For the rest of it, the People’s Party was a lot more than that, and the main thing it was accused of was not communism. In the west union veteran populists were tagged as “ultra-secession Democrats,” while in the south confederate veteran populists were tagged as betraying “the white man’s party.” The reason the populists insisted on forming a national third party is they wanted the federal government to reorganize the treasury so as to provide these hard-working farmers a low-interest source of credit, freeing them up from Wall Street plutocrats and local loan sharks called “the furnishing man.” It was not exactly a “localist” platform.

William Jennings Bryan may have had a golden tongue, but he betrayed the populists. He picked a Wall Street banker as his running mate. In some states, where populists had a majority of voters behind them, established Democratic election boards simply cast all Negro votes for their own candidate, then boasted that “white supremacy has been saved by Negro votes.” That had something to do with why white redneck populists decided all Negroes should be disenfranchised — but the local aristocracies went ahead and disenfranchised as many of the small farmer “white” voters as they could in the process. It was nasty, all around.

So, its always dangerous to rewrite history in light of whatever issue you want to push today, BUT, I fully agree that using food for fuel makes no sense at all, and massive government subsidy of “economic development” in general just made a few insiders rich and left the rest of us footing the bill. I would kind of like to see government fund R&D of new medicines, then license production to private companies, with taxpayers getting our money back, rather than have pharma companies rationalize price gouging by saying “we have to get our R&D money back.” (Don’t we all believe they charge about three times what the R&D actually cost them?) The problem is to pick exactly what government belongs in and what it doesn’t. Generally, leave the small stuff alone, give a hand to things that would improve life for all once they are up and running, but can’t break into the market in the first place, like electric cars, and anything that gets so big we all have to have it (like telephones, or the railroads for farmers in Kansas), tie it up tight so it becomes our servant and not our master.

Amy, I don’t disagree per se. See my last comment under Peters’ Krusty post for a brief explanation.

Here in my state we just expressed populist rage with rising taxes by kicking the incumbent out and bringing the Republican candidate in. Now I was a bit suspicious of the Republican candidate as he went around promising to lower my taxes as he never once explained exactly how he was going to do that.

Well, this week he explained. He is going to make the permit process for real estate developers easier.

The permit process he referred to is what protects the pitiful amount of farmnd we have left, it is what protects the pitiful left overs of what were once magnificent coastal areas, the permits protect the character of the few rural places we have left. The permit processwhich people in this state fought for, is what stands between us and the determination of the real estate developers to get rich by turning our once largely agricultural state intoa giant strip mall and one extended , never ending suburb.

So this is an example of how a populist rage can be expressed in ways which actually become more destructive of what we value.

I’d suggest we must be cautious – a conservative quality.

An uneducated populace – a people who are so complacent they do not bother to understand the issues we face – can make things much worse. As I wrote on another blog, keep in mind that the French Revolution began as a populist uprising which resulted in a naked woman stadning on the altar of Notre Dame Cathedral being worshipped as the “Goddess of reason”.

That is a spectacular image Caleb, send it along to those folks in their fancy suite of offices in San Francisco and remind them that a sea of grass beneath magnificent clouds can be just as moving as Half Dome. Even more so when you are standing there, bathing in the smell of grass under the vast weight of a blue sky.

The semsester’s entering its critical period, papers rolling in for grades, work piling up, but hot tasty music (i.e., must-read posts) is heard wafting in from the direction of the Front Porch.

That is a great Deneen passage.

And, possibly a Porcher PAC! As William Jennings Bryan once said, “I’ll take a PAC against both their houses over a pox on both their houses any day.” Well, okay…those might not have been his exact words…

Keep it up y’all. I may be one of your pricklier friendly critics, but know I’m cheering for you.