I’ll have more to say on this later, but Nate Silver raises issues that deserve a thorough hashing out. As just a preliminary thought, it pays to think about the two progressivisms in terms of our history. The prior Progressive Era’s two greatest accomplishments were granting female suffrage and enacting Prohibition. We can add the federal income tax and the direct election of the Senate.
In other words, the original progressive movement involved both populist and repressive ingredients. That remains true today as progressives combine concern with civil liberties with policies that fund SCHIP exclusively through cigarette taxes and that emphasize smoking bans.
Progressivism has always balanced the desire to achieve concrete societal benefits and to preserve liberty. I’m with Upton Sinclair. He was my kind of progressive.
