How Progressive Social Activists Risk Thrusting Us Into Fascism

Fascism and Nazism sprang from utopian goals

Photo by Meramec Valley Mutual Insurance Company

Lately I’ve been thinking about the Progressive Era in the United States — that time between roughly 1890 and 1920, which saw so many reforms to industry and politics.

Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle about the meat packing industry, and that brought us the USDA and child labor laws. Lincoln Steffens wrote Shame of the Cities and we got political reform.

These Progressive Era reforms brought needed changes, but Progressivism can be taken too far.

Progressive ideology contends that government is the best way to drive social change. Laws are passed with the idea of changing people’s behavior for the better. That works pretty well, but only in small doses. It seems that whenever government gets too much power it abuses it.

That is why we have the Constitution.

Constitutions do not grant rights to citizens. We are born with rights. That’s what Thomas Jefferson meant when he wrote that people are “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights” in the Declaration of Independence. Today we call these “human rights” and violations are “crimes against humanity”.

The purpose of the Constitution is to formalize rules limiting government…