{"id":72312,"date":"2021-09-19T17:30:02","date_gmt":"2021-09-19T22:30:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=72312"},"modified":"2021-09-19T17:41:17","modified_gmt":"2021-09-19T22:41:17","slug":"72312","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=72312","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

Book Review<\/a><\/p>\n

America Transformed: The Rise and Legacy of American Progressivism<\/i><\/a><\/p>\n

It is no secret that American public life is fracturing. The fissures can be seen in our gladiatorial-like Supreme Court nomination hearings, the collapse of confidence in our institutions, and the mounting sense that many have that elections won\u2019t change the country\u2019s fundamental trajectory. These disputes are merely symptoms, however, of a broader problem, the roots of which extend back decades.<\/p>\n

As Ronald J. Pestritto, graduate dean and professor of politics at Hillsdale College, argues in\u00a0America Transformed<\/i>, our present-day clashes reflect a fundamental \u201cdivide over first principles,\u201d which he traces to the rise of the Progressive Movement in the late nineteenth century. Pestritto makes a convincing case that the Progressives\u2014including Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt, Herbert Croly, and John Dewey\u2014sought to \u201crevolutionize both the theory and practice of American government.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Progressives had their differences and factions: consider the fierce 1912 presidential campaign between Wilson and Roosevelt. Yet they adhered to a \u201ccoherent set of principles, with a common purpose.\u201d They unleashed a \u201cdirect assault on the core ideas of the American founding,\u201d openly rejecting the natural rights teachings of the Declaration of Independence. Wilson once told an audience that \u201cif you want to understand the real Declaration of Independence, do not repeat the preface\u201d\u2014the same preface that contains the most concise articulation of the Founders\u2019 political theory.<\/p>\n

Pestritto argues that, for progressives like education reformer Dewey, the Founders\u2019 \u201cgreat sin\u201d was to think that principles such as a natural human equality in rights and government by consent transcended \u201cthe particular circumstances of that day.\u201d Influenced by Hegel\u2019s 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. In fact, the principles of the American Founding, and the Constitution built to reflect them, actively prevented government from taking the swift action that the public now demanded.<\/p>\n

Pestritto suggests that \u201cnative influences\u201d 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. The Progressives claimed that historical progress necessitated a dynamic and perfectible human nature, an idea that the Founders rejected. James Madison\u2019s claim in\u00a0Federalist<\/i>\u00a010 that the prevention of majority tyranny would always be a problem in political life was simply false, they believed. Thus Woodrow Wilson and political scientist Frank Goodnow sharply criticized the Constitution\u2019s separation of powers and the slow, methodical lawmaking process the Framers had put in place, which they saw as hopelessly out of step with the public will and too often stymied by a combination of political machines, big business, and other special interests.<\/p>\n

Pestritto maintains that the progressives worked toward \u201cdemocratizing and unifying national political institutions,\u201d though they sometimes differed on the means to achieve this end. Ever the radical, Theodore Roosevelt proposed policies such as overturning judicial decisions and the recall of recalcitrant judges who resisted heavy regulation of business. Herbert Croly, a cofounder of\u00a0The New Republic<\/i>, wanted to eliminate political parties altogether.<\/p>\n

To make politics fully democratic, the Progressives insisted that political leaders accountable to the people needed to find means of breaking the constitutional logjam\u2014think of Roosevelt\u2019s \u201cbully pulpit.\u201d Roosevelt and Wilson frequently enlisted (and refashioned) the memory of American statesmen such as Abraham Lincoln, John Marshall, and Daniel Webster, men who, in their rendering, had supposedly discerned history\u2019s centralizing trends.<\/p>\n

Pestritto argues that as the Progressives seemingly brought politics closer to the people, they simultaneously moved \u201cpolicymaking power away from popular institutions,\u201d handing it to \u201ceducated elites.\u201d They essentially established a fourth branch of government, a vast bureaucracy that wields legislative, executive, and judicial powers\u2014what Madison considered the very definition of tyranny\u2014that would fully bloom during Franklin Delano Roosevelt\u2019s presidency. What we know today as the\u00a0administrative state<\/a>\u00a0(a phrase coined by the political scientist Dwight Waldo in the 1950s) had its genesis in the Supreme Court\u2019s ruling in\u00a0J.W. Hampton<\/i>\u00a0v.\u00a0United States<\/i>, which granted broad powers to supposedly nonideological experts insulated from the corrupting effects of electoral politics.<\/p>\n

Pestritto notes that this new conception of government\u2014the sharp split between politics and administration\u2014originated in the \u201claboratories of democracy\u201d of state and local governments. There, Progressive governors such as California\u2019s Hiram Johnson and Wisconsin\u2019s Robert La Follette pushed direct democracy: the ballot initiative, recall, referendum, the direct election of senators, and electoral primaries. Through the establishment of government by unelected commission and the rise of nonpartisan city managers, the notion of expert administration permeated state governments in Oregon, South Dakota, Texas, and Illinois, as well as cities such as Galveston, Cincinnati, Des Moines, and Cleveland.<\/p>\n

The Progressives\u2019 strong belief in the notion of historical progress also guided their foreign policy. History had demonstrated that modern democracy was the \u201cpermanent and most advanced form of government,\u201d Wilson once wrote. To make the world safe for democracy, the Progressives\u2019 idealistic foreign policy necessitated an aggressive series of interventions in Haiti, Santo Domingo, Cuba, Mexico, and the Philippines.<\/p>\n

History had chosen the United States to lead the \u201cchildren\u201d (as Wilson described other sovereign nations) so that they could someday reach the heights of democratic governance. And should certain \u201cbarbaric races\u201d fail to do what they were told, Progressive historian Charles Merriam wrote in a particularly appalling passage, they \u201cmay be swept away.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some Progressives saw historical progress as the will of God Himself. Marshaling rhetoric that today would be regarded as extreme Christian nationalism, Roosevelt told the Progressive Party convention in 1912, \u201cWe stand at Armageddon, and we battle for the Lord.\u201d<\/p>\n

Adherents of the Social Gospel, the Progressive Movement\u2019s religious wing, were liberal Protestants who worked to reconcile life \u201con earth as it is in heaven.\u201d They turned away from concerns over individual salvation and other orthodox theological concerns and instead inculcated a social ethic that sought to use the modern state to equalize economic conditions. Pestritto observes that in one of his more moderate moments Baptist pastor Walter Rauschenbusch called for the \u201cpublic ownership of essential industries.\u201d By following God\u2019s unfolding plan, which history was revealing to mankind, human beings would someday experience the Eden that our ancestors had failed to maintain.<\/p>\n

Pestritto concludes\u00a0America Transformed<\/i>\u00a0by noting that, thanks to the Progressives\u2019 handiwork, \u201ccitizens of two different regimes [are] occupying the same country.\u201d The regime that today opposes that of the Founders is far different from what the original Progressives intended, but by uncoupling America from its natural rights foundations, they can justly be credited (or rather, blamed) for inaugurating our current crisis. Pestritto\u2019s concise volume, the best available overview of progressive political thought and practice, will help Americans make sense of the stark divisions that confront us.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Book Review America Transformed: The Rise and Legacy of American Progressivism It is no secret that American public life is fracturing. The fissures can be seen in our gladiatorial-like Supreme Court nomination hearings, the collapse of confidence in our institutions, and the mounting sense that many have that elections won\u2019t change the country\u2019s fundamental trajectory. … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,35,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-culture","category-enemies-foreign-domestic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=72312"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72312\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":72313,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72312\/revisions\/72313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=72312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=72312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=72312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}