progressivism, individualism, and the public ... - Telmarc Group

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The Telmarc Group PROGRESSIVISM, INDIVIDUALISM, AND THE PUBLIC INTELLECTUAL nineteenth century. A good part of the agenda of the Liberal Party during much of the nineteenth century consisted in reforms that sought to undo limitations that the state placed on the liberties and opportunities of citizens, especially when these forms of state intervention tended to reinforce class privileges. This political culture was exemplified in the repeal of the Corn Laws, opposition to religious persecution, and several electoral reforms. The 1832 Reform Bill extended the franchise to the upper middle class; the 1867 Reform Act extended it to approximately one million urban workers; and the Reform Act of 1884 extended it still further to include another two million agricultural workers. But in the later part of the nineteenth century there emerged a new view about the role of such reforms within the Liberal agenda. Earlier Liberals, such as Herbert Spencer, thought that reform should be limited to the removal of state interference with individual liberty. Liberalism, on this conception, stood for individualism and laissez-faire. By contrast, the New Liberals thought that these reforms that extended economic, social, and political liberties had to be supplemented by social and economic reforms in areas of labor, education, and health designed to redress the effects of inequality. These new reforms gave the state positive, and not just negative, responsibilities that required interference with individual liberties. It was these constructive reforms that drove a wedge between the Old and the New." The last set of sentences to some degree describe the expansive nature of the new liberalism in the sense of Mill versus the old liberalism which is Spencer in extremis. We argue here in the context of the new liberalism, a respect for the individual, but with a balance of negative and positive rights, yet with the Government having a role to play, albeit with continual respect for the individual. 8.3 NATIONALISM There is a debate amongst academics as to the meaning of nationalism and its evolution in our societies. There is also a debate amongst academics who are in the social justice camp that social justice is not just redistribution within a nation but across nations. Miller has written extensively on this as have many other social justice commentators. It is thus worthwhile in this conclusion to see what the implications of nationalism are regarding individualism. Nations have been evolving for many years, for centuries in fact, and if one looks at the literature at the time of the Revolution, the Federalists as well as Thomas Paine amongst many, one sees a clear trend to create a nation, a separate and distinct nation, which culminated in the Constitution. It had become clear in short order that the Confederation, a loose "fishing, drinking and smoking" club was not sustainable. Thus in just a few years a true nation evolved, with limited philosophers to drive it, just the men who created its underlying law, the Constitution. Page 210
The Telmarc Group PROGRESSIVISM, INDIVIDUALISM, AND THE PUBLIC INTELLECTUAL One may then ask as we go through one of our countries soul searching quests regarding the question, whither goest the country, we see a nation asking the question of just what a nation is and what type of nation we should become, if perchance we do not care for what we are. It appears that the current administration, the change agents of our nation as they had self proclaimed it, want such a change, and change is what we are getting. Yet we have seen all of this before, the Adams to Jefferson change, the Jackson revolution, Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt and then Wilson, FDR, and to some degree even Reagan. It has been a continuing struggle to "change" while looking back in the principles which were at the foundation of the country. To understand some of these issue I am reminded of how Will and Ariel Durant described James Joyce and his environs, the Irish nation, yet not allowed to be a nation under the captivity and heavy hand of the British. From the Durants' book on a grand collection of literary luminaries they open on the section on Joyce with the following 215 : "I have sometimes thought how high Ireland would stand in the world of letters if all her literary sons had stayed on her soil; Swift, Burke, Goldsmith, Wilde, Shaw, Joyce…The land was fertile, the moist cold air put blushing roses in the cheeks of the girls, and lust sons were eager to plant new life in willing wombs. But the spiritual atmosphere was deadly: a government Irish in name but foreign in humiliating fact; an Anglican Church more intolerant in Ireland than in England; a Catholic Church that loyal Irishman could not criticize or reform since she had suffered in fighting for Irish liberty. And just across the water was a Britain with a larger and more literate public, a freer press, a taste for Irish eloquence and wit. So Erin's genius crossed the Irish ea, and left a lovely island to destitute peasants and Joyce's Dubliners." In a recent book by a Northern Irish academic, McGarry, the author states 216 : "Where does the history of the struggle for Irish independence begin? For traditional republicans, like nineteenth century revolutionary John O'Leary, the story of Irish freedom stretches back over eight hundred years to Strongbow's invasion of Ireland in 1169; "If the English had not come to Ireland, and if they had not stayed there and done all the evil so many of them now allow they have been doing all along, then there would be no Fenianism." Although the English Crown's formal authority within Ireland can be dated to Henry II's expedition in 1171-1172…few historians would take such claims seriously, both because the Anglo-Norman invasion formed part of a much larger and more complex history of mutual interactions and colonization between hybrid peoples of the two islands, and continental Europe…..For many nationalists, the formative era in the struggle for Irish freedom was the sixteenth and seventeenth century period of Reformation…." 215 Durant, W., A Durant, 1980. 216 McGarry, The Rising, 2010. Page 211
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progressivism, individualism, and the public ... - Telmarc Group

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