This is the second installment in a series on political philosophy and its practical implications in America. In the first installment, I discussed the damaging effects of philosophical pragmatism, which may appear to be an “ivory tower” topic, but as I will show in this post, directly affects you in the arena of your government. The point I most want to get across is that all of our political leaders have adopted some system of thought, and that system of thought will have direct affects on how they lead this country. This fact cannot be more salient than at the federal level, where each and every citizen is affected, whereas at the state level, if you don’t like the way your state is governed, you always have the option to move to another state. Take note that in the states of California and Michigan, for example, there is a net outflow of people because Americans are “voting with their feet” by seeking out other states that have more opportunities and less onerous taxation. Now at the federal level, most Obama supporters see him as “change,” as if he is something new and different from those Presidents who have gone before him. But the truth is he is not a different type of politician, but the latest in a line of progressive Presidents leading back to Teddy Roosevelt. This worldview and way of governing has its basis in philosophical pragmatism, which I discussed in my previous post.
One of the central figures in developing philosophical pragmatism, according to Nancy Pearcey in Total Truth, was educator John Dewey, who was a leading representative of the progressive movement, and whose writings and speeches along with Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson were highly influential on democracy in America. Pragmatism, in essence, is an evolutionary logic based on a naturalized version of German historicism, particularly that of Romantic idealist philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel’s historicism taught that the material world is the outworking of an Absolute Spirit or Mind or God, where the Absolute externalizes itself over time through the historical process (history is completely contingent in that it is spontaneous, unpredictable, and open to genuine novelty). Dewey naturalized Hegelian historicism by reconciling it with Darwinism, thus offering pragmatism as a “via media,” or middle way that would overcome the dichotomy between philosophical naturalism and philosophical idealism. Essentially, pragmatists seized on the role of chance as a basis for a philosophy of indeterminacy, freedom, and innovation. The “openness” of the world takes the form of chance at lower levels of complexity, and takes the form of choice at the human level.
In the book American Progressivism: A Reader, Ronald Pestritto and William Atto note that the coupling of historical contingency with the doctrine of progress (namely, philosophical pragmatism) was shared by all progressives to one degree or another, and reveals how the progressive movement became the means by which German historicism was imported into the American political tradition. In fact, Johns Hopkins University, founded in 1876, was established for the express reason of bringing the German educational model to the United States, which produced prominent progressives that included John Dewey and Woodrow Wilson. Indeed, most modern liberals of today now refer to themselves as progressives, which is something of a homecoming. In general, modern liberals favor an expansive and active central government of the kind we have seen in America since the early part of the twentieth century, as opposed to classical liberalism, which saw the fundamental purpose of government as the protection of individual rights, viewing with suspicion any extension of governmental power into spheres beyond this limited purpose.
Pestritto and Atto note how Dewey complained that the founding generation lacked historic sense and interest and that it had a disregard of history. Dewey endorsed, instead, the doctrine of historical contingency, compatible with Hegelian thought. Natural rights theory, according to Dewey, blinded classical (or what Dewey called “early”) liberals to the fact that their own special interpretations of liberty, individuality and intelligence were themselves historically conditioned, and thus only relevant to their own time. They put forward their ideas as immutable truths good at all times and places, yet for Dewey, the idea of liberty was not frozen in time, but had instead a history of evolved meaning. Dewey believed the history of liberalism was progressive, which told a story of the move from more primitive to more mature conceptions of liberty. Modern liberalism, therefore, for Dewey, represented a vast improvement over classical liberalism.
Pestritto and Atto continue that American progressives took from the Germans their critique of individual rights and social compact theory, and their organic or “living” notion of the national state. Woodrow Wilson wrote of government as a “living thing,” which was to be understood according to “the theory of organic life.” The “living” notion of a constitution, Wilson contended, was far superior to the founders’ model, which had considered government a kind of “machine” that could be constantly limited through checks and balances. As a living entity, the progressives reasoned, government had to evolve and adapt in response to changing circumstances. While early American conceptions of national government had carefully circumscribed its power due to the perceived threat to individual liberties, progressives argued that history had brought about an improvement in the human condition, such that the will of the people was no longer in danger of giving in to factions. Progressives took this doctrine of progress and translated it into a call for a sharp increase in the scope of governmental power. There may be no greater example of this than Theodore Roosevelt’s speech on the New Nationalism in 1910. Roosevelt called on the state to take an active role in effecting economic equality by way of superintending the use of private property. Private property was to be respected, but only insofar as the government approved of the property’s social utility.
Roosevelt argued that new circumstances necessitated a new conception of government, and natural rights were no longer to serve as a principled boundary that the state was prohibited from crossing. Wilson had outlined a similar view of the extent of state power, even stating that he found nothing wrong with socialism in principle since no line can be drawn between public and private affairs which the state could not cross at will. Fundamentally, this view argued that rights-based theories of self-government, such as the republicanism to which the American founders subscribed and of which Wilson was sharply critical, are far less democratic than socialism. Wilson and his fellow progressives believed that rights-based theories of government limit the state’s sphere of action, thus limiting the capability of the people to implement their collective will and thus representing something less than a real democracy. So what we should see now is that a key goal of progressivism is to overcome the Constitution's limits on government and enlarge vastly the scope of government through regulation and redistribution of private property.
So whereas the founders had posited what they held to be a permanent understanding of just government, based upon a permanent account of human nature, the progressives countered that the ends and scope of government were to be defined anew in each historical epoch. Progressivism has a deep faith in historical progress, suggesting that due to historical evolution, government was becoming less of a danger to the governed and more capable of solving the great array of problems befalling the human race. These welfare-state politics of the twentieth and now twenty-first century are built upon a direct and conscious rejection of the original principles of the American Constitution, which were subsequently implemented by Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal, extended by Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, and have since been maintained by the progressive polices of presidents for both major political parties. In my view, this includes George Bush’s policies, and now Barack Obama’s more radical brand of progressivism which is on par with that of presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In my next post, I will discuss the dangers of progressivism based on Glenn Beck’s new book Common Sense: The Case Against an Out-of-Control Government, Inspired by Thomas Paine, as well as further reading of the Pestritto and Atto book.
* References:
Pestritto, Ronald J. and William J. Atto, eds. American Progressivism: A Reader. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2008.
Pearcey, Nancy. Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity (Study Guide Edition). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2005.
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