One hundred years ago it was in states like Wisconsin, Minnesota, the Dakotas, and Washington State. It certainly wasn't in New England. Many Southerners had their own version of progressivism. New York was always a big urban state with urban Democrats and some liberal Republicans like Theodore Roosevelt, but New Yorkers didn't much love the income tax imposed by states further South and West.
But yes, Massachusetts and New York formed a progressive coalition and it has remained such to this present day.
That was largely the Kennedys and the general shift of states in the Northeast to the Democrats. Few people would have said that the New England of 1910 or 1920 was especially "progressive," compared to other parts of the country. Penny pinching Yankees were once real. They are all gone now.
But you know, you've been saying the same thing over and over and over for years now. It's even less true now than it was when you started and it's gotten really boring.
“One hundred years ago it was in states like Wisconsin, Minnesota, the Dakotas, and Washington State. It certainly wasn’t in New England.”
Agreed. We have revisionists out there who seek to lay progressivism at the feet of the Puritans, even though there really isn’t any link other than some surface-level wishful thinking. They even have a specific name for it. “The Wisconsin Idea”
The Puritans were the good guys. We should stop running them over with the bus and then throwing the bus in reverse and doing it again.
Just once I’d love to see someone grab the Mayflower Compact and say “see this here? Yes, this right here, this Compact, THAT is the problem.”
No. Wrong. Nope.
As to the topic that was originally posted, I did recently state that I want to do a biography of one Founding Father. But the Christian history of America’s institutions is an even higher priority.