# Can someone define "Cultural Marxism" Please? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 25, 2011, 1:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-someone-define-cultural-marxism-please/590262 "2011-07-25T13:26:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [December 25, 2012, 2:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-someone-define-cultural-marxism-please/590262/141 "2012-12-25T02:19:13Z")
> [@wildorchid](#): > > (That’s another one i can easily site, the merger of the education systems of the US and the USSR under Reagan). FINALLY, the assertion of a “fact” rather than boilerplate Bircher rhetoric. If you can “easily” cite this example, then do so. Otherwise, we can probably dismiss the rest of your odd claims as part and parcel of the same disconnect from reality. ---
**Author:** ![wildorchid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/82dd89/32.png) [@wildorchid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wildorchid)\ **Post date:** [December 25, 2012, 2:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-someone-define-cultural-marxism-please/590262/142 "2012-12-25T02:25:07Z")
[http://www.nhteapartycoalition.org/tea/2012/03/31/reagan-administration-allowed-soviet-takeover-of-education/](http://www.nhteapartycoalition.org/tea/2012/03/31/reagan-administration-allowed-soviet-takeover-of-education/) also see link to Charlotte Iserbyts’ ‘Deliberate Dumbing Down of America’. ^^^ she was in the Dept. of Ed under Reagan [http://www.deliberatedumbingdown.com/MomsPDFs/DDDoA.sml.pdf](http://www.deliberatedumbingdown.com/MomsPDFs/DDDoA.sml.pdf) ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [December 25, 2012, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-someone-define-cultural-marxism-please/590262/143 "2012-12-25T02:27:36Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > The notion that things like a central bank, income taxes, and public schools are Marxism could only be believed by an insane person. Well, _The Communist Manifesto_ did call for universal public education, among other things. But that doesn’t mean Marx had any copyright on the idea, which in 1848 was already in practice in the United States and had been for decades. ---
**Author:** ![wildorchid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/82dd89/32.png) [@wildorchid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wildorchid)\ **Post date:** [December 25, 2012, 2:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-someone-define-cultural-marxism-please/590262/144 "2012-12-25T02:33:28Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Well, _The Communist Manifesto_ did call for universal public education, among other things. But that doesn’t mean Marx had any copyright on the idea, which in 1848 was already in practice in the United States and had been for decades. this isnt true. the truant officer was a new thing in ‘Our Gang’, the Little Rascals, and that was the 20’s… remember how they were always trying to duck the truant officer? in the 1800s it was the one room school house. school wasn’t compulsory. and it wasn’t provided by a central gov’t and was uniform/universal (each state and community was different/ independent) in the 1850’s the Prussian model of education was introduced for the first time in Mass., but it was still far from the rule. please back your claims… ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [December 25, 2012, 2:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-someone-define-cultural-marxism-please/590262/145 "2012-12-25T02:35:31Z")
> [@wildorchid](#): > > That international banking cartels would fund and foment communism should actually come as no surprise if one knows history, and philosophy. > Bankers have been creating arbitrary enemies, arming governments against each other, and creating debt slaves since ancient Babylon (5000 years)… this is nothing new. Cite for **that,** please. And what has it do with philosophy?! > [@wildorchid](#): > > Hegels dialectic describes the problem-reaction-solution method of indirectly achieving a goal which would never have flown on it’s own. :rolleyes: OK, we can now add Hegel’s dialectic to the list of things you do not understand. It ain’t a **method.** ---
**Author:** ![wildorchid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/82dd89/32.png) [@wildorchid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wildorchid)\ **Post date:** [December 25, 2012, 2:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-someone-define-cultural-marxism-please/590262/146 "2012-12-25T02:37:16Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > FINALLY, the assertion of a “fact” rather than boilerplate Bircher rhetoric. > > If you can “easily” cite this example, then do so. > > Otherwise, we can probably dismiss the rest of your odd claims as part and parcel of the same disconnect from reality. sorry, the use of shaming language establishes nothing in your ‘argument’ which is what i’m calling your weak invective out of courtesy. [?] sounds good, but you still score no points… (there are, however, many logical fallacies at work in your comment) ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [December 25, 2012, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-someone-define-cultural-marxism-please/590262/147 "2012-12-25T02:39:26Z")
> [@wildorchid](#): > > this isnt true. > the truant officer was a new thing in ‘Our Gang’, the Little Rascals, and that was the 20’s… > remember how they were always trying to duck the truant officer? > > in the 1800s it was the one room school house. > school wasn’t compulsory. and it wasn’t provided by a central gov’t and universal (each state and community was different/ independent) It was still tax-supported public education. Every town and county in the country had its public schools. (Attendance was made universally compulsory in the early 20th Century, simply as a way of enforcing the new child labor laws.) ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [December 25, 2012, 2:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-someone-define-cultural-marxism-please/590262/148 "2012-12-25T02:45:00Z")
> [@wildorchid](#): > > (there are, however, many logical fallacies at work in your comment) A claim which of course you won’t actually demonstrate. ---
**Author:** ![wildorchid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/82dd89/32.png) [@wildorchid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wildorchid)\ **Post date:** [December 25, 2012, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-someone-define-cultural-marxism-please/590262/149 "2012-12-25T02:51:21Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Cite for **that,** please. > > And what has it do with philosophy?! > > :rolleyes: OK, we can now add Hegel’s dialectic to the list of things you do not understand. It ain’t a **method.** [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectic](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectic) This has everything to do w/ pholisophy… Marx was a philosopher, remember?? (albeit a bad one, a kind of ‘hired gun’ who was put up to it.) please show where i mis-understand Helgelian dialectic (i was speaking of one aspect of it, ie. history…) I majored in philosophy, and was fortunate to have one well-known professor who was great (now deceased), so w/e. i don’t care what you think, and your put-downs just weaken your own credibility imo. I wouldnt re-read Kant, or Hegel if you paid me a million bucks. (horrible head ache… i’m assuming YOU have read that garbage?? i’m interested…) …but i do understand the implications and influence that their philosophy (including Fichte) has had on the 20th century and all the horrors that took place in it as a result of socialist dictators and the people who went along with them. In a nutshell, it’s: nihilism, irrationalism, (Kants phenomona ) , and the abandonment of aristotles’ reason; It’s substituting ‘you can’t know, so just do as your told’ for individual moral choice… This philosophy is evident everywhere you look in modern American culture, as it was in 1933 Germany. It’s still getting rammed down our throats in school. it used to be ‘God hates a liar’, and now it’s "don’t lie because you might get caught’ that parents teach their children, and then we wonder why society is falling apart… the individual is being undermined by the ‘collective’, and moral choice is replaced by the results of operant conditioning designed to control behavior. ---
**Author:** ![wildorchid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/82dd89/32.png) [@wildorchid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wildorchid)\ **Post date:** [December 25, 2012, 3:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-someone-define-cultural-marxism-please/590262/150 "2012-12-25T03:04:43Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > FINALLY, the assertion of a “fact” rather than boilerplate Bircher rhetoric. > > If you can “easily” cite this example, then do so. > > Otherwise, we can probably dismiss the rest of your odd claims as part and parcel of the same disconnect from reality. logical fallacies here: ] bringing Birch into it out of nowhere… ‘guilt by association’ fallacy (you say the same thing so-n-so says; so-n-so is a nutjob; therefore youre a nutjob, and what youre saying can’t possibly have any merit. (massive logic fail)) ] using ‘poisoning the well’ type language (disconnect from reality; boilerplate rhetoric) to sow seeds of doubt without presenting anything of substance… ] shifting the burden of proof for your counter-claim (if you have one) away from yourself with transparent sophistries… ---
**Author:** ![wildorchid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/82dd89/32.png) [@wildorchid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wildorchid)\ **Post date:** [December 25, 2012, 3:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-someone-define-cultural-marxism-please/590262/151 "2012-12-25T03:19:28Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > It was still tax-supported public education. Every town and county in the country had its public schools. (Attendance was made universally compulsory in the early 20th Century, simply as a way of enforcing the new child labor laws.) thanks… but it wasn’t centrally controlled, thats the point. …compulsory schooling started at @ the same time the fed was created. The thing is that if you could have taken a poll at the turn of the century as to if the ave. American supported the idea of a central bank, you would have got a resounding ‘NO’! I doubt anyone would challenge this looking at history, and how this was really the hot-button issue for public debate for most of American history. (the Constitution forbids it, for one thing… the Treasury should issue the currency, not an independent bank, but thats another can of worms.) if you did a poll now, i’m sure most people are all for it, although unemployment is staggering, and inflation is going crazy (at least when i go to the store it looks like it is). so, my question is, how did this change in the publics attitude and opinions occur? logically, something had to have intervened in order to change values and attitudes if they changed from generation to generation, because normally they are passed on intact from one generation to the next. Like when someone tells me about ‘global family’, i know that her Grandmother didnt believe in such nonsense, so where did she get that from? did she make it up out of thin air? everyone else is saying crap like that, too… American values like real family are being eroded and replaced, and it’s being done intentionally and in a calculated manner, right in front of our eyes… (Marx called for the end to the family) I guess the alternative is that it’s just happens randomly, and it’s evolution. forget about the Carnagie Institute documents (cited in the Iserbyt stuff) where they openly say they have to condition us through public education in the social sciences to give up our quaint american traditions of freedom and individuality in order to have created a collectivist totalitarian state, a technocracy…(Conclusions and Recommendations 1934 Carnagie Inst.) ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [December 25, 2012, 3:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-someone-define-cultural-marxism-please/590262/152 "2012-12-25T03:38:18Z")
> [@wildorchid](#): > > This has everything to do w/ pholisophy… I repeat: What does your notion that “Bankers have been creating arbitrary enemies, arming governments against each other, and creating debt slaves since ancient Babylon (5000 years)…” have to do with philosophy? > [@wildorchid](#): > > Marx was a philosopher, remember?? (albeit a bad one, a kind of ‘hired gun’ who was put up to it.) 😕 Who hired him? > [@wildorchid](#): > > please show where i mis-understand Helgelian dialectic (i was speaking of one aspect of it, ie. history.. [Hegelian dialectic:](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hegelian_dialectic#Hegelian_dialectic) > [@](#): > > Hegelian dialectic, usually presented in a threefold manner, was stated by Heinrich Moritz Chalybäus as comprising three dialectical stages of development: a thesis, giving rise to its reaction, an antithesis, which contradicts or negates the thesis, and the tension between the two being resolved by means of a synthesis. Although this model is often named after Hegel, he himself never used that specific formulation. Hegel ascribed that terminology to Kant.[31] Carrying on Kant’s work, Fichte greatly elaborated on the synthesis model, and popularized it. > > On the other hand, Hegel did use a three-valued logical model that is very similar to the antithesis model, but Hegel’s most usual terms were: Abstract-Negative-Concrete. Hegel used this writing model as a backbone to accompany his points in many of his works. > > The formula, thesis-antithesis-synthesis, does not explain why the thesis requires an Antithesis. However, the formula, abstract-negative-concrete, suggests a flaw, or perhaps an incomplete-ness, in any initial thesis—it is too abstract and lacks the negative of trial, error and experience. For Hegel, the concrete, the synthesis, the absolute, must always pass through the phase of the negative, in the journey to completion, that is, mediation. This is the actual essence of what is popularly called Hegelian Dialectics. > > To describe the activity of overcoming the negative, Hegel also often used the term Aufhebung, variously translated into English as “sublation” or “overcoming,” to conceive of the working of the dialectic. Roughly, the term indicates preserving the useful portion of an idea, thing, society, etc., while moving beyond its limitations. (Jacques Derrida’s preferred French translation of the term was relever).[32] > > In the Logic, for instance, Hegel describes a dialectic of existence: first, existence must be posited as pure Being (Sein); but pure Being, upon examination, is found to be indistinguishable from Nothing (Nichts). When it is realized that what is coming into being is, at the same time, also returning to nothing (in life, for example, one’s living is also a dying), both Being and Nothing are united as Becoming.[33] > > As in the Socratic dialectic, Hegel claimed to proceed by making implicit contradictions explicit: each stage of the process is the product of contradictions inherent or implicit in the preceding stage. For Hegel, the whole of history is one tremendous dialectic, major stages of which chart a progression from self-alienation as slavery to self-unification and realization as the rational, constitutional state of free and equal citizens. The Hegelian dialectic cannot be mechanically applied for any chosen thesis. Critics argue that the selection of any antithesis, other than the logical negation of the thesis, is subjective. Then, if the logical negation is used as the antithesis, there is no rigorous way to derive a synthesis. In practice, when an antithesis is selected to suit the user’s subjective purpose, the resulting “contradictions” are rhetorical, not logical, and the resulting synthesis is not rigorously defensible against a multitude of other possible syntheses. The problem with the Fichtean “Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis” model is that it implies that contradictions or negations come from outside of things. Hegel’s point is that they are inherent in and internal to things. This conception of dialectics derives ultimately from Heraclitus. > > Hegel has outlined that the purpose of dialectics is “to study things in their own being and movement and thus to demonstrate the finitude of the partial categories of understanding”[34] IOW, it’s a purely philosophical tool – **not** a political one. Perhaps you are confusing Hegel’s dialectic with [Marx’.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hegelian_dialectic#Marxist_dialectics) But **that** is not a political tool either, it is simply a theoretical substructure of Marx’ [historical determinism.](http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Historical_determinism) ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [December 25, 2012, 3:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-someone-define-cultural-marxism-please/590262/153 "2012-12-25T03:45:35Z")
> [@wildorchid](#): > > The thing is that if you could have taken a poll at the turn of the century as to if the ave. American supported the idea of a central bank, you would have got a resounding ‘NO’! Don’t say that like it’s something to be proud of. Yes, that kind of nonsense is actually very old in American populist thought. British conservative Paul Johnson commented in his _A History of the American People:_ > [@](#): > > The Founders, particularly the Virginians, Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, et al., equated property, as a moral force, with land. Their views were articulated by John Taylor (1753-1824), like them a Virginia landowner who served in the Senate and published in 1814 a monumental work of 700 pages, An Inquiry in the Principles and Policy of the United States. Taylor distinguished between ‘natural’ property. such as land, and ‘artificial property’ created by legal privilege, of which banking wealth was the outstanding example. He saw the right to issue paper money as indirect taxation on the people: ‘Taxation, direct or indirect, produced by a paper system in any form, will rob a nation of property without giving it liberty; and by creating and enriching a separate interest, will rob it of liberty without giving it property.’ Paper-money banking benefited an artificially created and parasitical financial aristocracy at the expense of the hard-working farmer, and this ‘property-transferring policy invariably impoverishes all laboring and productive classes.’ He compared this new financial power with the old feudal and ecclesiastical power, with the bankers using ‘force, faith and credit’ as the two others did religion and feudality. What particularly infuriated Taylor was the horrible slyness with which financiers had invested ‘fictitious’ property, such as bank-paper and stock, with all the prestige and virtues of ‘honest’ property. > > Taylor’s theory was an early version of what was to become known as the ‘physical fallacy,’ a belief that only those who worked with their hands and brains to raise food or make goods were creating ‘real’ wealth and that all other forms of economic activity were essentially parasitical. It was commonly held in the early 19th century, and Marx and all his followers fell victim to it. Indeed plenty of people hold it in one form or another today, and whenever its adherents acquire power, or seize it, and put their beliefs into practice, by oppressing the ‘parasitical middleman,’ poverty invariably follows. Taylor’s formulation of this theory fell on particularly rich soil because American farmers in general, and the Southerners and backwoodsmen in particular, already had a paranoid suspicion of the ‘money power’ dating from colonial times, as we have seen. So Taylor’s arguments, suitably vulgarized, became the common coin of the Jeffersonians, later of the Jacksonians and finally of silver-standard Democrats and populists of the late 19th century, who claimed that the American farmer was being ‘crucified on a cross of gold.’ The persistence of this fallacy in American politics refutes the common assumption that America is resistant to ideology, for if ever there were an ideology it is this farrago. > [@wildorchid](#): > > so, my question is, how did this change in the publics attitude and opinions occur? > logically, something had to have intervened in order to change values and attitudes if they changed from generation to generation, because normally they are passed on intact from one generation to the next. Well, it’s like women’s suffrage: It seemed like a scary radical idea once, worked out well enough when tried, and now it’s simply part of the status quo, that is all. > [@wildorchid](#): > > Like when someone tells me about ‘global family’, i know that her Grandmother didnt believe in such nonsense . . . She did if she was a Christian. > [@wildorchid](#): > > (Marx called for the end to the family) He might have, but I want a cite. > [@wildorchid](#): > > forget about the Carnagie Institute documents (cited in the Iserbyt stuff) where they openly say they have to condition us through public education in the social sciences to give up our quaint american traditions of freedom and individuality in order to have created a collectivist totalitarian state, a technocracy…(Conclusions and Recommendations 1934 Carnagie Inst.) Which [Carnegie Institute](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnegie_institute) are you referring to? ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [December 25, 2012, 3:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-someone-define-cultural-marxism-please/590262/154 "2012-12-25T03:51:20Z")
> [@wildorchid](#): > > logical fallacies here: > ] bringing Birch into it out of nowhere… ‘guilt by association’ fallacy (you say the same thing so-n-so says; so-n-so is a nutjob; therefore youre a nutjob, and what youre saying can’t possibly have any merit. (massive logic fail)) > > ] using ‘poisoning the well’ type language (disconnect from reality; boilerplate rhetoric) > to sow seeds of doubt without presenting anything of substance… > > ] shifting the burden of proof for your counter-claim (if you have one) away from yourself with transparent sophistries… The John Birch Society did not come “out of nowhere”; it is a fairly accurate assessment of the sort of tripe you have been posting. In any event, it was merely an adjective to describe your walls of text and not offered as an argument against you. Fail. I did not make a “counter claim.” You have gone on, at length, with non-historical assertions and FINALLY offered an actual fact to be examined. While my tone was justifiably dismissive, I simply asked you for a citation for your assertions. As I have not made any separate assertions of a factual nature (beyond commenting on your odd beliefs), and as you are the one who has revived this zombie thread with all sorts of claims, asking you to finally support one fact is not “shifting the burden of proof.” It is simply asking you to provide ANY evidence for a single assertion out of many that you have tossed into this thread. Fail. I am pleased that you actually did provide a citation for your absurd claim. It pretty much demonstrated the paucity of evidence or fact behind your beliefs. However, since Conspiracy Theories generally take more effort to disprove than they are worth, I will limit my battles against such to CTs that actually have traction among the credulous. Your beliefs have no serious traction: You are not going to sway others with your claims; As a True Believer, you are not open to persuasive reason or fact. Therefore, engaging you would be a waste of time and I would not enjoy it. Others are welcome to engage you for their own amusement, but I will leave you alone. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [December 25, 2012, 3:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-someone-define-cultural-marxism-please/590262/155 "2012-12-25T03:56:25Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > As I have not made any separate assertions of a factual nature (beyond commenting on your odd beliefs . . . Odd, but not quite so unusual as you might expect. My immediate reaction to **wildorchid** was, "Oh, another one of **those."** Lots of Libertarians and lots of paleoconservatives have similar views of “international bankers,” etc. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [December 25, 2012, 4:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-someone-define-cultural-marxism-please/590262/156 "2012-12-25T04:02:26Z")
BTW, **orchid,** monetarily speaking, things have been much better and more stable since the [Federal Reserve](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Reserve_System) was established than before; fewer bank-panics. Read [this book about that,](http://www.amazon.com/The-Money-Men-Capitalism-Enterprise/dp/0393061841) it’s a short and fun read and your library has it. Andrew Jackson was a complete idiot for killing the Fed’s precursor, the Second Bank of the United States. Could’ve saved us a lot of trouble down the road if he hadn’t. Banking is one industry where bigger really is better. A contrary Jeffersonian small-is-beautiful policy, multiplicity of one-office-banks, laws against interstate branch banking, sometimes even state laws against intrastate branch banking, plagued the American economy with bank-panics throughout the 19th Century. Other countries that allowed big banks avoided those, or had not nearly so many. ---
**Author:** ![waterj2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/858c86/32.png) [@waterj2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/waterj2)\ **Post date:** [December 25, 2012, 7:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-someone-define-cultural-marxism-please/590262/157 "2012-12-25T07:00:01Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Banking is one industry where bigger really is better. A contrary Jeffersonian small-is-beautiful policy, multiplicity of one-office-banks, laws against interstate branch banking, sometimes even state laws against intrastate branch banking, plagued the American economy with bank-panics throughout the 19th Century. Other countries that allowed big banks avoided those, or had not nearly so many. Incidentally, have you checked out Michael Lind’s book on the Jeffersonian and Hamiltonian trends in US politics? Reading [this interview about it](http://www.bostonreview.net/BR37.3/michael_lind_land_of_promise.php), it struck me as the sort of thing you would start a thread about: > [@](#): > > In _[Land of Promise](http://www.powells.com/biblio/9780061834806?&PID=35607)_, I emphasize that ever since Alexander Hamilton, the first Treasury Secretary, battled Thomas Jefferson, the first Secretary of State, in George Washington’s cabinet, there has been a clash over whether the federal government should act in the economy as the coach (the Hamiltonian view) or as the umpire (the standard Jeffersonian view, if not always of Jefferson himself). Americans need to be reminded that we do not need to look abroad for a compelling alternative to the Jeffersonian orthodoxy of the past generation. > In 1981, President Reagan asserted: “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” President Clinton ratified that statement in his 1997 State of the Union message: “The era of big government is over . . .” Although each qualified his statement, their words encouraged the consensus that government is unlikely to do anything effectively and that the smaller the government, the more likely it is to be effective. > Whether coming from Republicans or Democrats, this is pure Jeffersonian ideology. And it is dangerous nonsense. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [December 25, 2012, 8:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-someone-define-cultural-marxism-please/590262/158 "2012-12-25T08:09:58Z")
> [@waterj2](#): > > Incidentally, have you checked out Michael Lind’s book on the Jeffersonian and Hamiltonian trends in US politics? [Yes, I have.](http://www.amazon.com/Hamiltons-Republic-Democratic-Nationalist-Tradition/dp/0684831600) ---
**Author:** ![wildorchid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/82dd89/32.png) [@wildorchid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wildorchid)\ **Post date:** [December 25, 2012, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-someone-define-cultural-marxism-please/590262/159 "2012-12-25T21:03:25Z")
The colonists had ‘colonial scrip’ which was their own currency that they issued themselves. when that was taken away unemployment appeared almost instantly, which had been unknown in the colonies up until that time. now what exactly do bankers have to offer us?? why do we require the service of a foreign central bank to supply our currency when we could supply it ourselves, and cut them out? In the final equation, they are just pimps who suck our energy, and ruin our economy in manipulated planned out cycles of boom and bust. I’m gathering that the answer is ‘they know whats best, and we don’t’?? btw, when someone calls Andrew Jackson an ‘idiot’ they have lost credibility w/ me, and only betrayed their own idiocy, imo. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2012, 12:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-someone-define-cultural-marxism-please/590262/160 "2012-12-26T00:41:54Z")
> [@wildorchid](#): > > The colonists had ‘colonial scrip’ which was their own currency that they issued themselves. > when that was taken away unemployment appeared almost instantly, which had been unknown in the colonies up until that time. :rolleyes: That’s just silly. There’s always been unemployment as long as there’s been formal jobs to be unemployed _from_. There never was any lost golden age. > [@wildorchid](#): > > now what exactly do bankers have to offer us?? > why do we require the service of a foreign central bank to supply our currency when we could supply it ourselves, and cut them out? In the final equation, they are just pimps who suck our energy, and ruin our economy in manipulated planned out cycles of boom and bust. Gibberish. What foreign bank? And the cycles of boom and bust used to be worse; it’s “planning” that’s drastically limited them. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-someone-define-cultural-marxism-please/590262.md?page=7) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-someone-define-cultural-marxism-please/590262.md?page=9)