REFLECTIONS OF AN OBJECTIVIST MUSE

 

6 July 2000

 

ReadingThe Dancing Wu Li Masters by Gary Zukav.

Quote:  "What constitutional law had legitimated and political democracy through the party system enforced was a world of institutions and practices that has largely ceased to exist. On this institutionalist reading, then, the conclusion that the Progressive critique of rights prevailed does not seem absurd. We have had a revolution in constitutional law such that even its most liberal component, the Bill of Rights, no longer appears to limit Congress and certainly does not limit the president. Since the 1950s constitutional law has become an engine of nationalization, imposing what are, in effect, modified Progressive and cosmopolitan standards on states and localities."

--Eldon Eisenach, The Lost Promise of Progressivism.

 

Progressive Political Theory

 

I spent much of my evening tonight taking notes for the dissertation from Eldon Eisenach's recent book, The Lost Promise of Progressivism.  Eisenach is a political theorist by training, and therefore his approach to the study of Progressivism is quite different than the approach of mainstream historians, whose work on Progressivism generally disregards key ideas of Progressives (and indeed their political philosophy) in favor of -- what else -- an historicist approach.  Eisenach takes on these historians and comes up with a fine book on many levels.

Eisenach is useful to me because I can use him, in conjunction with Steve Hayward, to do some of my heavy lifting for the final section of chapter three in my dissertation.   My dissertation contends that Progressive political theory effected a constitutional revolution over time and illustrates this via the evolution of police powers doctrine.  Thus, to some extent it is incumbent upon my to explicate Progressive political theory.  Historians have largely come to the conclusion there was no coherent Progressive philosophy!  Not terribly useful.  Eisenach, however, contends that indeed there was a Progressive political philosophy, and that its driving force was historicism.  He makes a nice argument for this, and I can cite him extensively while avoiding getting too bogged down in that argument (which is not the point of my dissertation).  I can use Hayward to get me a bit further though -- because why would the historicism of the Progressives be important?  Because it was opposed to the Natural Right basis of the regime -- and the Founding -- as Hayward rightly claims (nice of him to do some more heavy lifting for me).   Yes, indeed, one of the central questions of political philosophy as epitomized in Leo Strauss's fine book, Natural Right and History, moves to front and center in my dissertation; Suddenly, a dissertation that seemed to be about an arcane area of constitutional law (police powers doctrine) influenced by the Progressives instead is a dissertation about one of the central questions of political philosophy, illustrated in practice by the American regime.   Fun stuff! 

Tomorrow, I will spend some time pulling quotes from Hayward, and then write up the section that explains this theoretically.  Then I can pull in some Croly, Beard, Wilson, and a few others -- and it will be time to move on to the Progressive Legal Theory section, as the Progressive legal theorists writing in journals and law reviews provide the linkage between the broad social movement and legal change.  Slowly but surely is the mantra these days.

 

 


Copyright (c) 2000, Kevin L. Whited