In a recent Wall Street Journal article on June 30, 2014, conservative theorist and researcher Charles Murray of the American Enterprise Institute writes:
“Wait, doesn’t ‘progressive’ today reflect the spirit of the Progressive Era a century ago, when the country benefited from the righteous efforts of muckrakers and others who fought big-city political bosses, attacked business monopolies and promoted Good Government? The era was partly about that. But philosophically, the progressive movement at the turn of the 20th century had roots in German philosophy (Hegel and Nietzsche were big favorites) and German public administration (Woodrow Wilson’s open reverence for Bismarck was typical among progressives). To simplify, progressive intellectuals were passionate advocates of rule by disinterested experts led by a strong unifying leader. They were in favor of using the state to mold social institutions in the interests of the collective. They thought that individualism and the Constitution were both outmoded. That’s not a description that Woodrow Wilson or the other leading progressive intellectuals would have argued with. They openly said it themselves. It is that core philosophy extolling the urge to mold society that still animates progressives today — a mind-set that produces the shutdown of debate and growing intolerance that we are witnessing in today’s America. Such thinking on the left also is behind the rationales for indulging President Obama in his anti-Constitutional use of executive power. If you want substantiation for what I’m saying, read Jonah Goldberg’s 2008 book “Liberal Fascism,” an erudite and closely argued exposition of American progressivism and its subsequent effects on liberalism. The title is all too accurate.
Murray is right. The progressive movement, as envisioned by Woodrow Wilson and other intellectuals of the time, has reached full fruition in today’s post-modern leftist establishment. Barack Obama is their man. But regardless, their time had come. And Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren and others stand ready to carry it on, and move it “forward.”
Perhaps the greatest irony about the term “progressive” is that Thomas Jefferson, a century before Woodrow Wilson and two centuries before Obama, wrote the following in a letter to Edward Carrington, in 1788: “The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground.”
...
Hope and change? Not until we start to define “progress” differently. This is why Obama’s presidency, like all the others, has failed miserably. It need not be so, and it need never have been so. So long as man can think, he can change his ideas and his policies and practices. Not a moment sooner.
The Economics and Political Science Room
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by Mister D
