Conservatives are frequently accused, with various levels of justice, of whitewashing the history of conservatism in the U.S. to ignore, evade, or cover up inconvenient historical truths.
Well, whatever sins conservative scholars have committed have now been matched by the Center for American Progress, which has published a monograph on the Progressive tradition in American politics.
The monograph begins with a laundry list of the Progressives’ legislation accomplishment. But among the Progressive reforms nowhere mentioned in this monograph are: alcohol prohibition; coercive eugenics (upheld in an appallingly insensitive opinion by Progressive hero O.W. Holmes); residential segregation by race (invalidated by the “conservative” Supreme Court); bans on private schools (invalidated by the “conservative” Supreme Court); judicial recall elections; and restrictions on women’s participation in the labor market (invalidated in part by the “conservative” Supreme Court, and then reaffirmed by a “Progressive” Supreme Court).
The monograph does mention immigration restrictions, but places the blame on “conservative” nativism, without noting the Progressives’ (including Theodore Roosevelt’s) longstanding creepy obsession with American “race suicide” because of immigration to the U.S. by the “lower races,” and without noting organized labor’s strong support for such restrictions.
To the authors’ credit, they do note that Progress Woodrow Wilson endorsed segregation in federal workplaces. However, they treat this as an unfortunate deviation from Progressive principle, when in fact early twentieth century Progressives’ views on race equality, with a few prominent exceptions, ranged from indifference to hostility. For example, every “Progressive” legal commentator who ventured an opinion decried the Supreme Court’s invalidation of residential segregation in Buchanan v. Warley.
In the end, what Progressives had in common was a commitment to activist government to promote their vision of the common good, and a concomitant impatience with or even contempt for competing claims of individual right. The best aspect of modern liberalism is that while it retained the Progressives’ enthusiasm for government regulation of the economic marketplace, it replaced Progressive statism in other spheres with respect for civil rights and civil liberties. It’s a shame to see the Progressives celebrated as modern liberalism’s forebears.
UPDATE: The problem, in other words, is the attempt to assert a seamless “Progressive” tradition from the original early twentieth century Progressives to modern liberalism/progressivism. The Original Progressives were not all recognizably on the political left, and had many political positions that people across the political spectrum would find appalling today. If the C.A.P.’s thesis was simply that modern “progressives” had adopted the best aspects of old-style Progressivism, while ditching the worst, I wouldn’t have any objection. But the suggestion that modern “progressives” are firmly in a generally unchanged “progressive” tradition, without noting the original Progressives’ views on state-sponsored segregation, coercive eugenics, and so forth, is a distortion of history.
Dan says:
“For example, every ‘Progressive’ legal commentator who ventured an opinion decried the Supreme Court’s invalidation of residential segregation in Buchanan v. Warley.”
Talk about looking over a crowd and picking your enemies.
April 16, 2010, 3:59 pmDavid Bernstein says:
Only if you don’t know what “for example” means.
April 16, 2010, 4:04 pmCrunchy Frog says:
What’s wrong with judicial recall elections?
April 16, 2010, 4:04 pmwm13 says:
In the same vein, one might note the overwhelming pro-Confederate and pro-”Redemption” tone of academic historiography prior to 1965 or thereabouts. I yield to no one in my detestation of Southern treason, but all the professors rushing to the barricades now to denounce commemorations of the Confederacy leave me a little cold.
April 16, 2010, 4:06 pmDan says:
Cute. My objection, of course, is to your presumption that you can survey all the reactions to this 93-year-old decision, determine which of these were authored by “Progressives,” and conclude that literally all of them opposed the decision. You cannot and have not.
April 16, 2010, 4:11 pmtvk says:
Doesn’t all of this depend on how you define “Progressive”? I haven’t read the book, and to the extent that we are talking about the bad legislative accomplishments or judicial holdings of the same people as the accomplishments being lauded by the book, your rebuttal is fair. But I speculate that it would be pretty easy for the CAP to disown many of the bad legislative accomplishments by saying they were being pushed by non-Progressive people as they define it.
April 16, 2010, 4:12 pmlgm says:
Would you consider supporting some of your claims? Prohibition comes from the religious right. And remember, George Washington supported slavery.
And about your previous post: can you blame Palestinians for not accepting the West Bank as a substitute for their original homeland? You ask why Israel would agree to ‘uproot the almost 200,000 Jewish residents of East Jerusalem”. The answer is simple: most are there illegally.
April 16, 2010, 4:18 pmOpenVolokh says:
Professor Bernstein,
These are interesting points. But what is your definition of progressive? How do we know? Your definition of progressive seems to be anyone that advocates state action without regard to individual rights. It seems that under this definition, Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin would all count as “progressive.” That is, this is an incredibly unsympathetic definition of progressivism.
I think that there may be something wrong with your definition, and that you may be missing something that other people with more sympathetic definitions of progressivism are seeing. The things that are not mentioned are probably not mentioned because of a different definition of progressivism than you.
On what basis do you say your definition is better or right and the definitions of those who adopt different terms are worse or wrong? I am not seeing it, but I am trying.
April 16, 2010, 4:26 pmDavid Bernstein says:
Yes, I have, given that I didn’t claim to survey “all the reactions”, but every “Progressive legal commentator who ventured an opinion”
April 16, 2010, 4:28 pmDangerMouse says:
In “Vision of the Annointed,” one aspect of liberalism/progressivism that is explored is its basic function as a tool for enforcing elitist cultural notions of the day. There need be no logical consistency in any “progressive” ideas, because ultimately, liberalism/progrevissism has NOTHING to do with individual rights, liberty, freedom, or any broader concept.
Liberalism/Progressivism is about using state power to enforce the current elitist cultural zeitgeist. That’s IT. There is no broader intellectual, social, moral, or policy underying liberalism. It is entirely and wholly focused on state power to enforce elitist cultural snobbery.
Conservativism today is the intellectual heir of classical liberalism, which has a history of government distrust, individual rights, and social morality.
April 16, 2010, 4:29 pmDavid Bernstein says:
Prohibition is widely recognized in the historical literature as a “Progressive reform”
April 16, 2010, 4:29 pmSteve Horwitz says:
Actually, LGM, I think it’s more accurate to say that prohibition came from the religious LEFT (not to mention the bootleggers who benefited from it). The evangelical elements of the social gospel movement (which was the religious wing of progressivism) strongly supported Prohibition.
April 16, 2010, 4:31 pmCJColucci says:
There’s a great deal of actual, solid historical knowledge available about who supported and who opposed what during the Progressive Era and why. Anyone with an honest interest in the subject can easily find it. Perhaps, if people look at it, they will be surprised by some of what they learn, though this is a trivial observation since most people will be surprised by what they learn about virtually anything, since most people don’t know jack shit. Very little of it will be surprising to people who already know enough about the history to know that there weren’t eight Progressives on the Court that decided Buck v. Bell by 8-1, that “Progressive hero” Holmes was actually a solid conservative who had little use for most of the liberal or Progessive nostrums that he voted to uphold, and that, on many of the issues on which decent folk now disagree with Progressives, the non-Progressives were, generally, not much different.
April 16, 2010, 4:35 pmThere’s a lot of useful information and commentary to be had out there from honest, competent scholars with no obvious axe to grind. I recommend it.
David Bernstein says:
Colucci, are you denying that Holmes was a “Progressive hero?” I never said he was a “Progressive,” but he certainly was the Progressives’ hero on the Court, and his opinion in Buck v. Bell received praise from Louis Brandeis, and Progressive Professors Robert Cushman and Harper Fowler.
And are you denying that coercive eugenics was a Progressive reform, which received most of its impetus from Progressive types, though admittedly with the support of many conservatives?
And surely you know that the greatest opposition to coercive eugenics came from the non-Progressive evangelical churches and later from the Catholic Church? Not coincidentally, the only dissenter on the Court was its lone Catholic and arguably most libertarian Justice, Pierce Butler.
April 16, 2010, 4:49 pmHauk says:
So I assume you’ve gone to the trouble of identifying which legal commentators of the period were “Progressive” and which were not, and tracked down all of the opinions those commentators expressed on this? Wow. Impressive.
April 16, 2010, 4:50 pmMark Field says:
A few quick comments.
First, the Progressive movement, like any large scale political movement, included people with lots of different opinions about things. It’s no easier to identify a particular item as “Progressive” than it is today to identify one as “conservative” or “liberal”. Some of each group will be opposed.
Second, CJColucci is very right to point out that on many of these issues the Progressives simply mirrored the views of society at large. That’s hardly surprising — the movement relied on electoral support and included large numbers of voters; inevitably they’d tend to reflect the society at large on many issues.
Third, conservatives weren’t necessarily opposed on many of these issues. In Buck v. Bell, for example, Butler was the only dissenter, so it’s not as if conservatives generally were covering themselves with glory on this count. That gets back to my previous point that large-scale political movements tend to reflect society at large; otherwise they wouldn’t be large-scale.
Any issue with enough support to pass as a Constitutional Amendment pretty obviously had support across the spectrum. As Steve Horwitz said, there were plenty of supporters of Prohibition on the religious left.
April 16, 2010, 4:53 pmGW says:
It seems that a number of names and tendencies are being grouped together under the term progressive that do not group well at all. How does the isolationism of a Hiram Johnson, for example, fit under the same umbrella with the interventionism of Woodrow Wilson? Also, this fails to account for similar policy decisions that stem from very different convictions. The anti-trust movement was, to early progressives (and in a tradition going at least as far back as Mill), an effort to avoid distortions to the market due to monopolies while more contemporary self-identified progressives see anti-trust regulation as advantageous for very different reasons. While turn of the 20th century progressives were essentially classical liberals who sought to use the state to the advantage of the market, our contemporary progressives tend to be much more social democratic. Thus the label progressive itself represents very little in the way of historical continuity.
(It is also rather odd to identify prohibition as a progressive reform at the same time one identifies Wilson as a progressive. The temperance movement was supported by a constituency that was far from identical to that of the progressives and the Volstead Act itself passed by Congress overriding Wilson’s veto.)
April 16, 2010, 4:54 pmOpenVolokh says:
CJColucci,
What is your definition of progressive? Is it so broad, as is Professor Bernstein’s that it would have to include Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin?
I am afraid looking at history does not resolve anything unless the conceptual question of what do you mean by progressivism is answered first. I do not think there is an “objective” answer.
You can’t even say, this person says he is “progressive” so anything he did was the definition of progressive. That would one way to define progressive, I suppose, but not a very good way. If you define political terms like that, then you would have to call “Medicare Part D” conservative, because President Bush called himself conservative. But, a lot of conservatives would say, wait a minute, even though President Bush calls himself conservative, I do not believe that the largest expansion of government since Medicare is conservative.
I have a hard time not seeing Professor Bernstein as ideologically motivated rather than intellectually honest on this issue. He has, after all, adopted such a negative definition of progressive that of course if he looks at history, he is going to attribute all sorts of negative things to progressivism.
But it all starts from the skewed definition. All of the analysis after that point is useless when the premise upon which it is based is wrong.
April 16, 2010, 4:55 pmMark Field says:
I’m not sure what this means. Brandeis was on the Court for Buck v. Bell and part of the majority.
April 16, 2010, 4:55 pmCJColucci says:
What is your definition of progressive? Is it so broad, as is Professor Bernstein’s that it would have to include Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin?
I mean what people who have studied the political history of the United States in the years around the turn of the 20th century mean by it, the American political tendency represented by such people as Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt, Louis Brandeis, and their less-prominent allies. You’ll probably notice that there are as many differences as similarities between them. Brandeis, for example, wanted an economy in which small producers could flourish and trusts were broken up, while TR favored regulation of the existing trusts. But they were all commonly in favor of clean government, technocratic expertise, regulation of varying kinds (sometimes to increase competitionn, sometimes to curtail it), and freedom of legislatures to experiment.
April 16, 2010, 5:09 pmI’m not sure that Prof. Bernstein thinks “progressivism” includes Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin. I do think he either thinks, or is content to let others think, that there isn’t a great deal of difference. After all, they all used to power of government to accomplish their ends, even though some people disagreed with those ends. Sounds like a defining characteristic of any government to me, but what the hell.
Alex J says:
As someone who self identifies with classical liberalism I don’t know if you could be farther from the truth. I view modern conservatives as statist which throws your first two points out the window. Plus, classical liberalism never had much of a social morality component.
April 16, 2010, 5:09 pmBob says:
Don’t you think they would have proclaimed those reforms had they still been in effect?
April 16, 2010, 5:10 pmSarcastro says:
This is awesome! It’s like the “my dictator is worse than yours” thread, only this one isn’t about mass killings!
April 16, 2010, 5:11 pmhattio says:
I’d STILL like to know what’s wrong with judicial recall elections
April 16, 2010, 5:23 pmMichelle Dulak Thomson says:
Mass killings, no; mass sterilizations, yes.
April 16, 2010, 5:24 pmSarcastro says:
Which proves progressives now are just patiently waiting to snip at yer nethers!
April 16, 2010, 5:26 pmMichael B says:
In the same vein, Whites, Blacks and Racist Democrats: The Untold History of Race & Politics Within the Democratic Party from 1792-2009, by Wayne Perryman.
Two videos by the authoer on the subject, here and here. Excerpt:
“Does [Obama] knew anything about our history? I’m also upset by the fact that every time a tea party or organization opposes him they play the race card.”
April 16, 2010, 5:26 pmMichelle Dulak Thomson says:
Sarcastro,
Which proves progressives now are just patiently waiting to snip at yer nethers!
Well, naturally not, though a lot of the people who call themselves “progressive” now do seem sincerely to think that there are a lot of people alive today who really shouldn’t have been born. Can you deny it?
April 16, 2010, 5:38 pmMichael B says:
Another telling excerpt from the first of the two videos, by the author, noted above, emphasis added:
“… the number of whites who died, ha know they lynched whites, they beat them, the whites who went down to the southern schools to teach blacks, they murdered them, they slept out in the wheat fields, the swamps, because those who opposed blacks getting an education were the Democrats and the KKK, they killed the white teachers along with the black teachers, and they killed their children as well. Whites died by the thousands on behalf of African Americans and they are not teaching that in our schools.”
April 16, 2010, 5:52 pmDavid Bernstein says:
He specifically praised Holmes’s opinion later.
April 16, 2010, 6:02 pmDavid Bernstein says:
It’s not the sort of thing that the Center for American Progress wants associated with modern Progressivism, so they leave it out.
April 16, 2010, 6:03 pmMichelle Dulak Thomson says:
It’s not the sort of thing that the Center for American Progress wants associated with modern Progressivism, so they leave it out.
Yes, hattio, DB has it right. The removal of Rose Bird and two colleagues from the CA State Supreme Court in 1986 pretty much soured the American left on the power of judicial recall.
April 16, 2010, 6:17 pmRandy says:
Mark: ” As Steve Horwitz said, there were plenty of supporters of Prohibition on the religious left.”
Indeed, from many places. My grandparents ran a tavern in a working class immigrant neighborhood. I grew up hearing plenty of stories of men who would spend their weeks wages at the tavern. Usually, the wives would round up their son to go get the money from pa before he spent the rent money on drink. They said that nothing is sadder than seeing a family destitute, only because the husband was so reckless to spent it all at the bar.
IT was those families that supported prohibition because they thought it would put an end to that sort of madness. Of course, it didn’t, but you can’t find fault with the sentiment.
April 16, 2010, 6:24 pmOpenVolokh says:
Alas, the edit function here at VC does not work from the iPhone and autocomplete on the iPhone is not always your friend.
Honestly though, I think there is something a little “off” with professor Bernstein. I think he is drawn to some strange wacko ideas.
April 16, 2010, 6:41 pmRPT says:
Having seen that one of my clients has spoken with Hannity at a Tea Party event, I can fully appreciate these labeling discussions. It reminds me of Dennis Prager’s practical definition of a liberal: “anyone who does or believes anything I don’t like”. As you can see, it’s a fluid definition. I also advised another client to send people to TP events with signs saying “Buy [fill in client product name here]“. Imagine the value of getting one of those signs in the picture right behind Sarah Palin!
April 16, 2010, 6:42 pmHugh says:
Progressives have an interesting view of history. I listened to the report below on FRESH AIR on NPR. The host was interviewing a writer about his book on FDR’s attempt to pack the Supreme Court. The writer, a former speech writer for Bill Clinton, was reverential in his treatment of FDR. Before giving any information that was the least bit critical, he would preface it with several minutes of “background” to make it seem as if FDR’s actions were justified.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125789097
Listen to it yourself.
April 16, 2010, 7:02 pmOpenVolokh says:
What is your point? That background isn’t necessary to understand why a decision was made? Of course background is necessary!
April 16, 2010, 7:08 pmHugh says:
The “background” information was terribly slanted and was only given when it would present FDR in a favorable light. For example, Roosevelt kept his reason for proposing the legislation that would have enacted the court packing scheme secret. The author stated that this was just a peculiarity of FDR…he liked keeping secrets. The author did not want to allow the audience to come to conclusion that Roosevelt kept his intentions secret because he knew they would be unpopular and he was hoping to pull a quick one on Congress.
There was a great deal of detail left out of the report. The author states that the court was wrong in overturning the National Recovery Act, but he never discusses the detail about why the court overturned the act.
April 16, 2010, 7:22 pmSteve says:
The guy who didn’t tell his Vice-President about the Manhattan Project liked keeping secrets? Gosh, what a controversial and “terribly slanted” observation!
April 16, 2010, 7:24 pmOpenVolokh says:
Was he asked?
April 16, 2010, 7:32 pmShelbyC says:
OV, progressism has a historically accepted definition that includes things like prohibition and eugenics. Why don’t you do a little research instead of taking shots at all the posters? Your obnoxious comments are becoming quite bothersome.
April 16, 2010, 7:35 pmMichelle Dulak Thomson says:
RPT,
It reminds me of Dennis Prager’s practical definition of a liberal: “anyone who does or believes anything I don’t like”. As you can see, it’s a fluid definition. I also advised another client to send people to TP events with signs saying “Buy [fill in client product name here]”. Imagine the value of getting one of those signs in the picture right behind Sarah Palin!
Well, the latter part is ultra-classy, isn’t it? But the former … I keep saying it. “Right-wing” really is “anyone who does or believes anything [the definer] doesn’t like.” That is the only way that people who disagree with each other about literally everything short of the sum of two and two can be labeled members of the same political movement. Honestly, in what universe are Glenn Reynolds and Pat Buchanan in any sense whatsoever on the same side? But to the left, they’re both the enemy, because each holds a bunch of “wrong” opinions. Buchanan’s a social conservative. Reynolds is an Iraq War hawk and a fiscal conservative. They are therefore both right-wing filth, though they probably have no even mildly controversial opinion in common. What they do have in common is disagreement with some [different for each] element of liberalism. So obviously they are on the same side — for someone who can’t imagine that there’s more than one side opposed to her own.
April 16, 2010, 7:40 pmMark Field says:
Ah, thanks.
April 16, 2010, 7:49 pmwooga says:
(emphasis added). I assume you’re joking, or pulling a crazy Alex Jones impersonation, but if you’re not: do you not agree that the recent healthcare law (to pick an example) is statist? Do you not agree that the modern conservatives were against it? Do you not agree that over a decade ago, leaders of the GOP were at least receptive to national healthcare? Do you not agree that the modern movement in the conservative arena (as embodied by the Tea Party) is explicitly anti-statist?
I mean really. Sure GWB was a big government guy – but the “compassionate conservatism” is no longer “modern conservatism.” How can anyone (outside the anarchist spectrum) claim that the side flying the Gadsden flag is statist?
April 16, 2010, 7:50 pmOpenVolokh says:
ShelbyC,
Eugenics was something supported by conservatives too! So, why isn’t support for eugenics attributed to conservatives?
A lot of progressives had racist views too. Look at Theodore Roosevelt. But so did conservatives!
When you talk about progressivism, the important thing is what makes it unique from other movements. That is what is properly defining. If you go digging in the past, you will see a lot of consensus ideas that we today would find absolutely appalling. To attribute such ideas to one group that one wants to smear is intellectually dishonest.
Look at the definition of progressive that David Bernstein has come up with. Do you not agree that Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin would all be progressive under that crazy definition? Don’t you think that is a major problem?
You may find my comments bothersome, but why don’t you explain why they are wrong?
April 16, 2010, 7:55 pmwooga says:
I suppose high schools don’t teach kids about how Reagan got elected by uniting the “three legs” of the conservatives: the social conservatives, the limited government conservatives (fiscal/libertarians), and the national defense conservatives (the hawks) – all by appealling to the concept of federalism. To the left, these are the same. Mike Huckabee = Ron Paul = Dick Cheney = Fred Thompson. What a simple world.
April 16, 2010, 7:56 pmCrunchy Frog says:
The hallmarks of Hiram Johnson’s Progressive movement in CA were initiative, referendum, and recall. Isn’t it ironic that those that call themselves progressives today have nothing but disdain for all three.
April 16, 2010, 7:57 pmwooga says:
Eugenics requires a strong central government. That’s why it fit the Progressives like a glove. To tie eugenics to the conservatives requires an assumption that conservatives are simply racist (a point which would have been laughable before 1960 since the Democrats were the open racists before then) and obsessed with centralizing government.
April 16, 2010, 8:01 pmOpenVolokh says:
Michelle,
You are being a little cynical. And justifiably so. But please do not lump everyone who criticizes right wing ideas together. I do not consider Pat Buchannan and Glenn Reynolds that similar, although I do not care for many of the views expressed by both of them.
April 16, 2010, 8:01 pmShelbyC says:
Well, you spend several posts rudely criticising DB’s definition of progressivism, when he doesn’t attempt to define progressivism in the post. If you disagree with something he wrote, say that eugenics was a progressive reform, why don’t you just politely argue the opposite point?
April 16, 2010, 8:05 pmRPT says:
One looks in vain for a sense of humor….I thought the last line was pretty clearly a joke, but perhaps it was too subtle. The point is that real people generally do not fit into any narrowly defined ideological categories. The “right” or the “left” or “conservative” or “liberal” are meaningless without context and specificity. Prager used to be reasonable when he was a local LA radio host of asking listeners to “think a second time”. As a working lawyer, one has to be able to put aside ideology to diligently represent clients across the range of problem areas, 99% of which have nothing to do with ideology; in my case this has included Mark Fuhrman, Jeffrey “Fatal Vision’ McDonald, and some other religious groups and individuals. Geokstr and D-Mouse and a few others like to jump to the default “you’re just an evil lib” response from time to time, but reality is somewhat more complex that that.
April 16, 2010, 8:11 pmShelbyC says:
And my main problem with your comments isn’t that they’re wrong. There’s nothing wrong with being wrong. It’s that they’re obnoxious.
April 16, 2010, 8:11 pmOpenVolokh says:
wooga,
You are confusing liberal and Democratic Party and conservative and Republican party as being synonymous. But it just was not so as a historical matter. Both parties have evolved considerably since the Civil War.
Not only that that, the meaning of both conservative and progressive have obviously evolved. Basically, at one point conservatives were racist! So were progressives.
Anyway, you need to go back to the historical literature. Conservatives at the time that certain progressives supported eugenics also supported eugenics. Also, that Republicans supported ending slavery does not imply that they thought blacks were equal. Indeed, some thought the problem of blacks should be solved be shipping them “back” to Africa.
April 16, 2010, 8:13 pmRPT says:
Mike Huckabee is a bass player. Fred is an actor who does great voice-overs. Dick Cheney is sui generis.
April 16, 2010, 8:13 pmMichelle Dulak Thomson says:
OpenVolokh,
I do not consider Pat Buchannan [sic] and Glenn Reynolds that similar
See, I thought you were sane,
although I do not care for many of the views expressed by both of them.
I think, you know, that you do care for the views expressed by both of them. Because that’s a set containing items like the sum of two and two, and very little else.
Look, Buchanan is a protectionist isolationist social conservative. Reynolds is a pro-Iraq-War free-trade libertarian. They agree on absolutely nothing that you couldn’t look up in a reference book. But I will do you the justice of assuming that you don’t actually disagree with the multiplication table.
Enh. Must go off and do work now (if playing an opera be counted as “work.” Frankly, at the end of this particular week, it should be.)
April 16, 2010, 8:14 pmChris says:
OpenVolokh:
Honestly though, I think there is something a little “off” with professor Bernstein. I think he is drawn to some strange wacko ideas.
Where have you been all these years?
April 16, 2010, 8:24 pmOpenVolokh says:
ShelbyC,
With all due respect, you are incorrect that DB did not offer a definition of progressivism. Here it is right here:
As far as your point about merely politely disagreeing, that is what I would normally do if DB had simply made this incorrect statement in a neutral context and in a polite way. But here you have DB attacking someone else for distorting history, implying that they are somehow disingenuous hacks, when in fact it is DB himself that is hackishly choosing an intellectually corrupt definition of progressive and using it to attack others.
April 16, 2010, 8:24 pmShelbyC says:
Saying that a group has a trait in common doesn’t mean that everybody who has that trait is a member of that group. You’re making the basic “all squirrels are mammals, not all mammals are squirrels” logical error.
April 16, 2010, 8:31 pmmariner says:
On NPR? Surely you jest!
April 16, 2010, 8:46 pmAmerican-Manifesto.com » Progressive Accomplishments says:
[...] of lefties on the offensive, Prof. Bernstein lists a number of progressive “accomplishments” over the last century. alcohol prohibition; coercive eugenics (upheld in an appallingly [...]
April 16, 2010, 9:32 pmBob says:
Fortunately, not only are the profferred characteristics not sufficient (though they may be necessary) to make a progressive, they’re not sufficient for anybody‘s ideology. Is there anyone who favors any and all kinds and objects of gov’t activism?
April 16, 2010, 9:38 pmChris Hallquist says:
I think a more helpful post might have said, “in the early 20th century, there was a movement with a lot of superficial similarities to today’s liberalism, but which was really more the mirror image of libertarianism, and that included supporting some really noxious state actions.” Talking about “progressivism” confuses the issue, because however it was used a century ago, now it’s just a weird euphemism for “liberal” (the way “evangelical” is mostly a euphemism for “fundamentalist”.) That approach wouldn’t have to vindicate CAP, but it would make you sound less like Glenn Beck.
April 16, 2010, 9:55 pmPurple Koolaid says:
Don’t forget Planned Parenthood’s founder, the progressive Margaret Sanger hated blacks, Jews, immigrants. Labeld them as “human weeds” “reckless breeders” “spawning..human beings who never should have been born”.
April 16, 2010, 10:04 pmDesiderius says:
OpenVolokh,
“Honestly though, I think there is something a little “off” with professor Bernstein. I think he is drawn to some strange wacko ideas.”
Limited government is not some strange, wacko idea. Those who identify themselves as Progressives today do so in large part because they are impatient with the same limits that Progressives back in the day were. DB has a different view about the relative importance of those limits, though he may somewhat overstate the enthusiasm of Progressives, then and now, to overthrow all limits altogether in his concern for those limits they trampled, and evidently aim to resume trampling again. No doubt you do not see it as trampling. We disagree. That’s not “off”; that’s life.
I would venture to guess that what you find distasteful, and likely with some justification, about both Buchanan and Reynolds is the all too evident distaste they share for an affinity group of which you consider yourself a member, and perhaps more importantly, which contains members about whom you care deeply. Tread carefully lest you do the same with DB.
April 16, 2010, 10:10 pmDavid Bernstein says:
I think I made it very clear at the end of the post that I don’t think that modern liberalism is the same as the Progressivism of yore.
April 16, 2010, 10:13 pmOpenVolokh says:
ShelbyC,
I am not making any such logical error. If I say that the things that the thing that all mammals have in common and distinct from other animals is that they are vertebrates, breathe air, have fur, and feed their young milk, then I am offering a definition of mammals.
When DB says that the thing that unites all progressives is there disregard for individual rights and desire to use government as a stream roller for their conceptions of the common good, he is best interpreted as offering a definition of progressivism. Now, it is possible that he is merely making an incomplete and distorted list of attributes of progressives that is framed in a particularly negative way and that these attributes are shared by other groups and are not in anyway definitional. That would be just as hackish! Why are you listing a partial list of attributes that are framed in an especially negative way? Are you trying to make an intellectually honest point or do you just trying to grind your axe?
Could it be that DB is not saying these are definitional but rather merely some attributes among others? If so, why would he omit the other attributes? What would be the purpose of mentioning some attributes, but not others? The best interpretation of DB is that he means this to be his definition of progressive.
Also, I give DB credit for recognizing that the definition of progressive is foundational to his critique/attack on the Center for American Progress. He has offered what sounds like a definition. In some ways, DB would be even MORE subject to being attacked intellectually if did not realize that the definition of progressive is central to his critique and did not offer a definition. Then he would simply be incompetent.
Finally, if DB wants to clarify and say that he has some other definition of progressivism, he is welcome to do so. People have repeatedly asked what definition he intended, and he has remained silent knowing that he has offered something that sounds like it is intended to be a definition.
But, if DB does offer such a definition, it will still be noted that he offered this partial skewed list of attributes. Basically, even DB wasn’t offering a definition of progressivism, he was engaged more in the production of propagandist attacks rather than intellectually respectable critiques with his partial list of attributes framed in an especially negative way.
DB must think we are all really stupid if he thinks we cannot see that the way he has framed the issue is either partial or distorted. If you ARE going to attack someone, you should do so in an intellectually honest manner and not make partial distorted lists of attributes or intellectually corrupt definitions.
And maybe DB should just cool it with the attacks anyway. They are both unpleasant and aren’t doing much for his own reputation when they are so sloppy.
April 16, 2010, 10:22 pmOpenVolokh says:
I will give DB credit for this. I never got the impression that he was trying to say that the Progressivism of yore is similar to EITHER liberalism or modern progressivism. In fact, he has made comments that suggest that modern progressivism wants to separate itself from certain attributes that DB associates with old-time progressivism.
I will also say, that if underlaying this critique, all DB was trying to say was that people SHOULD mention the negative attributes of those in the past as well as their positive attributes (i.e. you should give unlimited praise to James Madison without mentioning that he owned a whole boatload of slaves or you shouldn’t offer unlimited praise for Justice Holmes without noting his advocacy of eugenics or you should offer unlimited praise for Theodore Roosevelt without noting his racist tendencies, I would tend to agree. I would also tend to think the important point also needs to be made that these historical figures were also creatures of their times, and that these were fairly mainstream attributes even if they are appalling to us today.)
If that is the point DB was trying to make though, he really did a bad job.
April 16, 2010, 10:27 pmOpenVolokh says:
If DB simply wants to have a disagreement about what government should or should not do, that certainly is not “off.” Indeed, those debates occur in within both the Republican and Democratic parties all the time and is a debate that has been with us since before the founding. But if he is going to adopt either (1) a skewed definition of progressivism or (2) make a partial list of attributes that are framed in a maximally negative way about progressivism then he is entering into the fringes. Few people who think for themselves will fail to see the moves that he is making nor will they fail to note that they are not fully intellectually honest.
Maybe this is all a product of really really bad drafting and poor expression on his part. But it is hard to think his especially negative framing of progressivism is an accident. It is neither pleasant nor persuasive.
April 16, 2010, 10:37 pmShelbyC says:
That’s exactly the error you are making. He said, “what Progressives had in common was a commitment to activist government to promote their vision of the common good, and a concomitant impatience with or even contempt for competing claims of individual right.”
And you criticized him by saying that Hitler and Stalin shared those traits as well, but weren’t progressives. That’s like criticisizg somebody that says “One thing all denominations have in common is a belief in a single god” by saying Jews believe in a single god as well.
And he’s clearly talking about Progressives of the progressive era, not modern progressives.
April 16, 2010, 10:48 pmShelbyC says:
I think it’s probably poor comprehension on your part. The point he’s making is that the APC wrote a history of the Progessive movement without mentioning some of the more negative chapters in progressive history. And he made his point much better than you are making yours.
April 16, 2010, 10:53 pmdino says:
Trying to argue that the tea party is the embodiment of modern conservatism is ludicrous. Relatively all the Republican politicians who go to and speak at tea party rallies (and get cheered) all voted for Medicare part D, both wars and sat idly by and watched (with basically no attempt) to stop Bush’s massive expansion of government, spending and deficits. Sure HCR is statist, but to say that the opposition is based on some newly discovered fiscal responsibility is highly hypocritical. And yes support for military industrial complex is supporting big government. Even Paul Ryan the guy conservatives want to hold up as the poster boy for fiscal conservatism fell in line behind Bush and voted for Medicare part D. Don’t confuse a year and a half of protesting of being upset that they are out of power with some new found rediscovering of limited gov/fiscally responsible political movement. In polls tea party people dont want to cut medicare or social security or national defense. They want to cut foreign aid, which makes up 2% of the budget.
April 16, 2010, 11:05 pmneurodoc says:
To rebut Professor Bernstein’s assertion (“every “Progressive” legal commentator who ventured an opinion decried the Supreme Court’s invalidation of residential segregation in Buchanan v. Warley”), why not name some Progressive legal commentators who expressed approval of that decision. If he is wrong, it should be easy enough for you to prove himself, shouldn’t it?
April 16, 2010, 11:16 pmDavid Bernstein says:
The definition was: “what Progressives had in common was a commitment to activist government to promote their vision of the common good, and a concomitant impatience with or even contempt for competing claims of individual right.” I don’t think your average early 20th century Progressive would have quarreled with this description; many of them spent a good deal of energy attacking individualism, natural rights, and the idea that the Constitution (or anything else) creates any permanent, inviolable, limits on government power.
April 16, 2010, 11:31 pmMike McDougal says:
“Three generations of imbeciles are enough.” Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200, 207 (1927).
I challenge you to find a better Supreme Court quotation.
April 16, 2010, 11:33 pmOpenVolokh says:
Okay. But don’t you think your definition is just a little bit incomplete??
I think your definition would make Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin progressives. That is a problem! The definition is so broad as to classify a lot of things as progressive that aren’t remotely similar. Say what you want about Theodore Roosevelt, but he was no Hitler, no Mussolini, and no Stalin! But your definition would lump them altogether.
I also think this is overstated, although that is just a matter of opinion. TR, for example, did not reject all limits on government power, even though he certainly believed in robust vision of government power than a lot of his contemporaries.
As far as rejecting natural rights, I reject unenumerated natural rights, at least to the extent that we imagine that these should be identified and enforced by unelected and unaccountable judges as opposed to Congress. I happen to agree that the idea of allowing an activist judiciary enumerate an endless and arbitrarily determined list of natural rights is problematic. (But not as problematic as some would have it, since the Supreme Court is ultimately checked by the democratic branches, especially through the appointment power, but also through the ability to limit the court’s jurisdictions if necessary.) I suspect that you are taking the views of more extreme progressives as representative. You are especially ignoring progressive purposes in your definition. While it is obviously true that traditional progressive policy does not tend to give much weight to arbitrarily asserted unenumerated rights made up from whole cloth by activist judges (hello Roe v. Wade!) the purpose of progressivism was never to steamroll or disrespect the individual.
It is like a guy who evaluates policy X by mentioning the costs, but not the benefits. That isn’t valid cost-benefit analysis. Defining progressivism only in terms of the costs it imposes without mentioning the reasons (benefits) that progressives thought those costs were worth it isn’t a balanced definition.
Look, I think I have been a little overly harsh with you. But I still think your definition is off and I don’t think it is balanced. I am thinking at this point that this is unintentional.
I am not a progressive, traditional or otherwise. On that level, I don’t have a bone in this fight. My favorite political figure is Alexander Hamilton. But, I still think your definition is wrong. I would criticize the progressive movement on the grounds that they could possible think more direct democracy was a good idea (that is, empower ordinary individuals in government too much, even though ordinary individuals are too ignorant to make complicated policy decisions), not on the grounds that they wanted to steamroll the individual.
April 17, 2010, 12:04 amOpenVolokh says:
An addendum:
In terms of mentioning the purposes of progressivism, I should point you did mention to advance their vision of the common good. So, you aren’t totally like the guy who mentions costs without benefits. My comments in the previous comment in that regard are therefore totally off. The real criticism is that this is WAY too broad and not specific enough.
Everyone thinks they are advancing the common good. Hitler thought he was advancing the common good. Mussolini thought he was advancing the common good. Stalin at least acted like he thought he was advancing the common good. (I wonder if he really believed this though.)
That Theodore Roosevelt thought he was advancing the common good and gave less deference to the rights of property than you would in his position does not put him in the same category as Hitler, Mussolini, or Stalin. Even though it is true that he shared certain attributes with them on this hyper abstract plain of thought, he does not belong in a remotely similar category.
April 17, 2010, 12:16 amAlex J says:
Yes I do view modern conservatives as statist, I also think that the health bill could be reasonably called statist. I view that conservatives now just oppose the health care bill because they’re out of power. If you want to still argue that conservatives aren’t statist then define some of their opinions over their range of issues (take the war on drugs for example).
April 17, 2010, 12:33 amJames N. Gibson says:
From my reading of history, under the definition of Mr Bernstein we would have to lump in the entire Quaker movement which has as a hallmark trait extensive social activism. That is why Quakers were regularly connected to the Progressives until the 1960s when the secular progressives took over and threw out the remaining religious types. Then they truncated the history, as shown by this CAP booklet, and we now don’t have any progressive history before Teddy Roosevelt.
The Quakers however are connected to Alcohol Prohibition, ending the slave trade, various other “progressive” reforms and are listed as responsible for the creation of the progressive Amnesty International and Greenpeace. The only major know split was in Woodrow Wilson’s administration were they took issue with the military draft for World War 1. Most of Glenn Becks political prisoners under Wilson were Quaker draft dodgers.
April 17, 2010, 1:22 amLugo says:
Just curious – does David Bernstein regard Israel’s desire to control its borders and maintain its ethnic identity by limiting non-Jewish immigration as a “creepy obsession”, or justified?
April 17, 2010, 2:16 amManju says:
I think the question of how to define a progressive is different from what should be included in the history of progressivism. One may argue, as MLK did, that the American creed is about the self evident truth that all men were created equal, and therefore those who supported slavery were not real Americans so to speak; but that’s not a justification for excluding slavery from American history.
April 17, 2010, 2:57 amRicardo says:
DB is quite right that it makes little sense to tie the early Progressive movement to either modern liberalism or even to modern Progressivism.
Teddy Roosevelt was a nativist whose views on immigration were pretty similar to those of Pat Buchanan’s today. On war and foreign policy, TR makes Bill Kristol look like a peacenik. It was really only in the economic realm that TR-style Progressives had much in common with modern liberals or progressives.
April 17, 2010, 3:20 amRicardo says:
It certainly requires a strong state government which many people from across the political spectrum supported at the time. Laws against interracial marriage were part of a proto-eugenics movement and were strongly supported by southern whites of any political persuasion and predate the Progressive movement. Many southern Democrats openly self-identified as conservatives like Richard Russell, Jr., Strom Thurmond, and Josiah Bailey (author of the anti-New Deal “Conservative Manifesto”).
April 17, 2010, 3:38 amnoahp says:
I hope to sound like Glenn Beck! And D-mouse!
Progs are the enemy.
These are the same ignoramuses that attack the Founders because slavery existed and then attend maggie award dinners named after that noted turn of the century racist. (Back when racism was a real ideology and not a mere member of the progressivist trilogy of racism, sexism, and homophobia).
April 17, 2010, 3:52 amDavid M. Nieporent says:
A major problem for progressives, sure.
April 17, 2010, 3:55 amOpenVolokh says:
Amusing. You really think Theodore Roosevelt is just like Hitler? Come on.
Tricks are for kids! =)
Anyway, you and DB are free to be all kinds of crazy if you want! Have fun! =)
April 17, 2010, 4:43 amStephen Lathrop says:
If David Bernstein wants to be a historian he should go ahead and do it. Take a few years off from the law, get himself a good mentor, and earn a PhD in history. Once he has been trained, and learned to think like an historian, he can take another stab at this, or any other subject he likes. It will come out different than this did.
Seems to me there is a giant unmet need for law professors who actually know something about the professional practice of history, and the sorts of questions history can and can not answer. Professor Bernstein has been interested in taking an historical approach to law. He could lead the way.
April 17, 2010, 5:53 ambadlaw says:
For the same reason the Tea Party Movement is associated with the right-wing, even though “it’s Democrats too”.
April 17, 2010, 6:17 amnoahp says:
Actually, I agree that DB’s definition is incomplete but alas there is insufficient space here for a complete and rigorous exposition (Fermat’s dilemma). Thumbnail: progressivism exists in a platonic sense but has power in the real world only because of the people with operationally false views of human nature that embrace it. For example, one of the arguments for prohibition that progressives made and some nonprogressives fell for was that GDP would go up 25% if alcohol was banned. That argument is just as valid today as it was then. So why not give it another try?
April 17, 2010, 8:01 amShelbyC says:
If DB wants to call his description a definition, fine, although it seems funny to criticize something that wasn’t presented as a complete definition as imcomplete. But exactly how is this a problem, with respect to the main point of the post? Are you arguing that this reforms DB lists as progressive reforms we’re really progressive?
April 17, 2010, 8:03 amDavid Bernstein says:
Stephen Lathrop, given your obnoxious criticism, and your tone of guardian of the historical profession, I’m wondering how many peer-reviewed history books and history journal articles you’ve written. I’m guessing none.
April 17, 2010, 8:05 amShelbyC says:
Why? He seems to do better at publishing history books than you or I. If you want to get into the business of who should be writing about history, mabye you should get trained to be a publisher?
April 17, 2010, 8:08 amnoahp says:
Another possibly apochryphal story concerns the debate on the House floor regarding the income tax amendment. The speaker pro tem had a member forcibly removed for warning that the income tax rate might go as high as 20% if the amendment was enacted!
Hell, it was the right thing to do! Sound familiar?
April 17, 2010, 8:15 amAdam Berkowicz says:
And we wonder why certain people on this website don’t allow for comments…
April 17, 2010, 8:38 amSenatorX says:
Alex J:
As someone who self identifies with classical liberalism I don’t know if you could be farther from the truth. I view modern conservatives as statist which throws your first two points out the window. Plus, classical liberalism never had much of a social morality component.
Ok I get that the “big government” republicans on the right are far too statist, so much that they almost completely cloud the left/right divide and things have to be cleared up by resorting to statist/collectivist vs individualist.
But “Plus, classical liberalism never had much of a social morality component” this I don’t get, unless using the word social you are meaning something I don’t understand. Morality is at the very core of classical liberalism/libertarianism.
April 17, 2010, 8:59 amPurple Koolaid says:
Lugo, thanks for giving me the heads up to stop reading all your posts.
April 17, 2010, 9:05 amYou are seriously disregarding the facts to conflate Israel’s border issue w/ FORCED sterilization of undesirable races. I suggest you read Margaret Sanger. Israel’s abortion laws are for all. They allow any woman to murder her baby, regardless if Jew or gentile.
Desiderius says:
Ricardo,
“It was really only in the economic realm that TR-style Progressives had much in common with modern liberals or progressives.”
To DB (and those modern progressives as well!) that is what matters most. Modern liberals are distinguished from progressives in placing less value on the economic, to the extent of blinding themselves to the illiberalism of much of what progressives were, and are, up to, hence the concern of DB, a liberal himself.
April 17, 2010, 9:28 amOpenVolokh says:
I agree with DB’s update. It turns out to be a perfectly reasonable point that DB was trying to make. I wonder if the people at CAP would really disagree with this. I still think DB’s definition of progressive was way to broad, but I don’t really need to beat that dead horse anymore.
Whether CAP disagrees or not, they really shouldn’t selectively cite history. This is something that occurs on both sides, and it isn’t good. (OTOH: I don’t think that I have to mention every time I say something about James Madison that he owned slaves or Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes that he had some offensive opinions regarding imbeciles. But, if I am going to do an extensive bit of history involving either, these are indeed very relevant data.)
April 17, 2010, 9:32 amShelbyC says:
It strikes me as too broad as well, if this is really intended to be an exhaustive definition. But hey, what do I know. I’d be interested to hear a more thourogh definition of early 20th century progressivism.
Agreed, although personally I think Holmes transgression goes beyond just having offensive opinions. He personally authrized the forced sterilization of tens of thousands of women. That gives him a level of responsibility more like Hitler or Stalin than, say, Madison.
April 17, 2010, 9:50 amwooga says:
OpenVolokh already correctly noted that I was using “conservative” and “Republican” interchangeably. So while a 1920s KKK member would more likely than not be a Democrat, he could be considered “conservative” by some standards. The problem is the term “conservative” is such a relative term.
However, the term “Progressive” (big P) is not so relative. It was a defined movement, with specific goals and a belief in strong central government. It seems to me that whereas I was sloppy in failing to distinguish ‘conservative’ from ‘modern conservative’ from the current Tea Party rise of limited government conservatism… OpenVolokh and others on this thread are failing to note that historical Progressives were a specific set of people that formed the intellectual ancestors of the modern progressives. Whereas you can look back in history to find common origins (the whole ‘liberal fascism’ debate), it does not make sense to go the other way – trying to pretend old Progressives weren’t totalitarian racists just because modern progressives believe in state forced activities and race based treatment of citizens.
Because, you know, the shift from “that race is innately inferior so we must exterminate them” to “that race is innately inferior so we must infantilize them” shows how far progressives have progressed in their racism.
April 17, 2010, 9:59 amStephen Lathrop says:
You have a point. You are right about no publications. I learned to recognize history many years ago in a graduate seminar taught by Edmund S. Morgan. He certainly doesn’t approve of obnoxious criticism, nor of anyone setting themselves up as the guardian of the historical profession, although at the time he was the president of the Society of American Historians, and thus perhaps functioned, in the gentlest way possible, as that guardian himself. So if I came across as obnoxious I apologize. I intended to be pointed but civil, and apparently missed on the tone.
But what about the substance of what I suggested? I was responding to the tendentious and present-minded character of your note above, both of which are problems in historical interpretation, though probably less so in law. Do you really think you should set yourself up as an historian without training for it? If so, what does that say about your opinion of history and historians?
April 17, 2010, 10:08 amMark Field says:
You can start here.
April 17, 2010, 10:23 amMark Field says:
FWIW, I completely agree with Prof. Bernstein’s update.
April 17, 2010, 10:25 amSenatorX says:
“That socialism has displaced liberalism as the doctrine held by the great majority of progressives does not simply mean that people had forgotten the warnings of the great liberal thinkers of the past about the consequences of collectivism. It has happened because they were persuaded of the very opposite of what these men had predicted. The extraordinary thing is that the same socialism that was not only early recognized as the gravest threat to freedom, but quite openly began as a reaction against the liberalism of the French Revolution, gained general acceptance under the flag of liberty. It is rarely remembered now that socialism in its beginnings was frankly authoritarian. The French writers who laid the foundations of modern socialism had no doubt that their ideas could be put into practice only by a strong dictatorial government. To them socialism meant an attempt to “terminate the revolution” by a deliberate reorganization of society on hierarchical lines and by the imposition of a coercive “spiritual power”. Where freedom was concerned, the founders of socialism made no bones about their intentions. Freedom of thought they regarded as the root-evil of nineteenth-century society, and the first of modern planners, Saint-Simon, even predicted that those who did not obey his proposed planning boards would be “treated as cattle”.” F.A. Hayek
April 17, 2010, 10:49 amJoseph Slater says:
Speaking as someone who has done some peer-reviewed publishing in history, I’ll throw in my 2 cents (certainly not the be-all and end-all) that CJColucci got it right in his first post on this thread.
And DB: You seem to have backed off the claim that Holmes was a “progressive”; you then described him as a “progressive hero.” But to the extent progressives were praising Holmes, surely that was because Holmes was not as willing as many of his brethern on the bench to strike down labor-protective legislation and his related reluctance to use common law aggressively against unions. That was notable and honorable. But that wasn’t a general endorsement of all of Holmes’s beliefs.
April 17, 2010, 11:09 amneimoller says:
huh? so i assume you will stop criticizing palestinians from now on?
April 17, 2010, 11:28 amneurodoc says:
huh???
Are you trying to trump just lgm or all possible competitors with your own out-of-nowhere non sequitor?
April 17, 2010, 1:14 pmXenocles says:
As near as I can tell, it was nothing but an overly wordy appeal to authority.
April 17, 2010, 1:29 pmGrey says:
I live in Texas.
In recent years, the only people I’ve heard suggesting sterilization or breeding restrictions are conservative/libertarians/tea-party types, usually as a solution for long-term spending reduction vis a vis social programs.
I wonder why there’s such a zeal here to repeatedly connect today’s liberals to the Sanger era we’re discussing here. Isn’t that just the flip side of liberals connecting conservatives to things from their unfortunate past they’d rather forget?
Furthermore, does anyone believe modern liberals or progressives support (m)any of the controversial ideas of the Sanger era?
April 17, 2010, 1:53 pmneurodoc says:
You missed Professor Bernstein’s point. It is the decidedly left-center Center for American Progress doing the connecting of today’s “progressives” (“liberals” until they “re-branded” themselves over the past few years), to the “Progressive Movement” of a century or so ago, only doing so very selectively, reminding us of what might be viewed positively, while saying nothing of that which would likely be viewed negatively.
April 17, 2010, 2:36 pmDavid Bernstein says:
I didn’t back off, I never said he was a progressive. When I said he was a progressive hero, I meant a hero to Progressives. Since I don’t think he was in any way a hero, I obviously didn’t mean to describe him as a hero who happened to be Progressive. And no, Progressives didn’t just praise Holmes for upholding labor laws. They lavished him with praise. Roscoe Pound, for example, claimed he was the greatest expositor of “sociological jurisprudence” even though there was nothing remotely “sociological” about Holmes’s opinions. That’s because s.j. was a stalking horse for statism, and Holmes was indeed a statist.
April 17, 2010, 2:47 pmJoseph Slater says:
I understood that you later meant “hero to progressives,” and I stand by my point that, in the minds of “progressives” of the era, this was really about admiring Holmes for his — admirable — unwillingness to bend legal doctrine to the benefit of employers and detriment of workers and unions, in contrast to many-most his contemporaries on the bench.
April 17, 2010, 2:54 pmCareless says:
I wonder if maybe he was responding to something someone wrote that was unreasonably positive towards progressives of earlier eras. If only I had read the things Bernstein wrote, I might know the answer to that and understand why this pointed out negative things done or promoted by progressives in the past.
April 17, 2010, 3:17 pmLester Livio says:
Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin were socialists who attempted to use state power to create Utopian societies at the expense of individual rights…Modern progressives have the same goals, though they do not use the same means.
April 17, 2010, 3:33 pmneurodoc says:
Whenever Buck v Bell is brought up, I think it should be noted that the case presented by those who were looking for legal authority to proceed with forced sterilization and those who purported to represent Carrie Buck’s interests amounted to a fraud on the Court, with reliance placed on bogus evidence and major misrepresentations the result.
April 17, 2010, 3:37 pmChrisTS says:
Michelle:
How could anyone ‘deny’ such an empty claim? Who are these many people (however they self-identify)who say such things?
Personally, I cannot think of anyone who says that there are people alive who should not have been born.
April 17, 2010, 4:19 pmShelbyC says:
Yeah, not that it would have mattered if her mental state was what they said it was. But talk about your ringing indictments of stateism. You’d think the folks arguing the seminal case about using the power of the state to improve the human gene pool could manage to not be covering up a rape.
April 17, 2010, 5:28 pmLugo says:
Huh? I didn’t do anything of the sort. I quoted Bernstein, who said Progessives (including Teddy Roosevelt) had a “longstanding creepy obsession with American “race suicide” because of immigration to the U.S. by the “lower races,””. Bernstein did not link this to eugenics, and neither did I. If anyone is doing any conflating, it is you.
The question remains: if Bernstein thinks American Progressive obsession with “race suicide” resulting from immigration was “creepy”, what does he think of Israel’s immigration policy today, which is no less determined to maintain the state’s ethnic identity?
April 17, 2010, 9:17 pmLugo says:
I have no doubt that lawyers think they are just as good at, if not better than, historians, since lawyers think they do just the same thing as historians (put words on paper to make an argument) but are better at it.
Some of the best historians were never “academically trained” or even obtained a PhD, by the way, so I’m not going to scoff at a lawyer who wants to write history. Richard Frank is an outstanding military historian, and he has a law degree, not a PhD in History.
April 17, 2010, 9:22 pmneurodoc says:
Carrie Buck had been raped by a relative of her foster parents, and the child she delivered was the product of that rape. The Court was not told this, but was told she came from a “promiscuous” line. I don’t know but doubt that “covering up a rape” was part of the state’s motive in pursuing the matter. Thanks to the work of Paul Lombardo, a UVa law professor, I do know that both sides, that is both those representing the state and those purporting to represent Carrie Buck’s interests were in cahoots, falsely portraying her as a “defective” individual and the mother of a “defective” child in order to get the Court’s endorsement of forced sterilization.
April 17, 2010, 9:27 pmDavid Bernstein says:
To the extent any Israeli wants to maintain Israel’s Jewish character because they think that Jews are genetically or biologically superior to Arabs, which would be analogous to the views of Progressives like Roosevelt regarding non-northern Europeans, that is indeed creepy. But in fact, overwhelmingly the commitment is in fact a combination of the need for a safe haven for Jews after 2,000 years of oppression, a sense of religious mission, a knowledge that Arab majorities have oppressed their Jewish minorities for centuries, and a desire for cultural and religious autonomy. I’m sure you can find Israeli Jews who base their Zionism on some sense of chauvinism or ethnic superiority, but that is a distinct (and creepy) minority.
April 17, 2010, 10:01 pmOrson Buggeigh says:
Steven Lathrop, I see others have been posting on this point about David Bernstein as historian. I disagree with your assertion that David Bernstein needs to go back and get a PhD in history to have the qualities that will make him a good historian. I’d say his historical argument in this post is reasonable. It is also an argument that many present day historians would disagree with. But I don’t think that makes him a bad historian. Nor do I think that a PhD in history necessarily makes one a competent historian. There are plenty of examples of people with PhDs who are doing very poor history, and people without PhDs who are doing very competent history.
I happen to have a PhD in history. I’ve even published a few books, including one with a major academic press. I envy your good fortune in working with Edmund Morgan. Unfortunately, my own experience in graduate school allowed me to observe a number of politically partisan hacks who cheerfully utilized their position to discourage anyone who didn’t have what they deemed to be a sufficiently progressive political understanding of history from continuing in graduate school. The term usable history is long due for retirement, along with books like Howard Zinn’s _People’s History of the United States_. That would be my choice for the worst single volume history of the United States written to date. It is also one of the most recommended and praised books for high school and undergraduate collegiate work. That fact does not make me feel that my professional peers are especially well trained in understanding historical evidence.
Or shall we talk about Michael Bellesiles’ contribution to scholarship? HE has a PhD in history, and many of our historian colleagues thought his reasearch was wonderful. Clayton Cramer, who has an MA in history, and Jim Lindgren, a law professor, dismantled _Arming America_ very convincingly. There are still PhD historians like Jon Wiener who still think Bellesiles wrote good history. Lugo mentioned Richard Frank, whose _Downfall_ makes a very convincing argument to counter anything Gar Alperowitz and the folks who follow his viewpoint have to say about the use of the atomic bomb to end World War II. Don’t even get me started on the various historians who claim that Ward Churchill’s writing is valuable for the study of Indian-federal relations. Or PhD historian William Chafe’s support for trying to railroad the Duke men’s lacrosse team to prison to support a current progressive political prosecution. Interestingly a PhD historian, KC Johnson, (whose personal politics are not especially conservative) had a great deal to do with seeing that the case didn’t go through and send innocent men to prison.
There are many fine historians with PhDs in history. There are also some real clunkers with PhDs in history. It is also important to note, a PhD is NOT a requirement for being a competent historian. There are some fine historians who have a BA or MA at most. Richard Frank and Clayton Cramer are both doing good work, and it holds up well under careful scrutiny. Much better than _Arming America_ or _People’s History of the United States._
OK, I’ll get off my soapbox. I have another manuscript I’m supposed to be working on.
April 17, 2010, 10:23 pmPurple Koolaid says:
Do you think it is just coincidence that 78% of Planned Parenthoods (which margaret sanger founded) are in black communities? Blacks are 12% of population but 35% of abortions? PURE COINCIDENCE?? Or how about when LA Advocate ran a sting and called several PP and offered to make donations specifically for abortions for african americans and they said fine. Here’s from the staffer in Tulsa: “We can definitely designate it for an African-American.”
April 17, 2010, 11:24 pmAnd please state your source for socalled conservative/libertarian/tea partiers suggesting sterilization or breeding restrictions for spending restrictions. Perhaps it was the speaker Nancy Pelosi you remember who wanted birth control and abortion fuding in the stimulus bill: “The family planning services reduce cost,” Pelosi said, “One of the elements of this package is assistance to the states. The states are in terrible fiscal budget crises …the contraception, will reduce costs to the states and to the federal government.”
neurodoc says:
I don’t know who said what or who linked what to what, but its beyond dispute that eugenics was very much implicated in US immigration policy with its quota system by country and the screening that went on at ports of entry.
Is that your own twist on the “Zionism is racism” canard?
April 17, 2010, 11:48 pmChrisTS says:
What was the OP about?
April 18, 2010, 12:42 amRicardo says:
Since Margaret Sanger’s name has come up several times, it is worth pointing out that she never advocated any widespread forced sterilization. She did support the sterilization at issue in Buck v. Bell, where people who were mentally ill or afflicted with severe mental retardation were sterilized against their will. But she was explicitly against forced sterilization of mentally competent adults and against any policy that would sterilize only members of certain races.
Sanger spent a good deal of time trying to work against laws that made it illegal to discuss or sell contraception in the open. In that sense, her work was very much pro-individual rights. She denounced Nazi Germany from the very start in unequivocal terms. On eugenics, here’s what she had to say, “We maintain that a woman possessing an adequate knowledge of her reproductive functions is the best judge of the time and conditions under which her child should be brought into the world. We further maintain that it is her right, regardless of all other considerations, to determine whether she shall bear children or not, and how many children she shall bear if she chooses to become a mother… Only upon a free, self-determining motherhood can rest any unshakable structure of racial betterment.”
This business about racial betterment is pretty creepy but her clearly expressed sentiment — that women having accurate information about contraception will be the best judges of how many children they will have and at what time — is tough to argue with.
April 18, 2010, 1:18 amRicardo says:
No, it’s not a coincidence at all. About 80% of white children live in a household with both of their parents. For black children the number is around 40%. Link
Just about everyone agrees that having a majority of black children growing up with either single mothers, grandparents or other relatives is a problem. People disagree on why (maybe single mother households are inherently unstable or maybe it is just that single mothers are much more likely to be unable to fully provide for their children) but it’s not outrageous to think that condoms and birth control pills may be part of the solution to this situation.
April 18, 2010, 1:31 amRicardo says:
The first two quotes are fabrications. The website you appear to have gotten these quotes from lists the source as Sanger’s book “Pivot of Civilization.” Since the book is online, it is quite easy to see that the text does not contain the phrases “human weeds” or “reckless breeders.” As for human beings who never should have been born, the context of the quote indicates she is talking about people with severe genetic abnormalities rather than “blacks, Jews, [and] immigrants.”
One can certainly find this notion offensive but your attempt to paint Sanger as a Nazi is based on fabricated or out-of-context quotations that are not linked to any reputable source. There are lots of fake Sanger quotes out there and it pays to do some research before trusting anything you read on the internet.
April 18, 2010, 1:55 amneurodoc says:
Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky’s soulmate, who Silber would have fired if he could have managed it, and the Left as canonized and now is the subject of hagiographies, that Howard Zinn? I found this personal testimony of someone I trust to be effective rebuttal of all the effusive encomiums of this Leftist saint…
http://www.solomonia.com/blog/archive/2010/01/original-zinn-hillel/index.shtml#comments
Ward Churchill…oh, I get it, that was a joke, we aren’t supposed to say anything, just laugh at the mention of his name, right?
April 18, 2010, 2:47 amSammy Finkelman says:
By the thousands?
Actually this could be true, if you think about the Civil War, since that was a big motivation. It’s not true about later
April 18, 2010, 4:09 amShelbyC says:
Three Generations, no Imbecils. Your right, covering up was not the states motivation, but it sure was the family’s, and the were in cahoots.
April 18, 2010, 10:08 amShelbyC says:
The people forcibly sterilized in Buck v. Bell were two mentally competent adults and a mentally competent two-year old.
April 18, 2010, 10:15 amJoe says:
A bit more discussion on how “residential segregation” was a “progressive” program would be appreciated. I say this in part because the ‘progressives’ on the Court voted against it too in the cited ruling. The article does note: “shamefully [Wilson] supported legal segregation in federal agencies, reversing much of the work Roosevelt had done to eliminate racial barriers.”
April 18, 2010, 10:17 amRicardo says:
Not being familiar with the factual record of that case or with Paul Lombardo’s work, this could well be the case. The point is that Margaret Sanger explicitly and repeatedly affirmed her support for the right of mentally competent adult women to make their own decisions about if or when to become mothers and argued against genetic determinists and race theorists like Francis Galton. One commonality she did have with eugenicists was her support for forced sterilization for the “feeble-minded.”
On the other hand, she explicitly opposed sterilizing habitual criminals saying, quite simply, that the science is not there yet that could justify such a policy and public officials and the criminal justice system could not be trusted with this kind of power. It’s unfortunate she didn’t extend similar logic to compulsory sterilization of the mentally ill or mentally retarded, but that’s a far cry from widespread state-mandated eugenics, which was something she always vocally opposed on grounds of individual liberty and distrust of the ability and intelligence of public officials.
April 18, 2010, 10:57 amneurodoc says:
I knew next to nothing about eugenics until I published a paper on the role two prominent neurologists played in the movement. In the course of doing the research, I learned something about the facts of Buck v Bell, especially the “science” involved. Didn’t know about the rape part, and foster family’s role, which adds another dimension to the sordid case. (Any other Supreme Court cases with such fraught backgrounds? Any other cases in which it looks like a fraud was perpetrated on the Court by a party, or in the case of Buck v Bell by both parties?)
Do you have a cite for this? Is it there in the Buck v. Bell decision or is it documented elsewhere? I find it hard to believe that a two-year old was sterilized, if only because I don’t know how it would have been done in a small girl and am not certain about it in a boy of that age either. (The Surgical Solution: A History of Involuntary Sterilization in the United States by Philip Riley, an MD JD, might be the place to look for some of these answers, but my copy is packed away.)
April 18, 2010, 12:38 pmJeff Perren says:
What unites Progressives and modern liberals are the fundamentals they share, which have not changed in over 130 years. They are one and all collectivists who oppose capitalism and its basis in rational self-interest. They opposed and still oppose the protection of classical liberal rights to property, voluntary trade, and – in general – not being coerced to be one’s brother’s keeper.
The details over generations will change (particular modern liberals may or may not be racist, though many are) but the fundamentals do not. That is how one identifies which concrete instances go in which category.
April 18, 2010, 5:46 pmOchre says:
Eagerly awaiting DB’s impassioned, meticulously researched, closely reasoned critique of Confederate History Month. … Any day now …
April 18, 2010, 6:25 pmneurodoc says:
Clearly, snark is intended, but I’m at a loss to understand the point it is meant to serve, if indeed there is one. Care to enlighten us?
April 18, 2010, 11:27 pmGordo says:
One item in Professor Bernstein’s list seems misplaced – compulsory public school education. At least in Oregon, the KKK was behind the law, not the progressives – the law invalidated by an admittedly conservative supreme court in Pierce v. Society of Sisters.
April 19, 2010, 11:27 amShelbyC says:
Paul Lombardo’s book, “Three Generations, No Imbeciles”, albeit from memory. I had thought Carries daughter Vivian was sterilized at age two, though I could be misremembering. I’ll verify when I get home and have access to the book. Unfortunately she passed away at age 8.
April 19, 2010, 3:22 pmLugo says:
In my view, Israel is unquestionably determined to maintain its ethnic identity. I have no problem with that, since it is something any country is entitled to do for any reason (“creepy” or non-creepy). I don’t see this policy as fundamentally or importantly different from what US Progressives sought to do in the early 1900s. I am profoundly skeptical that, as DB claims, Jews do not view themselves as genetically superior. They certainly ought to, based on standardized testing and real-world performance.
April 19, 2010, 7:50 pmMichael B says:
Another telling excerpt from the first of the two videos, by the author, noted above, emphasis added:
“… the number of whites who died, [y]a know they lynched whites, they beat them, the whites who went down to the southern schools to teach blacks, they murdered them, they slept out in the wheat fields, the swamps, because those who opposed blacks getting an education were the Democrats and the KKK, they killed the white teachers along with the black teachers, and they killed their children as well. Whites died by the thousands on behalf of African Americans and they are not teaching that in our schools.”
Supportive citation? I’m quoting above directly from the author, in the video linked, and have the book by that author. I’ve only recently received the book and have skimmed it only to this point, but it is well documented. Too, he’s talking about the entire reconstruction era. But I’m open to a counter argument, with supportive documentation.
April 19, 2010, 9:15 pmneurodoc says:
Hugely different for a great many reasons religiously, culturally, historically, practically, etc. What “ethnic identity” were US Progressives seeking to preserve in the early 1900s, one of northern Europe stock, ignoring the presence of Native Americans, Africans brought to this country as slaves and their descendants, Asians who came before exclusionary quotes, etc.? You ought not be surprised that you express approval of those goals, which were not about “affirming” anything so much as discriminating against those deemed inferior on the basis of their national origin.
April 19, 2010, 10:34 pmneurodoc says:
I heard Lombardo years ago at a meeting of the American Association for the History of Medicine, but never read that book. The whole affair was shocking, but it would be still more so if in addition to the mother they sterilized the young child.
April 19, 2010, 10:39 pmyankev says:
Be as skeptical as you like; DB is still correct. Jews are not a racial group. We come in all colors and physical types. We have also been enriched over the centuries by converts from every possible racial group.
April 20, 2010, 3:48 pmyankev says:
Would you care to support yours? The religious right is a term that gained currency in the 1970s and 1980s to describe the alliance of political conservatism and conservative Christian religious views. Jimmie Carter holds conservative Christian religious views, but few would describe him as a creature of the religious right.
Many of the temperance activists were indeed religious. The WCTU, among others, comes to mind. What evidence is there that they were affiliated with the political right? And what right wing politicians supported the Volstead Act?
April 20, 2010, 3:54 pmyankev says:
According to Wikipedia, the Anti-Saloon League was part of the progressive movement.
According to that same source, Anti-Sallon League leader Wayne Wheeler attended Oberlin College. Oberlin College hardly considered a bastion of right wing politics.
April 20, 2010, 4:03 pm