Just great stuff. I hear echoes of today and other periods in US history where things got severely out of balance. In the late 19th century wealth represents certain forces which were severely out of balance (Morgan's overall demeanor and appearance in Congress sums this up very well) and it served to strengthen the progressive movement and men like T. Roosevelt. Bill Rusen
I am most fascinated by the text "the most ardent defenders of democracy -- the progressives" in light of the current environment in the US, where "progressives" seem to be pitted against "populists", both of which seem to now be terms of opprobrium.
I don't know how the changes in culture have modified the meaning of those two terms, much in the way that "left" originally referred to, IIRC, the revolutionaries in 1789 and the "right" referred to the royalists (and even now have completely different meanings in reference to the politics in Europe and the US, leaving out the rest of the world).
There is also some irony here in that Morgan was, presumably, attacked because he held too much power. But now, who has this power? the chairman of the Federal Reserve. Is that better? Is he/she/it less corruptible than JP Morgan? Does he/she/it "[intimidate] the institutions of democracy"?
And I can't let this go w/o a comment that the US is NOT a democracy. We are a federal republic with more-or-less democratically elected representatives.
Just great stuff. I hear echoes of today and other periods in US history where things got severely out of balance. In the late 19th century wealth represents certain forces which were severely out of balance (Morgan's overall demeanor and appearance in Congress sums this up very well) and it served to strengthen the progressive movement and men like T. Roosevelt. Bill Rusen
I am most fascinated by the text "the most ardent defenders of democracy -- the progressives" in light of the current environment in the US, where "progressives" seem to be pitted against "populists", both of which seem to now be terms of opprobrium.
I don't know how the changes in culture have modified the meaning of those two terms, much in the way that "left" originally referred to, IIRC, the revolutionaries in 1789 and the "right" referred to the royalists (and even now have completely different meanings in reference to the politics in Europe and the US, leaving out the rest of the world).
There is also some irony here in that Morgan was, presumably, attacked because he held too much power. But now, who has this power? the chairman of the Federal Reserve. Is that better? Is he/she/it less corruptible than JP Morgan? Does he/she/it "[intimidate] the institutions of democracy"?
And I can't let this go w/o a comment that the US is NOT a democracy. We are a federal republic with more-or-less democratically elected representatives.