In the Progressive view, the ends of government cannot be limited to protecting natural rights, because nature supplies no rights, and positive rights created by government change over time. Thus limited government is replaced with government of unlimited power and scope, what some political scientists call the administrative state. Rejecting natural justice, the liberal mind concerns itself with “social justice,” which at a minimum requires vast redistributions of wealth from the few to the many. As the administrative state itself is the arbiter of what “social justice” on any day might entail, there can be no restraints on its power; the bigger government becomes, the more “rights” will be bestowed on the people.
– Professor Thomas L. Krannawiter (Hillsdale College, Lincoln scholar)
