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Thread: What Progressives Wrought

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    What Progressives Wrought

    To me, this review of America Transformed: The Rise and Legacy of American Progressivism is less political than it is historical as it accounts for the roots and progress of progressives. It's not topical but in it you can see patterns emerge that play out today. I suggest reading it in its entirety as I can only cite part of it.

    What Progressives Wrought

    ...As Ronald J. Pestritto, graduate dean and professor of politics at Hillsdale College, argues in America Transformed, our present-day clashes reflect a fundamental “divide over first principles,” which he traces to the rise of the Progressive Movement in the late nineteenth century. Pestritto makes a convincing case that the Progressives—including Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt, Herbert Croly, and John Dewey—sought to “revolutionize both the theory and practice of American government.”

    ... They unleashed a “direct assault on the core ideas of the American founding,” openly rejecting the natural rights teachings of the Declaration of Independence. Wilson once told an audience that “if you want to understand the real Declaration of Independence, do not repeat the preface”—the same preface that contains the most concise articulation of the Founders’ political theory.

    Pestritto argues that, for progressives like education reformer Dewey, the Founders’ “great sin” was to think that principles such as a natural human equality in rights and government by consent transcended “the particular circumstances of that day.” Influenced by Hegel’s philosophical idealism, they argued that historical progress had shown that what the Founders thought were universal truths were in fact simply ideas of their time....

    Pestritto suggests that “native influences” had already compromised the American immune system by the time the Progressive Movement emerged. A toxic mix of Social Darwinism, pragmatism, and the rejection of social compact theory in New England and the antebellum South prepared American intellectuals and politicians to accept an alternative account of politics that seemed better able to meet the challenges of modern society....
    Points that follow include "vast bureaucracy that wields legislative, executive, and judicial powers—what Madison considered the very definition of tyranny," "Progressive governors such as California’s Hiram Johnson and Wisconsin’s Robert La Follette pushed direct democracy: the ballot initiative, recall, referendum, the direct election of senators, and electoral primaries," aggressive interventions to spread democracy, the Social Gospel of liberal Protestants, and more.
    Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire. ― Gustav Mahler

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    It sounds similar to Mark Levin's new book with a greater emphasis on the history of the Progressive movement in this country. Much of it under the false label of being a liberal intellectual movement I might add.

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