Definition and origins
Randall Holcombe, described by Bob Zadek as an economist who has written about twelve books, traced the federal government’s involvement in the economy to the Progressive Era that began in the late 1800s. Holcombe’s account begins with the Constitution, which he says designed a government of limited and enumerated powers and says virtually nothing about the economy; the Tenth Amendment, in his telling, reserves powers not explicitly given to the federal government to the states or to the people, and regulating the economy is not among the enumerated powers. He defines progressivism in a nutshell as the view that the role of government is not only to protect rights but also to look out for economic well-being. Randall G. Holcombe on Liberty in Peril (2019)
Holcombe locates the ideology’s origin in the industrialization of the late 1800s, when, for the first time in world history, someone could start from nothing and become one of the richest people in the world — he names Rockefeller, Carnegie, Fisk and Vanderbilt. Progressive ideology, he says, was a reaction against people who had amassed tremendous economic power in a short period and who progressives thought were using that power to take advantage of those with less. From the beginning, Holcombe argues, the ideology was redistributive: costs would be imposed on the new industrialists and financiers to provide economic benefits to others. He calls this the origin of the welfare state. Randall G. Holcombe on Liberty in Peril (2019)
The same passage appears in an earlier episode, where Holcombe delivered the identical account of the Progressive Era, the enumerated powers, the industrialists and the redistributive impulse. [[episodes/john_marini_on__unmasking_the_administrative_state|John Marini on Unmasking the Administrative State (2019)]]
Progressivism and force
In a discussion with Charlie Deist and Dr. Michael Edelstein, Bob Zadek offered a formulation of the difference between libertarianism and progressivism that he presented as almost not subject to rebuttal. Non-libertarians, and especially progressives, he said, require and embrace force, imprisonment and guns to promote their philosophy; every element of progressivism, in his account, has a compulsion baked into it, so that refusing to do what progressives require means having property taken by fines or freedom taken by imprisonment. He said progressivism cannot survive or be promoted except with the ally of force and the taking of property, and that a progressive challenged to explain how the view is promoted without a gun and a jail cell becomes mute. How to Stay Sane in a Statist World (2017)
Deist responded with uneasiness about that framing, noting that libertarians do not advocate abolishing laws, jail cells or police guns except on the anarcho-capitalist side of the spectrum. He suggested that more coercion or violence rests inside each individual, and that the struggle to get rid of the yoke of government reflects the inherent violence of humans mirrored in the institutions built to contain it. Zadek answered that libertarianism is not passivity or the total absence of guns, force and power: in libertarianism, he said, those are used only for protection, not to impose anything more. He described a two-pronged approach — don’t harm me and don’t take my stuff — and said that rather than arm himself and kill anyone who crosses the line, he prefers an institution established, as the Declaration of Independence said, to protect inherent rights. He said he embraces an army and a police force, but for the sole purpose of protecting him. Edelstein, speaking as a libertarian anarchist, said anything people want that is not coercive would be provided on a free market, including police or military. How to Stay Sane in a Statist World (2017)
Bureaucracy and incentives
Michael Strong, responding to Zadek’s framing of him as a skeptical progressive, addressed the argument that enlightened government should provide rule of law and enforce property rights. He cited the British television shows Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister as a lesson in political science, noting the British bureaucracy may be one of the most capable, and said most of the world is messed up and most developing-world governments even more dysfunctional. He described officials arriving an hour, two hours, four hours or a day late to meetings, and argued that people who will not have better lives by performing better will not do a good job, and that bureaucrats are typically rewarded for being there longer rather than for quality. Michael Strong on Creating a World in Which All Humanity Flourishes (2017)
Strong contrasted this with Singapore, sometimes described as Singapore Incorporated, where some public officials receive bonuses based on the previous year’s GDP growth of the nation, which he said gives business-like incentives and is part of why Singapore is one of the best-run countries in the world. He invoked public choice theory as an analysis of why governments do what they do, and said that if progressives want to believe in good government they should see what is actually going on in most developing-world governments and ask why these policies have not changed decade after decade. He credited the World Bank’s Doing Business index — created, he said, by a former Bulgarian who had been in Eastern Europe under communism — and Hernando de Soto’s The Mystery of Capital with drawing attention to the developing world being massively over-regulated. He said progressive professors he has spoken with are unaware of this, that Peter Singer had been completely unaware the developing world is over-regulated, and that when the evidence is put in front of them they do not deny the facts and cannot justify the laws and regulations. Michael Strong on Creating a World in Which All Humanity Flourishes (2017)
Education and ideological capture
Williamson M. Evers, asked whether publishers cater to more conservative states, said no, and argued that a federal system ought to permit competitive federalism in which states do different things and emulate what works. He attributed the uniformity to two things: the domination of teachers’ thinking by what is taught in education schools, and an ideological domination of progressivism in those schools. In culturally conservative states, he said, people who are not culturally conservative find a haven in certain areas, education chief among them — in Alabama, he said, the liberals are not in the police department but in the public schools, while in Washington state there are plenty of progressives and liberals outside the schools as well as inside them. He said there are only a few publishing houses, which will bind in a state history section but otherwise give students an American history book the same as a California or New York student’s. California’s Ethnic Studies Curriculum vs. Trump’s Patriotic Education (2020)
New-age progressivism and founding principles
Steven B. Smith distinguished what he called the new-age progressivism of recent times from an earlier and older progressivism. He said projects such as the New York Times 1619 Project would have us believe America is founded in racism and slavery, that racism and white supremacy have been the core of American national identity from 1619 to 2021, and — crucially, in his reading — that these are not departures from the principles but are the principles. He called this a deeply corrosive ideology and part of the attack on American founding principles. Steven B. Smith on Reclaiming Patriotism (2021)
Smith said it is not that the founding principles were somehow pure or born pure, that Americans have argued about them from the beginning and fought a great civil war over what they were. He called Abraham Lincoln the hero in many ways of his book, and said Lincoln understood the principles to be founded in the Declaration of Independence, particularly its clause of human equality, and understood they had not been perfectly realized in 1776 or 1861 but that Americans struggle to achieve those ideals. Smith said giving up on them, as many on the left and increasingly many on the right have done, represents a fatigue of what American patriotism is, and that patriotism is a virtue that must be taught, cultivated and practiced rather than something people are born with. Steven B. Smith on Reclaiming Patriotism (2021)
An earlier episode with C. Bradley Thompson is listed as touching on progressivism among its topics, alongside the American Revolution, the Declaration of Independence, natural rights, limited government, John Locke and Woodrow Wilson; the excerpt supplies no further statement on the subject. C. Bradley Thompson on America’s Revolutionary Mind (2019)
Across episodes: what changed
The topic recurs across the 2019 episodes and the 2021 episode, but the excerpts show no development of a single argument: Holcombe’s definition of progressivism as government looking out for economic well-being appears in near-identical form in the Marini and Holcombe episodes, Zadek’s force-based framing stands alone in the 2017 episode, Strong’s incentive-and-bureaucracy case stands alone in the 2017 Strong episode, Evers addresses only education publishing, and Smith’s distinction between an older and a new-age progressivism is his own contribution in 2021.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not supply a progressive’s own account of progressivism, nor any sustained defense of it beyond Zadek’s hypothetical framing and Strong’s report of progressive professors’ reactions. They do not name the statutes, agencies or court decisions through which the economic role Holcombe describes was built, and they do not carry the Thompson episode’s discussion past its topic list.