Although many also tout Teddy Roosevelt as being cut from the same cloth, most agree that Woodrow Wilson, an academic well immersed in the movement, was our first real Progressive President (from the NY Times, if you can believe it):
Here is Wilson’s description of the Founders’ view in his “New Freedom”: The ideal of government was for every man to be left alone and not interfered with, except when he interfered with somebody else.” Wilson was exaggerating (the Founders favored government support of education, for example), but he is right about the gist of their approach.
Referring to his own time period, Wilson continues, “Life is so complicated that we are not dealing with the old conditions, and that the law has to step in and create new conditions under which we may live.” In other words, the Founders’ idea of protecting property rights is outmoded. We need a government that intrudes into and even micromanages the private sphere.
Wilson anticipates today’s liberals by telling Americans to follow the example of Europe: “In the city of Glasgow, for example (Glasgow is one of the model cities of the world), they have made up their minds that the entries and the hallways of [apartment buildings] are public streets. Therefore, … the lighting department of the city sees to it that the lights are abundantly lighted.”
Glasgow is Wilson’s ideal. Government knows best. This was a leading feature of Progressivism, as it is of liberalism today — to get government involved in every detail of private life, wherever the private sphere fails to live up to the standard that government demands.
Progressives believe: you all are stupid and HAVE to have our help in order to be functional. Freedom: optional – freedom comes from lobbying Government instead of being "inalienable Rights from our Creator".
Believe this? Ask yourself: does the average adult need to be taken care by government? Last time I looked, children need to be watched over – not adults.
If you agree with Wilson and the Progressives and live in NH, vote for Carol Shea-Porter, Paul Hodes, Ann McKluster, and John Lynch. They believe it is impossible for you to make it without them. They will take care of you – but it will be THEIR way and you will have little to say about it.
And you will have given up your freedom. Freedom requires self-responsibility; give up the latter and you are abdicating the former.
