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One of the biggest sort of philosophical or
ideological battles that's happening right
now within the left and even to some degree
within the progressive left is about the approach
to making change.
How do you get change to happen?
And we can sort of a roughly coarsely sum
up the two positions by saying fix the system
or burn the system down and create a new one.
Once you've burnt down the system that we
have now, it's an oversimplification.
It's how we are oversimplifying today in order
to have this discussion.
There is more nuance to it than that, but
in a large sense, this is it.
Do you believe the system works well enough
that you would try to make changes to it,
or do you believe that the system is so broken
that it has to first fail or be destroyed
before real change can be made?
Now, from day one, when we talked about, for
example, about two candidates, neither of

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whom ended up being the Democratic nominee,
Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, we talked
about how on policy they end up in pretty
similar places on a lot of issues, but their
approaches are very different.
Bernie came from the 70s hippy further left
revolution mentality and was kind of pulled
towards moderation in terms of a lot of his
policy.
Over time, Warren came from the opposite place.
Warren came from a much more centrist or even
center right position and eventually was pulled
to the left where her policies and there ended
up being similar to Bernie in many ways.
But she is in the mindset of fix the system,
work within the system, make changes to the
system.
Today, I want to talk only about what has
worked in the history of the United States.
So this is not an analysis of any candidate.
This is not a moral judgment about any candidate.
This is not an analysis of any particular
policy that we're looking at.

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It is only historically which approach has
worked for achieving change that move the
country to the left, working within the system
or burn it down, build it back up.
More of a revolutionary style approach.
We can call it whatever you want.
None of these are pejoratives.
I think we sort of understand what what we're
talking about here.
And it certainly links more to the ideology,
more of the Bernie Sanders supporter in the
context of the Democratic primary.
Now, as I've said before, the paradigm that
has brought us the most progressive change
in history is making changes to the system
that we have rather than revolution and burning
it down.
Now, that being said, there have been times
when the type of burn it down.
Change that somewhat has happened.
But I am going to make the case today that
those big revolutionary moments have come
after horrible events.
What I would call cataclysm that includes
endless death.

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And we'll get to that in a little bit.
So let's start by looking at the successes.
There are three major eras of progressive
leftward advancement in the United States
that we can look at.
We can look at the progressive era of the
1890s to the 1920s.
We can look at the New Deal era between 1933
and 1939 and exactly how you define these
areas.
You know, there's some some leeway and then
the civil rights era of the mid 1950s to roughly
1965.
So let's look at each of these and see which
category they fall into.
The progressive era at the turn of the 20th
century was catalyzed by activism and demand
for social reform.
Going through every achievement of the progressive
era would be sort of difficult, impractical.
But the reforms of the progressive era dealt
with corruption, dealt with labor and labor
rights, dealt with anti-trust, with women's
voting.

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Of course, expanding labor policy and labor
unions, a whole bunch of bureaucratic stuff
that was really important, including things
like municipal reform.
And it was all catalyzed by the idea of we've
got to build up the middle class and economically
that will be good.
Morally, it's the right thing to do.
And we've got to put in some safety net elements
for the poor.
It all happened by tweaking the system.
Now, the thing is, progress can seem slow
when you're in it.
And in fact, this was a 30 year period.
That's a long time now from 2020.
It's easy to look back and say, wow, look
at all that stuff that they accomplished so
quickly.
But 30 years is a long time.
And I encourage you to look at the full list
of accomplishments when you're in the middle
of big change.
Thirty years seems a very, very slow.
Looking back, though, we realize even though
it was done by community activism, by slowly
getting a more favorable supreme.

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Court, it led to major change.
Now, let me give you an example of that.
A lot of the Progressive Era reforms were
upheld at the Supreme Court because of Justice
Charles Evan Hughes joining with Oliver Wendell
Holmes.
OK.
Herbert Hoover nominated Charles Evans.
Huge Hughes.
Teddy Roosevelt nominated Oliver Wendell Holmes.
So when we say would Trumper Biden select
a better replacement for Ruth Bader Ginsburg
and would it matter?
Just look at how much this stuff matters.
Look at who got to pick Supreme Court justices
that led to progressive era reforms.
And it was all tweaks, tweaks, tweaks.
And over 30 years, it transformed the country.
That's example number one.
Let's look at example number two of.
Fix the system rather than tear it down.
The New Deal era of the 1930s under Franklin
Delano Roosevelt.
This came out of the Great Depression.

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It included changes that now are considered
to be part of the fabric of the country, like
the Social Security Administration.
But they were not burn it down revolution
type changes.
It was regulate the banking industry by putting
the right regulators in place, create programs
to support farmers and the unemployed, support
young people and elderly folks creating Social
Security.
You don't get that by burning down the system.
They got it by taking more control of the
system, regulating securities trading.
The Housing Act of 1937.
Building labor power on top of the changes
of the progressive era.
It wasn't burn it down.
It was not revolution.
It was six to seven years of changes from
a center left president.
Now I'll go even further.
This is important when it comes to the New
Deal era.
The New Deal era was so much not a revolutionary
phase that there were people at the time saying
FDR is not even center left.

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He's a centrist.
And the new deal is merely a smoke screen
to reinforce capitalism as a system.
That's how much not of a revolution.
The New Deal was, although, of course, I don't
buy into that cynical interpretation and important
change happened over a seven year period.
Third, the civil rights era, the civil rights
era was filled with protests and sit ins and
rallies.
And a ton of the day to day elements that
we often today recognize would likely be needed
in order to achieve more change and achieve
it more quickly.
But look at the process, 1954.
You got the Brown v. Board of Education decision.
That was an early moment in the civil rights
era and it was a decision made again by the
Supreme Court reinforcing the importance of
who gets to pick those justices.
That continues to be a theme here.

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1956, the NAACP works within the judiciary
to win desegregation of the bus system.
1957, Martin Luther King creates the SC LSC
to support local protest movements and achieve
change at the local level in North Carolina.
We had the drugstore sit in in 1960, which
sparked a bigger era of sit ins to continue
making small changes legally to in the judiciary
at the legal, local, state and national level.
In 63, you get the march on Washington.
It demands jobs.
It demands.
It's a new fight against discrimination, which
was demanding change from the government,
not trying to take it down and cause a revolution.
Ultimately, this led to the Civil Rights Act
of 1964.
Now, was that the end?
Was that the be all end all of fighting against
racial discrimination?
No.
We're still in that process today.
But the point is, the great ara's of progress
were not burn it down moments.

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Last thing I want to mention here, when there
have been these bigger burn it down type moments
of radical fast change, they've typically
been very bloody and came out of cataclysm.
Example the Civil War, Civil War went from
1861 to 1865.
If in 1855, right about five years before
the Civil War, you had said, you know, in
six years the country will almost be torn
apart over the issue of slavery.
A multi year war will ensue during which more
than six hundred thousand people will die.
We will just barely be held together.
But big change will come of it.
We all, of course, would welcome the end result,
which is slavery is no longer allowed.
But when you look at when things move more
quickly in the more revolutionary way, there
is endless death and destruction.
And to think about causing it deliberately
is questionable.
And it took you know, when you look at reconstruction,
12 years in the United States.

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Because of the civil war, it achieved a great
victory.
No question about it.
It also brought incredible cataclysm to the
United States.
And sometimes it is the only way.
That's what's really important.
And of course, the north, the union fighting
in the civil war.
Of course, they were on the right side.
And of course, the right outcome came from
it.
But what history tells us is that if we want
to expand health care, increase social reforms,
regulate industry, the victories have come
not from the cataclysm of the type that the
civil war sort of checks a box under.
It's come from the reform of the Progressive
era, the New Deal era, the civil rights era
and the like.
Tell me where I'm wrong.
This is my perspective.
I welcome other other perspectives respectfully
and with peace and love.
I'm on Twitter at David Pakman.
I want to hear from you.
Quick break.

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Back after this.
