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From: mwm@UCBOPAL.CC (Mike  Meyer, I'll be mellow when I'm dead)
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Changing ideas
Message-ID: <8509171814.AA23399@ucbopal.Berkeley.Edu>
Date: Tue, 17-Sep-85 14:14:53 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucbopal.8509171814.AA23399
Posted: Tue Sep 17 14:14:53 1985
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In article <269@pedsgd.UUCP> pedsgd!bob writes:
>In article <3632@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU> josh@topaz.UUCP (J Storrs Hall) writes:
>>A study of intellectual history will show you that it was around 
>>1900 that socialist ideas began having their greatest impact 
>>on leading political thinkers, though it took time for them to 
>>"trickle down" to the mass of second-hand idea dealers such as
>>politicians and the press.
>
>This reply begs the question, which is 
>How is it that the people of Scandinavia (and the rest of Western Europe, and
>the US ) allowed themselves to be decieved into accepting democratic socialism
>when it was clearly contrary to their best interests?

The answer to this question can be found in a 130 year old quote from Thomas
Macaulay (British historian, circa 1857):

        The day will come when (in the United States) a multitude of
        people will choose the legislature. Is it possible to doubt
        what sort of a legislature will be chosen? On the one side is
        a statesman preaching patience, respect for rights, strict
        observance of public faith. On the other is a demagogue ranting
        about the tyranny of capitalism and usurers asking why anybody
        should be permitted to drink champagne and to ride in a carriage 
        while thousands of honest people are in want of necessaries.
        Which of the candidates is likely to be preferred by a workman?
        . . . When Society has entered on this downward progress, either
        civilization or liberty must perish.  Either some Caesar or
        Napoleon will seize the reins of government with a strong hand,
        or your republic will be as fearfully plundered and laid waste
        by barbarians in the twentieth century as the Roman Empire in
        the fifth; with this difference, that the Huns and vandals who
        ravaged the Roman Empire came from without, and that your Huns
        and vandals will have been engendered within your country, by
        your own institutions.