{"id":6636,"date":"2013-10-17T09:50:25","date_gmt":"2013-10-17T16:50:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=6636"},"modified":"2013-10-17T09:50:25","modified_gmt":"2013-10-17T16:50:25","slug":"barack-obama-and-the-bad-ideas-of-progressivism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/barack-obama-and-the-bad-ideas-of-progressivism\/","title":{"rendered":"Barack Obama and the Bad Ideas of Progressivism"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Bruce S. Thornton \/\/\u00a0FrontPage Magazine<\/a>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Barack Obama\u2019s serial gross incompetence has elicited all sorts of explanatory theories. He\u2019s a closet socialist, an Alinskyite radical, a secret Muslim, or an anti-American internationalist. Though some of Obama\u2019s words and deeds give support to all these speculations, I prefer a simpler explanation. Obama is a Progressive\u2013\u2013not a vague \u201cprogressive,\u201d the elastic moniker liberals started using when the word \u201cliberal\u201d became politically toxic. I mean a Progressive of the sort that flourished between the 1890\u2019s and 1920\u2019s, and that laid down the principles and tactics that have animated modern Democrats for decades: faux populism laced with class warfare, disregard for the Constitution, and the desire for a mammoth federal government. These are just a few of the old Progressive ideals that comprise the political philosophy of Barack Obama and much of the Democratic Party.<\/p>\n

Faux Populism and Class Warfare<\/strong><\/p>\n

Obama\u2019s pose as a champion of populist democracy against elitist cabals of bankers, rich people, and corporations is consistent with Progressive rhetoric about the \u201cpeople.\u201d Theodore Roosevelt, for example, in 1910 touted \u201cthe triumph of a real democracy, the triumph of popular government, and in the long run, of an economic system under which each man shall be guaranteed the opportunity to show the best that there is in him.\u201d But such anodyne phrases were in service to class warfare. A year later he railed against \u201cthose other men who distrust the people, and many of whom not merely distrust the people, but wish to keep them helpless so as to exploit them for their own benefit.\u201d In contrast, the Progressives \u201cpropose to do away with whatever in our government tends to secure to privilege, and to the great sinister special interests, a rampart from behind which they can beat back the forces that strive for social and industrial justice, and frustrate the will of the people.\u201d The Progressives\u2019 aim is \u201cadequately to guarantee the people against injustice by the mighty corporations.\u201d Woodrow Wilson in his 1913 book\u00a0The New Freedom\u00a0agreed: \u201cThe government, which was designed for the people, has got into the hands of the bosses and their employers, the special interests. An invisible empire has been set up above the forms of democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n

No different are the many attacks by Obama on corporations and the rich. Remember in 2010 when he said, \u201cI do think at a certain point, you\u2019ve made enough money\u201d? Or his constant harping on \u201cmillionaires and billionaires,\u201d a category including those making $250,000 a year? Or his 2011 attack on oil companies, when he vowed that his Justice Department will \u201croot out any cases of fraud or manipulation in the oil markets that might affect gas prices, and that includes the role of traders and speculators. We\u2019re going to make sure that nobody\u2019s taking advantage of American consumers for their own short-term gains\u201d? Or his claim during last year\u2019s presidential election that Romney \u201cthinks that someone who makes $20 million a year, like him, should pay a lower [tax] rate than a cop or a teacher who makes $50,000\u201d? Such exploitation of envy and resentment was rife during the Progressive period.<\/p>\n

Disregard for the Constitution<\/strong><\/p>\n

Obama\u2019s\u00a0selective obeisance to the Constitution he has sworn to uphold\u2013\u2013refusing, for example, to \u201ctake care that the laws be faithfully executed\u201d (Article 2.3) when he delayed legal provisions of Obamacare \u2013\u2013has its precedence in the Progressive presidents and theorists. They believed that social, technological, and economic changes had made the Constitution an anachronism. \u201cThe old laws,\u201d Theodore Roosevelt said, \u201cand the old customs which had almost the binding force of law, were once quite sufficient to regulate the accumulation and distribution of wealth. Since the industrial changes which have so enormously increased the productive power of mankind, they are no longer sufficient.\u201d Indeed, during the Anthracite Coal Strike of 1902, Roosevelt dismissed concerns that his interference was contrary to the Constitution by shouting, \u201cTo hell with the Constitution when the people want coal!\u201d<\/p>\n

So too the most influential Progressive theorist, Herbert Croly. In 1909 he counseled that Americans discard the \u201cstrong, almost dominant, tendency to regard the existing Constitution with superstitious awe, and to shrink with horror from modifying it even in the smallest detail.\u201d Woodrow Wilson agreed that the Constitution was outmoded. \u201cThe laws of this country have not kept up with the change of economic circumstances in this country; they have not kept up with the change of political circumstances.\u201d Invoking Darwinian evolution, Wilson continued, \u201cAll that progressives ask or desire is permission\u2014in an era when \u2018development,\u2019 \u2018evolution,\u2019 is the scientific word\u2014to interpret the Constitution according to the Darwinian principle.\u201d<\/p>\n

Obama exhibited the same critical view of the Constitution when he\u00a0complained<\/a>\u00a0in 2001 that the highest law of the land \u201cis a charter of negative liberties. Says what the states can\u2019t do to you. Says what the federal government can\u2019t do to you, but doesn\u2019t say what the federal government or state government must do on your behalf.\u201d In office he has acted on this belief, selectively enforcing laws from the Defense of Marriage Act to immigration laws and the legal provisions of Obamacare. And he bragged about violating the Constitution\u2019s defining principle of the separation of powers in his 2012 and 2013 State of the Union speeches when he said, \u201cIf Congress won\u2019t act . . . I will.\u201d<\/p>\n

Big Government<\/strong><\/p>\n

Progressives were impatient with the Constitution\u2019s dispersal of power through structural checks and balances and federalism. They thought the novel problems created by modernity needed a powerful central government wielding the power necessary to solve such problems without the cumbersome interference from the state governments. Theodore Roosevelt asserted, \u201cThe national government belongs to the whole American people, and where the whole American people are interested, that interest can be guarded effectively only by the national government. The betterment which we seek must be accomplished, I believe, mainly through the national government.\u201d In his address to Congress, Roosevelt said, \u201cThe danger to American democracy lies not in the least in the concentration of administrative power in responsible and accountable hands. It lies in having the power insufficiently concentrated, so that no one can be held responsible to the people for its use.\u201d<\/p>\n

Herbert Croly agreed: \u201cThe realization of a genuine social policy necessitates the aggrandizement of the administrative and legislative branches of the government.\u201d\u00a0Elsewhere he added, \u201cOnly by faith in an efficient national organization, and by an exclusive and aggressive devotion to the national welfare, can the American democratic ideal be made good.\u201d\u00a0Another influential Progressive theorist, Mary Parker Follett, in 1918 similarly wrote, \u201cThe state has a higher function than either restraining individuals or protecting individuals. It is to have a great forward policy which shall follow the collective will of the people, a collective will which embodied through our state, in our life, shall be the basis of progress yet undreamed of . . . Democracy is every one building the single life, not my life and others, not the individual and the state, but my life bound up with others, the individual which\u00a0is\u00a0the state, the state which\u00a0is\u00a0the individual.\u201d<\/p>\n

Consistent with Follett\u2019s remarks is Obama\u2019s frequent \u201cyou didn\u2019t build that\u201d rhetoric in which he equates citizens with the federal government, and privileges the collective over the individual. In July he said, \u201cWe all have a stake in government\u2019s success, because the government is us.\u201d This attitude lurks as well in the rhetoric of his Ohio State commencement address earlier this year, when he decried the \u201cvoices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that\u2019s at the root of all our problems\u201d and \u201cthat our brave and creative and unique experiment in self-rule is somehow just a sham with which we can\u2019t be trusted.\u201d Of course, the Constitution is founded precisely on the opposite idea: the legitimate fear of centralized power, which as George Washington once said is \u201cof an encroaching nature.\u201d That\u2019s why the Constitution created checks and balances, limited the power of the federal government, and preserved the sovereignty of the states, so that no one branch could become powerful enough to compromise the freedom of the rest of us.<\/p>\n

Obama and the Democrats share many other tenets of Progressivism, which have penetrated our politics to the point that many people take them for granted. When Obama told Joe the plumber, \u201cWhen you spread the wealth around, it\u2019s good for everybody,\u201d\u00a0 he was simply repeating the numerous Progressive demands to equalize incomes and redistribute property. At the 1912 Progressive Party presidential nominating convention, for example, former Indiana senator Albert Beveridge orated, \u201cWe mean not only to make prosperity steady, but to give to the many who earn it a just share of that prosperity instead of helping the few who do not earn it to take an unjust share. The Progressive motto is \u2018Pass the prosperity around.\u2019\u201d Punitive taxation of the rich, metastasizing government regulations, creeping collectivism, all have their origins in the Progressive Party.<\/p>\n

We need to recall this history to understand just how embedded in our political culture is the Progressive ideology, and just how outdated and reactionary it is. Doing so\u2013\u2013and studying the responses of Progressivism\u2019s now forgotten challengers like Calvin Coolidge, William Taft, and Elihu Root\u2013\u2013can be useful for understanding and fighting the political ideology now running and ruining the country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Bruce S. Thornton \/\/\u00a0FrontPage Magazine\u00a0 Barack Obama\u2019s serial gross incompetence has elicited all sorts of explanatory theories. He\u2019s a closet socialist, an Alinskyite radical, a secret Muslim, or an anti-American internationalist. Though some of Obama\u2019s words and deeds give support to all these speculations, I prefer a simpler explanation. Obama is a Progressive\u2013\u2013not a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[22,117,99],"tags":[12,342,66,165,897,1028,693,527],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-1J2","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":700,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obamas-presidency-and-the-pathologies-of-progressivism\/","url_meta":{"origin":6636,"position":0},"title":"Obama’s Presidency and the Pathologies of Progressivism","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 16, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. 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