Populism and Democracy - People's Party Quotes

"The farmers have learned the secret, that organization, unity of action, and continuity of purpose, on their part, will in the end unite all sections, enrich all communities, and make every citizen equal before just laws. Intelligence to organize, fellow-feeling enough to unite, and manhood sufficient to stand firm, are the necessary requirements to bring this about. Organization is now the order of the day."

Agricultural Organization Platform -The movement expanded from the agrarian uprising of the old frontier -Shows how the movement became an organization of labor -What started as a local agrarian movement, expanded to a party of all people

"We demand that all convicts shall be confined within the prison walls, and the contract system be abolished"

Cleburne Platform -The people's party platforms were about ending modern day enslavement through economic exploitative systems -Called to abolish convict and contract systems for labor -Speaks to system of mass incarceration (a labor exploitation that, in a way, puts men back into slavery system) -Populism aimed to critique slavery more broadly (uniting former slaves and white laborers)

"we do hereby charge that these parties have fastened a system of finance on the Nation which is sapping the vitals of our institutions and enslaving our people. That they have extended every aid and fostering care to corporate enterprise, organized to oppress and enslave the people, and subvert the principles of Jefferson, Jackson, and Lincoln..."

Dallas Platform -The cause of laborers is the same as slavery -Abolitionist cause with emancipation as their aim -people's party aimed to create an interracial coalition (a great ambition, that, as always, is met with failure (Rana))

"And make energy he does. It flows out of him, as if channelled in thousands of micro wires, enters the minds of his followers: their cheers go ragged and hoarse, chanting erupts, a look of religious zeal may flash across the face of some non-chanter, who is finally getting, in response to a question long nursed in private, exactly the answer he's been craving."

George Saunders, Who Are All These Trump Supporters? -The true energy of representation! -The excitement, energy, and passion in feeling as though you are being represented truly by someone like yourself -Representation taps into deeper part of yourself -Same energy seen at Willie Stark rallies

"From the beginning, America has been of two minds about the Other. One mind says, Be suspicious of it, dominate it, deport it, exploit it, enslave it, kill it as needed. The other mind denies that there can be any such thing as the Other, in the face of the claim that all are created equal. The first mind has always held violence nearby, to use as needed, and that violence has infused everything we do—our entertainments, our sex, our schools, our ads, our jokes, our view of the earth itself, somehow even our food. It sends our young people abroad in heavy armor, fills public spaces with gunshots, drives people quietly insane in their homes. And here it comes again, that brittle frontier spirit, that lone lean guy in our heads, with a gun and a fear of encroachment. But he's picked up a few tricks along the way, has learned to come at us in a form we know and have forgotten to be suspicious of, from TV: famous, likably cranky, a fan of winning by any means necessary, exploiting our recent dullness and our aversion to calling stupidity stupidity, lest we seem too precious. "DONALD J TRUMP A GUARDIAN ANGEL FROM HEAVEN," reads a poster I retrieved from the floor of the Rothschild rally. "HIS SPIRIT AND HARD WORK AS PRESIDENT WILL MAKE THE PEOPLE AND AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!" Although, to me, Trump seems the very opposite of a guardian angel, I thank him for this: I've never before imagined America as fragile, as an experiment that could, within my very lifetime, fail. But I imagine it that way now."

George Saunders, Who are all of these Trump supporters? -Saunders at the polling place -A reminder that we live in an experiment that can always go wrong -Dangers of (empty) representation on cultural cites

"What unites these stories is what I came to think of as usurpation anxiety syndrome—the feeling that one is, or is about to be, scooped, overrun, or taken advantage of by some Other with questionable intentions. In some cases, this has a racial basis, and usurpation anxiety grades into racial nostalgia, which can grade into outright racism, albeit cloaked in disclaimer. In the broadest sense, the Trump supporter might be best understood as a guy who wakes up one day in a lively, crowded house full of people, from a dream in which he was the only one living there, and then mistakes the dream for the past: a better time, manageable and orderly, during which privilege and respect came to him naturally, and he had the whole place to himself."

George Saunders, Who are all of these trump supporters? -A certain interpretation of the country and who is in it and who is not (based on cultural claims)

"I have been mentally gathering all those nice, friendly Trump supporters I met and asking them, Still? Even after the Curiel fiasco and the post-Orlando self-congrat fest, and Trump's insinuation that President Obama was in cahoots with the terrorists? Guys, still, really? The tragedy of the Trump movement is that one set of struggling people has been pitted against other groups of struggling people by someone who has known little struggle, at least in the material sense, and hence seems to have little empathy for anyone struggling, and even to consider struggling a symptom of weakness. "I will never let you down," he has told his supporters, again and again, but he will, and in fact already has, by indulging the fearful, xenophobic, Other-averse parts of their psychology and reinforcing the notion that their sense of being left behind has no source in themselves."

George Saunders, Who are all these Trump Supporters? -Trump speaks in terms of representation on cultural site (not really even political or economic) -But how empty is it?

"American Presidential campaigns are not about ideas; they are about the selection of a hero to embody the prevailing national ethos. "Only a hero," Mailer wrote, "can capture the secret imagination of a people, and so be good for the vitality of his nation; a hero embodies the fantasy and so allows each private mind the liberty to consider its fantasy and find a way to grow. Each mind can become more conscious of its desire and waste less strength in hiding from itself."

George Saunders, Who are all these Trump supporters? -There is a power and energy in representation -The energy we talked about in All the Kings Men, the power of actually being represented by someone like you!! This line of thought goes all the way back to anti-federalists like Melancton Smith -There is a private communication between Trump and those who say their story is being told for the first time (cultural representation)

"Above all, Trump supporters are "not politically correct," which, as far as I can tell, means that they have a particular aversion to that psychological moment when, having thought something, you decide that it is not a good thought, and might pointlessly hurt someone's feelings, and therefore decline to say it."

George Saunders, Who are all these Trump supporters? -Trump wants to speak honestly -Trump supporters like this about him -Trump is not politically correct, and people who don't want to be politically corrupt feel culturally represented by his rhetoric (white others non-people (exclusive) and appeals to emotion rather than rationale)

"Wow, what a crowd this is," he begins at Fountain Hills. "What a great honor! . . . You have some sheriff—there's no games with your sheriff, that's for sure. . . . We have a movement going on, folks. . . . I will never let you down! Remember. And I want to tell you, you know, it's so much about illegal immigration and so much has been mentioned about it and talked about it, and these politicians are all talk, no action. They're never going to do anything—they only picked it up because when I went, and when I announced, that I'm running for President, I said, 'You know, this country has a big, big problem with illegal immigration,' and all of a sudden we started talking about it. . . . And there was crime and you had so many killings and so much crime, drugs were pouring through the border." ("STOP IT!" someone pleads from the crowd.) "People are now seeing it. And you know what? We're going to build a wall and we are going to stop it!....Mayhem. The Wall is their favorite."

George Saunders, Who are all these trump supporters? -The wall is a populist symbol -A material representation of the populist attempt to define the people by who the people are not -The wall is a classic populist symbol - wall = attempt to construct and define the people. A literal way to keep some out of "the people"

"The Kansas Populists who swarmed around Watson's carriage, like Watson himself, like the old Texas Alliancemen, had too many memories to acquiesce comfortably in the fusion politics of 1896. The spirit of Populism possessed meaning because of these memories. Indeed, collectively, they constituted the essence of the agrarian revolt: memories of farmers on the crop lien bringing food to striking railroad workers; of Alliancemen wearing suits of cotton bagging during the long war against the jute trust in the South; of the great lecturing campaigns to organize the South in 1887-1889 and the nation in 1890-91; of mile-long Alliance wagon trains and sprigs of evergreen symbolizing the 'living issues' in Kansas..."

Goodwyn, Democratic Promise -Describing when populism was a pure and good democratic force -Radical and spontaneous creative activity by the real people of the Populist movement -Decentralized -Populism was only genuinely populism with no leader -When populism was real and good - radicals seeking new form of society

"The Populist essence was less abstract: it was an assertion of how people can act in the name of the idea of freedom. At root, American Populism was a demonstration of what authentic political life can be in a functioning democracy. The 'brotherhood of the Alliance' attempted to address the question of how to live. That is the Populist legacy to the twentieth century."

Goodwyn, Democratic Promise -During the 1870s and 1880s there was a burst of true democratic populist activity - creative, spontaneous, radical, decentralized -People experimenting to figure out how they want to live and what kind of government they want -Real populism was necessarily democratic -What populism held out was actual creative activity of people creating their own word! - through radically reshaping society -This 'real' populist period may have held out the last genuine democratic movement

"By this process, the relatively expansive pre-industrial sensibilities that had animated Thomas Jefferson, George Mason, and the original Anti-Federalists gradually lost that strand of democratic continuity and legitimacy which, in fact, connected their time and their possibility to our own through the actions of Americans who lived in the interim: the Populist connecting link was lost to the heritage. The egalitarian current that was part of the nation's wellspring became not a constantly active source of ideas, but a curious backwater, eddying somewhere outside both the conveyed historical heritage and the mainstream of modern political thought that necessarily builds upon that heritage."

Goodwyn, Democratic Promise -Goodwyn loved the real populist and democratic movement -Part of what we lost when the peoples party was lost (energetic, active source of creative and radical ideas) -Populist spoke of the people, but opponents would talk about traditional way of life -Establishment would assert itself and ground third party -2 party system limited the scope of how action

"This sophisticated despair, grounded in the belief that hierarchical American society could, perhaps, be marginally 'humanized' but could not be fundamentally democratized, became the operative premise of twentieth-century reformers. Their perspective acquired a name and, rather swiftly, a respectability always denied Populism. In 1900-1930, it was popularly recognized as 'progressivism.' Later, it became known as 'liberalism.' In such a way, a seminal feature of the democratic idea passed out of American culture. This rather fateful process was inaugurated during the climactic political context of 1896."

Goodwyn, Democratic Promise -The farther back you go in history, the larger the range of options of government -Now, the height of aspiration is no longer to reshape society, but to humanize system of capitalism we are resigned to (less democratic) -Narrowing the possible answer to question because of the 2-party system (which limits the democratic ability that existed within the early populist movement)

"The American farmer thus had a dual character, and one way of understanding our agrarian movements is to observe which aspect of the farmer's double personality is uppermost at a given time. It is my contention that both the Populist rhetoric and the modern liberal's indulgent view of the farmers' revolve had been derived from the 'soft' side of the farmer's existence—that is, from agrarian 'radicalism' and agrarian ideology—while, most farm organizations since the decline of the Populists have been based primarily upon the 'hard' side, upon agricultural improvement, business methods, and pressure politics. Populism itself had a hard side, especially in the early days of the Farmers Alliance and the Populist Party, but this became less and less important as the depression of the nineties deepened and other issues were dropped in favor of the silver panacea."

Hofstadter, The Age of Reform -Hard v. soft side of people's party movement -Soft Side: -Rhetoric of rural movement, and the rural attempt to save America for simple farmers whose lives and livelihood were being infringed upon by monopolistic powers -an ideology, a myth, a persuasion (used to secure hard-side narrow economic interests) -Hard side = material interests of agrarian business men -Soft-side rhetoric was harmful and backwards

"What distinguishes democratic politicians from populists is that the former make representative claims in the form of something like hypotheses that can be empirically disproven on the basis on the actual results of regular procedures and institutions like elections. Or, as Paulina Ochoa Espejo has argued, democrats make claims about the people that are self-limiting and are conceived of as fallible. In some sense, they'd have to subscribe to Beckett's famous words in Worstword Ho: 'Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.' // Populists, by contrast, will persist with their representative claim no matter what; because their claim is of a moral and symbolic--not an empirical--nature, it cannot be disproven."

Muller, What Is Populism -distinguishing democratic representatives from populist leader -Populism is based on a moral imagination of representation - it is moral and symbolic - and cannot be proven -Attempt to define who the people are (currency of democracy)

"Silver, which has been accepted as coin ever since the dawn of history, has been demonetized to add to the purchasing power of gold, by decreasing the value of all forms of property as well as human labor, and the supply of currency is purposely abridged to fatten usurers, bankrupt enterprise and enslave industry."

Omaha Platform -The gold standard (kept value of currency high, despite farmers wanted deflation so it's easier to pay back creditors) -spoke of contemporary economy as an issue of slavery (that enslaved black and white men alike -- all members of the productive class) -people's party aimed to form an interracial union of workers

"As Hanspeter Kriesi has argued, Western countries have seen a new conflict line emerge in recent decades--what political scientists call a "cleavage" between citizens who favor more openness and those who prefer some form of closure. This conflict can play out primarily in economic terms, or it can turn into mostly a cultural issue. When identity politics predominates, populists will prosper....People might not like the way the country is going, but who other than wedding photographers with very traditional beliefs about marriage really feel touched in their everyday lives by the legalization of same-sex marriage? It would not be the first time that the United States has developed a more inclusive, tolerant, and generous self-conception as a nation over the objections of a small but passionate faction of voters. A similarly hopeful story cannot be told about the males with no more than a high school diploma whose skills, if any, are simply not needed in the American economy today."

Muller, What is Populism -Muller is super elitist -The problematic side of populist definitions -Mueller argument is that populists are a threat because they don't have any skills (questionable and elitist) - oversimplified account -Populists a threat because they cannot be ignored? Isn't that the purpose of democracy? Populism arises because democracy is not working for every (people already don't feel represented)

"Populists should be criticized for what they are-a real danger to democracy (and not just to "liberalism"). But that does not mean that one should not engage them in political debate. Talking with populists is not the same as talking like populists. One can take the problems they raise seriously without accepting the ways in which they frame these problems."

Muller, What is Populism -Populism is a real threat to democracy -Interesting because Muller talks about how populism arises as a way to solve the problems of democracy, when democracy has failed to represent the people. But also frames populism as the problem, and not as the solution to a preexisting problem; can populism support democracy, while at the same time undermining it? Isn't populism just wanting a better version of democracy?

"If anything, one might want to talk about relatively intolerant--in that sense, illiberal--societies, but that is different from illiberal democracy. We have to distinguish illiberal societies from places where freedom of speech and assembly, media pluralism, and the protection of minorities are under attack. These political rights are not just about liberalism (or the rule of law); they are constitutive of democracy as such....Even for the most minimal definitions of democracy--as a mechanism to ensure peaceful turnovers in power after a process of popular will formation--it is crucial that citizens be well informed about politics; otherwise, governments can hardly be held accountable."

Muller, What is Populism -Populism is also a danger because populists are not well disposed to traditional institutions or liberal order -Populism undermines the media, and is a clear threat to democracy -Institutions might not reflect the will of the people

"Populism, I suggest, is a particular moralistic imagination of politics, a way of perceiving the political world that sets a morally pure and fully unified--but, I shall argue, ultimately fictional--people against elites who are deemed corrupt or in some other way morally inferior. It is a necessary but not a sufficient condition to be critical of elites in order to qualify as a populist. Otherwise, anyone criticizing the powerful and the status quo in any country would by definition be a populist. In addition to being antielitist, populists are always antipluralist: populists claims they they, and only they, represent the people."

Muller, What is Populism -Theory of representative democracy -Inclusiveness and exclusiveness: elites are on the outside, the "people" are those included -Populist leaders use moralistic rhetoric and symbolism to describe the people (difficult to prove right or wrong)

"First. That the union of the labor forces of the United States this consummated shall be permanent and perpetual; may its spirit enter into all hearts for the salvation of the Republic and the uplifting of mankind."

Omaha Platform -A Marxist vein to this statement - farmers, laborers, stock raisers are members of the essential class in any economy (all mankind) -Speaks to a universal class (created in capitalism)

"We believe that the powers of Government—in other words, of the people—should be expanded (as in the case of the postal service) as rapidly and as far as good sense of an intelligent people and the teachings of experience shall justify, to the end that oppression, in justice and poverty shall eventually cease in the land."

Omaha Platform -Wanted to radically transform government to meet their ends - expanding the power of the central government to benefit the people -Believed it would be good if the federal government owned transportation and communication systems -Freedom sought through radically refashioning the government -A government which accurately reflected the people (main ambition)

"Assembled on the anniversary of the birthday of the nation and filled with the spirit of the grand general chief, who established our independence, we seek to restore the government of the Republic to the hands of "the plain people" with whose class it originated."

Omaha Platform -What had started as a small agrarian revolt, had been universalized to an entire class "the plain people? -Beginning to conceive of themselves in larger and broader terms: -The "we" of the People's party is a class; the productive class

"If economic concentration and industrial capitalism questioned faith in commercial self-regulation, it also directly threatened the very framework of settler empire by undermining the ability of expansion to aid internal liberty. Dating back to the earliest days of colonization, the basic means for settlers to enjoy republican freedom was through territorial conquest and the extension of land ownership. It was this central link between new land and meaningful self-rule that legitimated empire, and with it the dispossession and control of indigenous groups. Yet, with the growth of frontier communities in the last decades of the nineteenth century, the essential goals of settler empire seemed as distant as ever. During earlier periods of expansion, conquest had gone hand in hand with a wide diffusion of property ownership among settlers and a remarkable degree of internal equality......However, with the rise of corporate power and the entrenchment of wide-scale factory production, expansion appeared to extend the new industrial order farther west rather than to create a burgeoning democracy of small producers."

Rana, The Two Faces of American Freedom -Describes the "end of the American frontier", as Turner would describe it -During the 2nd half of the 19th century, there was an increased settler drive west, as well as railroad presence and industrialization -The promise of the West - to live free and equal in open land, far away from the oppressive government and economic inequality - seemed to be becoming less and less possible -The west was coming to look more like the East and the corrupt systems of Europe

"Since all laborers, regardless of their specific work relationship, ideally shared a material interest in economic and political independence, they embodied that constituency best equipped to sustain republican liberty. When properly organized, distinct producers would recognize the unity between their partial interests and the common good and through collective effort would impose a democratic and popular will. In this way, a partial constituency within society could come to represent the whole."

Rana, Two Faces of American Freedom -Despite the populist ambition to universally represent mankind, the fiction of unity came apart because people are not one single whole -Similar to the failures of the anti-federalists -Aimed to construct general coalition, and yet soon after, they came to realize the country was not as unified as they imagined -Therefore, the party much choose segment because people were not one. -Process of disintegration of labor versus labor

"...Knights of Labor were an organized expression of the collective whole and its commitment to liberty. This vision of unified labor as constituting the people and as sharing a singular commitment to economic independence also struck deep roots with the Farmers Alliance and the People's Party."

Rana, Two Faces of American Freedom -People's party was about class, not race (in definition of the people and who was included/excluded) -Unified, anti-slavery argument -Universal movement of all productive laborers as the people (Marxist)

"Now the People's Party says to these two men [black and white], 'You are kept apart that you may be separately fleeced of your earnings. You are made to hate each other because upon that hatred is rested the financial despotism which enslaved you both. You are deceived and blinded that you may not see how this race antagonism perpetuates a monetary system which beggars you both.' This is so obviously true it is no wonder both these unhappy laborers stop to listen. No wonder they begin to realize that no change of law can benefit the white tenant which not benefit the black one likewise; that no system which now does injustice to one of them can fail to injure both. Their every material interest is identical. The moment this becomes a conviction, mere selfishness, the mere desire to better their conditions, escape onerous taxes, avoid usurious charges, lighten their rents, or change their precarious tenements into smiling happy homes, will drive these two men together"

Rana, Two Faces of American Freedom -Tom Watson quote -Common ground between white and black men through rhetoric of enslavement (the contemporary economy enslaves them both) -Ambition/promise of party to form an interracial union of people -A strain in populist thought of the time - "you are made to hate each other, both enslaved" -Contemporary power of corporations and monopolies amounted to a form of enslavement -Tried to draw black and white workers together -And interracial coalition of black and white workers -For Watson, the goal of the People's Party was to end modern slavery through interracial alliance (a failure of ambition...tragic. A promise that fell apart, but started genuine)

"More fundamentally, the fact that local leaders and ordinary party members had lost control of their own institutions spoke to a crucial normative difficulty with Populist thinking. At the center of the Populist account of democracy was a conception of the people. Rather than being racially defined or a simple aggregation of voters, the people constituted the actually existing community of laborers in their entirety. For Populists, the people were the 'masses' of farmers and industrial workers who found themselves confronted by the 'classes,' what one Nebraska newspaper called 'the monied aristocracy, who have set themselves up as our dictators.' In essence, they rejected the old Federalist notion that no actual body within society could represent the whole community and thus that the people had to be an ideal abstraction—a constitutional framework that gave institutional voice to competing class segments. At a basic level, Populists appreciated that their account rested on a fiction: in any community not all members were laborers, no matter how broadly one understood the category. Moreover, it was also clear that the producing classes were profoundly fragmented across a number of vectors: white versus nonwhite, rural versus urban, artisan versus wage laborer, tenant versus land owner. The idea of labor unity was therefore itself also a fiction, as these groups had distinct social experiences as well as competing immediate goals."

Rana, Two Faces of American Freedom -the populist movement aimed to construct general coalition, and yet soon after, they came to realize the country was not as unified as they imagined -Therefore, the party much choose segment because people were not one. -The movement depended on an idea of people as a whole... however, this was fiction. -Process of disintegration of labor versus labor

"Walt Whitman's 'Facing West from California's Shores' not only crystallized the energy of settler expansion but also prophetically expressed the restlessness and sense of incompleteness that now marked late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century America. In the poem's concluding lines, Whitman eulogized the western frontier's passing in language similar to that of Frederick Jackson Turner thirty years later: 'Long having wander'd since, round the earth having wander'd,/Now I face home again, very pleas'd and joyous,/ (But where is what I started for so long ago? / And why is it yet unfound?)' Such words captured the national mythology of the pioneer settler, the archetypal American capable of building civilization out of the New World's rugged wilderness."

Rana, Two Faces of American Freedom -The unfulfilled promise of the West (free land, separate from oppressive government) -As turner would say, "end of the American frontier" (when the west was open, unpopulated...) -The west came to look more and more like the East, and the corrupt, evil, suppressive systems of Europe

"The people's will is the law of the state" & "My study is the heart of the people"

Robert Penn Warren, All the Kings Men -"Willie Stark" -willie's rhetoric (he knows nothing beyond the people) -but there is no specification to these statements (no limits, specificity, Willie knows nothing beyond himself)

"I have a speech here. It is a speech about what this state needs. But there's no use telling you what this State needs. You are the State. You know what you need...I'm not going to read you any speech. You know what you need better'n I could tell you. But I'm going to tell you a story....It's about a hick. It's about a red-neck, like you all, if you please. Year, like you. He grew up like any other mother's son on the dirt roads and gully washes of a north State farm. He knew all about being a hick...Oh, he knew what it was to be a hick, summer and winter. He figured if he wanted to do anything he had to do it himself. So he sat up nights and studied books and studied law so maybe he could do something about changing things. He didn't study that law in any man's school or college. He studied it nights after a hard day's work in the field...It was going to be all together or non. That came to him. And it came to him with the powerful force of God's own lightning on a tragic time back in his own home country two years ago when the first brick school house ever built in his country collapsed because it was built of politics-rotten brick, and it killed and mangled a dozen poor little scholars...He was just a human, country boy, who believed like we have always believed back here in the hills that even the plainest, poorest fellow can be Governor if his fellow citizens find he has got the stuff and the character for the job...Let the hog lie, and listen to me, you hicks. Yeah, you're hicks, too, and they've fooled you, too, a thousand times, just like they fooled me..."

Robert Penn Warren, All the Kings Men -Willie Starks first good speech given at the county fair -He stops trying to "improve their minds" and rather appeals to the people's emotion -He is no longer talking about a "balanced tax program" -He shares a story about himself, but also a story about the people -- he conflates himself with the people -Creates shared identity and sense of authenticity - the potential of people to be represented by someone actually like themselves

"Friends, red-necks, suckers, and fellow-hicks"

Robert Penn Warren, All the Kings Men -How Willie begins his stump speeches -Creates a shared identity and sense of authenticity -He was the people and the people were him (his rhetoric = he knows nothing beyond the people)

"we, the farmers, laborers, and stock raisers, representing eighty per cent of the people of the State, hereby declare our independence of all political parties, rings, bosses, and cliques, and in following platform express our demands..."

Texas Platform Who were the peoples party? Laborers, agriculturalists, etc... -A party on behalf of the people rather than property (similar to Jackson)

"Property is and will remain the stimulus to endeavor and the compensation for toil."

William Jennings Bryan, Acceptance Speech -Walking back on all the radical and transformative platforms proposed by the early agrarian revolt -Emphasizing his commitment to capitalism--not a communist! -Bryan then goes on to quote Lincoln and Jackson and the Declaration of Independence to emphasis the fact that he is not radical

"It has been charged by men standing high in business and political circles that our platform is a menace to private security and public safety, and it has been asserted that those whom I have the honor for the time being to represent not only meditate an attack upon the rights of property, but are the foes both of social order and national honor. Those who stand upon the Chicago platform are prepared to make known and to defend every motive which influences them, every purpose which animates them and every hope which inspires them. They understand the genius of our institutions, they are staunch supporters of the form of government under which we live, and they build their faith upon foundation laid by the fathers. Andrew Jackson has stated, with admirable clearness and with an emphasis which cannot be surpassed, both the duty and sphere of government. 'Distinctions in society will always exist under every just government. Equality of talents, of education or of wealth cannot be produced by human institutions. In the full enjoyment of the gifts of Heaven and the fruits of superior industry, economy and virtue, every man is equally entitled to protection by law.' We yield to none in our devotion to the doctrine just enunciated. Our campaign has not for its object the reconstruction of society."

William Jennings Bryan, Acceptance speech -Bryan, in this statement, walks back upon everything that the People's Party previously aimed for (radical and expansive reconstruction of government). -Shows how the radical, broad, and sweeping vision of the platforms had been condensed into only the issue of the gold standard (the core of the movement was gone) -Jackson aimed for limited government - Bryan quotes Jackson to prove he's not an unusual radial -Sacrifices the ideal of the original People's party for mainstream social success

"When God made man as the climax of creation. He looked upon His work and said that it was good, and yet when God finished His work the tallest man was not much taller than the shortest and the strongest man was not much stronger than the weakest. That was God's plan. We looked upon His work and said that it was not quite as good as it might be, and so we made a fictitious person, called a corporation, that is in some instances a hundred times—a thousand times—a million times—stronger than the God-made men. When God made man He placed a limit to his existence, so that if he was a bad man he could not do harm long, but when we made our man-made man we raised the limit as to age. In some States a corporation is given perpetual life."

William Jennings Bryan, Antitrust Speech -In democracy, you ought not to say corporations can dictate government -Government should be ruled by the people (populist philosophy) -Populist terms in big money politics -Political vision into vision of the economy

"Following out the suggestion the gentleman has made, I want to add to what I have said to this extent: My contention is that we have been placing the dollar above the man; that we have been pieking out favorites and bestowing upon them special privileges, and every advantage we have given them has been given them to the detriment of other people."

William Jennings Bryan, Antitrust Speech -Prioritizing people over property -Populist terms in big money politics -Political vision into vision of the economy

"I believe that the American people can get rid of anything that they do not want, and that they ought to get rid of everything that is not good. I believe that it is the duty of every citizen to give to his countrymen the benefit of his conscience and his judgement, and cast his influence, be it small or great, upon the right side of every question that arises. In the determination of questions we should find out what will make our people great and good and strong rather than what will make them rich. 'A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches.' Shall we decide the ethics of larceny by discussing how much the man is going to steal or the changes of his getting caught? No, my friends, we must decide questions upon a higher ground, and if you were to prove to me that a monopoly would reduce the price of the articles that we have to purchase I would still be opposed to it for a reason which, to my mind, overshadows all pecuniary arguments. The reason is this: Put the industrial system of this nation in the hands of a few men, and let them determine the price of raw material, the price of the finished product and the wages paid to labor, and you will have an industrial aristocracy besides which a landed aristocracy would be an innocent thing. I may be in error, but, in my judgement, a government of the people, by the people and for the people will be impossible when a few men control all the sources of production and dole out daily bread to all the rest on such terms as the few may subscribe."

William Jennings Bryan, Antitrust Speech -Problem isn't populism, but failed institutions. -20th century was so damaging because is allowed for unconstrained democracy (dissolved constraints on the people)

"If they dare to come out in the open field and defend the gold standard as a good thing we will fight them to the uttermost. Having behind us the producing masses of this nation and the world, supported by the commercial interests, the laboring interests and the toilers everywhere, we will answer their demand for a gold standard by saying to them: You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns; you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold."

William Jennings Bryan, Chicago Convention -Uses Biblical references of good versus evil to speak about politics in moral terms -Many say the wizard of Oz is about this time -yellow brick road = the gold standard -ridiculous of the notion: just getting rid of the gold standard will lead us to Oz -Language was passionate and fiery (he wasn't even a candidate at this time)