Progressivism reconstructed American liberalism by dismantling the free market of classical liberalism and erecting in its place the welfare state of modern liberalism. The new liberalism discarded economic liberties as archaic impediments to necessary improvements to society’s health, welfare, and morals. . .
But the original progressives’ illiberal turn did not stop at property and contract rights. They assaulted political and civil liberties, too, trampling on individual rights to person, to free movement, to free expression, to to marriage and to reproduction. The progressives denied millions these basic freedoms, on grounds that their inferiority threatened America’s economic and hereditary security. They were wrong on both counts. That did not stop them, nor has it stopped those who, unaware of the history, repeat the same false claims today.” [Emphasis added.]
—Thomas C. Leonard, historian, Princeton University, in Illiberal Reformers: Race, Eugenics, and American Economics in the Progressive Era
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