Review of: The Political Philosophy of Robert M. La Follette: As Revealed in His Speeches and Writings. Compiled by Ellen Torelle; assisted by Albert O. Barton, and Fred L. Holmes. Madison, WI: The Robert M. La Follette Co., 1920.

            Why review an old book with speeches from a politician who lived a century ago? The answer: Robert M. La Follette, Wisconsin governor and later U.S. Senator, was a brilliant philosopher on popular government; ideas and events in his time are still relevant today, and they will be relevant long after tomorrow.

            Democracy is perhaps the most difficult process of government to maintain. While a republic can be a democracy, a republic like the United States of America, the Islamic Republic of Iran, or the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics can easily be maintained as tyrannies and dictatorships by the political power than extends from the barrel of a gun.

            Democracy, by theory and practice over 250 years in America, needs the will of people to govern effectively by their consent without need for coercion. Even the Soviet bloc failed in part because so much time, money, and manpower was devoted to oppressing and policing the population to ensure the rule of the elite. Democracy, to be a process of peace, justice, and order, requires the protection of the rights, lives, and property of all definitions of minorities from the will of the majority. Finally, to successfully live in times of change, to transition from generation to generation, a democratic process must create a system of government and governing where differences of opinion are allowed, resolved, or ignored in non-violent, non-punishing, and non-coercive means.

            Robert M. La Follette in the early twentieth century was a Republican Party member when that party was the liberal “let the common people live”-without-government-enforced-morality segment of American politics. La Follette in Wisconsin was the leader of the progressive movement before becoming an advocate for progressive causes nationally. The progressive movement, which included Republican President Theodore Roosevelt and Democratic President Woodrow Wilson, was a bipartisan effort to protect the people from the pillaging and plundering of the wealthy and powerful during the first era of globalization which took place from 1865 to 1914.

            As La Follette passed worker and consumer protection measures in Wisconsin, progressives nationally broke the Standard Oil trust and other monopolies, passed laws protecting the purity and health of food and medicine, created election reforms to ensure direct voting and representation, and tried to prevent fraud, abuse, and corruption in politics and government.

            In Wisconsin, La Follette established the “Wisconsin Idea,” a multi-disciplinary program to create a civil society to encourage the direct participation of largely rural Wisconsin people into their local communities. As it developed as an artistic, political, social and cultural movement, the Wisconsin Idea created a lasting identity between the people, each other, and the land, customs, and traditions where they lived. It was truly an inspiring, and revolutionary act, to get people to enjoy themselves and to celebrate their common heritage. It was also an act of subtle subversion to get people to pay attention to politics and government and act in their own best interest within the system.

            The Political Philosophy of Robert M. La Follette is a collection of speeches and writings during his lifetime of advocating the cause of common citizens and the regular people. La Follette believed the “Supreme Issue” of all history “is the encroachment of the powerful few upon the rights of the many” (p. 20). La Follette was an implacable enemy of elitism, privilege, and all forms of presumed aristocracy. Yet, while he believed that people needed to have and duly appoint, empower and supervise representatives, he said “ a more direct expression of the will of the people in all things pertaining to the people’s government is the dominating thought in American politics” in his day (p. 50).

            Indeed, as mentioned above, freedom of speech is one of the fundamental requirements for government befitting a free and independent people, in La Follette’s day and all time. The rights to freedoms of speech, worship, petition, press, and assembly are always under attack by partisans, despots, elitist, demagogues, and warmongers. It is no less so today. Perhaps the people should ask their politicians, “What part of liberty don’t you get?”

            In a time of war, the Great War from 1914 to 1918 in La Follette’s days as a senator, and today in the Middle East, the first thing to die in a free society is an honest, frank, civil, and enlightened discussion of the issues, the true causes, and the possible consequences of action or inaction. In America today, dividing over Iraq and the war on terrorist, and over the Israeli-Arab conflict, the debate from the beginning has fallen to the lies of partisanship, political advantage, and polemic personal attacks. In national security, there should be no Republicans or Democrats, no one side or another. But today in America, politicians on both sides have taken an important issue of life and death and national survival and peddled it for votes, donations and influence. That might prove the suicide of our freedom. We could only thank greed, vanity, and ignorance.

            In a speech to the U.S. Senate on October 6, 1917, La Follette foresaw the national disaster that would attend an end to free discussion and debate on World War One. It is instructive for today:

I am contending for this right because the exercise of [free discussion] is necessary to the welfare, to the existence, of this government, to the successful conduct of this war, and to a peace which shall be enduring and for the best interest of the country.

Suppose success attends the attempt to stifle all discussion of the issues of this war, all discussion of the terms upon which it should be concluded, all discussion of the objects and purposes to be accomplished by it, and concede the demand of the war-mad press and war extremists that they monopolize the right of public utterance upon these questions unchallenged, what think you would be the consequences to this country not only during the war but after the war (p.239).

            The consequences, then and now, could only be the destruction of our democratic process of government, the end of our republic of liberty and freedom, and our eventual defeat at the hands of those willing to fight us to the death. To survive as country, even our economic and cultural survival, demands an open debate and more honesty and humility and open-mindedness than our country has heretofore shown on anything. Without the freedom of speech and the right to dissent without punishment, our way of life and civilization cannot endure reality.