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William Jennings Bryan (1860—1925) was a three time Democratic Presidential
candidate. Though he 'struck out' in his effort to win the highest office
in the land, many of his ideas—a progressive income tax, 'trickle-up' economics
rather than trickle-down—won acceptance, if not in his lifetime then thereafter.
Some people were alarmed at his ideas, like Theodore Roosevelt, who said,
"'If Bryan wins,' he argued, 'we have before us some years of social
misery, not markedly different from that of any South American republic.'"
(Capitalism in America, Alan Greenspan and Adrian Wooldridge, p. 182). But
in the end many of his ideas became established.
Herbert Hoover complained bitterly that the New Deal was just "Bryanism."
In this era of the 'Religious Right,' it is striking to realize how many
of the social arrangements conservatives despise owe their inspiration
to this man, a fervent and sincere Christian who truly cared and diligently
studied what the Bible says about the rich and the poor and about war and
peace. What a contrast he presents with George W. Bush, a man pushed forward
by his backers as a Christian, though he does not think it matters much
if one is a Muslim or a Christian, and does not believe the Bible to be
"literally" true.* This web page is presented in the hope that contrasting the genuine with
the fake will awaken some people.
The modern Republican party is a 'three-legged stool,' clamped together
by Ronald Reagan. Evangelical social conservatives join with the less numerous
laissez-faire capitalists and militarists to form a potentially winning
coalition. It is understood that the social conservatives, despite their
weight of numbers, are the one leg who are never to expect any governmental
action beyond the symbolic on their concerns, such as abortion. While Bryan
would have shared the social conservatives' bewilderment at 'gay marriage,'
he would never have stood shoulder-to-shoulder with deregulators like Alan
Greenspan or the neo-imperialists who invaded Iraq.
And where do these ideas come from? From the gospel? Alan Greenspan's muse
was the atheist novelist Ayn Rand. Atheist economist Friedrich von Hayek
inspired Margaret Thatcher's neoconservatism. Laissez-faire economic theory
received a great impetus from Social Darwinism, a viewpoint first enunciated
by Charles Darwin himself in the 'Descent of Man.' The Social Darwinists
and their successors lamented that governmental assistance to the poor
encouraged these weak, unfit persons to breed, which they could not do
if allowed to starve. But the Darwinian viewpoint that life arose by chance
is at odds with the Biblical viewpoint of creation. Neither is it a Biblical
project to invade nations around the globe, such as Iraq, to shower them
with the blessings of democracy. What keeps a three-legged stool made up
of such heterogeneous elements from splintering? And why are American Christians
willing to allow themselves to be spoken for by a low buffoon like Rush
Limbaugh, when this is their heritage?
Bryan had his dark side as well, unfortunately. He was willing to stand
at the head of the Democratic Party ticket at a time when the Democratic
Party in the South was unabashedly racist. Later he opposed an anti-Klan plank in the Democratic convention of 1924: "McAdoo forces fought the anti-Klan plank with the support of William Jennings Bryan, three-time Democratic presidential candidate, a fight that included Bryan’s kneeling in prayer for unity on the convention floor." (Painter, Nell Irvin (2011-04-18). The History of White People (Kindle Locations 5154-5156). W. W. Norton & Company.)
I hope the reader will realize
that in putting up this web page I am not so much advocating such nostrums
as a silver standard as seeking to correct strange distortions in our
perception of American history. You read on the internet that we have an
income tax because Karl Marx called for one. Well, not exactly. Who wanted
an income tax? Both the Union and the Confederacy had had one during the
Civil War, as an emergency war-time measure; those later championing the
cause included Bryan's fellow boosters of Prohibition: "This had been
obvious to the leadership of the WCTU [Women's Christian Temperance Union]
as early as 1883, when the editors of the organization's official organ,
The Union Signal, coyly asked their readers, 'How, then, will [we] support
the government' if the sale of liquor is prohibited? The editors had a
ready answer for their own question: an income tax, they wrote, was 'the
most just and equable arrangement ever made for the equalization of
governmental burdens.'" (Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition,
Daniel Okrent, p. 57). Since the federal tax on liquor was a major source
of governmental revenue in that day, some substitute had to be found if
the Eighteenth Amendment was ever to be feasible. It is not so long since
then, but somehow, the progressive history of evangelicalism has retreated
to the dark side of the moon.
Not until Hubert H. Humphrey pushed through a civil rights plank in the
1948 Democratic Convention did the Democratic Party become the party of civil rights.
However, readers who follow Clarence Darrow's questioning of Bryan in the Scopes trial
realize that one of these men is a deep-dyed racist, and it's not Bryan, whose
views on Darwinian evolution are laid out in 'In His Image.' Bryan's political work revolved around his perception that the unitary
gold standard then in force was deflationary, thus disadvantageous to debtors
who were obliged to pay back their mortgages in dollars worth more than
those they had borrowed. On issues of taxation, he championed the progressive
income tax:
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