I tried out for mathematics at UTexas, Austin. Some of the stuff they made us do was so tedious and intricate that sample problems were welcomed as hawsers attaching the theories to practical reality. Few have read my 2007 Live and Let Live causality analysis between small party spoiler vote clout and changes in laws and Amendments to the Constitution.(link) Fewer still understand the relationship, despite the graphs, pictures and arrows and audio recording of that simplest of practical expositions. But persistence pays, so here goes another example of how small party planks plus a tiny yet persistent percentage of spoiler votes and minor offices leveraged MAJOR changes in the Constitution and laws of the nation and its States. Changing laws with votes is WINNING.
After the People’s Party–advocating Communist platform plank 2–got 9% of the vote in 1892, both halves of the entrenched Kleptocracy struggled to block further penetration of alien ideology. Republicans enjoyed power to impose prohibitive tariffs and invade foreign lands. Their ranks swelled with pietistic altruists eager to burn books and put women and their doctors on chain-gangs for mentioning human reproductive functions in print. Democrats had lost their slaves, resorted to terror to successfully stop freedpeople from casting votes, but accomplished little else. It was among failed agrarians and northern collectivists that German communism found fertile urban and agrarian ground in Postbellum America, so the People’s Party grafted itself onto the Democrats.
Business and banking had crumbled from Comstock‘s 1873 through late 1879, crashed again 1889-1884 and recovered somewhat during Grover Cleveland’s victory over sumptuary laws. Population and silver production increased faster than gold, so money was tight; teetotalers blamed liquor and elected Benjamin Harrison (R).(link) Dry and Looter parties each won over 5 times the vote difference between the entrenched parties when Cleveland won again in 1892, with the Populists getting 9% of the vote and helping wreck the economy with an income tax. Republican dry fanatics and gold bugs doubled down and got McKinley elected. It became clear during Eugene Victor Debs’ early career that elections were decided by Prohibition Party and Populist-Socialist-Marxist spoiler votes–much like today. Both entrenched Kleptocracy parties acted to keep insurgents from upsetting their plans with outcome-shuffling spoiler votes–just like today. Here’s how it played out in terms of increasing vote share for Socialist Eugene Victor Debs.
To break the impasse, small partisans demanded equal suffrage for men and women. They went after the sneaky insertion of “male” into the 14th Amendment, which poisoned the 13th and 15th as far as women were concerned. Women’s Suffrage activists managed to bring the sidelined half of the adult population into the affray as volunteers and boosters. Some entrenched State parties copied the plank. But Prohibitionists and Socialists (it’s hard to discover which) wuz there fustest with the mostest and their vote share bloomed anew. Still, the number of voters hardly changed from 1900 to 1912, thanks to entrenched Kleptocracy strategies to strangle upstarts in the crib. Debs did not run in the wartime election, in which all communistic parties together got less than his 1912 vote tally. But the 19th Amendment was gaining State ratifications in the summer of 1919.
Amid the booming population, the socialist vote fast outstripped the entrenched “communism of pelf” as war and 19th Amendment agitation slipstreamed the communist income tax back into action while jerking the dentures out of male politicians’ privilege of electing U.S. senators. Women voters no longer needed the Socialists in 1920. Guided by Pauline Sabine, women would in 1932 save the nation from the accelerating collapse brought on by fanatical enforcement of the Harrison and Volstead prohibition laws. After Franklin Roosevelt got alcohol bans repealed, many Republicans supported the National Socialist dictator Herbert Hoover’s policies of July 1931 had brought to power Over There in Germany. For 20 more years, few even tried to elect a Republican prohibitionist to the Executive Mansion.
Thanks and a tip of the hat to the late Kurt Vonnegut Jr for calling attention to Indiana politician Eugene Victor Debs.
Good Reading: INSTRUÇÕES PARA O FORMULÁRIO DE ASILO i589: Como preencher pedido de asilo nos EUA. Okay, I never said it was exciting reading. (link) This is a Kindle file readable in Brazilian Portuguese on a cellphone or tablet. I translated the instructions for applying for political asylum, suspension of removal or protection under the Geneva Convention against torture, which I hired two colleagues to correct and edit. The Catch-22 is that the actual asylum form, downloadable at no cost from government websites, has to be filled out in English. Brazilians with imperfect command of English find this an invaluable aid in understanding what the questions are asking. Attorneys, volunteers for Catholic Charities, the Legal Orientation Program and even my former bosses at the Brazilian Embassy and consulates Stateside will find this an excellent resource. The questions are set forth in plain language that is easy to understand and untainted by wishful thinking. No copy shop will even xerox this many pages for the one dollar ($1) fee I am charging, and delivery is practically instantaneous. The Amazon Kindle app that reads the file is free to download from Amazon.com or Amazon.com.br
Get the big picture in Prohibition and The Crash on Amazon Kindle in two languages. After this you’ll be able to explain to economists exactly how fanaticism and loss of freedom wrecked the U.S. economy.
Prohibition and The Crash, on Amazon Kindle (link)
ASYLUM APPLICATION FOR i589 INSTRUCTIONS IN PORTUGUESE: INSTRUÇÕES PARA O FORMULÁRIO DE ASILO i589. What we did was make the Political Asylum instructions accessible to and understandable by people accustomed to thinking in Portuguese. This costs one dollar ($1) and you can read it on a cellphone with the Kindle app.(link)
Check out LIBtranslator, my political economy blog at https://libertrans.blogspot.com/
Brazilian Sci-fi from 1926 featuring the beautiful daughter of a scientist touting prohibition and racial collectivism in America’s Black President 2228 by Monteiro Lobato, translated by J Henry Phillips (link)
I also produce books and articles in Portuguese, using Brazilian historical sources at http://www.expatriotas.blogspot.com or www.amigra.us
My financial history blog, http://www.Libertrans.us, is at libertrans.blogspot.com
libertariantranslator 