I had Dewey and Lippman down as opposites. I see now that I was giving them both too much credit. Can it be said that progressives see the state as the source or agent of human advance? Does a progressive disdain the individual, or simply ignore him?
Fascinating…to glimpse some of the work done on the Progressives, whom I confess to not having read since I was a graduate student in the early ‘70s. Something you don’t much address, which I think would be a fruitful line of inquiry, is the profound difference between the Progressive intelligentsia (which includes the despicable Wilson who was professor before becoming a politician) and the ‘Progressive’ politicians out in the states - on the ground, as it were, dealing with the world they found pragmatically. I would suggest that what positive view of the Progressive Era exists in the mind of the reasonably bright, but not academic citizen comes not from the Wilsons or Lippmanns or Deweys, but from the practical reformers and their reforms which were largely inspired by the notion that government had become the pawn of large interests, and unresponsive to the will of voters and citizens…their procedural reforms — classically, the popular initiative, the referendum, and recall — were all checks on the abuse of power between elections. They haven’t always worked out well, but the idea made sense…it was an appeal not to experts (a la Col. House in Philip Dru Administrator) but to the ability of the average voter…there are many examples, but the California Progressives are an interesting one. I think the whole question of the Republican progressives interesting. With regard to the intellectual progressives, I think their fundamental problem was (as you noted) thinking the natural rights basis of the Founding was both wrongheaded and obsolete…from my perspective a bad misreading of the enlightenments and an unsophisticated notion of the idea of progress…perceptive to note Wilson’s quasi-Hegalianism contracted (by way of Germany) at Johns Hopkins…in that way Wilson and top down Progressives like House were quite distinct from the more typically American reformers. Good read!
I thought that when you said: "..One way is to borrow a technique from the time itself, in this case, Lytton Strachey’s famous revisionist character sketches in Eminent Victorians. As Strachey wrote in the introduction:
It is not by the direct method of a scrupulous narration that the explorer of the past can hope to depict a singular epoch. If he is wise, he will adopt a subtler strategy. He will attack his subject in unexpected places; he will fall upon the flank, or the rear; ,,," That you were going to conduct a proctological exam. And maybe you did.
I had Dewey and Lippman down as opposites. I see now that I was giving them both too much credit. Can it be said that progressives see the state as the source or agent of human advance? Does a progressive disdain the individual, or simply ignore him?
Ignore, especially if it's Musk
Fascinating…to glimpse some of the work done on the Progressives, whom I confess to not having read since I was a graduate student in the early ‘70s. Something you don’t much address, which I think would be a fruitful line of inquiry, is the profound difference between the Progressive intelligentsia (which includes the despicable Wilson who was professor before becoming a politician) and the ‘Progressive’ politicians out in the states - on the ground, as it were, dealing with the world they found pragmatically. I would suggest that what positive view of the Progressive Era exists in the mind of the reasonably bright, but not academic citizen comes not from the Wilsons or Lippmanns or Deweys, but from the practical reformers and their reforms which were largely inspired by the notion that government had become the pawn of large interests, and unresponsive to the will of voters and citizens…their procedural reforms — classically, the popular initiative, the referendum, and recall — were all checks on the abuse of power between elections. They haven’t always worked out well, but the idea made sense…it was an appeal not to experts (a la Col. House in Philip Dru Administrator) but to the ability of the average voter…there are many examples, but the California Progressives are an interesting one. I think the whole question of the Republican progressives interesting. With regard to the intellectual progressives, I think their fundamental problem was (as you noted) thinking the natural rights basis of the Founding was both wrongheaded and obsolete…from my perspective a bad misreading of the enlightenments and an unsophisticated notion of the idea of progress…perceptive to note Wilson’s quasi-Hegalianism contracted (by way of Germany) at Johns Hopkins…in that way Wilson and top down Progressives like House were quite distinct from the more typically American reformers. Good read!
I thought that when you said: "..One way is to borrow a technique from the time itself, in this case, Lytton Strachey’s famous revisionist character sketches in Eminent Victorians. As Strachey wrote in the introduction:
It is not by the direct method of a scrupulous narration that the explorer of the past can hope to depict a singular epoch. If he is wise, he will adopt a subtler strategy. He will attack his subject in unexpected places; he will fall upon the flank, or the rear; ,,," That you were going to conduct a proctological exam. And maybe you did.