Misunderstanding Democracy

In a speech he gave last week at the University of Texas, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas asserted that, “(progressivism) has coexisted uneasily with the principles of the Declaration (of Independence). Because it is opposed to those principles, it is not possible for the two to coexist forever.” Progressives across the country have reClasponded by attacking Justice Thomas, his wife Virginia, other justices as well, but interestingly not addressing Thomas’s philosophical argument.

In a substack column, former Obama Labor Secretary Robert Reich praised the accomplishments of the progressive era as exemplified by Teddy Roovevelt and his cousin Franklin Delano Roosevelt while downplaying the role of Woodrow Wilson. Wilson, an intellectual and former President of Princeton University before becoming New Jersey governor and president of the United States, was an ardent advocate of progressivism but is now barely mentioned by modern progressives due to his racial segregation of the federal bureaucracy and his opposition to women’s suffrage. But Thomas makes Wilson the focus of his argument because Wilson was outspoken about the intellectual argument in favor of progressivism as opposed to the constitutionalism of the Founders which was based on the philosophy of John Locke.  

Modern progressives believe in the power of government to make things better, to lessen the harmful effects of economic inequality and on ending systemic discrimination such as institutional racism. They advocate for social safety nets and workers' rights; and oppose corporate influence on the democratic process according to Wikipedia. Good intentions, perhaps, but at a cost. German Chancelor Otto von Bismarck invented the modern welfare state back in the 1800s, not to benefit the German people, but to make them pliable collaborators to his dreams of empire.

Progressivism comes in many forms but all require giving more power to government. Teddy Roosevelt considered himself a conservative progressive while FDR was a liberal progressive. But what we have now in America is far left progressivism. They view the private sector as the enemy. An evil force that must be checked by the power of the government. But it was the power of government (the unchecked power of King George) that Founders declared independence from.

The Declaration of Independence states, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Not only are all men (and women) created equal the rights that they enjoy are inherent, endowed by their creator, not granted by governments.

But Paul Waldman writes in an article on MS Now (the zombie reincarnation of MSNBC) that, “The idea that rights come from God, not government, couldn’t be more wrong.” He accuses Justice Thomas as being “someone who routinely wields the power of government to deprive Americans of their rights.” But the so-called rights the Supreme Court strikes down, through Justice Thomas and others, are not the inherent rights described in the Declaration but rights created and granted by governments. And rights granted by governments can be taken away by governments.

Throughout history, the people who lived under monarchical or autocratic governments weren’t granted any rights. They weren’t citizens, they were subjects. The inhabitants of Iran are not citizens. They are being executed by their government for trying to exercise rights that we take for granted. The inhabitants of China (including minorities like the Uighurs and Tibetans) are subject to the orders and demands of the Communist Party. Perhaps Mr. Waldman’s classical education stopped at Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan and did not continue on to John Locke’s Second Treatise on Government.

The declaration states that citizens of a country have inherent rights and, further, that “to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” The new government of the United States did not grant rights to its citizens, its citizens granted powers to that government in order to secure those rights. That is why autocratic governments around the world fear the United States. Not because of our military power, which is indeed very great, but because of the notion that rights are inherent and “unalienable.” This was the “New Order of the Age (Novus Ordo Seclorum) that changed the nature of the relationship between government and its citizens. It is not Clarence Thomas that doesn’t understand democracy as Mr. Waldman wrote. Justice Thomas got it exactly right.

Citing Justice Thomas’s reference to growing up in the Jim Crow South, Mr. Waldman writes, “It was government — or more specifically, democratic citizens who worked tirelessly to change the laws.” He had to correct his statement about government ending Jim Crow to democratic citizens because, as the Declaration of Independence says, “whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it.”

This is what Robert Reich, Paul Waldman and most other progressives don’t get. The Founders changed the direction of government 180 degrees. The progressives want to undo the new order of the age that the Founders created. They want to enhance the power of government and not protect the liberty of the people. And this is why they hate and fear people like Justice Thomas.