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This is a good, albeit long, read:
Obama and the State of Progressivism, 2011
Obama and the State of Progressivism, 2011
The United States can be proud of the progress it has made since its founding. And since its rise in the 19th century, progressivism can take pride in its leading role in bringing about salutary reform — from regulating the workplace to establishing a social safety net to anchoring civil rights in law. But the dogma embedded in the new progressivism, that it has transcended the legitimate and enduring divisions between left and right, is a potent mix of partisan self-deception and academic rationalization. It signifies not progress, but a dangerous decline.
And it proves that we still have much to learn from the Founders’ understanding that moral and political opinions are bound to be partial and incomplete because of the imperfections of human nature and the irreducible differences among human beings; that our common ground in America is the conviction that government’s central task is to protect individual liberty; that because of naturally competing interests and legitimately contending perspectives, citizens will inevitably divide over government’s role in securing citizens’ equal right to freedom; and that limits on government not only reflect respect for the individual but create room for families and the associations of civil society to foster the virtues on which liberty depends.
Progressivism’s flaws do not obviate the need, the ever-present need, for reform. Edmund Burke persuasively argued that liberty requires devotion to the principles of conservation and correction or reform. John Stuart Mill rightly maintained that free societies need both a conservative party and a progressive party, the one specializing in preserving inherited order and the other concentrating on improving institutions and adapting them to changing circumstances. And the makers of the American constitution wisely taught that to sustain the American experiment in ordered liberty and democratic self-government, our representatives must avoid both pandering to the people’s prejudices and disdaining the people’s preferences.
And it proves that we still have much to learn from the Founders’ understanding that moral and political opinions are bound to be partial and incomplete because of the imperfections of human nature and the irreducible differences among human beings; that our common ground in America is the conviction that government’s central task is to protect individual liberty; that because of naturally competing interests and legitimately contending perspectives, citizens will inevitably divide over government’s role in securing citizens’ equal right to freedom; and that limits on government not only reflect respect for the individual but create room for families and the associations of civil society to foster the virtues on which liberty depends.
Progressivism’s flaws do not obviate the need, the ever-present need, for reform. Edmund Burke persuasively argued that liberty requires devotion to the principles of conservation and correction or reform. John Stuart Mill rightly maintained that free societies need both a conservative party and a progressive party, the one specializing in preserving inherited order and the other concentrating on improving institutions and adapting them to changing circumstances. And the makers of the American constitution wisely taught that to sustain the American experiment in ordered liberty and democratic self-government, our representatives must avoid both pandering to the people’s prejudices and disdaining the people’s preferences.