It isn't clear to me what you see as problematic in the 1958 NDEA. What was wrong with the government loaning (or granting) money to students so that could go to college? The program was one reason that there was a doubling in the number of college students between 1960 and 1970 (from 3.6 million to 7.6 million) while the population grew about 13% to 202,000,000 in 1970. (There were other factors, of course: Vietnam, a good economy, optimism about employment, and so on.)

I wouldn't have been able to attend college starting in 1964 if it had not been for this kind of program.

The military-industrial complex has grown steadily since Eisenhower pointed out the dangers of this kind of combination. The needs of the military for weaponry, and the need of corporations for profit from making weaponry, and the desires of congress members that big appropriations benefit their district or state pretty much guarantees there will be a lot of waste, fraud, and abuse. Armaments (for us and for whoever has the cash to buy them) are a critical part of our economy.

I would greatly appreciate it if you would spell out what, exactly, we borrowed from the Germans in the area of education and bureaucracy. (We may well have, but I'm not clear about what.)

By the way, there is nothing particularly fascistic about

"

Big Government (fascism) — Athena

There are both specific and general features of fascism, but large bureaucracies in themselves aren't one of them.

I do agree 100% that the threat to democracy is internal. Education can, should, but may not contribute to student's enthusiasm about democracy, or give them competence. Looking back to my high school experiences... there was nothing particularly democratic about school. It wasn't an awful prison, either, but maybe it was a bit closer to a dictatorship than a democracy.

Preparing people to be productive citizens is an important social task. Schools grew in importance during the latter part of the 19th century into the 20th, when there were many immigrants who needed to be "taught how to be American". As the volume of immigration diminished and as generations passed, that task faded away. Later in the 20th into the 21st century, teaching Americans how to be consumers became important. The school wasn't needed for this task, because the various forms of media -- print and electronic -- were perfectly suited to shape, motivate, and spur consuming behavior, 24/7/365. Schools still serve useful functions. Elite students (those who will be managing business for other people, professionals, etc.) need a decent elementary/high school education to prepare them for college, and they generally get it. That's like... 20%. The other 80% need to be taught how to behave. Whether they know shit from shinola is less important.

"They" definitely do not want a bunch of high school riff raff suddenly becoming political change agents, whatever change they might have in mind.

A large poorly employed working class/under class isn't inherently fascistic, but they are usually fertile soil for fascistic manipulation. Strong man leaders (or strong woman leaders) who emotionally manipulate the working class definitely is characteristic of fascism. Trump fits that bill. Being extremely stupid isn't a sign of fascism, and maybe we are lucky that he isn't the brightest bulb on the marquee.

I would greatly appreciate it if you would spell out what, exactly, we borrowed from the Germans in the area of education and bureaucracy. — Bitter Crank

The US military is organized Prussian-style. It's said that as men left the military, they drew on their military experience in the creation of industries.

But the US is now partly de-industrialized and it's been decades since the US was engaged in a real war. Maybe it's worn off?

For one, big government and fascism aren't the same thing.

Are you in agreement that the US adopted the Prussian bureaucratic order? I want to be sure of what others are saying about this. It is much easier to have this discussion with people who are familiar with the information. So if you are in agreement about the Prussian bureaucratic order, how do you come to this information?

What do you know of merit hiring? When did it start and why? What wwere the problems we were trying to correct when we switched to merit hiring? What could possibly be the problem with merit hiring? What does this have to do with college education and also the change in how hospitals are organized? What are the social and economic ramifications?

Eisenhower praised the German contributions to democracy soon after the war. I saw the letter he wrote in the document department of the University of Oregon library. I was looking for information about the National Defense Education Act and got excited and decided to find what else was happening in 1958. For sure education for technology and merit highering is a great social leveler and that is great for democracy, right? :wink: That is a trick question.

The National Defense Education Act was to last 4 years, but instead of returning to our domestic education or what some would call liberal education, the change has become permanent and it has been strengthened despite some believing our constitution prevents the federal government from controlling education. — Athena

The language of the act specifically excludes control of curriculum:

"Nothing contained in this Act shall be construed to authorize any department, agency, officer or employee of the United States to exercise any direction, supervision, or control over the curriculum, program of instruction, administration, or personnel of any educational institution or school system."

In regards to the shrinking influence of "liberal education", isn't that more directly related to the struggle between Specialization vs. Generalization that pits the demands of our means of production against the desire to broaden and enhance the lives of individuals?

His [Eisenhower's] warning has not been well understood and some believe talking about it is only conspiracy talk. — Athena

I am not familiar with the warning being received as "conspiracy talk", unless you are making a reference to someone like Chomsky who sees the owners of industry manipulating every system at their disposal for their benefit. Eisenhower wasn't imputing a malign motive to either the state or the capitalists. He was pointing at how the complex perpetuated itself and tended to expand if let unchecked. Your observation is more "conspiratorial" than Eisenhower's remarks.

It is essential to the understanding of this subject that we all understand the US also adopted the German model of bureaucracy and this became a huge shift of power when Roosevelt and Hoover worked together to give us Big Government (fascism). — Athena

If you are going to look for the DNA of modern bureaucracy, it is more profitable to look at France.
They had developed a professional civil service and a system of state finances while the Prussians were still busy telling other Prussians to get off their lawn. The French system was so well established that Alexis De Tocqueville wrote a book on how the revolution didn't actually change it: The Old Regime and the French Revolution.
The first real explosion in the role of Bureaucracy in the U.S. was after the Civil War what with all the management problems that appeared with conquering indigenous and rebellious people in ever expanding new domains.
The equation you make between Big Government and (fascism) is something you are assuming and trying to prove at the same time.

The enemy to our democracy is not over there, it is internal, and the only way to defend our democracy is in the classroom. — Athena

I agree wholeheartedly. How that is precisely the case is a subject of much disagreement.

I am reminded of the story of three wise men who were blindfolded and each one was told to touch a different part of the elephant and describe it. What we know of matters is usually limited and this can lead to false disagreements. How do you know big government and fascism are not the same?

Big government is not all bad, and it is not possible without the bureaucratic order we adopted from Germany. Fascism is private ownership of property and government control of industry. The bureaucratic order is what makes Social Security possible. What is another benefit of giving every citizen a number? How can this affect military decisions?

"In the past, personal and political liberty depended to a considerable extent upon government inefficiency. The spirit of tyranny was always more than willing; but its organization and material equipment were generally weak. Progressive science and technology have changed all this completely." Aldous Huxley

PS I studied public policy and administration at the U of O and I saved a textbook that I can quote from if there is a sincere interest in the subject. Also, many years ago my grandchildren were made wards of the state for about a year, and that experience radicalized me. I joined other grandparent in a fight for grandparents rights and we succeeded in radically changing the department that held responsibility for protecting children. I learned more tyranny and what logic has to do with opposing tyranny than I ever imagined possible in the US, when the state held control of what happened to my grandchildren. I am letting you know this because this a very sensitive subject for me. I am not saying this all bad. I am saying we need to be aware of the potential of governing powers to get out of control and also in this is the problem with merit hiring and the shift in power, and what education for technology has done to how we see the world.

I am looking forward to addressing your post but held it off because your post is far more complex than the others, and I am short on time. I am hoping my replies to the others helps address parts of the complexity. I hate to do this but I must close and attend to my mundane life. Just know I highly value what you said and very much look forward to addressing your post.

I too took advantage of the school grant and work/study income. Nothing is all bad. If it were all bad it would not exist, but consider the differences between education for being a human and education for technology. :kiss:

How do you know big government and fascism are not the same? — Athena

Because (a) logically they're not the same, "big government" isn't conventionally defined as "fascism" and it doesn't imply "fascism" analytically, and (b) there have been big governments that weren't fascistic.

So if you are in agreement about the Prussian bureaucratic order, how do you come to this information? — Athena

Familiarity with military life coupled with an interest in history. Prussian military organization was consciously adopted. It's a tool for managing a large operation. It was adapted to American industry by people who saw its advantages while serving in the military. So particularly post-WW2, though the US was democratic in name, most men spent most of their working hours in a martial environment and saw that as perfectly normal. Whether this means that WW2 and the Cold War militarized the American society is debated. Probably just comes down to how we decide to define the term.

I don't know the extent to which the same organizational principles were adopted by the US government. Do you know about that?

What do you know of merit hiring? — Athena

I don't know what you're talking about. What's the alternative to merit hiring? Affirmative action?

Familiarity with military life coupled with an interest in history. Prussian military organization was consciously adopted. It's a tool for managing a large operation. It was adapted to American industry by people who saw its advantages while serving in the military. — frank

It is true that the model of the General Staff developed by the Prussians was adopted by the U.S. military in the early twentieth century and employed by Pershing during WW1. But the development of management over huge projects has more to do with the industrial revolution itself rather than a cultural imitation of military organizations. When one considers the development of project management through the efforts of Taylor and Gaant, it looks like the influence of culture went the other way.

How do you know big government and fascism are not the same? — Athena

"Fascism" is not ancient; Mussolini invented it in 1915. It isn't a coherent political philosophy, really. It's best defined by its style of operating and what it opposes: socialism, marxism, democracy, and "progressivism" in general. The political style of fascism tends to be manipulative (leveraging class fears, resentments, and traditions against designated enemies). The Jews were Hitler's designated enemies, much less so Mussolini's. Italy's fascism also did not make the trains run on time. Fascism is usually characterized by strong-man rule (dictatorship). Militarism of some sort -- German, Italian, Spanish -- is a feature.

Authoritarianism is a feature of fascism, but we can have authoritarian rule without fascism. The Soviet Union was authoritarian but wasn't fascist.

Is fascism a potential threat within the United States? Yes, and almost certainly NOT from the targets that the "antifascist" campus activists target. It's far more likely to arise within mainline politics, not some tiny white guys' club. The guys who dress up as 1930s Nazis are more uniform fetishists than fascists. Take Donald Trump: I don't think he is sufficiently 'far out' or energetic enough to be a fascist, but his continuing post-election rallies where he strokes the hostilities of a slice of the electorate is one of the features one would look for. Another feature of a potential fascism is the far right operatives in the Republican party. I don't think they are fascist (yet), but that's the sort of place, personally, I would watch out for.

Fascism will arrive in the United States the same way it arrived in Germany: the established democratic mechanisms will be subverted and a core cryptofascist cabal in Congress will destroy the means by which subversion at the highest level would normally be prevented. The refusal to hold hearings for the last Supreme Court nomination in the Obama administration (Merrick Garland) is an example.

Subversion of the central political machinery has to be backed up by a core of citizen support for such a subversion. This core has to be willing to use crude methods to back up the subversion at the top. Is such a core in place, in large enough numbers? No -- I don't see any evidence of that today.

But the development of management over huge projects has more to do with the industrial revolution itself rather than a cultural imitation of military organizations. When one considers the development of project management through the efforts of Taylor and Gaant, it looks like the influence of culture went the other way. — Valentinus

The US military and US industry were joined at the hip post WW2. It would be odd if there were no cross pollination. I may have overstated, though. My info is anecdotal.

What's your association with product management, if you don't mind my asking?

The US military and US industry were joined at the hip post WW2. It would be odd if there were no cross pollination. I may have overstated, though. My info is anecdotal. — frank

There certainly was cross pollination. Eisenhower was warning about their integration and he had been in enough places to see the depth of it. I am only contesting the claim that the culture comes from a single source.
It should also be noted the "Prussian system" was not created ex nihilo but came out of responses to many forces, not the least of which was having their hind parts kicked by Napoleon. Napoleon's use of a citizen army was only possible because of the social structure that came before him. And so it goes until we find the first chicken and egg.

What's your association with product management, if you don't mind my asking? — frank

One of my jobs is project management. I learned it initially through working in construction as a part of taking on responsibility for site supervision. When I started to learn planning as a discipline in itself, I became increasingly aware that the industry methods being used had their own genealogy.

It should also be noted the "Prussian system" was not created ex nihilo but came out of responses to many forces — Valentinus

industry methods being used had their own genealogy — Valentinus

first chicken and egg — Valentinus

I recognize that parsing the sources of organization and methods is terribly useful for understanding historical developments. Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of knowledge about this, beyond figuring that various sources contributed to any given situation.

You are quite right about the Civil War (and its aftermath) being a watershed for organization. Lincoln, for instance, learned over a 4 year period (61-65) how to use the telegraph to control and direct his generals. Both sides used railroads to move troops -- an innovation of great significance. In one of his books Garry Wills discussed how dealing with several hundred thousand dead spurred a growth in bureaucracy: identifying the dead, the wounded, keeping track of the soldiers who survived, etc. required organization. For that matter, the logistics of the Civil War required some very good supply chain management skills. Just buying, training, and shipping horses was a huge job, never mind feed, horseshoes, harnesses, wagons, gun carriages, etc. that the horses pulled. A million horses and mules were killed.

I think that Preussia was first (or one of the first) nations to have a modern education system with things like having grades starting education from kindergarten. Yet as the name (Preussia) implies, this had influence in the 19th Century and perhaps early 20th century.

Time was the different in the 19th Century: Americans went to study the STEM-fields to Germany back then. As historical foundations obviously do have an influence at the present, it should be noted that the trends of post-war educational policy are the ones we have now. Also one shouldn't forget John Dewey and the Progressive Education movement, so education policy hasn't been one sided in the US.

Coming to the post-WW2 era I think that America itself wasn't anymore looking at other countries, but being the model itself. And at least in higher education, nowhere you find universities like the Ivy League ones and US universities dominate the Global higher education. As I worked once in the Academy of Finland and handled these question, I understood the size and dominance of the US quite staggering. If you put all the universities together here in Finland (all 14 of them) plus add all the major government research centers into one university, you basically would have a university spewing out papers, making academic research equivalent to MIT in volume (but not with as high impact factor). And MIT is just one university on a rather specific area giving higher education and not even the biggest university around the US. Basically three of the largest universities in Florida have equivalent number of university level students as my country.

Just like the American military might have learned things in the past from Preussians/Germans, it has been for a while been at the cutting edge of military doctrine since WW2. Hence it's far better to talk about an American school.

Frank, you are amazing. I was afraid of having another very bad experience, but with this new to me forum, and posters like you, I think I may have found my heaven. :grin:

In 1916 Scott Nearing, Ph.D. wrote of industry adopting the Prussian method, and also that the US used the English autocratic model for industry. Together the Prussian model and the English autocratic model make for a miserable life for most human beings. Our saving was a west where people could get land simply by working the land, and get away from the industrial North and stay away from the Slave South.

A better understanding at the beginning of the industrial age would have been nice. Anyone here familiar with Steam Punk? Frank, are right about accepting our reality as the way things are without questioning why they are like this and what might be different.

Yes, Prussia was the leader in education, however, in 1899 James Williams objects to the Prussian method because while it produces people who are good at research work, they are not original thinkers. In contrast, we had education for well round individual growth. The Prussian method produces products for industry. The focus of Egland's education was on character and ours was more along that line, but England was protecting its class society and the US was shooting for a greater quality and higher human potential. Ideally, US education would manifest the dream of the Age of Enlightenment of all humans achieving their full potential and participating in self-government. That is, the US was producing citizens for a liberal democracy with the understanding, that only highly moral people can have liberty instead of authority over them and understanding science's role in liberty. Prussians were authoritarian! Important difference. Huge difference! Anthill versus dignified and honorable human difference.

Amazing! You are so much better than people I attempted to engage with in other forums! Like I am in a state of shock and almost speechless to come across someone with such a good understanding of Fascism. Yup, this is heaven.

I would say Roosevelt introduced fascism to the US and I am sure he was strongly in favor of democracy. However, I think was blind to the problem of autocratic democracy. For sure Franklin and Teddy Roosevelt found fault with industrial leaders, but this did not lead to promoting the democratic model for industry. Instead of moving us in the direction of greater democracy, Roosevelt made our government more autocratic. That is, during his administration, the powers of government were greatly increased and especially the power to control industry with regulations and laws. I would call this Fascist. It left industrials the property owners, but was progressive in favor of labor, sort of? :chin: See the complexity here? He was government as parent taking care of the laboring class, adding the social programs Germany already had, Social Security and Workers Compensation, stopping short of a national medical plan. But did not increase the power of laborers.

Deming who also rose during the Great Depression, tried to convince Industry to accept the Democratic model for model but it was rejected so following WWII when the US was Americanizing Japan and Germany, Deming told Japan not to model its Industry after the US but to use his democratic model. Now that would have made our democracy stronger but that did not happen in the US.

"Fascism is usually characterized by strong-man rule (dictatorship)." And isn't that what Trump supports want, as those who supported Hitler wanted a strong-man rule. But what of the Military Industrial Complex that Eisenhower put in place. Do you know it was Texas behind the election of Eisenshower, Regan, and Bush? Oh dear, the problem with explaining what happened and why, is all messed with the complexity of it. What each president has done, was built upon what was done by earlier presidents. And in case you haven't noticed, it isn't citizens driving the development of the Military Industrial Complex as a world power. Might we say what is happening is so far beyond their self-interest, and understanding of politics that the average person has no understanding of what is happening behind the carefully orchestrated scenes. They are reactionary and I am saying this is a result of the change in education.

"Authoritarianism is a feature of fascism, but we can have authoritarian rule without fascism." Oh dear, more complexity. Christianity is authoritarian and is not compatible with democracy, but I don't want to add that to this thread. Perhaps in another thread, we can chew on that confounding complexity? I will just leave it at, one of my friends is a Trump supporter and she thinks he is being a very good father to our country. :lol: Just like individuals often need psycho-analysis to understand their irrational thinking and compulsions, so do nations need analysis. Kings are father figures and something is wrong with thinking we need a good father to run our country, but a Christian whose father is heaven, and whose god promises to send us good leaders, and who believes their prayers help the ruler be good authority over us, is not likely to be aware of the incongruity of democracy and being ruled by a father. Especially not when we have a national mythology that Christianity is why we have democracy. :chin:

"Is fascism a potential threat within the United States?" Last night I watched a documentary about the fascist movement in the US and I was glad at least one of these guys was throughout of military service when the evidence of his fascist activity was strong enough and the person with this information would not back off the military personnel that ignore the information as long as it could. Unfortunately, there are ties between our military and the fascist movement. Not direct ties. The military at this moment in time stands firmly against the fascist bullies and killers, but it is not the militaries interest to spend time checking out reports. It took years of research to gain an understanding of what war has to do with the rise in the KKK and Fascism that is not economic but is prejudice against non-whites and Jews. :brow: How do when have a coherent discussion of Fascism when it can mean two totally different things, economic or racist? I hope we keep in mind, Germany was a Christian Republic and so is the US. I say this because adopting the education that lead to Nazi Germany may not be best for our democracy and liberty?

"Fascism will arrive in the United States the same way it arrived in Germany: the established democratic mechanisms will be subverted and a core cryptofascist cabal in Congress will destroy the means by which subversion at the highest level would normally be prevented. The refusal to hold hearings for the last Supreme Court nomination in the Obama administration (Merrick Garland) is an example.

Subversion of the central political machinery has to be backed up by a core of citizen support for such a subversion. This core has to be willing to use crude methods to back up the subversion at the top. Is such a core in place, in large enough numbers? No -- I don't see any evidence of that today.
a day ago ."

No, and if we do not return to education for democracy, our democracy will become as dead as Athens democracy. The reasoning for what must do done has progressively been replaced with a different reasoning since 1958. When my generation is dead, there will be no one to remember when our nation was different. That gives us very little to remedy the problem. But more and more people are becoming aware of this. What they lack is the necessary understanding of what education has to do with all this, and why Christianity is a problem. Trump is not a good father figure and prayers are not helping him understand things like climate change and the need to stand for human rights around the world. Being okay with political leaders holding power by killing people is not good for America.

Frank's question about merit hiring is too important to miss.

"I don't know what you're talking about. What's the alternative to merit hiring? Affirmative action?"

The alternative to merit hiring is hiring someone because you trust his/her judgment. That is a judgment much broader than being technologically correct. You might be aware that we pay very little attention to the merit of people we choose for President. Before we became so technologically smart, we judged one another on character and education was almost 80% about character development. Our liberty is dependent on not on our technological smarts but our moral judgment and the decline in moral judgment leads to an increasing effort to control the masses by law or policy. I am horrified by our lack of liberty because employers are trying to control so much by policies and they leave so little to our judgment.

The Prussian model defines every job within an organized, and everyone who fills a position will do the job exactly like the person before because the job is precisely defined and limited to a closed set of duties. All the thinking was done by a committee and all that is left is to obey orders. Education for technology compliments this bureaucratic order. That is, after the policy is made, no one is left to make changes, short of calling the legislators' attention to the problem and mobilizing enough public concern to force a change in policy. No human being can change or bypass the policy without this legislative process. No one is very important to the organization, because everyone is a replaceable part, just like the Prussian military run by policy and an organizational order that keeps the war machine running no matter who is killed. We went to war against this mechanical society and now we are it. Like amebas, they assimilate everything that enters them and spit out what they can not digest, and they must grow or they get weak and die.

Our human experience has been dramatically changed and this has an effect on young men who are proud to be violent Nazis or in the military. Compared to our past, we lack personal power and value so we may try to gain power and value by joining the organization and being assimilated into it. In the past, we put a priority on human dignity and self-worth. Today we respect the position of power, but not the person in the position of power.

Before adopting the Prussian bureaucratic order our government bureaucracy and all organizational bureaucracy was extremely inefficient. Everyone did his/her job his/her way. No one told them how to do the job, or what the boundaries of the job were. When someone died it threw the organization into chaos for months or even years, because the new person would have different skills and talents and do the job differently and everyone would have to adjust to the new person. That made the individual very valuable because if /she died it made a big difference. Today it makes very little difference because a new part can be plugged in and the mechanical society, like the Borg, continues. We could not have Social Security and other government programs without the Prussian bureaucratic order, but it is my thought, the shift in education turned what would be a good thing into a nightmare.

Brilliant post.

I have said too much already, so I just to emphasize what I just said about education. The change in bureaucracy was necessary, however, adopting the education that goes with the bureaucratic order, creates a nightmare! We stopped transmitting our culture. Only when our democracy is defended in the classroom is it defended and we stopped doing that. Our national pride and reputation were not based on our wealth or military might. It was based on our values and we no longer know what those values were. In Athens, Athena was the protector for those who stood for liberty and justice. When Thomas Jefferson wrote of our right to pursue happiness, he didn't mean a bowl of weed, or a six pack, chips and watching a football game, but the pursuit of knowledge. We no longer know why our democracy is worth defending, so for some being a racist and killing Jews seems a good option for a meaningful life. With Trump they think this how to return our nation to greatness as disenchanted people followed Hitler.

Hot diggity you know Tocqueville! Oh my goodness there is too much to say. What is the rule about quoting from the internet? I think we should be working with what he said about the despot of the future. The Prussian bureaucratic order is just want was needed to manifest the despot that was what Christian democracies would becoming. You are right, the culture change did not come from one source, but was withing us since the beginning. The Prussian bureaucratic order and education for technology for military and industrial purpose is just what was needed to manifest what Tocqueville warned us of.

"Napoleon's use of a citizen army was only possible because of the social structure that came before him" That is an excellent point, along with what Tocqueville had to say about a democratic army.

Oh my, I have never seen so many well-informed people in a forum as you all have here. You all are absolutely awesome!

I would say Roosevelt introduced fascism to the US and I am sure he was strongly in favor of democracy. However, I think was blind to the problem of autocratic democracy. — Athena

Well, how did Roosevelt introduce fascism to the use? True, he served from 1932 to 1945 -- but that was then constitutionally kosher. Two terms were imposed on the presidency in 1951 (Amendment #22). True, he did greatly expand the federal bureaucracy (with various depression aid programs, and then war preparation programs). The US had a very small government into the 1920s. It was small enough that it did not need an income tax, except during the civil war, the 1890s (don't know why then) and then after 1913 and ever since. Most of the government income had come from excess taxes on alcohol and other items. With 25% of the workforce unemployed, the farm economy a wreck (poverty, bankruptcies, severe drought, etc.), with industrial activity at a low, and so on, programs were needed to assist people to some degree.

Roosevelt introduced his programs primarily to protect the oligarchy (of which he was a part) from revolution. Russia and Germany, for two, offered an example of how the ruling class could lose control.

Fascism is difficult to talk about because it is a style more than a platform. A lot of Germans and Italians had better lives under fascism (except for the small detail of a world war) than they had had under previous governments, and most of them were not active Nazis or Fascists. (Jews, of course, had a much less positive experience under fascism.)

You might like The Plot Against America, a novel by Philip Roth published in 2004. Roth's first book was Portnoy's Complaint. In TPAA, Roth's Jewish characters find the US moving rapidly toward a fascist take over. There is also the Sci Fi novel by Philip K. Dick, which supposes the Allies lost WWII and ended up under joint German Japanese occupation after WWII. (I haven't seen the TV series.) Both are pretty good.

our democracy will become as dead as Athens democracy — Athena

If it hasn't already died. I don't know. I'm of two minds: "All is lost" and "We can turn things around". We were never a direct democracy, and even the New England towns that started out with direct democracy found it difficult to maintain once their numbers grew, and when the times were good. Direct democracy becomes unwieldy fast.

the only way to defend our democracy is in the classroom. — Athena

But the lessons are hollow if students are not taught how to be free thinkers. And how can they be free thinkers if the purpose of schooling is competitive, not personal?

Prussians were authoritarian! Important difference. Huge difference! Anthill versus dignified and honorable human difference. — Athena

This issue has been on my back burner for a while. I'm thinking most of us aren't ready for the world you envision.

Consider this forum, which you praised. It's not a democracy. It's run in a fairly totalitarian manner. This is us as a species.

Ancient democracies always transitioned to monarchy eventually. I think the US will, if not in this century, in the next.

What's your assessment?

Thomas Jefferson as POTUS was an isolationist moron. Had he been POTUS in the 1930's and 1940's we would all be speaking Japanese by now and worshipping Shinto and the Japanese emperor.

Every POTUS from Reagan to Obama has exported American jobs. Only now has one (Trump) finally tried to reverse that process.

Almost the same thing however.

…"conventionally" is a populorum fallacy. You ought to brush up on your Aristotle reader.

By "ancient democracies" you must mean Athens and some of the other city states nearby it.

These ancient democracies did not possess the U.S. Constitution with its many checks and balances against tyranny (or as you say, monarchy).

Ergo I suspect that your comparison/analogy is flawed and that your notion is therefore in error.

I am so delighted to converse with someone who is so well informed! Compared to my experience in other forums, what is happening is amazing! I would love to share my library with you and all those who really care about understanding how the US was changed bureaucratically and why this matters. May I suggest the reason my point of view is different, is my books were written when history was made, they are not a modern interpretation of what happened.

I speak of "Big Government" because that is the title of a 1949 book written by Frank Gervasi. His purpose was to praise Hoover's reorganization of the federal government at the request of Roosevelt. That is, Hoover a Republican and the former president working with Roosevelt a democratic president to give us big government. Then another book warns of the dangers of giving government these new powers. The author of that book agrees, at the moment changes are necessary, but in the future, these new governing powers could be abused. Then as we deal with the second world war, another book questioned where is the United States going with all these government contracts and will we regret these industrial ties with the government? And as everyone knows, Eisenhower who warned us of the Military Industrial Complex, put it in place. We demobilized after every war, until Eisenhower made our military mobilization permanent. Military mobilization is the keystone to a Fascist economic organization. Listen to Trump, he is not telling other nations to increase their defense spending because the world is on the verge of war, but making and selling weapons is good for the economy and as Trump sees it, making and selling weapons is so important to our economy not even when there is no question of a national leader using his power to kill a journalist, and engaging in a dreadful war that is causing the deaths of many children, our economic gain is more important than any human rights. The Military Industrial Complex is escalating the potential for war and the destructiveness of war around the world for economic gain. I would say this is pretty Fascist. It sure as blazes is not representative of our past values.

It must be said, all governments became more involved with national economic growth. Remember a thousand years ago, individual traders took all the risk and government did not regulate trade. But mass production requires mass resources and mass markets and the world was changed. I don't want to carry my thread into blind democratic and republican banishing. Nor blindly bashing the US for all the changes. However, when this materialistic agenda totally consumes our nation and education, that is going too far! We must return to defending our democracy and liberty in the classroom.

It was based on our values and we no longer know what those values were. — Athena

While I share your dissatisfaction with the shallow quality of many of our present forms of life, I don't think it is only about leaving one kind of education system for another or agree that all the changes in our society are a mistake.

Athens and the beginning of U.S had the good and the bad bound up with each other. The institution of slavery was the most obvious evil but there were many others not always easy to describe. "Ages of Gold" throw long shadows.

The good and the are all tangled together today in our time as well. The rise of "nationalist" hate groups is not just about failures to communicate values, although it certainly is also about that. The growing number of people who embrace the normalcy of diversity is a real threat to certain other peoples' form of life. Those "other people" kept relatively quiet when they figured the game would always be rigged in their favor.

I also want to reiterate how our education and means of production are involved with each other. Expressed another way, the way we work and what is taught are bound up with each other. A significant change in one is talking about a significant change in the other.