How does "social legislation" differ from legislation? And how to stop it

Dennis Prager made a great quip when he said: "They don't know why they don't like the term "justice"" - in reference to people who believe strongly in so called "social justice". And he's right. People who are dead set in favor of "social justice" are equally dead set against "justice".

This is illustrative and instructive in understanding the mindset of progressives. At least to a degree. If you live in the real world, you'll never fully understand progressives. But we can go pretty far in our endeavor. Much further than most people realize. For example, Herbert Croly writes in his book "Progressive Democracy" the following: (Page 362)

In the past the administration of the civil law, except through the agency of the courts, was of small importance, because the law was supposed merely to recognize and interpret customary ways of economic and social behavior. But when the chief object of legislation is to carry into effect an experimental social program, the administration of the law has a different and more responsible function. Legislation is being used as a means of modifying social behavior, not social behavior as an excuse for formulating legislation. The legislator has become an innovator. He is dealing with an extremely complex and elusive material, and it is most difficult for him to define in advance how the objects of the law are best to be realized. The difficulty of the job has not prevented him from very frequently trying it out ; but he has learned something from his failures. He is learning that an extremely detailed and comprehensive statute is usually ineffective, because of the impossibility of anticipating all the conditions which affect the operation of a specific rule. Social legislation is coming more and more to demand results rather than prescribe means. Statutes are being passed in the interest of the safety of employees in factories, which merely define safety as such freedom from danger to life and health as the nature of the employment will reasonably permit. The duty of drawing up a set of regulations which will provide sufficient safeguards for the life and health of the operatives is intrusted to a commission. All that the legislature does is to declare that industrial employment shall be reasonably safeguarded. The commission makes a comprehensive investigation of the conditions upon which the health and safety of the industrial employees depend and it issues orders based on the result of its investigations. These orders can be attacked in the courts, but in adjudicating the case the courts have to accept as final the commission's record of the facts.

I'm sure most of you saw it, because you couldn't miss it. He just described Obamacare. Why is Obamacare 3000 pages long? Because the entire thing is a lead in to massive regulation. Commission after commission after commission, layer of control after layer of control. Forbes reported last October that "So far, more than 13,000 pages of federal ObamaCare regulations have been issued". And that's just the beginning. 3000 pages = 13000 pages, at a minimum.

Croly is surprisingly honest in this part of the book with the following line:

But when the chief object of legislation is to carry into effect an experimental social program, the administration of the law has a different and more responsible function. Legislation is being used as a means of modifying social behavior, not social behavior as an excuse for formulating legislation.

That's social legislation. It's experimental legislation which is designed to get people to change their behavior. Now I'm sure may of you knew full well that a lot, if not most legislation has that goal. But now you know that it actually has a name. That's not legislation, it's social legislation.

Croly uses the line about results and means, which really isn't all that different than "means and ends". For a lengthy examination into the progressive view of means and ends, see Saul Alinsky's book Rules for Radicals, Chapter 3. I'll just summarize it this way: "If the end is what you want, then the means is how you get it". In this case, the means is social legislation. Croly even makes the point that the courts are powerless against social legislation. Keep in mind that Croly wrote all of this in 1915. But you and I have the benefit of 20/20 hindsight. I'll ask you the question:

Have the courts been powerless in the face of social legislation?

The clear answer to this is yes. We've lived it our entire lives. Because these statues do not contain "detailed and comprehensive" wording and measures, what exactly is it that they are violating? Now, sure, from a strict constitutional standpoint, the role of congress and the role of the president are clear and defined. But the courts made sure to get rid of that. Last November I wrote this, detailing portions of the role of the courts in progressivism. The important thing is Taft's 1928 ruling:

If Congress shall lay down by legislative act an intelligible principle to which the person or body authorized to [exercise the delegated authority] is directed to conform, such legislative action is not a forbidden delegation of legislative power.

See. It's constitutional for congress to pass social legislation in which the power is delegated to the executive and a commission. The point of social legislation is meant to create a vehicle for commissions and regulatory bodies. But to what end? Once the regulatory body takes over to run the show, what kind of regulations should they implement?

They should implement social regulations. Again, with the word "social" appended. John Dewey, in his essay "The Social Possibilities of War" explains that:

To dispose of such matters by labeling them state socialism is merely to conceal their deeper import: the creation of instrumentalities for enforcing the public interest in all the agencies of modern production and exchange. Again, the war has added to the old lesson of public sanitary regulation the new lesson of social regulation for purposes of moral prophylaxis.

And of course, "the supremacy of public need over private possession". Now, does Obamacare do this? It does. Did the courts uphold Obamacare? Absolutely. Just as Croly knew they would. But is Obamacare a vehicle for regulation? No. It's a vehicle for social regulation. They don't want general regulations that make common sense. They want social regulations for the purpose of moral prophylaxis - the supremacy of public need over private posession. Centralized planning. Bureaucratic despotism.

Just as the believer in "social justice" doesn't like "justice", it can be said that the social legislator doesn't like legislation, they only like social legislation. The why is clear: total and ultimate power to centrally plan society. And the social regulator, just like the social legislator, also wants to conduct experiments via regulation(and legislation, respectively) in order to see just how far they can go and what you will accept.

If you want to put an end to progressive social legislation, then it might make sense to start looking toward an overturn of J. W. Hampton & Co. v United States - or at least that portion of the ruling which enables centralized planning.

http://tinyurl.com/b8fmhke

Professor Louis M. Seidman is channeling Herbert Croly

CBS News and Professor Louis Michael Seidman have a lot of people in a panic. Rightfully so, because it's typical in our society to regard college professors as disinterested observers.

College professors are not disinterested observers.

While plenty of people are in a panic over the open attacks on the constitution, one question I have not heard anybody ask or even begin to take a look into, is where does this come from?

Whether he knows it or not, Professor Seidman is speaking almost verbatim from one of the most important early 20th century progressives: Herbert Croly. Croly was profoundly influential with President Roosevelt, and was co-founder of the magazine New Republic. So Croly's vision is still very real and with us today.

Here's a portion of what Prof. Seidman stated: (Video/transcript)

This is our country. We live in it, and we have a right to the kind of country we want. We would not allow the French or the United Nations to rule us, and neither should we allow people who died over two centuries ago and knew nothing of our country as it exists today.

Notice the sophistry injected into the phrasing he's using. It's true that Americans wouldn't want the French or the UN to rule over us, but then he equates that with the Founding Fathers. In his mind, he does see the Founders as ruling over us as dictators from a distant and irrelevant time period.

What I heard was this: "The Monarchy of the Word". I wrote this blog posting over a year and a half ago, and I'll briefly cover Croly's words here for comparison. In Herbert Croly's book "Progressive Democracy", on pages 44 and 76.

The Law in the shape of the Federal Constitution really came to be a monarchy of the Word. It had been imposed upon the popular will, which was the only power capable of disputing its authority; and its friends came more and more to assume that the imposition was wise and beneficent.

Herbert Croly, just like Professor Seidman, view the constitution as a paper dictator - imposing it's will upon people who don't want it.(and by extension, the Founders who wrote it) In addition to the quote I listed above, Professor Seidman made these comments:

But what happens when the issue gets Constitutional-ized? Then we turn the question over to lawyers, and lawyers do with it what lawyers do. So instead of talking about whether gun control makes sense in our country, we talk about what people thought of it two centuries ago.

Instead of a question on policy, about which reasonable people can disagree, it becomes a test of one's commitment to our foundational document and, so, to America itself.

If we are to take back our own country, we have to start making decisions for ourselves, and stop deferring to an ancient and outdated document.

These are all right out of Herbert Croly: (Page 76)

They became, consequently, its appointed defenders. By the force of their reiterated panegyrics they did much to surround the monarchy of the Law with a more radiant halo of sanctity, which under the circumstances may have had its uses; but they certainly carried their worship of the Word too far.

I really hope that over time I've inspired a few people to pick up some of these old books and read them because yes,they are relevant and yes, the answers are here. The truely scary part is that the progressives have a 100 year head start on us. If I could impress just one thing upon my readers it's this: We can make up time by reading these old texts and realizing who it is we're up against. The progressives rarely if ever talk about their own history in detailed ways. We can use that to our advantage.

http://tinyurl.com/b782vqm

The Founders had a chance to discuss Progressivism, and they rejected it

For those of you who didn't catch the tail end of Mark Levin's show Tuesday night, here's what he discussed in the last 5 minutes.(mp3)

At the Constitutional Convention, July 17th, 1787, delegate Gunning Bedford of Delaware made the following proposal:

Mr. BEDFORD moved that the 2d. member of Resolution 6. be so altered as to read "and moreover to legislate in all cases for the general interests of the Union, and also in those to which the States are separately incompetent," or in which the harmony of the U. States may be interrupted by the exercise of individual Legislation."

That proposal has progressivism written all over it. And as is made clear by the debate that ensued, the Founders resoundly rejected it.

Mr. RANDOLPH. This is a formidable idea indeed. It involves the power of violating all the laws and constitutions of the States, and of intermeddling with their police.

Mr. L. MARTIN considered the power as improper & inadmissible. Shall all the laws of the States be sent up to the Genl. Legislature before they shall be permitted to operate?

I liked the opening line of Madison's comment the best:

Mr. MADISON, considered the negative on the laws of the States as essential to the efficacy & security of the Genl. Govt. The necessity of a general Govt. proceeds from the propensity of the States to pursue their particular interests in opposition to the general interest.

In other words, the states have a specific claim to persue their own best interests, regard of whatever is being called the "general interest" of the day. For Madison, the states were never incompetent; or, certainly not nearly as incompetent as the federal government.(or, as the Founders then referred to it, the general government) Hello 10th amendment. 9th amendment too.

The proposal created quite an outburst, as is made evident by this:

Mr. Govr. MORRIS was more & more opposed to the negative. The proposal of it would disgust all the States.

I would encourage all to listen to the last few minutes, starting at 1:07. It should be noted that the primary pillar of progressive ideology is rule by unelected bureaucrats, but said rule needs to have no opposition from some pesky state legislature.

"We are impatient of state legislatures"

Yeah you are, Mr. Wilson. You certainly are.

http://tinyurl.com/a8sm6je

The Weathermen - First Communique, July 31, 1970

I got this from the website of UC Berkeley, their Media Resources Center, of the Moffitt Library.

From The Berkeley Tribe, July 31, 1970. Reprinted in Jacobs, Harold. Weatherman. Ramparts Press, 1970.

Hello. This is Bernardine Dohrn.

I'm going to read A DECLARATION OF A STATE OF WAR.

This is the first communication from the Weatherman underground.

All over the world, people fighting Amerikan imperialism look to Amerika's youth to use our strategic position behind enemy lines to join forces in the destruction of the empire.

Black people have been fighting almost alone for years. We've known that our job is to lead white kids into armed revolution. We never intended to spend the next five or twenty-five years of our lives in jail. Ever since SDS became revolutionary, we've been trying to show how it is possible to overcome the frustration and impotence that comes from trying to reform this system. Kids know the lines are drawn revolution is touching all of our lives. Tens of thousands have learned that protest and marches don't do it. Revolutionary violence is the only way.

Now we are adapting the classic guerrilla strategy of the Viet Cong and the urban guerrilla strategy of the Tupamaros to our own situation here in the most technically advanced country in the world.

Ché taught us that "revolutionaries move like fish in the sea." The alienation and contempt that young people have for this country has created the ocean for this revolution.

The hundreds and thousands of young people who demonstrated in the Sixties against the war and for civil rights grew to hundreds of thousands in the past few weeks actively fighting Nixon's invasion of Cambodia and the attempted genocide against black people. The insanity of Amerikan "justice" has added to its list of atrocities six blacks killed in Augusta, two in Jackson and four white Kent State students, making thousands more into revolutionaries.

The parents of "privileged" kids have been saying for years that the revolution was a game for us. But the war and the racism of this society show that it is too fucked-up. We will never live peaceably under this system.

This was totally true of those who died in the New York townhouse explosion. The third person who was killed there was Terry Robbins, who led the first rebellion at Kent State less than two years ago.

The twelve Weathermen who were indicted for leading last October's riots in Chicago have never left the country. Terry is dead, Linda was captured by a pig informer, but the rest of us move freely in and out of every city and youth scene in this country. We're not hiding out but we're invisible.

There are several hundred members of the Weatherman underground and some of us face more years in jail than the fifty thousand deserters and draft dodgers now in Canada. Already many of them are coming back to join us in the underground or to return to the Man's army and tear it up from inside along with those who never left.

We fight in many ways. Dope is one of our weapons. The laws against marijuana mean that millions of us are outlaws long before we actually split. Guns and grass are united in the youth underground.

Freaks are revolutionaries and revolutionaries are freaks. If you want to find us, this is where we are. In every tribe, commune, dormitory, farmhouse, barracks and townhouse where kids are making love, smoking dope and loading guns—fugitives from Amerikan justice are free to go.

For Diana Oughton, Ted Gold and Terry Robbins, and for all the revolutionaries who are still on the move here, there has been no question for a long time now—we will never go back.

Within the next fourteen days we will attack a symbol or institution of Amerikan injustice. This is the way we celebrate the example of Eldridge Cleaver and H. Rap Brown and all black revolutionaries who first inspired us by their fight behind enemy lines for the liberation of their people.

Never again will they fight alone.

May 21, 1970

Progressivism and the rejection of consent. (Consent of the governed)

Progressives have talked a good game about "democracy" for generations now, but if you'll note they never link that word together with another which is just as important in the mixture of Liberty: "Consent". If you are an admirer of the Founders as I am, you've seen this word "Consent" routinely. Consent of the governed is something that was paramount in the belief of those who secured our rights. Progressives primarily use the word "democracy" because they know that we generally associate the word with a free people, because that's what we're taught by progressive professors to believe that's what it means, all the while what they mean by "democracy" is a euphemism for "socialism" and I am going to again demonstrate this.

When speaking of the "Problems of Democracy", John Dewey, the widely acknowledged Father of Modern American Education and President of the radical group League for Industrial Democracy, wrote in an essay titled "Liberalism and Social Action":

The problem of democracy becomes the problem of that form of social organization, extending to all the areas and ways of living, in which the powers of individuals shall not be merely released from mechanical external constraint but shall be fed, sustained and directed.

When seeing this, it's no wonder that progressives never speak of "consent". They don't mean democracy as a free society. True democracies - if they ever are free societies when they begin, are never free for long, and nearly every Founding Father as made some comment or another about this true historical fact of how dangerous democracies are. Which again, gets at the socialistic nature of democracy, as I demonstrated above in the first link. How shall you vote, for what or how many bureaucracies, which shall control the lives of individuals in how many ways?

That's surely democratic, but it's clearly socialistic. But not so socialistic as to outright nationalize everything. Progressivism is instead "regulation, not socialism" - it's "control without ownership". That's the dividing line between the ideologies. Now, there's a greater context to this quote. Why does Dewey believe that the problem of democracy is a social organization which feeds, sustains, and directs the lives of individuals?

The reliance of liberalism is not upon the mere abstraction of a native endowment unaffected by social relationships, but upon the fact that native capacity is sufficient to enable the average individual to respond to and to use the knowledge and the skill that are embodied in the social conditions in which he lives, moves and has his being. There are few individuals who have the native capacity that was required to invent the stationary steam-engine, locomotive, dynamo or telephone. But there are none so mean that they cannot intelligently utilize these embodiments of intelligence once they are a part of the organized means of associated living.

Because he fully rejects the Founders ideals that we are endowed by our creator, natural law, and the whole lot. We aren't born with any gifts whatsoever to speak of. As I mentioned yesterday, Dewey believed that government needed to "create individuals". Inherently(as the quote above makes clear), progressives do not think highly of individuals. We are nothing without government.

Going back to the original quote above, but looking at it's larger context:

The life-long struggle of Mill to reconcile these ideas with those which were deeply graven in his being by his earlier Benthamism concern us here only as a symbol of the enduring crisis of belief and action brought about in liberalism itself when the need arose for uniting earlier ideas of freedom with an insistent demand for social organization, that is, for constructive synthesis in the realm of thought and social institutions. The problem of achieving freedom was immeasurably widened and deepened. It did not now present itself as a conflict between government and the liberty of individuals in matters of conscience and economic action, but as a problem of establishing an entire social order, possessed of a spiritual authority that would nurture and direct the inner as well as the outer life of individuals. The problem of science was no longer merely technological applications for increase of material productivity, but imbuing the minds of individuals with the spirit of reasonableness, fostered by social organization and contributing to its development. The problem of democracy was seen to be not solved, hardly more than externally touched, by the establishment of universal suffrage and representative government. As Havelock Ellis has said, "We see now that the vote and the ballot-box do not make the voter free from even external pressure; and, which is of much more consequence, they do not necessarily free him from his own slavish instincts." The problem of democracy becomes the problem of that form of social organization, extending to all the areas and ways of living, in which the powers of individuals shall not be merely released from mechanical external constraint but shall be fed, sustained and directed. Such an organization demands much more of education than general school, which without a renewal of the springs of purpose and desire becomes a new mode of mechanization and formalization, as hostile to liberty as ever was governmental constraint. It demands of science much more than external technical application--which again leads to mechanization of life and results in a new kind of enslavement. It demands that the method of inquiry, of discrimination, of test by verifiable consequences, be naturalized in all the matters, of large and of detailed scope, that arise for judgment.

There's a lot here in this paragraph, so I'm going to try to wrap this all up as best as I can. I once wrote a comparative article detailing how the evolution of progressivism followed a similar path to the Fabians over in Britain, and you see that here in Dewey's writings, as he makes it clear that he was deep in thought about Mill and Bentham. Furthermore, the comparison continues as Dewey quotes directly from Havelock Ellis, who was one of the founding members of the Fabian Society. I have also written in the past about the friendly relationship between progressives and Fabians. I typically mean this ideologically as shown above, not friendly personally.(though that did exist too, see Margaret Sanger in that link)

As I mentioned above, Dewey was president of the group LID, and according to the LID themselves, they were America's Fabian Society.

We know what Fabians think of individuals. The key phrase is "big organization of our society". That's exactly what Dewey is talking about. That's the problem of democracy, the bigness of the organization, not the consent of the governed. The consent of the governed is the problem of a republic, of a society which still has it's liberty and doesn't live under bureaucratic despotism - progressivism.

http://t.co/9UmE6au9

Progressivism: Individuals don't inherently have this thing called "liberty"

In "Liberalism and Social Action" (Excerpts only), John Dewey explains the following:

The idealistic philosophy taught that men are held together by the relations that proceed from and that manifest an ultimate cosmic mind. It followed that the basis of society and the state is shared intelligence and purpose, not force nor yet self-interest. The state is a moral organism, of which government is one organ. Only by participating in the common purpose as it works for the common good can individual human beings realize their true individualities and become truly free. The state is but one organ among many of the Spirit and Will that holds all things together and that makes human beings members of one another. It does not originate the moral claim of individuals to the full realization of their potentialities as vehicles of objective thought and purpose. Moreover, the motives it can directly appeal to are not of the highest kind. But it is the business of the state to protect all forms and to promote all modes of human association in which the moral claims of the members of society are embodied and which serve as the means of voluntary self-realization. Its business is negatively to remove the obstacles that stand in the way of individuals coming to consciousness of themselves for what they are, and positively to promote the cause of public education. Unless the state does this work it is no state. These philosophical liberals pointed out the restrictions, economic and political, which prevent many, probably majority, of individuals from the voluntary intelligent action by which they may become what they are capable of becoming. The teachings of this new liberal school affected the thoughts and actions of multitudes who did not trouble themselves to understand the philosophical doctrine that underlay it. They served to break down the idea that freedom is something that individuals have as a ready-made possession, and to instill the idea that it is something to be achieved, while the possibility of the achievement was shown to be conditioned by the institutional medium in which an individual lives. These new liberals fostered the idea that the state has the responsibility for creating institutions under which individuals can effectively realize the potentialities that are theirs.

This explains what I posted just the other day: "When progressives use the word "liberty", they mean setting the government free"

Yes, but why? I always ask myself that question. "When progressives use the word "liberty", they mean setting the government free", and here is why: "the basis of society and the state is shared intelligence and purpose" and "Only by participating in the common purpose as it works for the common good can individual human beings realize their true individualities and become truly free". He means working through the state. He says quite plainly, that the new liberal school served to break down the idea that freedom is something that individuals inherently have.

Which means that the "liberals" didn't like that idea. They didn't want individuals to believe they were inherently free. (I put liberals in quotes, because by the time Liberalism and Social Action was written, the progressives had re-made themselves and stopped calling themselves progressive)

And you can see this in the writings of my earlier posting, which I linked to. Wilson, Croly, and FDR all make it pretty clear that government must be set free from the original constraints. They don't approach it as philosophically as Dewey does, but they clearly agree. Individuals aren't free. So the state must be set free.

Now, I don't want to just rest my thoughts upon only one of Dewey's writings. From "Reconstruction in Philosophy", Dewey writes the following: (Page 193/194)

Consider the conception of the individual self. The individualistic school of England and France in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was empirical in intent. It based its individualism, philosophically speaking, upon the belief that individuals are alone real, that classes and organizations are secondary and derived. They are artificial, while individuals are natural. In what way then can individualism be said to come under the animadversions that have been passed? To say the defect was that this school overlooked those connections with other persons which are a part of the constitution of every individual is true as far as it goes ; but unfortunately it rarely goes beyond the point of just that wholesale justification of institutions which has been criticized.

The real difficulty is that the individual is regarded as something given, something already there. Consequently, he can only be something to be catered to, something whose pleasures are to be magnified and possessions multiplied. When the individual is taken as something given already, anything that can be done to him or for him it can only be by way of external impressions and belongings: sensations of pleasure and pain, comforts, securities.

Animadversion means 'strong criticism'.

So here we see that Dewey does fully and accurately grasp the "old conceptions" of individualism.(and thus by extension, individual liberty) And he is rejecting it. He sees that it's individuals that create institutions. And then he flips it on it's head: (still in pages 193/194)

Now it is true that social arrangements, laws, institutions are made for man, rather than that man is made for them; that they are means and agencies of human welfare and progress. But they are not means for obtaining something for individuals, not even happiness. They are means of creating individuals. Only in the physical sense of physical bodies that to the senses are separate is individuality an original datum. Individuality in a social and moral sense is something to be wrought out. It means initiative, inventiveness, varied resourcefulness, assumption of responsibility in choice of belief and conduct. These are not gifts, but achievements. As achievements, they are not absolute but relative to the use that is to be made of them. And this use varies with the environment.

Creating individuals. That's the true role of government. Without the state, you and I are nothing. Without the state, you and I are destined to make the wrong choices. Note where Dewey uses the phrase "possessions multiplied", that is his real point of contention. We as individuals spend our lives accumulating wealth, and progressives really have a problem with that. In "The Future of Liberalism", (Full text on Heritage.org) John Dewey explains the following:

In the first place, such liberalism knows that an individual is nothing fixed, given ready-made. It is something achieved, and achieved not in isolation but with the aid and support of conditions, cultural and physical: including in “cultural,” economic, legal and political institutions as well as science and art. Liberalism knows that social conditions may restrict, distort and almost prevent the development of individuality. It therefore takes an active interest in the working of social institutions that have a bearing, positive or negative, upon the growth of individuals who shall be rugged in fact and not merely in abstract theory. It is as much interested in the positive construction of favorable institutions, legal, political and economic as it is in removing abuses and overt oppressions.

And to end my post, I'll leave you with the words of Drs. Ronald J. Pestritto and Thomas G. West, who explain this last quote from Dewey exactly as I would:

Because individuals are not spontaneously free, the absence of social conditions providing "aid and support" for the development of spiritual potential will inevitably constrain and/or distort individual growth. For this reason, Dewey engaged in a wide-ranging survey of the character of the relations making up American society in order to determine whether they were conductive to spiritual growth. While concluding that many aspects of American life were in need of significant reform(or social reorganization), Dewey believed that no relation posed so great an impediment to spiritual growth as did the free market economic system arising from the protection of the natural right to acquire property.

http://tinyurl.com/b8ehu7s

The process of Segregation has resulted in development

In the Journal of Proceedings and Addresses of the Forty-Second Annual Meeting of the National Educational Association(NEA), Edward Gardner Murphy, a southern Progressive, wrote the following: (Page 130)

The great masses of our colored people have themselves desired it. It has made our public school system, however, a double system. It is inevitable that it should often have made the negro schools inferior to the white schools. But the social and educational separation of these races has created the opportunity and the vocation of the negro teacher, the negro physician, the negro lawyer, the negro leader of whatever sort. It has not only preserved the colored leader to the negro masses by preventing the absorption of the best negro life into the life of the stronger race; it has actually created, within thirty years, a representation of negro leadership in commerce, in the professions, in church and school and state, which is worthy of signal honor and of sincere and generous applause. The segregation of the race has thrown its members upon their own powers and has developed the qualities of resourcefulness. The discriminations which they have borne in a measure by reason of their slavery, and which have established the apartness of their group life, are the discriminations which are curing the curse of slavery - an undeveloped initiative - and are creating the noblest of the gifts of freedom, the power of personal and social self dependence. The very process which may have seemed to some like a policy of oppression has in fact resulted in a process of development.

Notice the title of the piece: "The Schools of the People". Progressives still use language like that to this day.

This is on the same plane as Woodrow Wilson, who stated that "Segregation is not humiliating, but a benefit, and ought to be so regarded by you gentlemen.". This is really what the progressives thought back then. And they cherry picked information to make their case.

Unfortunately, I can't find a readable copy online, but Edgar G. Murphy has long been considered a progressive. At the end of his 1909 book "The Basis of Ascendancy", Edward Murphy highlights all of the people, groups, and institutions that gave him praise. At the top of the list - The New York Times.

It should not be assumed that this was just as southern progressive ideal that the northern progressives held in disdain, as the link above demonstrates, Murphy was widely praised. And to this day, Woodrow Wilson is routinely and consistently ranked as one of the best presidents we've ever had.

http://tinyurl.com/bc9szy4