A Social Gospel Quotation

 John Fea at Current:

Every department of human life—the families, the schools, amusements, arts, business, politics, industry, national politics, international relations—will be governed by the Christian law and controlled by Christian influences. When we are bidden to seek first the kingdom of God, we are bidden to set our hearts on this great commission; to keep this always before us as the object of our endeavors; to be satisfied with nothing less than this. The complete Christianization of all life is what we pray and work for, when we work and pray for the coming of the kingdom of Heaven.

Who uttered these words?

Before you move your eyes down this page in search of an answer, I encourage you to take a guess. Allow me to offer some possibilities. Perhaps this call for the “Christianization of all life” comes from a Seven Mountain Dominionist such as charismatic prophet Lance Wallnau or pseudo-historian David Barton? Or maybe a member of the Christian Right—someone such as Robert Jeffress or Franklin Graham—uttered these words. What about a 2024 GOP presidential candidate such as Trump, DeSantis, Pence, or Scott? Missouri Senator Josh Hawley? Turning Point USA pundit Charlie Kirk? Radio host and author Eric Metaxas?

While statements about the Christian takeover of schools, entertainment, art, business, politics, and foreign affairs sound like the rantings of today’s so-called Christian nationalists, these words actually come from Washington Gladden’s 1894 address “The Church and the Kingdom.”

Washington Gladden was one of the early leaders of the Social Gospel movement in the United States. As the progressive pastor of the First Congregational Church of Columbus, Ohio, Gladden preached a biblical gospel that combined personal salvation through Christ and social justice for the poor and oppressed. He developed a national reputation as an advocate for working people in their ongoing battles with capitalists. He took on the monopolies, fought for shorter work weeks and higher wages, mediated labor strikes, and called upon corporations to share their profits with their workers. He championed the public ownership of railroads, gas and electric companies, mines, water suppliers, and telephone services. As the president of the American Missionary Association he refused a $100,000 gift to the organization from oil magnate John D. Rockefeller because, as he put it, the money was “tainted.”

Progressivism and Constitutionalism

Informal” constitutional developments

• Political parties.  
• Judicial review.  
• State of the Union and presidential rhetoric
• Commander in chief -- intelligence community
• Civil Service and the administrative state

Creation of a new conception: Progressives/ New Deal

• Downplay or redefine Founding
• Support for “living Constitution”
• Overcome separation of powers with stronger president and claim of presidential “mandate”
• Promote direct democracy at expense of representative democracy (esp. Progs.)
• View government as a counterweight to private economic power
• View traditional limited government as “obsolete”
• Draw distinction between “human rights” and “property rights”
• Government by “neutral experts”
•  National power up, state power and federalism down
• Dramatic weakening of the idea of enumeration of powers based on broad reading of “necessary and proper” clause and “general welfare” clause
• Promotion of “positive rights” (esp. New Deal)

From Merriam, A History of American Political Theories”

In conclusion, it appears that recent political theory in the United States shows a decided tendency away from many doctrines that were held by the men of 1776. The same forces that have led to the general abandonment of the individualistic philosophy of the eighteenth century by political scientists elsewhere have been at work here and with the same result. The Revolutionary doctrines of an original state of nature, natural rights, the social contract, the idea that the function of the government is limited to the protection of person and property, — none of these finds wide acceptance among the leaders in the development of political science.

Woodrow Wilson, “What is Progress?"

The Constitution was founded on the law of gravitation. The government was to exist and move by virtue of the efficacy of “checks and balances.”

The trouble with the theory is that government is not a machine, but a living thing. It falls, not under the theory of the universe, but under the theory of organic life. It is accountable to Darwin, not to Newton. It is modified by its environment, necessitated by its tasks, shaped to its functions by the sheer pressure of life. No living thing can have its organs offset against each other, as checks, and live. On the contrary, its life is dependent upon their quick cooperation, their ready response to the commands of instinct or intelligence, their amicable community of purpose. Government is not a body of blind forces; it is a body of men, with highly differentiated functions, no doubt, in our modern day, of specialization, with a common task and purpose. Their cooperation is indispensable, their warfare fatal. There can be no successful government without the intimate, instinctive coordination of the organs of life and action. This is not theory, but fact, and displays its force as fact, whatever theories may be thrown across its track. Living political constitutions must be Darwinian in structure and in practice. Society is a living organism and must obey the laws of life, not of mechanics; it must develop.

All that progressives ask or desire is permission—in an era when “development” “evolution,” is the scientific word—to interpret the Constitution according to the Darwinian principle; all they ask is recognition of the fact that a nation is a living thing and not a machine.

Some citizens of this country have never got beyond the Declaration of Independence, signed in Philadelphia, July 4th, 1776. Their bosoms swell against George III, but they have no consciousness of the war for freedom that is going on today.

Roosevelt, “Commonwealth Club Address”

The Declaration of Independence discusses the problem of Government in terms of a contract. Government is a relation of give and take, a contract, perforce, if we would follow the thinking out of which it grew. Under such a contract rulers were accorded power, and the people consented to that power on consideration that they be accorded certain rights. The task of statesmanship has always been the re-definition of these rights in terms of a changing and growing social order. New conditions impose new requirements upon Government and those who conduct Government.

FDR “Message on the State of Union” 1944

This Republic had its beginning, and grew to its present strength, under the protection of certain inalienable political rights—among them the right of free speech, free press, free worship, trial by jury, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. They were our rights to life and liberty.

As our Nation has grown in size and stature, however—as our industrial economy expanded—these political rights proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness.

We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. "Necessitous men are not free men." People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.

In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all regardless of station, race, or creed.

Johnson, “Great Society Speech” 

The purpose of protecting the life of our Nation and preserving the liberty of our citizens is to pursue the happiness of our people. Our success in that pursuit is the test of our success as a Nation.

For a century we labored to settle and to subdue a continent. For half a century we called upon unbounded invention and untiring industry to create an order of plenty for all of our people.

The challenge of the next half century is whether we have the wisdom to use that wealth to enrich and elevate our national life, and to advance the quality of our American civilization.

Your imagination, your initiative, and your indignation will determine whether we build a society where progress is the servant of our needs, or a society where old values and new visions are buried under unbridled growth. For in your time we have the opportunity to move not only toward the rich society and the powerful society, but upward to the Great Society.

Read these provisions from an actual constitution. How would you appraise them?

ARTICLE 118. Citizens have the right to work, that is, are guaranteed the right to employment and payment for their work in accordance with its quantity and quality. ...
ARTICLE 119. Citizens have the right to rest and leisure. The right to rest and leisure is ensured by the reduction of the working day to seven hours for the overwhelming majority of the workers, the institution of annual vacations with full pay for workers and employees and the provision of a wide network of sanatoria, rest homes and clubs for the accommodation of the working people.
ARTICLE 120. Citizens have the right to maintenance in old age and also in case of sickness or loss of capacity to work. This right is ensured by the extensive development of social insurance of workers and employees at state expense, free medical service for the working people and the provision of a wide network of health resorts for the use of the working people.
ARTICLE 121. Citizens have the right to education. This right is ensured by universal, compulsory elementary education; by education, including higher education, being free of charge; by the system of state stipends for the overwhelming majority of students in the universities and colleges; by instruction in schools being conducted in the native language...
ARTICLE 122. Women are accorded equal rights with men in all spheres of economic, state, cultural, social and political life. The possibility of exercising these rights is ensured to women by granting them an equal right with men to work, payment for work, rest and leisure, social insurance and education, and by state protection of the interests of mother and child, prematernity and maternity leave with full pay, and the provision of a wide network of maternity homes, nurseries and kindergartens.
ARTICLE 123. Equality of rights of citizens irrespective of their nationality or race, in all spheres of economic, state, cultural, social and political life, is an indefeasible law. Any direct or indirect restriction of the rights of, or, conversely, any establishment of direct or indirect privileges for, citizens on account of their race or
nationality, as well as any advocacy of racial or national exclusiveness or hatred and contempt, is punishable by law.
ARTICLE 124. In order to ensure to citizens freedom of conscience, the church is separated from the state, and the school from the church. ...
ARTICLE 128. The inviolability of the homes of citizens and privacy of correspondence are protected by law.

(The source)

Defense of the original conception? Reagan Revolution

• Belief in ongoing relevance of Founders and limited government
• Decentralization of power; reinvigoration of states rights
• Attempt to restore stricter understanding of enumeration of powers and separation of powers
• View “property rights” as an essential part of “human rights”
• Support for judicial interpretation of Constitution on the basis of “original intent”
• Preference for “negative rights”
• Preference for “individual rights” against “group rights” 

Coolidge, “Speech on the Occasion of the 150th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence,”

About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful. It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But that reasoning can not be applied to this great charter. If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers

Reagan, "A Time for Choosing"

What does it mean whether you hold the deed or the title to your business or property if the government holds the power of life and death over that business or property? Such machinery already exists. The government can find some charge to bring against any concern it chooses to prosecute. Every businessman has his own tale of harassment. Somewhere a perversion has taken place. Our natural, inalienable rights are now considered to be a dispensation of government, and freedom has never been so fragile, so close to slipping from our grasp as it is at this moment.

Eugenics and Sterilization in California

A release from the University of Michigan:

California should consider offering reparations to more than 800 survivors of the state's 20,000 forced sterilizations that took place between 1919 and 1952, say University of Michigan researchers.

Alexandra Minna Stern, U-M professor of American culture and director of the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, and colleagues spent several years combing through thousands of records of sterilizations carried out in California psychiatric institutions—which disproportionately affected poor and minority patients in the state.

"Given the advanced age and declining numbers of sterilization survivors, time is of the essence for the state to seriously consider reparations," said Stern, who also co-directs the Reproductive Justice Faculty Program based at U-M's Institute for Research on Women and Gender.

Stern and her team recommend that California follow the examples of Virginia and North Carolina, states that recently set up funds to compensate survivors of forced sterilization programs.

"Recent efforts in these two states underscore the merit of compensating individuals who have experienced state-sanctioned reproductive justice," Stern said.

Stern team's previous research showed that Latinos were disproportionately sterilized for decades in California. Between 1907 and 1937, 32 states passed eugenic sterilization laws geared to prevent the "feeble-minded" and "insane" from procreating.

Sterilization laws had the effect of depriving individuals marginalized in the U.S. society of their reproductive rights, according to the researchers.

Stern has also provided historical expertise to "No Mas Bebés," a PBS documentary focusing on Mexican immigrant mothers who were sterilized while giving birth at Los Angeles County USC Medical Center in the late 1960s and 1970s.

Her current study appears in the American Journal of Public Health.

Eugenics was part and parcel of the Progressive Movement. 

Progressivism Pure, Without the Base Alloy of Hypocrisy

At The Sacramento Bee, David Siders reports on Governor Jerry Brown's remarks, which are a nice summary of progressive thought.  In Paris, he was talking up green energy.

But on Monday it was the “coercive power” of government for which Gov. Jerry Brown was seeking credit.

Regulations, he said at an event with billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer at an art museum in the city, “work hand in glove” with innovation, forcing companies to adapt to cleaner technologies. Brown held out the introduction of the catalytic converter and the proliferation of renewable energy as examples of industry responding to regulation.

“You do have to have, at the end of the day, a regulation, a law,” he said. “Progress comes from well-designed regulatory objectives that business then follows.”

Later, at the site where world leaders are meeting to negotiate a climate pact outside of Paris, Brown urged a small crowd to “never underestimate the coercive power of the central state in the service of good.”

“You can be sure California is going to keep innovating, keep regulating,” the Democratic governor said. “And, shall I say, keep taxing.”

Woodrow Wilson, Bad President

At The Federalist, David Harsanyi writes of Princeton protests against Woodrow Wilson:

Like most progressives of his era, Wilson wasn’t merely a common racist, he embraced the pseudo-scientific eugenics that would haunt millions. After his election, he didn’t only say terrible things—”There are no government positions for Negroes in the South. A Negro’s place in the corn field”—he institutionalized racism in the federal government, segregating the civil service in 1913. He personally fired 15 out of 17 black supervisors appointed to federal jobs, while his postmaster general and Treasury secretary segregated their departments. He’s the only president that I know of who’s ever celebrated the Ku Klux Klan in the White House.

While governor of New Jersey, Wilson signed a bill making sterilization of criminals and the mentally ill compulsory. Is that the legacy Princeton was talking?

A well-regarded scholar, Wilson, who argued that Americans needed to get “beyond the Declaration of Independence” and valued “progress” over freedom, is typically given a pass because he was the first president to lead a massive expansion of the federal government, activating the state in the “service of humanity.”

That’s just the start. Although I suspect there will be pushback to this contention: Wilson also oversaw one of the greatest foreign-policy disasters in American history, World War I. The untenable outcome was bad enough, but the massive social engineering project Wilson helped spearhead is still being paid for. Simultaneously, Wilson sent American citizens to jail for expressing opinions that cast the government or the war effort in poor light.

There are many insane things happening on college campuses these days, but calling out Woodrow Wilson is not one of them.

"Unstinted Power" and Federal Spending

A report from the Joint Economic Committee:

A progressive philosophical shift in federal spending began under President Woodrow Wilson. The First World War masked the fiscal effect of Wilson’s policies, but a clear change had occurred between pre- and post-war federal spending. Whether viewed as total spending or isolated to non-interest spending, federal spending as a percentage of the economy had notably increased. For the 10 years prior to Wilson (1902 – 1912), non-interest federal spending averaged 1.95 percent of the economy; for the 10 years after Wilson (1921 – 1931), it averaged 2.77 percent.* Yet due to the Great War’s effect on spending, it is better to study the effects of the philosophical shift with the enactment of the 1921 Budget Act, rather than with the inauguration of Wilson.

From the nation’s founding through 1920, total federal spending as a percentage of the economy (including the Civil War) averaged 2.80 percent; but since then (1921 – 2014), total federal spending has risen to an average of 17.27 percent. George Will—writing on Wilson’s underlying philosophy—succinctly contrasted Wilson with James Madison by noting, “Wilsonian government, meaning (in Wilson’s words) government with‘unstinted power,’ is hostile to Madison’s Constitution, which, Madison said, obliges government ‘to control itself.’”24 

The combination of philosophical change, along with the new budget process—which gave the President a more prominent role in directing federal spending, as well as expanding “the President’s control over budgetary information by establishing the Bureau of the Budget,”25—were two of the notable forces at work as federal spending began to deviate from the historical average rate. 

 * From 1844 through 1976, U.S. government fiscal years ran from July through June, so the 1941 fiscal year ended nearly six months prior to the U.S. entering World War II.

24 George Will, “The Danger of a Government with Unlimited Power,” The Washington Post, June 3, 2010, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/02/AR2010060203278.html. 25 “Our Founding,” Congressional Budget Office, accessed July 20, 2015, http://www.cbo.gov/about/our-founding.

 

Margaret Sanger

Margaret Sanger (1879-1966) was a birth control advocate who started the nation's first birth control clinic s, and established Planned Parenthood's predecessor groups. She was also a racist. an advocate of eugenics, and an admirer of Nazi Germany's policies on sterilization.

"What Every Girl Should Know: Sexual Impulses--Part II," December 29, 1912.

It is said a fish as large as a man has a brain no larger than the kernel of an almond. In all fish and reptiles where there is no great brain development, there is also no conscious sexual control. The lower down in the scale of human development we go the less sexual control we find. It is said that the aboriginal Australian, the lowest known species of the human family, just a step higher than the chimpanzee in brain development, has so little sexual control that police authority alone prevents him from obtaining sexual satisfaction on the streets.

"America Needs a Code for Babies," March 27, 1934:

Many groups of the socially unfit, as for example the feeble-minded and the criminal, are not sufficiently susceptible to education or the moral pressure of the community. For such people sterilization is indicated. Some states already have sterilization laws, and others should adopt similar measures. While there must be ample safeguards in administering such laws so that the rights of the individual are considered, the paramount need is to protect society as a whole. Sterilization would go far in reducing human misery, not to speak of the financial saving in the upkeep of the unfit offspring. Therefore I suggest the following clause in the Baby Code:

Article 8. Feeble-minded persons, habitual congenital criminals, those afflicted with inheritable disease, and others found biologically unfit by authorities qualified judge should be sterilized or, in cases of doubt, should be so isolated as to prevent the perpetuation of their afflictions by breeding.

I do not pretend in the above suggestions to have arrived at the formulation of a workable baby code, but my puzzling over this problem has convinced me that America needs such a code. I should be very much interested in hearing the suggestions of others.

This is the great day of social planning. We have come to believe in planning the production and distribution of goods. We plan methods of governing cities, states, and the nation. We plan jobs, and leisure-time activities, and vacations. We plan almost everything, big and little, except families. It can scarcely do any harm and it may do a vast amount of good to engage in thoughtful, planning of our population, a population with a still larger percentage of happy families.

 "Human Conservation And Birth Control," March 3, 1938:

 Again, however, we must stress the fact that in a national program for human conservation institutional and voluntary sterilization are not enough; they do not reach those elements at large in the population whose children are a menace to the national health and well-being.

Reports in medical journals state that the indications laid down in the German law are being carefully observed. These are congenital feeble-mindedness; schizophrenia, circular insanity; heredity epilepsy; hereditary chorea (Huntington's)' hereditary blindness or deafness; grave hereditary bodily deformity and chronic alcoholism.

Surely everyone will agree that the children of parents so afflicted are no contribution to the nation for even if they do not inherit these defects they are children of parents so handicapped that life will give them little, owing to their necessarily bad environment.

There are 1,700 special courts and 27 higher courts in Germany to review the cases certified for sterilization there. The rights of the individual could be equally well safeguarded here, but in no case should the rights of society, or which he or she is a member, be disregarded.

The Case for Limited, Republican Government

David Corbin and Matt Parks write at The Federalist:

The case for limited, republican government that runs beneath The Federalist’s defense of the Constitution is itself dependent on a modest view of the possibilities of political life, as several of its most famous arguments illustrate:

• The effects of faction can be controlled, but the causes cannot be prevented (Federalist 10).
• Ambition can counteract ambition, but there are no angelic statesmen to govern the equally non-angelic people (Federalist 51).
• The people must cement their union because “we are yet remote from the happy empire of perfect wisdom and perfect virtue” (Federalist 6).

The Federalist, in other words, suggests that there are important limits to both what we can know and what we can do in politics. In Federalist 85, Hamilton particularly notes (citing Hume) how much of political wisdom must be uncovered piecemeal, through the “judgments of many,” guided by “experience” gained through often painful “inconveniences” over the course of “time”–and, as Hume’s reference to “inconveniences” suggests, we often learn more about what doesn’t work than we learn about what does.

What set progressivism apart from other, earlier challenges to the founders’ political vision was its explicit rejection of these limits. As Croly argues, the American regime “must cease to be a democracy of indiscriminate individualism, and become one of selected individuals who are obliged constantly to justify their selection.” An elite class must henceforth impose order upon American society and “make [popular government] expressly and permanently responsible for the amelioration of the individual and society.”

The Scopes Trial

Many people know of the "Scopes Monkey Trial" through the play and movie "Inherit the Wind," which portrayed it as a battle between enlightenment and ignorance.  The trial involved A Civic Biology, a textbook by biologist George William Hunter.  In a profile of Hunter, who later taught at Pomona College, The Foothills Reader makes an important point:

One of the great misconceptions of the trial is that it simply pitted creationism against evolution, yet the actual trial forged an alliance of creationists and opponents of a then-popular and now discredited pseudo-scientific theory called eugenics, which bolstered white supremacy theories embraced by racist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan.

That distinction was omitted from the play and subsequent film. Playwright Jerome Lawrence said he and writer Robert E. Lee fictionalized the events to mount a parable against McCarthyism. Many historians later suggested that the section on eugenics had been inserted by Hunter's editors.

Eugenics was a pet cause of the Progressive movement and was quite popular at the time. So was racism, and the book's discussion of evolution was explicitly racist:

At the present time there exist upon the earth five races or varieties of man, each very different from the other in instincts, social customs, and, to an extent, in structure. These are the Ethiopian or negro type, originating in Africa; the Malay or brown race, from the islands of the Pacific; the American Indian; the Mongolian or yellow race, including the natives of China, Japan, and the Eskimos; and finally, the highest type of all, the Caucasians, represented by the civilized white inhabitants of Europe and America.

And in light of subsequent events, its discussion of eugenics sounds chilling:

Hundreds of families such as those described above exist to-day, spreading disease, immorality, and crime to all parts of this country. The cost to society of such families is very severe. Just as certain animals or plants become parasitic on other plants or animals, these families have become parasitic on society. They not only do harm to others by corrupting, stealing, or spreading disease, but they are actually protected and cared for by the state out of public money. Largely for them the poorhouse and the asylum exist. They take from society, but they give nothing in return. They are true parasites.

If such people were lower animals, we would probably kill them off to prevent them from spreading. Humanity will not allow this, but we do have the remedy of separating the sexes in asylums or other places and in various ways preventing intermarriage and the possibilities of perpetuating such a low and degenerate race. Remedies of this sort have been tried successfully in Europe and are now meeting with success in this country.

Health Care Law Before the Court

The Washington Post reports:

The Supreme Court’s conservative justices appeared deeply skeptical that the Constitution gives Congress the power to compel Americans to either purchase health insurance or pay a penalty, as the court completed two hours of debate Tuesday on the key component of the nation’s health-care overhaul law.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, traditionally the justice most likely to side with the court’s liberals, suggested that the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act invoked a power “beyond what our cases allow” the Congress to wield in regulating interstate commerce.

“Can you create commerce in order to regulate it?” he asked.

The arguments revealed a familiar alignment of the court. Its four liberal justices, appointed by Democratic presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, supported the government’s argument. But one of the five conservatives appointed by Republican presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush would be needed to uphold the act, and all at some point resisted the government’s position. Their sharp questioning raised doubts about whether the individual insurance mandate could survive the Supreme Court’s historic review.

Rich Lowry writes:

The shade of James Madison hovers over the Obamacare argument at the Supreme Court.
It is the system of limited and carefully divided government powers that he had a large hand in crafting — and defended so ably in the Federalist Papers — that is at stake in the contest over the constitutionality of the individual mandate.

If the mandate stands, it will be the latest blow to Madison’s scheme, which is the best architecture for self-government yet devised by man, but has been steadily worn down over time.

...

In the mind of contemporary progressivism, these words of Madison from the Federalist Papers simply don’t compute: “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite.” They are an antiquated 18th-century sentiment unsuited to our more complex and more sophisticated time, to be ignored when not actively scorned.

But Madison thought this division of power so important for a reason: “In the compound republic of America, the power surrendered by the people is first divided between two distinct governments, and then the portion allotted to each subdivided among distinct and separate departments. Hence a double security arises to the rights of the people. The different governments will control each other, at the same time that each will be controlled by itself.”

Different Views of Federalism

At AEI, Jonah Goldberg writes:

Federalism is simply the best political system ever conceived of for maximizing human happiness. A one-size-fits-all policy imposed at the national level has the potential to make very large numbers of citizens unhappy, even if it was arrived at democratically. In a pure democracy, I always say, 51% of the people can vote to pee in the cornflakes of 49% of the people.
...
The problem for conservative and libertarian federalists is that whenever we talk about federalism, the left hears "states' rights," which is then immediately, and unfairly, translated into "bring back Bull Connor."

But that may be changing. In an essay for the spring issue of Democracy Journal, Yale law professor Heather K. Gerken offers the case for "A New Progressive Federalism." Her chief concern is how to empower "minorities and dissenters." Not surprisingly, she defines such people in almost purely left-wing terms of race and sexual orientation. Still, she makes the very compelling point that the current understanding of diversity — including minorities as tokens of inclusion — pretty much guarantees that racial minorities will always be political minorities as well.
...
Allowing local majorities to have their way, Gerken continues, "turns the tables. It allows the usual winners to lose and the usual losers to win. It gives racial minorities the chance to shed the role of influencer or gadfly and stand in the shoes of the majority."

The New York Times editorial page, however, cites a recent study to disparage federalist approaches:

For all the reform talk by many governors and state lawmakers, very little has really changed in most capitals over the decades. Budgeting is still done behind closed doors, and spending decisions are revealed to the public at the last minute. Ethics panels do not bother to meet, or never enforce the conflict-of-interest laws that are on the books. Lobbyists have free access to elected officials, plying them with gifts or big campaign contributions. Open-records acts are shot through with loopholes.

And yet all the Republican presidential candidates think it would be a good idea to hand some of Washington’s most important programs to state governments, which so often combine corruptibility with incompetence. In a speech on Monday, Mitt Romney said he would dump onto the states most federal anti-poverty programs, including Medicaid, food stamps and housing assistance, because states know best what their local needs are.

States, however, generally have a poor record of taking care of their neediest citizens, and could not be relied on to maintain lifeline programs like food stamps if Washington just wrote them checks and stopped paying attention. In many states, newspapers and broadcasters have cut their statehouse coverage, reducing scrutiny of government’s effectiveness and integrity.

The Progressive Era and the Present

Our textbook discusses the Progressive Era in a number of places, including our chapters on civic culture and economic policy. At The New York Times, David Brooks describes several differences between that period and our own.

First, the underlying economic situations are very different. A century ago, the American economy was a vibrant jobs machine. Industrialization was volatile and cruel, but it produced millions of new jobs, sucking labor in from the countryside and from overseas.
...

Moreover, the information economy widens inequality for deep and varied reasons that were unknown a century ago. Inequality is growing in nearly every developed country. According to a report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, over the past 30 years, inequality in Sweden, Germany, Israel, Finland and New Zealand has grown as fast or faster than inequality in the United States, even though these countries have very different welfare systems.
...       

Second, the governmental challenge is very different today than it was in the progressive era. Back then, government was small and there were few worker safety regulations. The problem was a lack of institutions. Today, government is large, and there is a thicket of regulations, torts and legal encumbrances. The problem is not a lack of institutions; it’s a lack of institutional effectiveness.
...
Third, the moral culture of the nation is very different. The progressive era still had a Victorian culture, with its rectitude and restrictions. Back then, there was a moral horror at the thought of debt. No matter how bad the economic problems became, progressive-era politicians did not impose huge debt burdens on their children. That ethos is clearly gone.

In the progressive era, there was an understanding that men who impregnated women should marry them. It didn’t always work in practice, but that was the strong social norm. Today, that norm has dissolved. Forty percent of American children are born out of wedlock. This sentences the U.S. to another generation of widening inequality and slower human capital development.

One hundred years ago, we had libertarian economics but conservative values. Today we have oligarchic economics and libertarian moral values — a bad combination.