Progressivism & Government with Ronald J. Pestritto | BRI Scholar Talks

0:00 the argument was that uh that when you look at what government ought to be that’s not a question that could be answered the same way all of the time uh that that the principles of government ought to reflect the different circumstances and the different historical pressures and so their their view was that uh even

0:22 though that’s a very limited understanding of government constitutional government may have been appropriate for the times of the founding you know this was well beyond a hundred years uh after that that philosophy was dominant things had changed all kinds of new pressures all kinds of circumstances the framers could not have foreseen

0:42 and therefore government needed needed to change [Music] hi this is tony williams senior fellow at the bill of rights institute and we are pleased to bring you another episode of scholar talks for this episode we’re honored to have on scholar ronald j pistrito who is going to discuss his new

1:03 book america transformed the rise and legacy of american progressivism and and here it is uh the guiding question for this episode is how did the philosophy and and policies of the progressive era transform the role of american government from the american founding and dr ronald j pestrido is dean of the

1:25 van andel graduate school of statesmanship and professor of politics at hillsdale college he hosts the charles and lucia shipley chair in the american constitution and dr pastrito is the author and editor of several excellent books several of which adorn my shelves including woodrow wilson and the roots

1:45 of modern liberalism and several other books on the progressive era and american founding rj i want to thank you for joining me thanks for inviting me really uh glad to be doing something for the bill of rights institute looking forward to our conversation great great well you know i really love america transformed uh you know it’s a collection of some really

2:07 thought-provoking essays but we’re really tightly bound together really reads like like a narrative book and and really has some some really important things to say about the american founding and about progressivism uh so if you’re ready uh we’ll get started um so before assessing the ways that progressives might have

2:28 transformed politics from the american founding can you please just briefly give us a review of the important characteristics and important principles that you see characterizing the american founding ah that’s a uh that’s a loaded question of course i can i teach whole courses on that uh

2:50 but uh i mean i think of course understanding that there are lots of different people involved in the founding but if you kind of think of the public documents and sort of the public philosophy that gets presented and what seems to be sort of basic consensus uh views i mean you have a you have a political system that has to be

3:10 understood within the context of of the moral law what they call the natural law uh and when they were debating you know what what kind of government is right for human beings that’s what they that’s what they consulted and that’s a an old you know tradition in political thought uh and so they uh you know they understood the the natural law to to uh

3:34 to be a source of both duties and rights uh and if you look at the declaration of independence um just just government is defined as a as a government that secures certain rights that that uh inherent man because of his nature that come from the law of nature you know life liberty property and so that’s they understood government

3:55 that way uh that that uh the point of it was the securing of the natural rights of individuals that if it didn’t do that it was not legitimate it’s part of the argument against the british and that they understood human beings to be equal in these rights not equal in every every other respect of course by nature we’re all very very

4:16 different uh but equal equal in our in our rights uh and so uh because of that then legitimate government could only be based on consent uh the idea of no man being able to govern another without the others consent that sort of comes from the the law of nature uh and so i mean if you want to sort of get it set up for uh

4:37 we’re looking at the progressives i mean yeah i think the important thing to stress about the founding was for them government was limited it was limited to this purpose in order to be legitimate it doesn’t necessarily mean government was small in every respect that’s sometimes a a mistake that i think people on the right tend to make uh but it but you know with respect to

4:58 the exercise of its powers it had to be limited in in scope limited on the ends that people had consented to uh and that’s that’s that’s really i think an important contrast to the to the progressives because the constitution reflects those limited ends those purposes

5:19 uh and so you have a kind of structure a political science in the constitution separation of powers federalism checks and balances you know in independent judiciary all things that you see discussed in the federalist papers these are things that are that are there to reflect these basic natural rights

5:40 purposes of government and that’s what you see the progressives really starting to question that’s what they’re chafing against is the the constitutional restrictions and if they’re coming up against those restrictions they know they have to also kind of go at the the deeper the core philosophy that that gave rise to that

6:01 constitutional structure right and well thank you for the succinct uh summary of the founding in about three minutes i i know we can do an entire course and and uh we have a an an entire uh library of um materials here bri on the founding but but that’s very helpful because and

6:22 also is a great segue to setting up my next question which is in general what were some of the guiding ideas then of the progressives at the beginning of the 20th century and how do they challenge the constitutional order that you were just describing of the american founding yeah i i think that that you know the progressives or progressivism the

6:44 basic idea uh if if you’ll pardon the use of the term to you know in its own definition is is to progress or to kind of get beyond to move beyond the original principles of of the country uh and the argument was that uh that when you look at what government ought to be that’s

7:04 not a question that could be answered the same way all of the time uh that that the principles of government ought to reflect the different circumstances and the different historical pressures and so their their view was that uh even though that’s a very limited understanding of government constitutional government may have been

7:25 appropriate for the times of the founding you know this was well beyond 100 years after that that philosophy was dominant things had changed all kinds of new pressures all kinds of circumstances the framers could not have foreseen and therefore uh government needed needed to change and not just change in its

7:46 in its particular means the framers would have agreed with that they they certainly would have uh you didn’t think that their their ideas about government that were frozen in time uh but the sort of the core the core purpose right that’s what they thought was a sort of timeless uh you know a timeless

8:07 principle so the the progressives uh they they thought that the constitution there for the structure was outdated uh they had a vision for a much more robust federal government uh in terms of regulation in terms of redistribution of wealth

8:29 they knew that the constitution’s political science stood in in the way of that and you see that in a lot of the judicial disputes that take place for example during this time uh and so they they it’s a very common feature of of progressive era writings to see

8:50 sort of thoughtful sustained critiques of the idea of natural rights the idea of social compact the idea of limited constitutional government separation of powers criticisms of these things are are sprinkled all all throughout progressive era writings so for for people who are interested in

9:11 getting into the principles of government and the purpose of government and what you know reading the progressives is really interesting because they’re they’re they’re not just talking about policy they’re really you know getting at these fundamental questions and laying out and they’re very open about laying out very novel radically different views of what government should be

9:32 right uh transformative as the title of your book mentioned as a suggestion yes right okay uh and so uh digging into a few of these progressives uh we don’t have time to do all of them you have a lot of great great um sketches uh in there and analyses of various progressives but but let’s hone in on two particularly um and

9:52 probably well known for our audience you argue that presidents theodore roosevelt and woodrow wilson uh were were two important progressives who rejected several key points as you just mentioned of the american founding to create that strong presidency to create a national regulatory state uh run by experts can you uh maybe uh go

10:14 into that a little bit yeah i mean i think wilson and roosevelt i think you know those are the two in a quick discussion of the book those are the two to focus on those are the the ones that those are the prominent national progressives uh i have a chapter in the book on on state and local progressivism which is actually an area where it was probably even more influential but but they’re definitely i

10:35 think the um the ones to focus on and they they contested the 1912 election uh which was all about progressivism in one way or another uh and so uh they you know in these characters you see what i consider to be the the two the two uh

10:58 two pretty distinct prongs of the progressive argument one prong being a push for greater democratization uh the argument that the framers distrusted the people they were fearful about overactive government and so they put a lot of distance between the people and and actual policy making and so you

11:19 get all kinds of institutions and represent representative institutions mechanisms ways of filtering out popular passions you know famously the federalists were very worried about this and the progressive view of that was that human nature was not uh the danger uh that the framers thought it was at

11:40 their time history had had cured that problem by and large they thought and so uh you could have a more direct directly democratic form of government so that’s one problem kind of going in the other direction the the other prong is however when you have the national government

12:01 getting into now so much regulation and so many new facets of american life and economics obviously the original legislature that is established to do all of the rule making is not up to this task and so you have the creation of of a sort of independent and very large

12:23 bureaucracy of alleged experts and the progressive call on the one hand while they wanted more democratization the the government the institutions that they want to democratized were also uh made much less powerful because so much real power for governing for policy making was removed from

12:45 political institutions altogether and placed in the hands of a kind of bureaucratic elite uh and this is a concept that’s grown you know over the decades and and i think you can probably see that uh if if people didn’t understand how that worked uh prior to 2020 uh the fact that

13:06 all of our lives have been run by unelected uh you know public health officials for the last two years uh i think it’s it’s you know it should bring the the idea home very clearly all right great uh and so and you know maybe a lesser known uh but but very important part of progressivism uh you

13:26 uh described the social gospel movement and and how it might have challenged traditional religion uh from from sort of a heavenly paradise and focus on salvation to more of an earthly paradise maybe achieve more through through social justice uh can you unpack that by and large uh the progressives were very

13:48 religious uh and much of their progressivism was driven by a very fervent uh christianity uh and it’s i mean in a way to quote the blues brothers a lot of the progressives thought they run a mission from god i mean i’m uh i’m old enough uh where that reference might make sense i i you know

14:09 i’m aging myself there obviously for maybe some of your younger viewers but um but in any event uh that this is where you see progressivism was really bound up with the important uh religious movement on on the left at that time which was social gospel and social gospel was a kind of

14:29 you know a kind of a combination of sort of hegelianism the philosophy of history evolution with with you know a sort of liberal form of of protestant christianity um and so they’re you know the progressives weren’t always social gospelers and the social gospelers weren’t always progressives but the two movements were

14:49 very interrelated uh and social gospel was essentially uh you know after when you get the darwinian revolution in the 19th century the protestant church reacts in two very different ways you have the orthodox reaction which is to reassert the fundamentals of the faith that’s where the term fundamentalism comes from

15:09 but you have the liberal reaction which was to see evolution as a a moment for for change and so uh and and that really is what became social gospel and a challenge to a lot of the traditional christian doctrines like original sin and so on the idea that man’s not permanently fallen i get the political significance of this is

15:30 if man is not permanently fallen then he we are capable here on earth through through human work of of making a paradise for ourselves and that’s where i think social gospel and progressivism really do kind of come together so that’s a very i think inarticulate and overly short way of putting putting

15:51 that but that’s as uh as best i can do under the pressure of time no no it’s it’s great and uh and as as is the description in the book um so our last question uh you describe how this progressive administrative state uh might have undermined these principles of separation of powers federalism these

16:12 founding principles to take governance away more from from congress and the people and you describe kind of the course of of that over the the 20th century into the 21st century uh what impact has this made over governance over over the last 125 years yeah as i said earlier i think we’re in unfortunately we’re in great

16:33 times to to see this uh because um the you know the the argument here you know by by the progressives was that um increasingly rulemaking lawmaking uh rules that have the force of law rules you have to obey or you’re in trouble um

16:53 you know these things are increasingly technical our society is increasingly complex and so uh people that we vote for people in in politics are increasingly less capable of making all of these rules and regulations and so um you know i i think that i mean just if you look around you at

17:15 the way most policy questions are debated and dealt with today not just covet policy that’s an obvious example but environmental policy immigration policy health care policy most of the the rules and the policies that affect us uh are not made by elected officials

17:37 anymore they’re made by unelected officials who are delegated broad swaths of power and some very vague ways uh you know think of the obamacare act for example think of the osha act which which now has allowed osha to claim authority to mandate vaccination all over the

17:58 country these are very broad very vague just grants of authority with the idea being the experts will figure it out the difficulty there of course is you have very uh very impactful policies that are made by people who are not elected and as we started our conversation uh

18:20 you know talking about consent is a fundamental requirement for the legitimacy of government and so this is a real problem in a republic right i mean just to bring it home you know the idea that you have an unelected lifelong bureaucrat like tony fauci uh who has far more to say today about

18:43 uh you know what you what you can do in your life than uh any elected member of our congress uh for example uh that that’s that’s kind of where we are uh and is there a direct line for progressivism of course not because history doesn’t work that way history is complicated but there’s there’s a lot of indirect connection uh for sure

19:04 right and as a follow-up you know you describe in the book how a lot of these agencies have taken on uh not only executive power but the legislative power and then also the judicial power to adjudicate their own ruling so it’s there’s just no separation of powers and and sort of what happens to liberty uh of the people

19:24 very yeah i mean agents right it’s not efficient separation of powers is not efficient uh if you were to design an efficient system you would not have done what james madison did now yes they wanted the system to do more than it had under the articles of confederation that’s true uh but you know when when you have the fathers of the

19:45 modern administrative state they they want to take all of the power and place it in in a single set of expert hands and so uh you would have those responsible for making rules be the you know who better to know whom to investigate than those who made the rules and then who better to know if there’s

20:07 actually been a violation than those who did the investigating and the charging and so you have most of the independent regulatory commissions that exercise all three powers of government and sometimes you know it’s funny these days i have to remind students about why something like the separation of powers is actually important why this might be a problem for liberty

20:28 uh that that you know the the policeman who accuses you of a crime doesn’t get to get up on the bench during your trial and decide whether you’re guilty uh that’s actually not how it works you know we have things like rule of law there has to be rules in advance made by people who are different than those who are enforcing them so the enforcers don’t get to make up the rules as they go

20:49 uh and the history of the administrative state unfortunately is is full of uh these kinds of very problematic developments for liberty uh and you’re seeing a bit of a reassessment of that i think going on in the courts right now i don’t know where that’s going to end up

21:10 um but there’s a bit of a reassessment uh you know this week i think maybe even today as we’re recording this the uh vaccine cases are up before the supreme court and the question of the discretionary power of unelected administrative agencies is front and center in those cases for example very good well

21:30 the book is america transform the rise and legacy of american progressivism and so rj pastrito i want to thank you very much for joining us happy to do it and uh really happy to be participating with with bri great thank you and thank you all for joining us on this episode of scholar talks uh please check out our

21:51 series uh and and large and growing collection of videos on various topics but our series include pivotal battles in american history the cold war and the presidency and black intellectuals and the african-american experience uh so so check out all those uh great videos on youtube and thank you for joining us