Rolling Back The Progressive Administrative/Redistributive State
What kind of justice will we get? (Charles Krauthammer, Town Hall)
In the absence of a record, there has been a search for scraps, such as a five-paragraph dissent on the case of the arroyo toad. It's a federalism case in which Roberts dissented from the opinion that the Endangered Species Act allows the federal government to prohibit a developer from putting up a fence that would impede the movements of said toad.
[snip]
This is a thin reed on which to hang a constitutional philosophy. But it's about all we got. Does this portend a justice who will demolish the underpinnings of the regulatory state and seven decades of commerce clause precedent?
Who knows. But I doubt it.
Vision and Philantrophy (pdf) (Steven Hayward, Hudson Institute)
Liberalism as a programmatic ideology derives much of its energy and legitimacy with the public by assuming to be the prime force of human progress. In practical terms “progress” means the continual—and in principle unlimited—expansion of government. This is why more and more spheres of economic and social life end up being politicized despite our best efforts, and is also why today’s liberals slide naturally into calling themselves “progressives” to avoid the unpopularity associated with the “liberal” label. Public opinion remains vulnerable to liberal/progressive appeals, which is why narrow cost/benefit analysis and similar approaches are not sufficient to turn back liberalism. Right now the conservative movement does not explicitly contest the Left over the terms of how human progress is understood.
As a historical matter, it was during the “Progressive Era” 100 years ago that both the intellectual foundations of modern liberalism, and the corruption of American constitutionalism, were set in place. The ideas spawned during the Progressive Era established the foundations of both the welfare state and the regulatory state. Progressive liberalism began as a broad-based intellectual movement, comprising economists, lawyers, political scientists, historians, journalists, and practical politicians. In the space of a generation this movement reshaped our understanding of our political system. It requires an equally vigorous and broad-based intellectual movement to reverse this.
In other words, we should seek to roll back the Progressive Era.
The crisis of democracy in America (Gara LaMarche, OpenDemocracy.net)
In the last few years, radical-right political leaders have moved from the fringe essentially to control much of the national and many state governments. They, the fundamentalist clerics and their followers who comprise the “base” to which they feel most accountable, and the network of think-tanks and attack media which support them, make clear their intent to roll back the Great Society and the cultural, social and political gains of the 1960s. Now, with fights over social security and the courts, they are targeting the New Deal.
Some of these figures and institutions wish explicitly to return United States government, and its relationship to its citizens, to what it was before the Progressive Era.
Our view of the constitutional underpinnings of the Republic was transformed radically as a result of the Progressives -- and I would argue that we've only recently begun to recognize that transformation, thanks to various revisionist works that have come out (and that break the monopoly of the Progressive historians who effectively wrote the history of their victory, and the neo-Progressive historians they trained, who were responsible for at least the second and third waves of historiography of the period).
I'm not especially looking to Justice Roberts to be a foot soldier in Hayward's suggested rollback, but it would surely be pleasant if he turned out to move commerce-clause jurisprudence in that direction. I have smaller (more realistic) goals than Hayward.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 07/30/05 14:07 | American Politics | Technorati
Previous Entry | Home | Next Entry
TrackBack
There are currently no trackbacks for this item.
Incoming trackback pings have been disabled because of abusive spammers. Technorati is now used to track cross-blog conversation.
Comments
No comments yet. Add yours?
Add Comments
While it is not required, creating an account for commenting provides a number of benefits (such as comment editing and bypassing the captcha challenge). You may log in to your account here.
No flames or impolite behavior. Any questions, see the site policies. Older posts are moderated (because of spammers), so if your post does not appear immediately, that could be why.
HTML will be stripped. URLs will be transformed into hyperlinks.
[b]text[/b] will produce bold text. [i]text[/i] will produce italicized text.
Comments for this post must be approved before being published. Thank you!
BLOG
» Create Account
» Log In
DISCLAIMER
Content and design copyright © 1997-2008, Kevin Whited.
Posts represent the views of Kevin Whited (and occasional guest bloggers) only, and do not necessarily reflect the views of employers, family, friends, or significant others.