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

The Telmarc Group
PROGRESSIVISM, INDIVIDUALISM, AND THE PUBLIC
INTELLECTUAL
larger and larger. This licensed selfishness became more dominating in proportion as it
became more successful. If a political question arose, which in any way interfered with
his opportunities, the good American began to believe that his democratic political
machine was out of gear."
Croly despised individualism and at his heart as a Progressive he sought in every way to
seek out and promote his agenda of a strong central government and a national society of
communal interests. Croly saw in TR a medium for his message, a voice to promulgate
the destruction of individualism and the New Nationalism was such a vehicle.
One of TR's initial statements in his New Nationalism speech places the progressive
viewpoint in clear perspective when he states:
At many stages in the advance of humanity, this conflict between the men who possess
more than they have earned and the men who have earned more than they possess is the
central condition of progress. In our day it appears as the struggle of freemen to gain
and hold the right of self-government as against the special interests, who twist the
methods of free government into machinery for defeating the popular will. At every stage,
and under all circumstances, the essence of the struggle is to equalize opportunity,
destroy privilege, and give to the life and citizenship of every individual the highest
possible value both to himself and to the commonwealth.
Possessing more than what one earns and earning more than one posses is a statement of
disdain for those who have made returns on the "backs of the working man". Although
not a socialist dictum, it is in essence a core belief of the progressives, that those who
have accumulated wealth have done so on the backs of others, and thus what they have is
well in excess of what they should have earned.
Roosevelt then stresses the need for equality, again a progressive agenda item, and he
does so as follows:
Practical equality of opportunity for all citizens, when we achieve it, will have two great
results. First, every man will have a fair chance to make of himself all that in him lies; to
reach the highest point to which his capacities, unassisted by special privilege of his own
and unhampered by the special privilege of others, can carry him, and to get for himself
and his family substantially what he has earned. Second, equality of opportunity means
that the commonwealth will get from every citizen the highest service of which he is
capable. No man who carries the burden of the special privileges of another can give to
the commonwealth that service to which it is fairly entitled.
Equality to him is equality of opportunity is a twofold objective; first that each man, and
one would assume woman, would have a "fair chance", whatever that means, but it is
delimited by not having the "special privilege" restriction, again whatever that means.
second, that the country will then get from that person in return for having been given
this equal opportunity the "highest service". In effect he states that it is the duty of the
Government to establish a level playing field by bringing up those who are lower and
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