The Destructive Origin of the Liberal Progressive Movement

The Destructive Origin of the Liberal Progressive Movement
In pursuit of the truth – www.cinopsbegone.com – Thursday, December 30, 2010

What follows is a most insightful article by Thomas Sowell, a writer in the tradition of Alexander Hamilton, in the Orange County Register, Dec. 29/10 “Lawmaking Run Amok” – excerpts:

“During the Progressive era of the early 20th century, the denigration of the Constitution began, led by such luminaries as Princeton scholar and future President of the United States Woodrow Wilson, future Harvard Law School Dean Roscoe Pound and future Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis.

“As a professor at Princeton University, Woodrow Wilson wrote condescendingly of “the simple days of 1787” when the Constitution was written and how, in our presumably more complex times, “each generation of statesmen looks to the Supreme Court to supply the interpretation which will serve the needs of the day.”*

“This kind of argument would be repeated for generations, with no more evidence that 1787 was any less complicated than later years than Woodrow Wilson presented – which was none – and with no more reasons why the need for “change” meant that unelected judges should be the ones making those changes, as if there were no elected representatives of the people.

“Professor Roscoe Pound likewise referred to the need for “a living constitution by judicial interpretation”, in order to “respond to the vital needs of present day life.” He rejected the idea of law as “a body of rules”.

“But law is not a body of rules, what is it? A set of arbitrary fiats by judges, imposing their own vision of “the needs of the times”? Or a set of arbitrary regulations stealthily emerging from the within the bowels of a bureaucracy?

“Louis Brandeis was another leader of this progressive era chorus of demands for moving beyond law as rules, such as those set forth in the Constitution, and around the elected representatives of “we the people.” As Roscoe Pound put it, law should be “in the hands of a progressive and enlightened caste whose conceptions are in advance of the public”

“That is still the vision of the left a hundred years later. The Constitution cannot protect us unless we protect the Constitution by voting out those who promote end runs around it.”

George H. Kubeck, the needs of the day* were not served when prayer was outlawed in our public schools or when Roe vs. Wade on Jan. 22nd, 1973 legalized abortion on demand. Their ideas are intellectually and morally bankrupt like judicial activists trying to legalize same-sex marriage or introducing social engineering into the Army with the repeal of DADT. Also liberal progressive democratic socialist economics will bankrupt America.

Think about it! What is the difference between a liberal progressive socialist in America and the National Socialist in the 1930’s in Germany or the Communist Socialist in Russia? All three subvert our Constitution, Declaration of Independence and the beliefs of our Founding Fathers. This is a good reason to attend the monthly Tea Party Meetings. Locally at St. Isidore Hall, Los Alamitos, Ca. – Monday, Jan. 12th, 2011 – 7:00 PM: