Given the current slate of policy proposals that are popular today across the country, one could argue the Democratic Party could rename itself the “Progressive Democratic Party.” From the policies and public rhetoric of leaders in the Obama administration to New York mayorial candidate Bill de Blasio, we can see that progressivism is back in a new way.
According to the Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project, a university-chartered research center associated with the Department of History of The George Washington University, progressivism is a term applied to a variety of responses to the economic and social problems that rapid industrialization introduced to America spanning from around 1890 to 1920. Progressivism began primarily as a social movement but later morphed into public policy initiatives and even into a political party in 1912. The early progressives rejected Social Darwinism, believing that “the problems society faced (poverty, violence, greed, racism, class warfare) could best be addressed by providing good education, a safe environment, and an efficient workplace. Progressives lived mainly in the cities, were college educated, and believed that government could be a tool for change.”
Does this sound familiar? President Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign was not so much a platform for “liberals” as it was an introduction to America’s neo-progressivism. Today’s neo-progressivism has the same views of the role of elites to govern society, the role of government to run economies with a twist on social agendas, and so on. There are differences, however. The progressivism of old was explicitly racist at times and supported programs like eugenics to rid America of those who might impede national progress. In fact, Margaret Sanger helped to launch and systematize abortion as a progressivist weapon to that end. While the eugenicist abortion platform has been recast as a “women’s health” issue, today’s neo-progressivism comes with the consecration of minority groups as sacred and therefore justifies the use of government to guarantee them various special rights, protections, and privileges under the law. In the neo-progressivist era, every minority group deserves to have their lifestyles and choices enhanced and protected by the state.
U.S. History.org explains the development of progressivism this way:
The Progressives were urban, Northeast, educated, middle-class, Protestant reform-minded men and women. . . It was more of a movement than a political party, and there were adherents to the philosophy in each major party. There were three progressive presidents — Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and Woodrow Wilson. Roosevelt and Taft were Republicans and Wilson was a Democrat. What united the movement was a belief that the laissez faire, Social Darwinist outlook of the Gilded Age was morally and intellectually wrong. Progressives believed that people and government had the power to correct abuses produced by nature and the free market.
Does the Obama administration believe that government has the power and capacity to correct the contingencies of a broken world? Does his administration believe the government is there to manage and oversee the free market? It would be difficult to answer “No” to these questions. This explains why his tenure has been criticized by some as an explosion of more and more government programs. Moreover, one of the greatest examples of the resurgence of neo-progressivism is Obamacare. This is the most Rooseveltian idea we have seen in decades.
In the New York City race for mayor, the contest for the Democratic Party’s candidate is actually a debate about who best represents progressivism. Bill de Blasio is explicitly campaigning on a progressivist platform. He is pitching himself as the “True Progressive Choice.”
Do not take my word for it. Read the Progressive Party platform from 1912 and compare the agenda to what we might hear from today’s “Democrats” or the proposals on the President’s own website. Among progressive ideologues there is heated debate about the President’s true progressive commitments because of his foreign policy proposals of late. But it could be argued that what we are seeing is a new era of progressive fusion that, at times, will borrow rhetoric from classical liberal, democratic, conservative, nationalistic, and socialist ideologies to reassert what progressives sought back in 1912.
Neo-progressives are finding themselves more accepted as social commentators as well. One of the chief promotions of neo-progressivism can be found in the writing of Wendell Berry, for example. Whatever the source, it is safe to say that neo-progressivism will be with us for quite some time.
