I've written a lot, lately, about Woodrow Wilson. Mostly, this is because of Jonah Goldberg's book Liberal Fascism and his assertion that Woodrow Wilson was a fascist. I even wrote an essay called Was Woodrow Wilson Fascist? in which I looked into the question and decided that, yes, he was, but only by Goldberg's somewhat unusual definition of fascism.

I'm changing my mind, however. I've just encountered an essay by Wilson, written in 1910, that casts additional light on the topic. It also tells us a lot about Wilson as a person. This essay doesn't appear anywhere on the internet that I can find. It was apparently the text of a speech that Wilson gave to a group of lawyers. The speech was published in The Public Papers of Woodrow Wilson, in 1925 and was titled The Lawyer and the Community. I wish I could present it in full, but it's just too long for me to type.

Update: Google Books has scanned in the Annual Proceedings of the American Bar Association and it contains the text of this silly speech. So, now you can go and read the whole thing, if you like.

Here's Wilson's first sentence:

The whole history of society has been the history of a struggle for law, for the definite establishment and continuance of such relationships as seemed to those who had the choice to be best suited to the support of their own influence and for the maintenance of the community over which they presided.

Say what? Right away, we can see that Wilson either doesn't think very clearly or has trouble expressing his thoughts clearly. I'm not sure what the heck he means, but in the context of the rest of this document, I think he means: "people in charge have always sought good laws". This is balderdash and shows a silly understanding of both history and humanity. But, let's continue. A few paragraphs later we run across a sentence that tells you just about everything you need to know about Woodrow Wilson:

There are two great empires of human feeling, the realm of religion and the realm of political aspiration.

This just dumbfounds me. What sort of damaged human being only sees religion and politics as the only two "empires of human feeling"? It's just wrong on so many levels. What is the word "empire" doing in there when the discussion is about human feelings? Did Wilson not know that many, many people have no "political aspiration" at all? Did Wilson truly not see regular old love as an aspect of "human feeling"? I think that the answer is that Wilson himself was consumed by two things, his religion and his political aspirations, and he was so self-absorbed that he had no idea that other people weren't like himself. I'm telling you: the man was messed up.

Before we continue, let's note that 1910 was an era in American history when the Populist movement, which started in the West, was sweeping the entire country. Many people, politicians for the most part, were sure that a revolution was at hand when society would be remade in a sort of socialist utopian image. Utopian social works like Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward and Upton Sinclair's The Jungle were all the rage. All across the country, the "little guy" was being told by his politicians that it was time that he got his. Wilson was surfing the crest of this wave.

Society is looking itself over, in our day, from top to bottom, is making fresh and critical analysis of its very elements, is questioning its oldest practices as freely as its newest, scrutinizing every arrangement and motive of its life, and stands ready to attempt nothing less than a radical reconstruction, which only frank and honest counsels and the forces of generous cooperation can hold back from becoming a revolution.

He makes this statement without the slightest doubt that he is in full understanding of all the forces and facts of history. It was true, but only to a degree. The problem was that this complete makeover he foresaw for the country turned out to be all wrong for America. The worst parts were all cast aside by the beginning of World War II and the rest have more or less plagued us to this day.

As he sees it, lawyers have lost their way. Instead of serving the public good, they have become too specialized and too dedicated to their clients (Big Business, that is) rather than the public good (and the idea that lawyers should serve the public good, rather than their clients, may indicate why Wilson never did very well as a lawyer).

A new type of lawyers has been created; and that new type has come to be the prevailing type. Lawyers have been sucked into the maelstrom of the new business system of the country. That system is highly technical and highly specialized.
...
In gaining new functions, in being drawn into modern business instead of standing outside of it, in becoming identified with particular interests instead of holding aloof and impartially advising all interests, the lawyer has lost his old function, is looked askance at in politics, must disavow special engagements if he would have his counsel heeded in matters of common concern.
...
The country must find lawyers of the right sort and of the old spirit to advise it, or it must stumble through a very chaos of blind experiment.

This tells us a lot about Wilson. He really believed that lawyers were the leading lights of societal progress – well, at least lawyers of the "old spirit". Wilson was the worst sort of elitist. Not only did he believe that certain elites, the "right sort", should lead society, but he believed that it was their duty to do so – no matter what the benighted masses thought about it. This attitude is still prominent on the Left today, Wilson has a lot to answer for.

Most men are individuals no longer so far as their business, its activities or its moralities, is concerned. They are not units, but fractions; with their individuality and independence of choice in matters of business they have lost also their individual choice within the field of morals. They must do what they are told to do or lose their connection with modern affairs. They are not at liberty to ask whether what they are told to do is right or wrong. They cannot get at the men who ordered it, – have no access to them. They have no voice of counsel or of protest. They are cogs in a machine which has men for parts.

Sheesh, what a load of crap. First of all, this implies that no one has ever quit a job over a disagreement with the boss. It implies that no one, upon being told to do something they know is wrong, has ever yelled out to the community, "hey, look over here!" It assumes that newspapers and public conversation don't exist. It plainly states that workers don't even know whether what they are asked to do is right or wrong, because they need to "ask" those bosses which they have "no access" to. This is crazy, not only have individuals always had the ability to resist wrongdoing in the name of a corporation, but doing so has been so common that we have a word for it: whistleblower.

The present task of the law is nothing less than to rehabilitate the individual, – not to make the subordinate independent of the superior, not to turn corporations into debating societies, not to disintegrate what we have been at such pains to piece together in the organization of modern industrial enterprise, but to undo enough of what we have done in the development of our law of corporations to give the law direct access again to the individual, – to every individual in all his functions.

So, what Wilson wants to do is hold individuals responsible when corporations act – not illegally, not in breach of contract – but when they commit "offenses against the public interest". It's the duty of lawyers of the right sort to "rehabilitate the individual," because, God knows, those individuals will never be able to take care of themselves.

In respect of the responsibility which the law imposes in order to protect society itself, in order to protect men and communities against wrongdoings which are not breaches of contract but offenses against the public interest, the common welfare, it is imperative that we should regard corporations as merely groups of individuals, from which it may, perhaps, be harder to pick out particular persons for punishment than it is to pick them out of the general body of unassociated men, but from which it is, nevertheless possible to pick them out, – possible not only, but absolutely necessary if business is ever again to be moralized.

Thus Wilson promulgated one of the central fallacies of modern Liberal thought: the idea that there is something called the "public interest" and it is always clearly and easily determined. Here's a lovely example of this over my lifetime: at periodic intervals, we have decided that certain aspects of diet are "bad" for people and that Something Must Be Done. There was a time when salt was the culprit, all right-thinking, right-dieting people were urged to avoid salt. At other times, the offender has been sugar, fat, "empty calories", soft drinks and "transfat". Wilson's wrongheaded idea has become so common that communities are, as I write, scrambling to outlaw the public vending of foods containing transfat. What about salt? sugar? regular, old fat? Never mind, our elites have changed their mind on the nature of the danger.

The fact is that if we learned anything over the course of the 20th century, it's that the "public interest" is a slippery idea that is often the opposite of what it seems to be. For example, a community may debate vigorously over various aspects of zoning law; taking into account environmental aspects, business interests, city planning and state and federal law. The community may then pass a set of ordinances that turn out to be perfectly wrong in the light of history. The public is made up of many conflicting interests and prioritizing them is not always easy. Only a snobbish elitist like Wilson could think that those in power (Wilson, that is) would always have a clear, disinterested, unbiased view of the public interest. Holding either a corporation or an individual responsible for acts against something as vague and ill-defined as the public interest is just another way of saying, "we, the people in charge, will let you know what you should and should not do." Rather than put the law, clearly defined and open to public debate, in charge, Wilson would put himself. Not only does he put himself in charge, he does so for your own good.

It is not necessary that the corporation should be broken up. It is not fair that the stockholders should be mulcted in damages. If there are damages to be paid they should be paid out of the private means of the persons who are really guilty.

Here we have naked folly. Imagine that Joe the engineer is behind in his work and his boss Fred tells him to finish up the design work on those brakes for the new car they are designing. Joe says, "but I need to do some more analysis, they may not be safe!" Fred says, "they'll be fine, we've got other work to do." Then the car is built, the brakes fail and someone is killed. How is it better, under Wilson's idea, that Joe and Fred pay the damages, rather than the corporation? Holding the corporation responsible means that the corporation, to avoid paying enormous damages, will hold its people to a high standard. If only the individuals are held responsible, it's actually in the corporation's best interest to see that it knows as little as possible about the functioning of its employees. If we had actually taken Wilson's advice, the results would have been disaster. He could only think in generalities, not practicalities.

You also have to wonder if Wilson would have extended this idea of serving the public interest for government officials. Certainly, a government official should be no less responsible for their own actions than a worker in a corporation. Would Wilson really have subjected himself to financial ruin if some decision of his as president had turned out not to serve the public interest? Was Wilson, who in order to get elected, promised to keep the country out of war, then within months of becoming elected declared war, acting in the public interest? Both times?

We can also find out who uses the corporations against the public interest; and we can punish him, or them, if we will, whither they belong to the actual nominal organization of the corporation or not.

It's pretty easy to see how Wilson became such a dictator during World War I. It was his nature to think that he knew what people needed to do, even if they disagreed. But it gets better:

I have used the corporation merely as an illustration... Society must get complete control of its instrument or fail. But I have used it only as an illustration of a great theme, a theme greater than any single illustration could compass, – namely, the responsibility of the lawyer to the community he professes to serve.

I interpret this poorly worded passage to mean that all of society, not just corporations, must be made to work in the public interest. All of us are, in Wilson's view, beholding to this public interest. All of us must sit at the feet of the elites – the lawyers, for goodness' sake – and be told how to serve the public interest. Only by subordinating our own wishes and desires to the public interest can we live in a just and equitable society.

This is, of course, what we have heard from politicians on the Left for the last hundred years. Wilson decided that speaking against the government (the elites, that is) would be a punishable offense and jailed thousands for it. FDR decided, by fiat and out of no superior understanding of economics or finance, how the economy should be run and what the price of gold should be. Lyndon Johnson decided that paying unwed mothers to have children was the duty of all well-to-do Americans. Hilary Clinton asserted it was the "village" that had the smarts to raise a child, not the child's parents.

There can be no doubt that we all have obligations to our society. The difference between liberals and conservatives is that liberals think it's the elites who decide the public interest and conservatives think the determination of the public interest is an act reserved to the conscience of each individual. Modern liberals think that the public interest is a definable, tangible thing. Conservatives think that we each have our own idea of the public interest and the combination of all of those ideas – sometimes working together, other times at odds or cross-purposses – is the true definition of public interest. Conservatives trust each other, modern-day liberals trust the elites.

Was Wilson a fascist? Hell yes! Nothing could be clearer. Over at Merriam-Webster, they define fascist thusly: a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition. Wilson was a staunch nationalist. This speech shows how forthright he was in placing the good of the nation in general ahead of the individual. He assumed essentially dictatorial powers during World War I. He nationalized the railroads and he forcibly suppressed opposition to the war. I don't see how you could take it any other way.

Note: this entry is part of a series called "Thoughts about Jonah Goldberg's book", which contains the following entries:
     Liberal Fascism
     The Pivot of Civilization
     Was Woodrow Wilson Fascist?
     Woodrow Wilson: Epic Fail