What Does It Mean To Be A "Conservative?"

The Emergence of "Progressivism"

The “Progressive Era” in American history conjures up for many people memories of Teddy Roosevelt’s trust-busting efforts, the enactment of child-labor laws, and reforms to ensure food and workplace safety. Yet along with reforms like those, which most Americans supported, was a vastly expanded role for government and a loss of individual liberties. In his best-selling book, "Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning," author and columnist Jonah Goldberg has described excessive and unconstitutional measures taken by the Wilson Administration. Using the emergency of wartime, the Wilson Administration fired the opening salvo in a campaign that is still being waged for large, powerful and centralized government.

Many influential “progressive” thinkers in that era of American history saw World War I as an opportunity for fundamental political change. The human suffering and economic destruction caused by the Great War in Europe and the world-wide economic crisis that became known as the Great Depression would soon sweep away most eighteenth and nineteenth century notions about the sovereignty of the individual and a government that is of, by, and for the people. Seizing the opportunity provided by the Great Depression, the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt quickly made permanent, and dramatically built upon, the big-government excesses of the Wilson years.

Among American progressives it became not only acceptable but fashionable to admire what Lenin was imposing in Russia and Mussolini’s Fascists were experimenting with in Italy. Here at home, the great number of new government agencies and programs advanced by the Roosevelt Administration intruded into every aspect of American life and commerce. We ask today how 100,000 Japanese-Americans could have been forcibly housed by our government in internment camps during World War II. President Gerald Ford answered that question best with his observation that “a government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.”

Government at all levels continued to grow throughout the twentieth century in the United States, and at mid-century there was little that fundamentally separated our two major political parties. Indeed, some critics ridiculed the Republican Party by accusing it of promising “less of the same.”

The flame of classical liberalism, which was the foundation of modern-day conservatism, had been bestowed across the ages through the five historic cities chronicled earlier in this series. Yet while seriously jeopardized in the twentieth century by the advancing winds of progressivism, the flickering flame was not completely extinguished. At mid-twentieth century, progressivism or modern-day liberalism was at its peak, but the tide was turning.

Senator Robert Taft made an unsuccessful attempt in 1952 to challenge the big-government orthodoxy of the Republican Party and return it to the ideals of limited government respecting freedom and individual rights. National Review Magazine, which catered to the philosophies of many influential conservatives, was launched by young William F. Buckley, a resident of Camden, SC. And a former Democrat and union official named Ronald Reagan began giving speeches about the important need to restore Constitutional government in the United States. Indeed, the tide was turning.