Americanism vs Progressivism

by


       M. Richard Maxson


     Before we begin let us get our terminology set so there is no mistake. Americanism pertains to the vision of the Founding Fathers, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Progressivism refers to Socialism, Communism, and the current state of the Democratic party of the United States. Progressivism has transformed American politics and culture. What was that transformation? It was a total rejection in theory, and a partial rejection in practice, of the principles and policies on which America had been founded. Progressivism, as modified with contemporary liberalism, has become the predominant view in modern American education, media, popular culture, and politics.

• The Founders believed that all men are created equal and that they have certain inalienable rights. All are also obliged to obey the natural law, under which we have not only rights but duties. We are obliged "to respect those rights in others which we value in ourselves" (Jefferson). The main rights were thought to be life and liberty, including the liberty to organize one's own church, to associate at work or at home with whomever one pleases, and to use one's talents to acquire and keep property. For the Founders, then, there is a natural moral order – rules discovered by human reason that promote human well-being, rules that can and should guide human life and politics.
  

• The Progressives rejected these claims as naive and unhistorical. In their view, human beings are not born free. Since human beings are not naturally free, there can be no natural rights or natural law. The Progressive Era is generally seen as the period from 1890 to 1920, coinciding with the beginnings of Communism. President Woodrow Wilson(D), a leading progressive, had a deep contempt for the founding principles of our nation. Progress for Wilson was to get "beyond the Declaration of Independence," because "it is of no consequence to us." President Woodrow Wilson was a believer in notions of racial superiority and inferiority. He was so enthralled with D.W. Griffith's "Birth of a Nation" movie, which glorified the Ku Klux Klan, that he invited various dignitaries to the White House to view it with him.
  

• Government's main duty for the Founders is to secure that freedom – at home through the making and enforcement of criminal and civil law, abroad through a strong national defense. The protection of life and liberty is achieved through vigorous prosecutions of crime against person and property or through civil suits for recovery of damages, these cases being decided by a jury of one's peers.
  

•  The Progressives regarded this as a Founders' scheme that is defective because it took too benign a view of human nature. They rejected the Founders' conception of freedom as useful for self-preservation for the sake of the individual pursuit of happiness. For the Progressives, then, it was of no great importance whether or not government has consent as long as it serves its proper end of remolding man in such a way as to bring out his real capacities and aspirations. For the Progressives, freedom is redefined as the fulfillment of human capacities, which becomes the primary task of the state, not the individual.
  

• The Founders taught that political society is "formed by a voluntary association of individuals in which the whole people covenants with each citizen, and each citizen with the whole people, that all shall be governed by certain laws for the common good" (Massachusetts Constitution of 1780).
  

• The Progressives treated the social/political contract idea with scorn. Democracy and consent are not absolutely rejected by the Progressives, but their importance is greatly diminished. In Progressivism, the domestic policy of government had two main concerns. That the government must protect the victims of capitalism through redistribution of resources, anti-trust laws, government control over the details of commerce and production. The other is that government must become involved in the "spiritual" development of its citizens -- not, of course, through promotion of religion, but through protecting the environment, education, and spiritual uplift through subsidy and promotion of the arts and culture.
  

• In the founding, the liberty to be secured by government is not freedom from necessity or poverty. It is freedom from the despotic and predatory domination of some human beings over others. The Founders believed that government was incompetent at directing man in his highest endeavors. Government had to be limited both because it was dangerous if it got too powerful and because it was not supposed to provide for the highest things in life.

  
  
• The Progressives believe that the state has the responsibility for creating institutions under which individuals can effectively realize the potentialities that are theirs." Institutions are means of creating individuals…. Individuality in a social and moral sense is something to be wrought out." "Creating individuals" versus "protecting individuals": this sums up the difference between the Founders' and the Progressives' conception of what government is for.
   

    

      Progressivism is transforming American politics. What is that transformation? It is a total rejection in theory, and a partial rejection in practice, of the principles and policies on which America had been founded. A rejection of the Constitution, as it was intended, and all of the eternal wisdom of “those old white slave owners”. Progressivism seeks to grant the state vast new authority to manage all walks of American life while at the same time weakening traditional checks on government power, including private property rights and liberty of contract, two principles that progressives hold in contempt.

      The Progressives wanted to sweep away what they regarded as this amateurism in politics. They had confidence that modern science had superseded the perspective of the liberally educated statesman. Only those educated in the top universities, preferably in the social sciences, were thought to be capable of governing. Politics was regarded as too complex for the common people with sense to cope with. America desperately needs to rid ourselves of professional politicians and to return to a ‘citizen legislature,’ where regular Americans take time out of their lives to serve this nation. The next four years will be a daily battle against a mighty Progressive movement that already controls academia and the media. The fate of this nation depends on our victory over this evil.