Thomas C. Leonard of Princeton University has compiled a terrific power point presentation on the Progressive Era. It is available at the first item (click “slide-show”) on this link. The presentation is very comprehensive, yet explains in very easy to understand terms why understanding this crucial period is important. This is definitely NOT Glenn Beck at his blackboard superficial stuff. This is the real deal.
Many of Leonard’s explorations and insights are very compatible with the synthesis of analysis developed by Murray N. Rothbard:
“The Progressive Era and the Family“: The Progressive Era was the incubation period of the welfare-warfare state — and of all the malevolence that follows.
“World War I as Fulfillment: Power and the Intellectuals“: The Great War was not the end of Progressive “reform” but its fulfillment.
“Origins of the Welfare State in America“: Here Rothbard provides the Rosetta Stone to understanding the origins of the welfare state in America: the role of post-millennial Protestant pietistic intellectuals and evangelical activists born in the crucial decade surrounding the events of the Civil War who, because of the seductive influence of the evolutionary naturalism of Darwinism, came of age increasingly secularized, but who did not forsake their faith in statism and elitist social control.
2:44 pm on July 12, 2011
