The reforms will be effected because the country needs them. It cannot stand much more of the present system. It will not accept Socialism. Occupying the middle ground of radical, but practical reform, Populism is inevitable.
National Politics and Policies
There is a saying that the difference between a wise man and a fool is that the wise man never makes the same mistake twice, while the fool continues to make it without limit.
It is of supreme importance that those who will act as political leaders during the next four years should think clearly in order that they may act wisely.
We have not, as yet, discovered any brighter lamp with which to guide our footsteps than that which Patrick Henry named the Lamp of Experience.
If I felt that our national leaders were about to repeat a disastrous mistake and adopt a policy which seems the continuance of the reign of class legislation and special privilege, I should be false to my own sense of duty if I did not at this early day point out that error and warn the Jeffersonians against it.
I say Jeffersonians because, after all is said and done, there are but two great differences of political thought in the United States—never have been but two; never will be but two.
On the one hand are those who believe that legislation should be dictated by the interest of the few; that the powers and the benefits of good government should be monopolized by the few; that the blessings and the opportunities of life should be the heritage of the few; that wealth and privilege and national initiative should perpetually be the legacy of the few.
On the other hand is the Jeffersonian idea that the human family are all alike the children of God; that the earth and all it contains was created for the benefit of this human family, and that any system of law and government which gathers into the hands of the few an unjust proportion of the common estate, to the exclusion of the vast majority, is an infamous invasion of the natural rights of man.