Ep 1 | Control Freaks: The 'Scientific' Roots of Progressive Tyranny (REPLAY) | The Beck Story

This episode discusses the historical influence and current impact of the 'cult of expertise' in American governance and its ties to progressive movements.

1. The 'cult of expertise' has a deep-rooted history in American governance, influencing policy and societal norms.
2. Frederick Taylor's scientific management principles have been foundational in establishing the authority of experts in various sectors.
3. There is a perceived overreliance on experts in political and social arenas, which Beck argues undermines democratic processes and individual autonomy.
4. Historical instances of expert-driven decisions have led to significant societal changes, not all of which have been positive.
5. The episode draws parallels between past and present to argue that the unchecked power of experts can lead to tyranny.

1. Introduction

Overview of the episode's theme on the historical and current impact of the expert class in America. Quotes:

• Glenn Beck: "How did we get here with the cult of expertise?"

2. The Rise of Expertise

Discussion on the origins of the expert class during the Progressive Era and its implications. Quotes:

• Glenn Beck: "Expertise killed common sense."

3. Scientific Management

Exploration of Frederick Taylor's principles and their adoption across industries and governance. Quotes:

• Glenn Beck: "He called it science, and since no one really argued, it became so."

4. Modern Implications

Connection of historical expertise to modern-day policies and the impact on society. Quotes:

• Glenn Beck: "But again, how did we get to this point?"

1. Question the source: Always evaluate the credibility and motives behind expert advice.
2. Stay informed: Diversify your information sources to get a broad perspective on issues.
3. Participate actively in community and political discussions to ensure a balanced representation of views.
4. Educate yourself on historical contexts to better understand current policies and their roots.
5. Advocate for transparency and accountability in decision-making processes involving experts.

How did unelected “experts” with their unwavering devotion to “science” rise to such power in American life?
More than a century ago, an engineer named Frederick W. Taylor inspired progressive activists with a new concept he called “scientific management.” Future Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis took Taylor’s concept and married it with political power. Brandeis teamed up with President Woodrow Wilson and a powerful senator named Robert La Follette to give the nation an “expert” makeover that Americans were not asking for.

This is the story of how a cult of expertise developed among progressives and how these “experts” took a sledgehammer to our constitutional system of government, with far-reaching consequences that still reverberate today.

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People

Frederick W. Taylor, Louis Brandeis, Woodrow Wilson

Companies

None

Books

"The Principles of Scientific Management"

Guest Name(s):

None

Content Warnings:

None

Glenn Beck
Ever wonder why things are the way they are in America?

Welcome to the Beck story, my podcast on how our past informs our present charts our future. How did we get here?

The first season is about the cult of expertise in America. How it permeated our government, how this allegiance to so called expertise has far reaching implications for our nation. Right now, a remarkably consistent through line extends from the original progressive movement right through to the actions of left wing elites today.

How many times lately have you heard? Well, do you have a doctorate in that?

Oh, are you an expert?

Oh, you must be a scientist.

No, I'm not any of those things.

I am somebody who's a reasonable, thinking american.

I have a right to question, and I also have a responsibility to be involved in all of the decisions that now seem to be being made for me.

So how did we get here?

How many times in the past few years have you heard some version of this?

Health experts say your time might be ready now.

Speaker B
Experts say it's happening well, experts, health.

Speaker C
Experts, some experts, experts.

Glenn Beck
Follow the science.

Speaker D
Follow the science.

Speaker B
Be driven by science.

Speaker D
Listen to the scientists.

Glenn Beck
But if we now have access to so many experts and so much science, why is it that everything seems to be breaking down and basic common sense is gone?

Answer expertise killed it every day. Now decisions are being made by a class of experts that have a direct bearing on your life and the future of not only your nation, but the world.

And no one is asking you about any of it.

As the world learned in 2020, expertise untethered from humanity and combined with a cult like devotion to the science, end quote, can have disastrous, far reaching consequences.

But again, how did we get to this point?

That's the journey I want to take you on this season. How the experts rose to such power, how they wielded that power, and how America is now struggling with the fallout.

Our story begins with Louise Marie Taylor. She had traveled all over Europe numerous times, but she had never seen a lavish spectacle quite like the one that greeted her in Rome in 1927.

Lou, as her family called her, was in Rome for the third International Management Congress.

The pageantry and the crowds surrounding the conference demonstrated the power of her late husband's legacy, Frederick W. Taylor. He'd been dead now for twelve years, but he was a legend in the field known then as scientific management, a field that he basically invented in more ways than one.

Frederick Taylor's most famous book, called the Principles of Scientific Management, was first translated into Italian in 1915, the year Taylor died. Just eleven years later. Italian bureaucrats were so taken with Taylor's principles that they created a government agency to promote scientific management.

At the closing ceremony of the conference, banners, flags, soldiers, all provided a regal atmosphere in the italian Senate chamber.

Lou was moved when a photo of Frederick, her husband, was projected on a big screen.

Then the leader of the conference rose to speak and gave a full throated endorsement of scientific management, and the crowd roared with approval.

After the closing ceremony, Lou received a special invitation from the revered conference leader to his private office. He was eager to present Lou with a photo of himself in an exchange for a photo of her husband, Frederick Taylor, whom he said was a great man and had revolutionized management.

Lou thanked the man who happened to be a little bit more than just the italian leader of the management conference.

In fact, he was the new leader of everything in Italy.

He was Benito Mussolini.

What is an expert? Some expert witnesses point out that that's the actor we turn to the experts on. Experts agree that if nothing is done, do we really think experts are jumping in and helping people make great decisions? I don't think so.

When you learned about the progressive era in history class, it probably went something like this. The progressives are big hearted heroes who cared for the common man. They used government to fight for the poor, for children, for women and immigrants, battling all the terrible things that they had suffered at the hands of evil industrial capitalists. Right?

This reform obsession that came to be known as progressivism was not an overnight sensation. It was a slow burn, roughly the 1890s to the end of World War one in 1918. And some of the reforms that progressives brought about were good things like basic safety and sanitary standards for America's food and drugs. No one's going around today saying, gee, I wish we still had kindergarteners working on the factory floor.

But overall, America's history textbooks don't tell you the whole story about progressivism, or, frankly, anything.

They fail to mention how a cult of expertise developed among progressives and how these experts took a sledgehammer to our constitutional system of government. And we're still feeling the effects today.

In 1856, Frederick Winslow Taylor was born into a wealthy family in Philadelphia. When he was twelve, he spent three years touring around Europe with his family at a time when no one outside of the wealthiest Americans did such a thing.

When he was 16, Taylor attended Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, an elite boarding school for America's wealthy young men. Two years later, he passed the Harvard entrance exam with honors, then horrified his parents by deciding not to attend Harvard.

He hung out at his parents Philadelphia mansion for several months until his father finally helped Taylor get an apprenticeship at a machine shop called the Enterprise Hydraulic Works.

There, Taylor learned to cuss like a commoner and work with his hands. He had a genuine knack for engineering and design. In fact, he eventually owned several patents, including tennis racket and golf club designs.

Taylor would always use his apprenticeship as a badge of honor. Having rubbed shoulders with the common folk gave him some sort of street cred.

But Taylor was always an elite. He never shed that part of himself. And the major difference between he and the regular men that he apprenticed under was that ultimately, he didn't need the job. He had a safety net.

After his apprenticeship, he pleased his parents by completing an engineering degree from Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey. He then got a job at Millvale Steel Company in Philadelphia. And it was there that he discovered the knack that would make him famous, the knack for telling people how to do their jobs better.

At Midville, Taylor observed inefficiencies through the company, including what he believed to be employees working slowly on purpose.

Taylor soon fell in love with the stopwatch and then began doing time studies. Each step of the manufacturing process, he then corrected the workers, dictating the best technique that they should follow in performing their job.

Oh, he must have been mighty popular.

Detailed performance standards were put in place for all of the areas of the operation. He moved equipment around and meticulously streamlined everything.

Through these efficiency audits, he was able to enhance a company's productivity and cut costs. He essentially invented management consulting.

Here's how historian Jill Lepore described what Taylor did. Quote, hed get himself hired by some business, spend a while watching people work, stopwatch and slide rule in hand, write a report telling them how to do their work faster, and then submit an astronomical bill for his services, end quote.

He called it science. And since no one had really done it before, no one really argued with him about how scientific it actually was.

His favorite example, which he talked about in his book and countless lectures, was his 1899 pig iron study at Bethlehem Steel Company in Pennsylvania.

Pig iron was part of the steelmaking process in which iron ore was smelted and then poured into molds. When the iron cooled. You can have individual planks of iron that were later used as raw material for producing steel.

Taylor loved to tell the story about how his efficiency science got a man named Henry Knoll, who he referred to as Schmidt in his book, to work harder than everyone else when it came to the job of moving pig iron. The legend, as Taylor always told it, was that he got Henry Knoll to prove that a man could move 47 and a half tons of pig iron per day instead of twelve and a half tons.

How did Taylor science come up with 47 and a half tons as the standard?

Well, he picked ten men. He challenged them to load 16 and a half tons as fast as they could.

They did it in 14 minutes. So at that rate, over a ten hour day, that equaled about 71 tons per man. But then he knocked that number down to 47 and a half tons, based on his guesstimate of what he called the law of heavy laboring. But only Henry Noel was ever able to get close to 47 and a half tons per day, and he certainly didn't reach the number every day.

Was that really science?

Well, apparently it was if you just kept saying science over and over, and if you saved your client some money in the process, you can really see Taylor's elitism shining through as he discusses the pig iron job in his book.

Speaker D
This work is so crude and elementary in its nature that the writer firmly believes that it would be possible to train an intelligent gorilla so as to become a more efficient pig iron handler than any man can be. Yet it will be shown that the science of handling pig iron is so great and amounts to so much, that it is impossible for the man who is best suited to this type of work to understand the principles of this science, or even to work in accordance with these principles without the aid of a man better educated than he is.

Glenn Beck
Unfortunately, he goes on.

Speaker D
Now, one of the very first requirements for a man who is fit to handle pig iron as a regular occupation is that he shall be so stupid and so phlegmatic that he more nearly resembles in his mental makeup the ox than any other type. He is so stupid that the word percentage has no meaning to him. And he must consequently be trained by a man more intelligent than himself into the habit of working in accordance with the laws of this science before he can be successful.

Glenn Beck
Here is the progressive hero narrative of experts in action.

Poor Schmidt had no chance on his own, but with rules and prodding by expert overseers, he can rise above his station.

Taylor's audiences ate up the Schmidt story. Never mind the fact that Taylor described the workers he was supposedly helping as stupid gorillas and oxen.

He was merely doing science.

As America would find out, elitism usually goes hand in hand with progressivism. Frederick Taylor considered himself a progressive, but he wasn't much of a political activist during most of his career. Politics and state power were not his passions. Yet he had basically stumbled onto the holy grail that would make him a hero and a saint to american progressive elite.

He synthesized the spirit of the progressive era he lived in. He codified what progressive leaders were instinctively building, but just hadn't branded it yet.

It was the idea that we should put experts in charge of all aspects of life. And life would improve for everyone.

Taylor said.

Speaker D
In our scheme, we do not ask the initiative of our men. We do not want any initiative. All we want of them is to obey the orders we give them. Do what we say and do it quick.

Glenn Beck
Perhaps nothing made Taylor more progressive than the fact he was so in love with his own ideas.

In his book, he said, scientific management should be applied across all of society.

Speaker D
Quote, the same principles can be applied with equal force to all social activities. To the management of our homes, the management of our farms, the management of the business of our tradesmen, large and small, of our churches, our philanthropic institutions, our universities and our governmental departments.

Glenn Beck
This would become music to progressive ears.

Taylor's concept of scientific management gave power mad progressives the perfect label and tool they needed.

If you could transform a complex business through careful study and planning, and dictated change, imagine what could be done by using those same techniques on government and society.

Now progressivism had a unifying rallying cry.

Taylor was the Moses for them, coming down from the mountain with a new set of commandments. And giving them even more justification to take charge. Because now science was on their side.

And you cant argue with science.

Progressive leaders took Taylors concept and married it with political power.

But it would take another progressive titan, someone that the left still worships today, to take Taylors ideas about the importance of experts and make them go viral.

A century ago, as we're now learning, we witnessed the dawn of the expert class in this country. The consolidation of power into a few hands was something the founders tried to avoid.

But we had progressivism. Woodrow Wilson, he brought it all crashing back into our lives. And in one of the most blatant efforts of all time, trying to stamp out individualism and freedom. We're doing it again. And that means the freedom to have the opportunity to take your destiny in your own hands. It's something that I believe in. And if you're listening to this podcast, I believe you are too. And it's something that Jace medical believes in as well. They're a proud partner in bringing this together. And I'm happy to have them on board. They understand the way you and I do. That you need to be able to make decisions for yourself and your family. You need to be as self reliant as possible. And they're providing some of the most vital life saving medications, medications that the experts wouldn't want you to be in charge with. Medicines because of. The experts in charge might not be easy to get in the coming months and years, and they'll make sure you're prepared for anything with a year's worth of whatever medicine you have to take every day. I encourage you to check out jacemedical.com and prepare yourself and your family.

Im no expert, but I use Jace medical Louis Brandeis. He was one of those guys you didnt want to get into a debate with, you know, kind of like Elon Musk, youre certain to lose.

The son of a secular jewish immigrant from Prague, Brandeis was born in Louisville, Kentucky, and mostly grew up there. He was incredibly smart and ambitious, graduating from Harvard Law School when he was 20 years old with the highest grades in the school's history at the time.

In 1879, Brandeis started a law firm in Boston with a friend from Harvard, and soon their practice was so profitable that Brandeis started taking on select cases for free, cases that furthered his progressive ideals.

For Brandeis, that included advancing the idea of rule by experts, this speaks volumes about Brandeis philosophy.

Among his papers, a note was once found that he had written himself which.

Speaker D
Said, quote, advise client on what he should have, not what he wants.

Glenn Beck
That could practically be the progressive motto in our history textbooks. A 1908 Supreme Court case, Mueller v. Oregon, is often cited as an example of superhero progressivism at work.

Before this case, the Supreme Court had considered it a right of employers and employees to establish a work contract without interference from the state.

Brandeis would change that.

This case demonstrated Brandeis passion for rule by experts. He defended the state of Oregon in front of the Supreme Court, packing his brief with over 100 pages of research and supposed science backing up his theory that women working long hours was dangerous to the public health, safety, morals, and welfare.

This progressive argued that the state was correct to restrict work hours for women, rather than allowing employers and employees to set up their own work arrangement.

Brandeis won the case, as he usually did, and he's been hailed as a hero ever since. For his Brandeis briefs, judicial historian Stephen Powers wrote, quote, the so called Brandeis brief became a model for progressive litigation. He says the hallmark of this approach is its disregard for common law jurisprudence in favor of faith in a jurisprudence that takes into account social and historical realities.

Because of cases like Mueller versus Oregon, Brandeis gained a saintly reputation on the left as the people's lawyer. In 1910, he got another big opportunity to stand up for the people, this time in a hearing before the Interstate Commerce Commission.

The ICC was an early product of progressivism. It was established in 1887 to regulate the railroad industry.

It was the first regulatory authority commission in us history. Brandeis was brought in by the trade association of the Atlantic seaboard to make an argument for why railroad companies should not be approved to increase their rates. He dug in, preparing one of his famous Brandeis briefs, and that is when he stumbled onto the glories of Frederick Taylor's scientific management.

Brandeis traveled to Philadelphia and met with Taylor in person to glean everything he could about the amazing new science. He also met with Taylor's associates. In true progressive, expert style, Taylor was extremely protective of his scientific management concepts. Only he could certify official scientific management experts. According to him, there were only five other authorized experts in the world, and they all happened to work for him.

After learning everything he could about Taylor's scientific management, Brandeis was enthralled. Writing, quote, of all the social and.

Speaker D
Economic movements with which I have been connected, none seemed to me to be more equal in its importance and hopefulness.

Glenn Beck
Brandeis felt he held the key to a glorious, progressive future, and that key was experts in charge.

Just like Taylor, hovering over his stopwatch and charts to reconfigure every department of a steel company, Brandeis could see experts reconfiguring every aspect of America's messy society.

Speaker D
Brandeis said, quote, efficiency is the hope of democracy.

Glenn Beck
In October 1910, before heading to DC for the Interstate Commerce Commission hearing, Brandeis held a meeting in New York City with some of Taylor's associates. Among the attendees were Frank and Lillian Gilbreth, who later would become famous in the book Cheaper by the dozen, which was written by two of their children.

Yes, they really did have twelve kids. And if you read the book or seen the 1950s movie, you recall that it's about these eccentric parents who try to run their chaotic household with strict efficiency rules. The Gilbraiths were all about studying human motion to eliminate inefficiencies in everything from factory work to household tasks.

At that meeting, Brandeis had everyone help him settle in on an official title for this efficiency management by expert system. They decided to call it scientific management.

Taylor, who was not at the meeting, had used the term before, so he was sure to approve their choice. And of course, using the word scientific was the key ingredient at the ICC hearing. Brandeis built his case trying to demonstrate how evil capitalist railroads had no clue as to how they arrived at their crazy high rates and therefore were not justified in raising them. Even more, he built up to his you cant handle the truth moment. When he questioned the VP of a New York railroad company named Charles Daly, Daley admitted setting their prices was based on judgment.

So Brandeis asked him for details on exactly how he made that judgment.

Speaker D
The basis of my judgment is exactly the same as the basis of a man who knows how to play a good game of golf.

It comes from practice, contact, and experience with the particular subject at issue.

Glenn Beck
Then Brandeis said, I want to know.

Speaker D
Mister Daly, just as clearly as you can state it, whether you can give a single reason based on anything more than your arbitrary judgment as you have expressed it.

Glenn Beck
None whatever, replied Daley.

Speaker D
None whatever.

None whatever.

Glenn Beck
Frank Gilbreth, the cheaper by the dozen dad, was a star witness for Brandeis.

Gilbreth put on a show mesmerizing the commissioners when he used a stack of law books to demonstrate the bricklaying efficiency techniques he had developed using the new science of motion study.

When Gilbreth was done with his show, one of the commissioners said, this has become a sort of substitute religion with you. Yes, sir, responded Gilbreth with enthusiasm.

The commissioner had no idea how prescient he was comparing this to a religion.

The other thing that made Brandeis an activist lawyer who was way ahead of his time was his genius at controlling narrative.

At one point in the hearings, he made a startling claim, that scientific management would save the railroads $1 million a day.

He knew that figure would turn heads the next morning. The New York Times headline read, Rhodes could save $1 million a day. Brandeis says scientific management would do it. Calls rate increases unnecessary.

Well, similar headlines like that ran all across the nation, and it was a brilliant pr coup. Brandeis had no real way to back up the million dollars a day claim. But it didn't matter. Reporters had never heard of scientific management before, and they were mesmerized. That dollar figure struck in the public's mind. Brandeis won. As usual, the railroads were denied their rate hike. It was like taking candy from a baby. All you had to do was invoke scientific management.

But Brandeis wasn't just some clever con man. He actually believed what he was preaching, and he was just getting started.

Frederick Taylor. He became an overnight star. His scientific management spread like wildfire.

Brandeis hooked him up with a glowing profile in the american magazine, written by uber progressive journalist Ray Stannard Baker.

The same issue also serialized Taylor's book, the principles of scientific management, which came out just in time to ride the public wave. The magazine issue was titled the gospel of a new science of business management.

In his profile of Taylor, Baker wrote.

Speaker D
Quote from the very first young Taylor, with his early home environment in a reform atmosphere and his natural democratic instinct, was impressed with the deplorable conditions of industry and the heartlessness which characterized nearly all industrial operations.

It was as natural as sunlight for him to inquire, how can I change these things?

Mister Taylor is a man of wide cultivation, of varied interest, and of personal charm. He has a lively and progressive mind, seizing eagerly upon the problems of the.

Glenn Beck
Day, as would be the case with many leading progressives, they often revealed their true colors.

Maybe Baker missed the part in Taylor's book when he described the common laborer.

Speaker D
As too stupid properly to train himself.

Glenn Beck
But that kind of rhetoric didn't matter, because with the progressive cause, the ends justifies the means.

One biographer stated that Taylors principles of scientific management book was above all a reform tract, a progressive manifesto.

Regardless of whether Taylor actually considered it that many progressive activists did, Louis Brandeis raved that the coming science of management.

Speaker D
In this century marks an advance comparable only to that made by the coming of the machine in the last.

Glenn Beck
Nothing captured progressivism quite like scientific management.

Here was a bulletproof form of improved control.

You couldnt argue that it wasnt better for you because it was based on science.

More than a century later, progressives are still using this science argument.

And that's why in my first inaugural address, I vowed to return science to its rightful place. Follow the scientists and the science.

Speaker C
We have seen a pattern with this administration, which is they don't believe in science.

Glenn Beck
Science is settled. Science, science, science and science. On almost every subject that you can name. Science is the answer.

Speaker B
The science determines what is the correct answer to a particular question.

Glenn Beck
Armed with this magic new rhetorical device, it was time for progressive operatives to do what Taylor's book dictated, apply scientific management to basically everything, but especially government.

A little over a year after Taylors book came out, Louis Brandeis met his ideological twin, Woodrow Wilson.

They met just after the Democratic Party nominated Wilson for president. Wilson, the former president of Princeton and governor of New Jersey at the time of his nomination, was instantly captivated by Brandeis intellectual. Wilson biographer A. Scott Berg wrote that Brandeis quote, as much as anyone would shape the future of Woodrow Wilson's campaign and career.

Brandeis and Wilson, a perfect match. Two self styled experts, a Harvard man and a Princeton man, like minded about the problem facing America. They both thought America had outgrown the Constitution.

An editorial in the New Republic magazine perfectly captured this progressive mindset.

The business of politics had become too complex to be left to the pretentious misunderstandings of the benevolent amateur.

Ray Stannard Baker, the guy Brandeis got to write that glowing feature about Frederick Taylor, called for a, quote, new aristocracy.

Speaker D
Which must appear in America if our inefficient and halting political democracy is ever to develop into a true democracy. That higher and finer sort of aristocracy based upon a scientific and artistic outlook and inspired by an intense enthusiasm for human progress.

Glenn Beck
Brandeis and Wilson believe the situation required experts to fix it. They nominated themselves to do it. Wilson was the first president to have a PhD, and progressives were beside themselves about it. The left's charge against every non progressive president since Wilson has been that they're just dumb.

When Wilson was president of Princeton, he gave a speech titled our elastic constitution that really should have been a warning sign to America. But progressives saw it as a virtue. Wilson and Brandeis helped institutionalize this notion of a living constitution.

Wilson was the very first president to ever disparage the constitution and the separation of powers, which he considered an outdated barrier to his agenda. He thought it was time for America to evolve beyond the constitution.

He was a fanboy of the british parliamentary system and desired to see the US convert to a british style setup.

Speaker D
Wilson said, each generation must form its own conception of what liberty is.

We are not bound to adhere to the doctrines held by the signers of the Declaration of Independence.

We are as free as they were to make and unmake governments. Every 4 July should be a time for examining what forms of power we think most likely to affect our safety and happiness.

Glenn Beck
Brandeis and Wilson had big plans for America, which they dubbed the new freedom, during the 1912 presidential campaign.

But when Wilson won the election, the reality was that he still had to work within the constitutional system for the time being. So they needed willing allies in Congress to carry out their progressive bidding.

You know, the field of medicine didn't used to draw a distinction between itself and what we would now call holistic remedies.

It was just the field of medicine. Some things worked better than others, and that's it.

But then, of course, came the experts. They insisted on things being done in a certain way, which meant that a lot of good treatments for things that we all had taken or our grandparents had done that really did work, went by the wayside.

Relief factor is one of our sponsors and partners on this program. Relief factor doesn't work that way because the people who make it realize something the experts really don't fighting pain is almost always about helping your body heal itself with natural healing supplements that are actually effective. I know because I take relief factor every single day. If you're suffering from pain, may I recommend that you try relief factor? Just try their three week trial pack. Like I said before, I'm no expert on this, but this has worked for me. Give it a try. Relieffactor.com dot have you ever heard of Robert La Follette?

If you live in Wisconsin, you probably have when you see a photo of Senator Robert La Follette. One aspects make him stand out from almost every other politician of his era.

His full on, gravity defying, righteous mane of hair which totally fit the man who became known as fighting Bob.

Theodore Roosevelt, progressive himself, called La Follette an extremist with a touch of fanaticism.

And that's coming from the guy who started the Progressive Party.

The way Robert La Follette told it, his own party turned him into a rebel fighter. He was a Republican from Wisconsin with a law practice in Madison. In 1890. He claimed that Wisconsin US Senator Felitas Sawyer, a fellow Republican, offered to bribe him if he would influence a court case involving Sawyer.

The judge in the case happened to be Lafollettes brother in law. Lafollette said he refused the bribe, and his outrage set him on a warpath against corruption in his own party.

It also put him on the outs with Wisconsin Republicans. He stuck with his party, but became the leader of the progressive wing and rallied a coalition that got him elected governor in Wisconsin in 1900.

As governor, La Follette was an early pioneer of the progressive obsession with experts.

One of his co pioneers of this strategy was Richard T. Ely, a University of Wisconsin professor who had major influence on a young Woodrow Wilson. Years earlier, when Wilson was his student at Johns Hopkins University, Lafollette, in partnership with the University of Wisconsin, established the legislative Reference Bureau in which professors and other experts provided guidance to lawmakers and actually drafted legislation for them.

In 1905, Wisconsin's legislature elected La Follette to the US Senate. Within a few years, he established himself as the leader of the progressive Republicans in the Senate, who were often called insurgents.

The american magazine published a glowing ten part series on La Follette titled an autobiography of an Insurgent. His co writer was Ray Stannard Baker. You remember him, the guy who would go on to write that puff piece on Frederick Taylor and scientific management.

In 1909, La Follette called the insurgents together to divvy up the work of pushing progressive reforms through the Senate. Their biggest reform was the 17th Amendment, and it allowed for the direct election of us senators.

The insurgents thought they were improving democracy by empowering voters. But clearly it was a massive tilting of the playing field away from the states and toward bigger, more destructive federal power.

In 2010, the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said that through the 17th Amendment, you can trace the decline of so called state rights throughout the rest of the 20th century. End quote.

The 17th amendment was a seismic win for progressivism. The fighting bob he was fast becoming a progressive icon.

He started a magazine to promote progressive ideas called La Follettes Weekly.

It's now called the progressive and it's still running today.

Shortly after Louis Brandeis scientific management show at the ICC hearings, La Follette brought his fellow insurgents together for a meeting where they formed the National Progressive Republican League.

Historian William Murphy described the league as, quote, a bold effort by a group of republican reformers to seize control of their party and transform it into a party of progressivism, end quote.

Ultimately, Woodrow Wilson solved the Republican Party's progressive insurgency problem by making progressivism dominant in the Democratic Party. And when Wilson took office, he and Brandeis had no bigger champion for their new freedom agenda than Robert La Follette.

One historian stated, Woodrow Wilson was the first president to develop systematically the legislative powers of his office.

The constitution does not give the president any legislative powers. But surely the founders meant to make an exception for the president, right? I mean, if he has a PhD.

Louis Brandeis became Wilsons chief economic advisor. Wilson wanted to give Brandeis a cabinet position, but there was strong public pushback because of Brandeis radicalism. So he remained just an advisor in that role. Brandeis was one of the chief architects of both the Federal Reserve act and the new Federal Trade Commission.

The Federal Reserve was absolutely transformational.

It created twelve regional Reserve banks controlled by the Federal Reserve Board.

Naturally, board members were pointed by the president, but this government monolith would have power to adjust the interest rate, regulate banks and control the nation's money supply.

Just weeks before Wilson took office, the 16th Amendment was ratified, allowing federal income tax.

Wilson then signed in the first peacetime federal income tax law in us history.

And the only republican senator to vote for it was Robert La Follette.

Wilson considered it his duty and right to lead Congress by the nose. To accomplish his agenda, he forced himself on Congress. More than any other previous president, he was the first since John Adams to give a state of the Union speech in person. Before Congress, most previous presidents rarely visited the Capitol building, but Wilson used an office in the Capitol as often as three times a week to strong arm the legislative process.

Wilson had barely been in office for a year when one journalist remarked, quote, the vital fact in any present american politics is the enormous control, if not ascendancy, which President Wilson is exerting over Congress.

Republican Senator Albert Cummins of Iowa told his Senate colleagues, the influence which has.

Speaker D
Been exerted by the president upon members of Congress, an influence so persistent and determined that it became coercive, is known to every intelligent citizen of the United States States.

It ought to humiliate us all somewhat when we look around and find that the people generally not only understand the surrender of our rights and privileges, but observe it with a certain degree of satisfaction.

Glenn Beck
Besides dominating Congress, Wilson also signed over 1800 executive orders. That's the second most of any president of all time, behind FDR.

Remember, Wilson had two terms, FDR had four.

This was the expert at work. This was scientific management at work. After all, he was a doctor, and doctors know best.

Here's how Princeton historian Thomas Leonard summed up Wilson's radical first term in office.

By March 1917, the fourth branch of government was established. Fourth branch describes the independent government agencies staffed and advised by experts, which, though nominally inside the executive branch, were chartered specifically to be free of political influence. Employing a permanent civil service rather than political appointees, these experts represented themselves as objective scientists above the political fray, administering progress for the good of all. Hmm. How's that working out for us?

This was the birth of what many conservatives mean when they refer to the deep state, a vast bureaucracy of unelected experts creating policies that have the force of law because they're under the executive branch. To Wilson and Brandeis, consolidating power under the executive was the natural evolution required for efficiency. To them, the constitution's separation of powers was, for a bygone era. True progress required more concentrated power.

Near the end of Wilson's first term awarded Brandeis for all of his transformative work with the Supreme Court nomination, the only senator consulted before Wilson announced his nominee was, who else? Robert La Follette.

Wilson needed to know he could count on progressive republican votes to confirm Brandeis.

Fighting Bob assured him, oh, yes, you'll have the votes.

Not everyone was so enthusiastic about Brandeis's nomination, however. Former president Taft pulled zero punches, saying that Brandeis was a muckraker, an emotionalist.

Speaker D
For his own purposes, a socialist prompted by jealousy, a hypocrite, a man of infinite cunning, of great tenacity of purpose, and, in my judgment, of much power for evil.

This nomination is one of the deepest wounds that I have ever had as an american and a lover of the Constitution.

Glenn Beck
In the end, La Follette voted yes, even though he only got two other progressive republicans to join him.

Louis Brandeis was on the highest court in the land.

Now he could really give the living constitution a run that would long outlast him.

Now progressives had hardcore disciples of the gospel, of expertise in key leadership roles in all three branches of government.

Progressive dreams were coming true, and yet there was still so much to be done.

The experts in our society helped bring about some of the modern miracles weve experienced in technology, no doubt. But theyve also helped usher in modern horrors at the dawn of the 20th century, as mankind was raising its hackles and nations were slowly preparing to go to war with each other in what would be the bloodiest war in history. Until its sequel.

While all of that was going on, the experts in the medical field, they were raising their ugly heads as well. They were the experts, the doctors that you could trust, and they were promoting eugenics, the systematic weeding out of undesirable human beings because their lives and their rights weren't that important, because they stood in the way of progress. They didn't have a life that's worth living.

Our experts today, Yuval Harari is one of them, says by 2030, there will be millions of useless people.

Maybe we should learn from the past. This podcast today is a pilot, and we're watching the metrics to see if you connect with it. If you want more, let us know. But in one of our upcoming episodes, if it indeed goes well and you like this podcast, we'll be about eugenics and the experts in medicine.

Tragically, the brainchild of that historic evil is embedded in our society to this day. It's practiced every time an expecting mother walks into a clinic and allows a doctor, an expert, to destroy her unborn child.

Progress is progress, don't you know?

I want to thank one of our partners on founding this particular podcast. It's Preborn. They combat this evil every day. Please go to preborn.com and join the battle to fight against the sadistic experts. Save a mother and their child. Do it today. Preborn.com dot written on Frederick Taylor's tombstone in Philadelphia are the words father of scientific management.

So much for Taylors science, because it really wasnt science at all.

Taylors biographer Robert Canigel put it like his scientific time studies werent very scientific. He had left a legacy not of harmony, but of turmoil.

Yet these elements of the story would, in his telling and retelling, recede into the dark corner of the stage. Meanwhile, bathed in the floodlight, would be another version, close enough to the events to be true, yet sufficiently rearranged and reconstituted to be seen with equal justice as the product of Taylor's art.

All of this would become the stuff of story, myth and drama.

According to historian Jill Lepore, Taylor fudged his data, lied to his clients, and inflated his record of success.

An analysis of Taylor's work by two historians in the 1970s concluded a careful study of Taylor's published accounts of the story about his 1899 pig iron study. His biography, his papers all reveal Taylor's story to be more fiction than fact.

Yet none of that mattered to progressive leaders because Taylor's art helped legitimize their cult of expertise.

Harvard was finally convinced to open its business school by a man who wanted to model it on Taylor's scientific management.

Taylor delivered a lecture series there every year until his death.

Many other universities soon followed suit. Elite universities would become America's factories that churned out experts to run everything.

Oh, and do you remember Frank Gilbreth? The cheaper by the dozen dad?

He helped start the Society for the Promotion of the Science of Management, which was later renamed the Taylor Society.

During the 1920s, the Taylor Society was an incubator for future new Dealers and members of FDR's so called brain trust.

In the introduction to the principles of scientific management, Taylor said, in the past.

Speaker D
The man has been first.

In the future, the system must be first.

Glenn Beck
But what happens when you carry that system too far?

Mussolini was a devoted man of scientific management. But so was Lenin, who read Taylor's books, created a soviet council for scientific management, and insisted that the Taylor system be taught and incorporated across russian territory.

And what happens when the scientific management system is supreme and it merges with technology and artificial intelligence?

All you would have to do is watch what's unfolding in real time in China.

And a happy smiley in this swell version is right around the corner for western progressive societies.

At the World Economic Forum conference in Davos in 2023, Duke University professor Nita Ferhani presented a disturbing seminar on the latest in brainwave technology.

Speaker C
After all, what you think, what you feel, it's all just data.

Data that, in large patterns can be decoded using artificial intelligence.

We're not talking about implanted devices of the future. I'm talking about wearable devices that are like fitbits for your brain, using consumer wearable devices. These are headbands, hats that have sensors that can pick up your brainwave activity, earbuds, headphones, tiny tattoos that you can wear behind your ear. We can pick up emotional states like, are you happy or sad or angry? We can pick up and decode faces that you're seeing in your mind. Simple shapes, numbers, your pin number to your bank account.

Glenn Beck
We're moving beyond scientific management at this point. It's scientific micromanagement.

In 1948, CS Lewis wrote, of all.

Speaker D
Tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies.

The robber barons cruelty may sometimes sleep, but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

Glenn Beck
This kind of expert control continues to be the dividing force of progressives.

We see things like the Biden administration telling us what light bulbs were allowed to buy, banning the sale of incandescent bulbs in 2023, and doing it through the Department of Energy, which is under the executive branch. So you have no say in the matter. It's the old progressive obsession with efficiency.

Only now, with the added urgency of climate change.

The progressive suffered a backlash after World War one in Woodrow Wilson's second term for reasons we'll explore in another episode later this season. But there's little doubt that Wilson would have kept running for president if his health hadn't failed him. He never fully recovered from the stroke that had incapacitated him for the last year and a half of his presidency.

That didn't stop him from collaborating with Louis Brandeis in 1921 on a new progressive manifesto, just as he was starting to plot another presidential run.

Wilson died later that year. And instead, Robert La Follette kept the progressive flame burning.

Running for president 1924, with a coalition of labor unions and socialist groups backing them.

Who did he choose as his full time running mate?

Louis Brandeis. But Brandeis declined. He couldn't give up his influential lifetime post on the Supreme Court.

In 1922, supreme court heard a case involving a female student who was barred from attending public school in San Antonio because her parents refused to get her vaccinated for smallpox as required by her school district.

Their lawyers argued that the vaccine requirement denied her equal protection of the laws under the 14th Amendment. But the Supreme Court unanimously ruled against her. And here's what Louis Brandeis wrote in the decision. Quote.

Speaker D
Long before this suit was instituted, Jacobson v. Massachusetts had settled that it is within the police power of a state to provide for compulsory vaccination.

These ordinances confer not arbitrary power, but only that broad discretion is required for the protection of the public health.

Glenn Beck
In 2020, America met a certain doctor who was a little bit of Frederick Taylor, Louis Brandeis, Woodrow Wilson, and Robert La Follette all rolled into one, as if he had been created in a progressive lab. Few people embodied the shape, sheer elitist, progressive conviction of their own genius expertise more than Anthony Fauci.

How many times was America told what an expert doctor Fauci really was?

He was a doctor who had been in this position for nearly 40 years. That kind of expertise could not possibly go wrong, even when the contradictions piled up. To question the experts, to question the science during a national health crisis, was considered dangerous.

Speaker B
It's very dangerous, Chuck, because a lot of what you're seeing as attacks on me, quite frankly, are attacks on science, because all of the things that I have spoken about consistently from the very beginning have been funded fundamentally based on science.

Sometimes those things were inconvenient truths for people, and there was pushback against me. So if you are trying to, you know, get at me as a public health official and a scientist, you're really attacking not only doctor Anthony Fauci, you're attacking science.

Glenn Beck
The expert was no longer just using science as a tool.

The expert had become the science.

We constantly rely on experts to make.

Speaker C
Decisions for us, because even eyewitnesses and experts can get it wrong. The experts do get things wrong. You have to seek out sources from other points of view and then critically examine their motivations and credibility as well.