ire of your Barbara Bushes, and the public will squint hard enough to see sunlight breaking through the clouds.  But it doesn’t much matter if she has a worse chance than someone else — it won’t be good for the Republic.

On April 28, 1938, five thousand people gathered in the Livestock Pavilion in Madison, Wisconsin, to hear Governor Phil La Follette announce the creation of the National Progressive Party.  On the stage, behind the small and studious – looking governor, was an immense banner bearing the party’s emblem — a blue cross in a red circle.  It was a shocking and unmistakable takeoff of the Nazi Party’s symbol — some called it a “circumcised swastika.”  Around the pavilion stood national guardsmen in shiny steel helmets, emblazoned with the party’s jarring insignia.
The old parties were “fumbling the ball,” La Follette told the excited, roaring crowd.  The good intentions of President Roosevelt were being “sabotaged, undermined and humstrunt” by dissension in the Democratic Party, and especially by its reactionaries.  For liberal Americans who longed for change, the National Progressives, he proclaimed, was not a third party but rather “THE party our time.”
The party platform, however, puzzled some observers.  “We are near the end of the road,” La Follette exclaimed.  “The time has come when a new trail must blazed.”  Exactly what kind of trail did he have in mind?  The governor refused to offer “blueprints.”  What kind of progressivism was he offering then?  He ruled out “failed capitalism,” insisting that capitalism had become obsolete.  His brand of progressivism, he said, meant no more “coddling or spoon-feeding of Americans.”  The executive branch needed power “to get things done.”  But he opposed military preparedness and hammered FDR’s naval buildup.
His statements were alarmingly, ominously vague.  “We must have a method and be able to act collectively, but preserve at the same time individual initiaitve.”  In a frightening emotional appeal that made short shrift of reason, he declared that only true believers — “those who come with complete conviction and without reservation” — were welcome in his party.
A darkly shadowed photo in Life of La Follette on the podium with his arm outstretched, as if giving the Nazi salute, captured for many the menacing drift of his party.  When asked about the party insignia, La Follette gave the imrobably explanation that the gigantic X stood for the cross that citizens marked on their ballots, a symbol of their inalienable rights.  Interviewed by writer Max Lerner in his office, where he displayed a photograph of Mussolini, La Follette, who had visited Germany in 1933, spoke admiringly of the Fuhrer’s “positive achievements” and energy.
La Follette’s National Progressive Party managed to inspire some Americans — and it also aroused one former president, Herbert Hoover.  The new party, Hoover slyly remarked, might be just the wedge needed to divide Democrats and return Republicans to power. (*) […]
For his part, Roosevelt was seriously worried about a third party threat, though he joked about the grotesque Nazi resonances of the National Progressive Party.  Writing to his friend William Phillips, the ambassador to Italy, the president described La Follette’s dedication of his new party emblem on a twenty foot wide banner.  “All that remains,” he wrote, “is for some major party to adopt a new form of arm salute.  I have suggested the raising of both arms above the head, following by a bow from the waist.  At least this will be good for people’s figures.”

Roosevelts Purge
Susan Dunn
p 106 – 108

(*) Note that this was Hoover was thinking in 1936 with concerns to Huey Long and the eventual “National Union Party”.

If I were Osama Bin Laden, my next video would be composed of five minutes describing exaggerated TSA “groping” techniques.  That’s all.