Here we’re going to dig into the beliefs of the original American Progressives (c. 1890s-1920), and we’ll see that they’re a bit different (and more troubling, if you happen to support things like self-ownership and property rights) from what you’ve probably been told about them.
Join Prof. C.J. as he discusses:
- Quotes from leading Progressives
- How Progressives like to deliberately conflate “state” and “society”
- Analysis of what Progressives really believed on such topics as government, the economy, religion, the American Constitution, education and more
- The reality that Progressives were (contrary to the established narrative) more likely to be working on behalf of, rather than against, the interests of big business in order to corporatize/cartellize the economy
- Differences between Progressives and Populists
- The affinity of many Progressives for eugenics
- The European origins of Progressive ideology, including British Fabians and Prussian/German statism
- How Progressives stole the label “Liberal” for themselves starting around the 1930s, but have in recent decades returned to the label “Progressive” because “Liberal” had too much negative baggage (which is why Progressives had abandoned the P-word back in the 1920s)
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External links:
- On the topic of the (I believe in part deliberate) confusion about what words such as “Liberal” and “Progressive” actually mean: A clip from then-Senator Hillary Clinton in a 2008 Democratic primary debate, talking about how she’d label herself — notice how many times she contradicts herself in this rambling answer