Progressives and progressivism
January 1, 2022 — John Hinderaker
The proto-fascists among us have delighted in issuing “emergency” orders relating to the coronavirus. These have included, among others, shutdowns and mask and vaccine mandates. The Governor of Minnesota went so far as to issue an “emergency” order prohibiting all residents of the state from leaving their houses without his permission. Many have speculated that statists’ overreaction to covid has been a dry run for more “emergencies” to come. Indeed
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December 27, 2021 — Steven Hayward
The Census Bureau has just released the latest statistics on domestic migration and population change, and it is no surprise that the exodus from high-tax/high-crime blue states is becoming a stampede in the last year. Here are the charts: It’s one thing for people in cold climates in the northern and midwestern states to leave for the warmer south, but no one leaves California in search of better weather. It
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October 26, 2021 — Steven Hayward
• Headline, from Nature magazine this week: Money quote: “Politicians who are not trained in science should not meddle in our day-to-day business, or tell scientists what’s right or wrong.” This is exactly how we got Fauci funding “gain of function” research in China, and (apparently) experimenting in a gruesome fashion on dogs. • Reminder, from President Eisenhower’s Farewell Address: The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal
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September 5, 2021 — John Hinderaker
Corporate America has largely aligned itself with the Left, a choice that is often reflected in advertising. “Get woke, go broke” is a nice sentiment, but unfortunately it isn’t always–or, perhaps, usually–true. Nike, to name just one example, has profited greatly by being anti-American. Some of this probably has to do with catering to a non-American customer base, but sadly there is also no shortage of Americans who respond to
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June 23, 2021 — Steven Hayward
It’s only Wednesday, but this is shaping up as the week when the Progressive agenda hit the wall. First, there is Eric Adams’s showing in the New York City mayor’s race. And as Scott noted earlier in the week, the University of Minnesota did a complete about-face on utilizing the Minneapolis police to keep the campus safe. Then there’s this in today’s Wall Street Journal: Biden to Say Cities Can
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May 12, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
Yesterday, Steve wrote about how the left has turned on John Kennedy. To me, the wonder is that it didn’t turn on him years ago. Kennedy’s presidency might have been liberal as that term was understood at the time, but it wasn’t “progressive.” In fact, today it might reasonably be considered conservative. Kennedy gave Americans a big tax cut on the theory that this would stimulate the economy. It did.
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May 11, 2021 — Steven Hayward
One trait of the progressive left is that its contempt for the past leads it sooner or later to turn on their own previous heroes. The environmental left has long detested Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal for things like the massive dams on the Columbia River and elsewhere, along with other big infrastructure projects. The so-called “anti-racist” left attacks FDR for perpetuating segregation in housing (with some justice in this case).
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May 3, 2021 — Steven Hayward
More and more the woke pandemic afflicting our elites and causing them to mask their racism is reminding me of forced busing back in the late 1960s and early 1970s—a project to which liberals (and compliant federal judges) were fiercely dedicated (even as rich liberals sent their own kids to private schools), and which was hugely unpopular. Then, as now, many Republicans spoke in subdued tones about their opposition to
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April 18, 2021 — Steven Hayward
Nothing so surely signals the essential emptiness of Joe Biden than his rapid flip-flop Friday on raising the cap on the number of asylum seekers the United States will accept. At first the Biden Administration announced that they would not lift the relatively low cap that Trump had adopted, but following “outcry” from “Progressives,” Biden did a pirouette worthy of Bolshie ballerina and said he’d now lift the cap. One reason
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March 19, 2021 — Steven Hayward
There are some interesting signs that the Biden victory and the Democratic Party’s current lunge to the far left may be an outlier among Western democracies, where leftist parties continue to lose ground. Progressive writers Ruy Teixeira and Brian Kaltis (both with the lefty Center for American Progress) note the unhappy (for them) results of elections earlier this week in the Netherlands: Look at the results from yesterday’s national elections in
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January 28, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
George Will has an excellent column in which he presents the arguments of Philip Howard, as set forth in an article called “From Progressivism to Paralysis.” Howard contends that modern government “is structured to preempt the active intelligence of people on the ground.” Moreover:
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July 1, 2020 — Steven Hayward
When I heard the news that the nihilist mob plans to take down the statue of Theodore Roosevelt astride his horse in front the Natural History Museum in New York City, I knew I had to ring up Jean Yarbrough, the Gary Pendy Sr. Professor of Social Sciences at Bowdoin College, and author of the best book on TR’s political thought and legacy, Theodore Roosevelt and the American Political Tradition.
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April 7, 2020 — Steven Hayward
The downloads folder on my computer is jammed full right now with endless charts depicting data and analysis of both the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic shocks rolling across the world, and naturally they can tell a widely varying story depending on the data quality and, most crucial of all, the assumptions that go into any model that generates projections about the future—even the near future. Experts and models disagree!
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July 22, 2019 — Scott Johnson
Last year we celebrated the week of Charles — Charles Kesler, Dengler-Dykema Distinguished Professor of Government at Clarmeont McKenna College, editor of the Claremont Review of Books, long-time friend and tutor — for his receipt of one of 2018’s Bradley Prize awards along with Allen Guelzo and Jason Riley. Video of the event is posted here on Vimeo. Charles is a gentleman, scholar, author, teacher, editor, advocate of America and
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July 8, 2019 — Steven Hayward
It’s a really tough time to be a liberal Progressive. One bit of evidence appears right now in The New Yorker, where Harvard Law professor Jeannie Suk Gersen worries that the Supreme Court might actually rein in the administrative state. This, she assures us, would produce a “parade of horrors” (actual quote). Let’s start with this passage: For the better part of a century, the Court has permitted Congress to delegate
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April 29, 2019 — Steven Hayward
I often like to annoy liberals with Harvey Mansfield’s remark that it is the job of modern conservatism to save liberalism from liberals. Heh. After all, “liberty,” a pre-eminent principle for conservatives, is obviously a cognate of “liberal,” and liberalism for most of its history has been a creed of limited government and individual rights against the State. But just as often here on Power Line commenters will remark, quite
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April 7, 2019 — Steven Hayward
How “Progressive” is Progressivism? Is there actually a “side of history,” or is that just the lazy formula of presumptive socialists who think they have a monopoly on the truth and don’t need to argue with or persuade anyone? In another of my lecture series for the William F. Buckley Jr. Program at Yale, I walk through more of the details of Progressivism then and now, showing continuities—and also some
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