Federal Expression: Dan Smoot Report- 'America's Promise'

Source:Federal Expression- 1960s Tea Party leader Dan Smoot.

"The Dan Smoot Report Americanism as dream of by the founding fathers of our nation."

From Federal Expression 

"Howard Smoot, known as Dan Smoot (October 5, 1913, in East Prairie, Mississippi County, Missouri – July 24, 2003, in Tyler, Smith County, Texas), was a Federal Bureau of Investigation agent and a conservative political activist. From 1957 to 1971, he published The Dan Smoot Report, which chronicled alleged communist infiltration in various sectors of American government and society." 

From Wikipedia 

"Thereafter, Smoot published his weekly syndicated The Dan Smoot Report. He also carried his conservative message via weekly reports over radio. The Dan Smoot Report started with 3,000 paid subscribers; at its peak in 1965, it had more than 33,000 subscribers. Each newsletter usually focused on one major story. One issue, for instance, was devoted to the Alaska Mental Health Bill of 1956, which Smoot claimed was a communist conspiracy to establish concentration camps on American soil. Another issue lionized Douglas MacArthur after his death in the spring of 1964.

A subsequent 1964 issue opposed a proposal by U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson to transfer sovereignty of the Panama Canal to the Republic of Panama. Johnson failed in his attempt, but President Jimmy Carter in 1978, with bipartisan U. S. Senate support led by Moderate Republican Howard Baker of Tennessee, prevailed by a one-vote margin to extend control of the Canal Zone to Panama. It was Moderate Republican support for many Democratic proposals that particularly angered Smoot, who gave up on the national Republican Party as a viable alternative to the majority Democrats of his day." 

From Wikipedia

Just to start off with some of the things that Dan Smoot says here: I think you would get a more intelligent analysis from Rush Limbaugh, or Sean Hannity about liberalism and so-called modern liberalism, than Dan Smoot. And that is not a complement. 

Mr. Smoot lumps liberalism in with communism and fascism. Liberals, believe in human rights and individual rights. Communists, don't and believe that a state strong enough to take care of everyone you wouldn't need individual rights. Because everyone would be taken care of by big government. Liberalism, is about liberty, liberation and liberalization. Not statism, especially in a communistic, or theocratic form.

Now as far as what Dan Smoot's main point about President Lyndon Johnson and the Great Society: I basically agree with everything he said here, except the nonsense (to be generous) about so-called modern liberalism. 

President Johnson's goals with the Great Society, was to create a country where everyone would be freedom from anything bad, especially poverty, but discrimination as well. He and his administration, with help from a Democratic Congress and Progressive Republican support in both the House and Senate, otherwise those programs don't pass, built off the New Deal and added new welfare rights to the American safety net. But didn't create some Scandinavian welfare state, where the central state becomes responsible for managing everyone's welfare for them.

So Dan Smoot, is wrong here about what liberalism actually is and what Lyndon Johnson was trying to accomplish with the Great Society. But was right about the dangers of a superstate big government welfare state that assumes responsibility for the personal and economic welfare of each and every individual. 

But that is not what we have in America and never will. Unless more than half of the country goes on a month long marijuana high and elects Jill Stein, or Bernie Sanders President. But you might have a better shot at seeing snow in Atlanta at a Braves games in July, then Stein or Sanders ever getting elected President of the United States. So nothing to be worried about. 

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