“Commencement Address at Howard University”

Lyndon B. Johnson

At the end of the United States Civil War, a century before President Lyndon B. Johnson’s 1965 Commencement Address at Howard University, the ex-slave turned American orator and statesman Frederick Douglass concluded that the best thing the federal government could do for Americans of African descent was to leave them alone. (more…)

The Great Society Speech

President Lyndon Johnson delivered the Great Society speech at the University of Michigan in May of 1964. Superficially, the Great Society speech is a typical modern speech, an agenda of platitudinous and pragmatic goals. More deeply, the Great Society speech represents a dramatic rhetorical reorientation of the United States.

Ambitious American political speeches invoke the founding. And the Great Society Speech is no exception, alluding to the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration of Independence sets forth both the basis (more…)

John F. Kennedy, “Commencement Address at Yale University”

Throughout the twentieth century, one of the most fundamental tenets of progressive ideology was what many historians called the “gospel of efficiency” that found salvation in scientific rather than republican government.  Progressives believed that democratic, partisan politics based upon representative government was often corrupt but always too messy.  The people were too uninformed, the Progressives believed, and political compromise did not always result in the “best solutions.”

The Progressives thought that they had a much better alternative.  They believed that if policymaking were removed from the hands of the sovereign people and their representatives (more…)

FDR and the Second Bill of Rights

As World War 2 was winding down, Franklin Delano Roosevelt set his sights for the nation on transitioning the newly expanded role of government from the war effort to an expanded social and economic role. FDR called for the guarantees outlined in this address, as he argued that “true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. “Necessitous men are not free men.” By assuming a role in protecting citizens from the potential problems of their own economic security, government entered an arena in which the citizen operates as a co-producer of the circumstance. Those with the most to gain would seek additional services, while others ignored the pattern of growing government until its scope and size became overwhelming. (more…)

It seems today that many Americans wrongly perceive the Constitution as a roadblock on the way to a better America.  Not too long ago during a dinner conversation, this unfavorable view of the Constitution was expressed to me.  The person had overlooked the enduring qualities of the document—qualities that have allowed freedom to flourish and have kept tyranny in check.

In “What Good’s A Constitution,” former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill reminds readers that the American Constitution has been the “shield of the common man,” and its framework and provisions reveal that a government exists for individuals.  Individuals do not exist for the government.  Churchill wrote the 1936 article in an era in which Fascist dictatorships had emerged in Italy and Germany and Russia’s Communist experiment (more…)

On June 27, 1936, Franklin D. Roosevelt accepted the Democratic nomination for the presidency.  Despite all of the success in getting Congress to pass New Deal legislation during his first administration and his excellent chances for re-election, FDR felt beleaguered.  Republicans in Congress and conservatives such as Herbert Hoover and the Liberty League continued to oppose the legislation he believed would solve the economic crisis and transform America.  Populist radicals such as Huey Long and Charles Townshend went even further than FDR in seeking to provide a guaranteed income for Americans and won some of his support.  (more…)

In 1932, the Democratic candidate, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was the privileged scion of a wealthy family who ran a campaign that was committed to the Progressive vision of American society and government from the turn of the century.  In his “Commonwealth Club Address,” FDR embraced the Progressive idea that pitted the “interests” against the people.  He also promised the continued growth of the administrative state managed by enlightened bureaucratic elites in the name of the people.  Even more importantly, FDR maintained that the purpose of government under the social compact was to preserve rights, but he was bold enough to assert that a redefinition of rights was necessary in an industrial age.  Achieving this vision would usher in a secular utopia of progress and equality. (more…)

President Coolidge delivered this speech on the 150^th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.  In this essay, I place President Coolidge’s speech into a relevant perspective first, by outlining two divergent visions about the nature of man and secondly by explaining how these divergent visions culminated in the progressive attack on the essence of the Declaration of Independence. (more…)

Herbert Croly was perhaps the most important intellectual of Progressivism, which seems odd, given the tortuous language and convoluted emotive passages that characterize his work. Progressive Democracy was not Croly’s most significant book. That was his earlier work, The Promise of American Life, a book that supposedly so influenced Theodore Roosevelt it is said to have provided the catalyst for Roosevelt’s return to politics as a third-party “Bull Moose” presidential candidate in the 1912 election.

Progressive Democracy is of the same style and substance as Croly’s other writings. It rests on the usual Progressive premises, such as the omnipotent, all-caring, and morally perfect Hegelian God-state that is the inevitable evolutionary end of Progressive politics. It reflects the notion—so common in Progressive and other leftist theory—of stages of human social and political development that have been left behind and whose outdated institutions are an impediment to ultimate progress into the promised land. Hence, Croly’s insistence that the Constitution’s structure of representative government and separation and division of powers needed to be, and would be, changed. (more…)

Theodore Roosevelt left the office of the President in 1908, only to be drawn back into politics in 1912, disappointed with his predecessor’s defense of the Progressive cause.  He launched the “Bull Moose” Party with the zeal befitting a man who was photographed actually riding a bull moose.  Roosevelt pursued an agenda in 1912 that called for increasing popular participation in government and eroding the barriers between the people and government.  This is also an intentional blurring of the line between a republican form of government and a direct democracy of the kind that existed in antiquity. (more…)