Progressivism: Still Dangerous After All These Years

Julia Shaw / September 20, 2010

Love him or hate him, Glenn Beck has a point: Progressivism rejects America’s foundational principles. For the past one hundred years, progressive intellectuals and politicians have been desperately trying to sever Americans’ attachment to the principles of the Declaration of Independence—with its emphasis on human equality, natural rights, consent of the governed, and limited government—and instead embrace a more European model of governance. Progressives assert that America has advanced beyond the principles of the Declaration of Independence. All men were not created equal; some peoples are more historically advanced than others. Rights are not tied to human nature; government creates rights. The consent of the people is unnecessary for legislation; technical expertise should regulate every detail of life.
Just read what the progressives wrote. As Ronald Pestritto notes in his latest Wall Street Journal op-ed on “Glenn Beck, Progressives, and Me,” Woodrow Wilson repeatedly lambasted the Founders’ institutions of government, especially the separation of powers, and instead praised a new “foreign science, speaking very little of the language of English or American principle” that would become the new administrative state. Theodore Roosevelt is more pointed: (more…)