Was Milwaukee’s Last Socialist Mayor, Frank Zeidler, a ‘Liberal?’

 The term 'liberal' is often used in politics and economics.  The different meanings of the term, liberal, conflict with one another.  for example, the classical use of the term 'liberal' in economics means no interference by government.  This was established by Adam Smith, Ricardo, and Malthus.  Their theories were the basis of capitalism.  the term, 'neo-liberal' includes a dominant influence by government in trade transactions, for example, setting the rules for free trade.  Economist Milton Friedman, and Presidents Bush, Clinton, and Obama are examples.  The economic order of neo-liberalism is now being attacked and replaced by Donald Trump with ethno-nationalism.  

Manifest Destiny 'liberal', for example, Theodore Roosevelt, included expansionism, motivated by the doctrine that America's mission is to lead the world.  Government interference issued for the purpose of America's leadership.

The New Deal 'liberalism' of Franklin Roosevelt promoted government interference to provide labor rights and purchasing power for consumers.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary says the meaning 'liberal' is to be open to ideas and ways of behaving that are not conventional or traditional.  the dictionary goes on to say that 'liberal' means broad-minded or tolerant.

For Milwaukee Mayor Frank Zeidler (1948 - 1960), 'liberalism was openness to new ideas, a society that respects the individual and the common good.  Zeidler was a Democratic Socialist, the party that was opposed to war.   

 Victor Berger, the founder of the Democratic Socialist Party in Milwaukee opposed World War I.  For his opposition to World War I, Berger was indicted under the Espionage Act in 1918.  He and four other Socialist party leaders were convicted in Chicago and then sentenced to twenty years in prison.  The U.S Supreme Court overturned Berger's conviction in 1921 and, with his name cleared, he won election to Congress in 1922, 1924, and 1926.Opposition to war was key to Zeidler's philosophy of government.  He wrote:  

'The Brotherhood of Man' becomes a trap and snare

    Unless a man reflects;

For only by a knowledge of our difference can we dare

    To remedy defects.

    Our tastes are not the same;

    We do not thrive in equal ways.

    And useless is the aim,

    Without this sight, for peace that stays.

For Frank Zeidler, peace was at the core of 'liberal.'  Other liberal manifestations resulted in war.  Zeidler is a Democratic Socialist.  He never aspired to much more than living above the poverty level.  He insisted to a colleague that he would always call himself a 'liberal' when it was suggested that it was suggested that it was a term not respected.  Zeidler would not accept the tag 'progressive.'  He was a 'liberal.'

The struggle that we are currently experiencing with Trump must be challenged.  It is the destruction no only of neo-liberalism, but of the American Experiment that 'All are created equal, with the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.'  Mayor Frank Zeidler's understanding of 'liberal' is an excellent basis for this challenge.

Resources:

The Making of Milwaukee, John Gurda, Milwaukee County Historical Society, 1999.

Reflections:  the poetry of a young Frank Zeidler, published by the Milwaukee public Library, 2002.

Liberal in City Government:  My Experiences As Mayor Of Milwuakee, by Frank P. Zeidler, Milwaukee Publishers, LLC,  2005.   

 

      

  

 

Our Lady of Guadalupe, Patroness of the Americas

HOPE from History Compressed

The Gospel of Luke describes Mary receiving the news that Christ would be with us all. 

The struggle of Judaism at the time was against Rome.  It was hopeless, but Mary on her visitation to her cousin said,

…for the Mighty One has done great things for us – holy is his name.

  His mercy extends to those who fear him, from generation to generation.

  He has performed mighty deeds with his arm; he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts.

  He has brought down rulers from their thrones, but has lifted up the humble.

  He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty. 

Luke 1:46-50

We have hope.  Let us speak out against Trump and his minions.  

 

St. Patrick's Day

 Theologian Matthew Fox is mistaken in associating the Celtic spiritual tradition of St. Patrick with Teilhard de Chardin.  Teilhard, the Frenchman, overcooks Celtic spirituality. 

Ray Nogar writes:

The God of the strange world of Father Teilhard is not the one I have come to believe in.  His is the God of the neat; mine is the God of the messy.  His God governs with unerring efficiency; mine provides with inexcusable waste.  His God is impeccably regular; mine is irresponsible.  His God is the Lord of order; my God is the Lord of the Absurd.  

[The Lord of the Absurd by Raymond J. Nogar, O.P., p. 126.  Herder and Herder, New York, 1966.]

The Rise and Fall of the Neo-Liberal Order by Gary Gerstle

 Gary Gerstle’s history of contemporary economics is an outstanding work.  It offers a structure to remember and criticize recent economic history and also suggests pertinent questions for consideration.  Gerstle’s summary of liberalism begins with classic liberalism of the 18^th Century based on the analysis of Adam Smith.  This is followed by Keynesian liberalism, dominated and led by Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal. Next came neo-liberalism.  In our opinion, in all phases of liberalism, imperialism is denoted.

Classic liberalism, which promoted a free market economy based on profit, resulted in poverty for millions. Slavery continued from the previous order of mercantilism.  Lady Wilde’s poem as follows described the potato famine where cash crops were sent overseas while the Irish starved:

    Weary men, what reap ye? 

    —Golden corn for the stranger.What sow ye? 

    —Human corpses that wait for the avenger.

    Fainting forms, hunger‐stricken, what see you in the offing?

    Stately ships to bear our food away, amid the stranger's scoffing.

    There's a proud array of soldiers—what do they round your door?

    They guard our masters' granaries from the thin hands of the poor.

    Pale mothers, wherefore weeping?

    —Would to God that we were dead

    Our children swoon before us, and we cannot give them bread.

The Famine Year: poem by Lady Jane Wilde, The Penguin Book of Irish Verse, Penguin Books, 1970.

Each epoch delineated by Gerstle is precluded by a movement and then established as an order. 

Classic liberalism was based on free trade.   It replaced the economic order of mercantilism.  Free trade meant an elimination of tariffs and minimal government intervention in business.

According to Gerstle, free market liberalism collapsed with the Great Depression.  The answer was found in the theories of J. M. Keynes who showed the need for purchasing power by consumers. 

Keynes’ theory highlighted the then-considered factors of production, land, labor, and capital, and added consumers to the list.  For consumers to have purchasing power, government needed to intervene. 

This was a successful policy, but collapsed with the depression of the thirties.  C. H. Douglas also had some ideas at the time of Keynes, but Keynes’ ideas were selected.  Douglas claimed that his program of credits would eliminate economic fluctuations and would negate war as a means to establish needed markets.  His system would eliminate overproduction and unemployment.  Douglas died before World War II; he saw it coming and died as a very sad man. 

The following is Frank Zeidler’s poem describing the alienated worker in the Roosevelt era.

    I have not thought much of what it must be like to be struck by some of the     weapons us munitions workers make.  I really don’t think there is going to be     a big war anyway, and even if there is, we might as well enjoy ourselves right     now. 

        “I Am the Munitions-Maker. And I Am.”  Poem by Frank Zeidler, former Milwaukee Socialist mayor published  by Milwaukee Public Library, Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  2002.

 

 

Roosevelt’s New Deal provided jobs and wages for workers, but also war.  Japanese citizens were rounded up and imprisoned and also some Italian and German families were imprisoned. Economic hegemony replaced military control.  Roosevelt’s success made him very  and he ran and was elected to a fourth term.  Martin Kennelly, an Irish immigrant, despite family pressure, voted for Dewey in 1944 because he was afraid of Roosevelt being established as a King.  Roosevelt’s New Deal liberalism lasted until the 70’s when complaints about high taxes, inflation, and government interference in business opened a new path for another liberalism, neo-liberalism. 

Neo-liberalism had a long history of formation.  A key moment in its history was the Bretton Woods, New Hampshire Conference in 1944.  Delegates from the major capitalist countries on the verge of the World War II victory, suggested a new economic order of minimal control by government for a free market economy.  Financial rules were set up controlled by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank.

Both U.S. political parties supported this initiative.  Rules were set for a global economy.  The term, globalization of the economy, was used.  The system was called neo-liberalism to distinguish it from classic liberalism, the classic liberalism of Adam Smith and the liberalism of Franklin D. Roosevelt. 

The collapse came rather quickly.  Poverty hit the main laboratory of the experiment in Chile.  The advocates of the Chicago school of Friedman economics were wrong. 

Free trade meant the movement of manufacturing from the United States to Latin American countries seeking low wages. 

Gary Gerstle does not note a major breaking point.  The Zapatista armed challenge in Mexico the opening day of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994 indicated serious trouble for neo-liberalism. 

Donald Trump challenged neo-liberalism in his first term.  Gary Gerstle has yet to comment on his second term which has taken a wrecking ball to the neo-liberal system.  Trump’s policy of America First destroys world economic liberalism and promotes a new imperialism led by the U.S. 

Gerstle does not foresee an economic order that would supplant Trump’s new version of imperialism.  Wouldn’t it be different if the factors that move the world economic system would adjust free market capitalism to serve the common good, as determined by the people, and would respect the sacredness of the earth?

 

The Rise and Fall of Neo-Liberal Order:  America and the world in the free market era by Gary Gerstle, Oxford University Press, 2022

 

"Honoring the Courage of Those Who Sacrifice and Follow Conscience"

The Creation Spirituality Lineage Calling All Social and Environmental Activists, Mystic Explorers, Justice Makers, Cosmic Thinkers, Earth Keepers   Daily Meditations with Matthew Fox  Watch for Matthew Fox's video meditation -- now appearing every Monday!   Be sure to catch Matthew's newest social media channel on Bluesky! Honoring the Courage of Those Who Sacrifice & Follow Conscience 2/15/2025 As the results of the election ripple out, learn the deeper stakes involved. Get your copy of Trump & the MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ: A Handbook for the 2024 Election today! Choose your format in the book block below.  Three days ago, we honored the 20th anniversary of Sister Dorothy Stang’s martyrdom among the peasant farmers living in the rainforest, and committed to defending it against forces of greed that are trying to kill it in order to get rich quick by establishing cattle farms.   The peasants, when they buried Sister Dot, said “we are not burying you, we are planting you.” In other words, her love for them, the forest and justice, is growing fruit elsewhere.   In doing what she did and staying to do her work on behalf of the peasants and the rainforest, Sister Dot was imitating the courageous way of Jesus, who was called a “stern warrior” in the Scriptures and in the Liturgy. At Christmas, this text is used to speak of Christ: When peaceful silence lay over all,  And night had run the half of her swift course,  Down from the heavens, from the royal throne,  leapt your all-powerful Word:  Into the heart of a doomed land  the stern warrior leapt.  Warrior on horseback. Bronze statue at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Photo by Brett Wharton on Unsplash.  Such love and heroic sacrifice as Sister Dot’s takes spiritual warrior energy. As Aquinas says, we are to “brave great dangers for great things, for instance the common welfare, justice, divine worship, and so forth.” He frequently cited the prophet Jeremiah who said, “The Lord is with me like a brave warrior.”   Rabbi Heschel talks about “the urgency of justice,” and how “to do justice is what God demands of every person: it is the supreme commandment, and one that cannot be fulfilled vicariously.” To do justice takes inner strength or warrior/prophetic energy.   Poster at a Black Lives Matter protest in Nebraska, 2020. Photo by Kalea Morgan on Unsplash.   Buddhist nun Pema Chodrin calls mindfulness practitioners “spiritual warriors.” Buddhist Joanna Macy tells us that “great courage—moral and physical—is required of the Shambhala warriors who carry the weapons of compassion and insight.”   Yesterday, a long-time Republican and conservative and top federal prosecutor resigned, rather than comply with an order to dismiss corruption charges against New York City’s mayor. US Attorney Danielle Sasson, who once interned with conservative judge Anthony Scalia, was recently chosen by the Trump administration to lead the prosecution of New York Mayor Eric Adams.    When she was ordered by deputy attorney general Emil Bove to dismiss the case on Monday, she refused to do so, and gave up her job rather than comply. It took “lion energy” and spiritual warrior conscience to leave her post rather than submit to a command to cease pursuing the corruption charges. Good for Ms. Sasson!  Five other prosecutors followed Ms. Sasson’s courageous act of conscience and defiance, and also walked away from their jobs. It is good to see some courageous and conscience-driven lawyers stand up.  Manhattan U.S. attorney resigns after DOJ says to drop Adams case. Video by CBS New York. Would some congress people and senators would show the same commitment to conscience and to the greater good of our country, stand up and speak out against dangerous nominees for cabinet positions, for example. And risk losing their jobs while standing up for the common good.

The Working Catholic: Disabling Help by Bill Droel

 

Generally, those in education, health care, ministry, civil service and more want to do good through their daily work. However, the outcome of their efforts often produces the opposite of what they intend. Schools produce too many uncultured young adults. Frustration among patients and health professionals is a major side-effect of health care delivery. Churches reinforce individualistic attitudes. The civil service system, top to bottom, often delivers dependency and/or corruption.

The bad side-effects come from the nature of our bureaucratic system in which transactions supersede personal attention. Students relate to teachers by way of grade sheets. Patients relate to doctors and nurses through charts and test results. A business simply counts an employee as a debit on the expense sheet, rather than as a unique individual.

Some time ago, Msgr. Ivan Illich (1926-2002) gave a talk to seminarians, titled “To Hell With Good Intentions.”  These North American seminarians were about to spend a summer helping people in Mexico. Illich told them to discard their unacknowledged pretention that You people will be better because I know better.  Those who desire to help, said Illich, have “enormous good will [but] an abysmal lack of intuitive delicacy.”

 L.M. Sacasas, writing in The Convivial Society, summarizes Illich’s challenge and gives it current application, including to those involved with artificial intelligence. How deeply do computer engineers reflect on the harm that their programs cause, Sacasas asks? All our tools and devices come along with “a perspective on the world.” The devices subtly encourage their users to adopt an individualistic attitude, he continues.

Too often unexamined helping behavior results in “a loss of personal potency,” says Sacasas. The more that nice people apply their notion of helpfulness and forsake “critical self-awareness,” the more that patients, students, parishioners, employees and citizens lose agency.

In this talk to seminarians and in his other writing, Illich delivers a stern warning. The warning does not, however, support the neoconservative position that all government assistance (Medicare, food stamps, disaster relief, etc.) should end. Illich’s positive advice to the seminarians and to us is a “silence of deep interest.” At prayer each evening, consider the question: Whom did I really help today?

Pope Francis preaches the same when he urges Christians to develop a “culture of encounter.” Go to the peripheries and look squarely at others. Listen to them with an unbiased heart. Programs, notebooks, handouts and bandages can be appropriate. But the genuine helper is skilled in the art of active listening. Lo and behold, the helper who listens can discover something about herself. So too, each true exchange between people is an encounter with God, our God who is Unified Community, a Blessed Trinity.

 

Droel edits a free, printed newsletter, INITIATIVES (PO Box 291102, Chicago, IL 60629)

The Lost Factor of Production

 The Episcopal Bishop of Washington, D.C. says we need to be concerned about the least among us.  The least among us are innumerable in our world economy. Trump’s disregard for immigrants is just the beginning.  We are all vulnerable. 

Economists say there are 4 factors of production:  land, labor, capitol, and entrepreneurship.  But what is it all for?  If AI is substituted for ‘labor’ and ‘entrepreneurship, ’what is the reason for an economy?  Massive wealth is created for the few. 

If there is no need for labor, why be concerned about social justice for immigrants?  Why be concerned about social justice?  The rationale for an economic system is lost.

But if the reason for an economic system is human survival and happiness, the factors of production have to be adjusted to serve this goal.  This is the lost factor of production.

Where are we going?  Is humanity evolving towards a sincere awareness of the mandate, ‘Love God and love your neighbor’ or do we face an apocalypse of destruction and we have to start all over again? 

                              Robot standing in the lobby of the Sphere in Las Vegas, Nevada