The Progressives Yesterday and Today

As I have discussed previously, the progressives, who currently control the Democratic Party, have an obsession with equality as a foundational concept in human society. That characteristic had no outlet prior to 1800 because the common man had no rights. Absent rights, progressive thinkers had no power to advocate for equality.

The advent of political parties and politics, which arose from public rights created by the early democracies, made progressive ideals real and placed them in opposition to conservatism. At the same time, socialism emerged as an ideology that sought to create equitable societies through a sharing of power between people and government. The first attempts at socialism involved the creation of utopian communities, which were set up as models of equality, but each one of them failed.

In the mid-1800s, political unrest in Europe and the failed revolutions of 1848 earned new rights for Europe’s publics. Labor unions became the foundations for socialist movements, and their efforts led to the establishment of entitlement programs for pensions and health care.

In the United States, labor’s success was limited to the industrial eastern and midwestern states because the South was not industrialized, and the West was undeveloped. For that reason, socialism never made any headway in the United States. The American Progressive Movement arose spontaneously during the Gilded Age in response to rampant political corruption in government and the exploitation of American workers by large industrial companies.

The movement was bipartisan because most Americans were agitating to stop corruption and exploitation, but it was Republicans who led the way. The Republican Congress passed the major laws restraining corporations, acting on the directions given by President Theodore Roosevelt, who was opposed to the behavior of large corporations.

The progressive Roosevelt helped nominate his progressive successor, William Howard Taft, in 1908. Taft stumbled during his presidency, and he became alienated from Roosevelt. TR challenged Taft for the presidential nomination in 1912, but he was narrowly defeated. Roosevelt formed a Progressive Party after the Republican Convention and ran as its candidate in that year’s election. With the Republican Party divided, Taft and Roosevelt were defeated by Woodrow Wilson, the Democratic candidate.

In the 1916 election campaign, the Progressives split when Roosevelt decided not to run for the presidency. Many joined the Democratic Party, and Wilson sensed the wisdom of embracing the progressive ideology. After the 1924 election, the Progressive Party was dead, and many of its followers joined the Democratic Party and became advocates of the New Deal programs of Franklin D. Roosevelt starting in 1932. They were at the center of New Deal politics and saw many of their priorities put into law.

The progressives were also frustrated by FDR’s actions because he was a pragmatist and not an ideologue. He needed the power and wealth of the corporations to execute his New Deal agenda, so he often used them as allies to help him achieve his objectives. Roosevelt’s party was later labeled New Deal Liberals, which was a new use of the Enlightenment term “Liberalism.”

During the 1930s, the progressives became associated with socialist ideas and Communism through their shared objectives. That alliance caused them to fall out of favor in the United States after World War II, when the Cold War began. The last gasp of the Progressive Party was their nomination of Henry Wallace (the former Vice-President of FDR) to run for president in 1948. Wallace had been fired by President Truman in 1946 for urging conciliatory policies toward the Soviet Union. Through the 1950s and part of the 1960s, there was no organized progressive movement, so the main players in the ideology game were the New Deal Liberals and the Republicans.

The Counterculture Movement in the early 1960s breathed new life into the progressives. They incorporated socialist ideas into their new ideology and used them to force change. The progressives marched through academia, taking complete control of higher education by the 1990s. That control was used to launch thousands of progressive journalists into traditional media. They also began the pursuit of their equality objectives through the feminist movement, the gay movement, and eventually, the trans movement. Religious views were criticized as outdated and bigoted.

While the progressives were moving forward, the New Deal liberals were destroying themselves because of ineffective welfare state programs that wasted money and accomplished nothing. Liberalism became a symbol of government failure, and the progressives benefited from it.

Today, it is the progressives who have stumbled. Their hubris allowed them to believe they could elect Biden to a second term on a radical left agenda. Their plans were hidden from the American people in 2020 but were fully in the open last year. Their neoliberal open border policy and globalist ideology offended enough Americans to elect Donald Trump, even though he had been impeached twice and falsely indicted for crimes six times.

The Democratic Party is currently going through a period of self-reflection. The results of that effort are uncertain because they don’t appear to be ready to admit their own mistakes or learn why the American people voted for Trump. The left media continues its day-by-day attacks on Trump, ignoring the fact that the American people just elected the Trump agenda. The majority of Democrat members of the House are progressives, so their ideology holds sway over more moderate points of view, preventing moderate voices from being heard.

History should remind them that socialism has never worked and that globalist ideology is about to crash. Western nations are rejecting the march to totalitarian control that features radical climate initiatives, mandatory vaccinations, lockdowns, and government control of the food supply. A majority of the American people do not support a radical agenda if pursued by either party. Progressives must accept the reasons for their failure and move themselves more toward the political center if they expect to compete for control of the federal government.

It would be wise for them to get back to their original purpose, which is agitating for equality. That fight must be conducted in a society where both side’s opinions are respected, and both sides work together to accomplish the goals of the American people. Single-party dominance will never prevail in a society with two different views of the world.

Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author's own.