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This is simply not accurate. Even at best, if we point to the first bureaucracy, the Interstate Commerce Commission, which was birthed two decades after the war in 1887(but was practically toothless at the beginning) we can only find scant evidence of a full-throated drive toward big government for big government’s sake. The ICC was in many ways a compartmentalized department which was thought to deal with one single(set of issues) issue.

The fact remains that the first big government president who loved big government as his beginning, and loved big government as his end, who loved big government as his beloved all, his beloved everything, was Theodore Roosevelt.

There wasn’t one aspect of life that TR didn’t want to see government involved in. There wasn’t one aspect of life that TR and his followers didn’t think that long term, government shouldn’t be involved with. Government must meddle in all. Government must control all. That’s progressivism.

There’s 1081 executive orders with TR’s name on them to prove it. Big government for as far as the eye could see, and for longer than the human lifespan, that’s what the ideology is all about. There’s nothing like it prior in any chapter of American history. None.

Thanks for posting this, ProgressingAmerica!

And to support your comment that "Government must meddle in all. Government must control all. That’s progressivism," I was especially struck by this passage from the journal article:

"In certain respects it has to be recognized that the constitution-makers failed in foresight. They could not foresee the abject dependence of men on unified social organization and the consequent dangers of conflict. When they theorized about government, their interest was in protecting men from it, not, as later generations' was, in protecting men with it. What was an excellent interest for the one purpose was not so good for the other. And now that the need is to function through it rather than merely being protected by it, it is found to be even less suited to the purpose. It needs reorganization in many ways but no other can compare with the necessity for repairing the lack of an agency whose duty is to the whole and whose interest is in the creation of the future."

This is simply not accurate. Even at best, if we point to the first bureaucracy, the Interstate Commerce Commission, which was birthed two decades after the war in 1887(but was practically toothless at the beginning) we can only find scant evidence of a full-throated drive toward big government for big government’s sake.

Why are you trying to use motives as a means to dispute the point? Of course the people at the time had no intention of creating a monster, that was just the unintended consequences of them demanding government power to address a situation. The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

The fact remains that the first big government president who loved big government as his beginning, and loved big government as his end, who loved big government as his beloved all, his beloved everything, was Theodore Roosevelt.

That oversimplifies things. I think Theodore, having emerged from New York politics, exemplified the natural biases for government power that New Yorkers of the time shared. I think he also realized that so much of what was going on in the US Government at the time, was the consequence of too cozy a relationship between various power barons and governmental entities. (Buying congress, influencing bureaucrats.)

He spent a lot of his Presidential power on efforts to diminish the influence of corporate powers on government, and I have come to believe that it is this very relationship between industry power barons and government that was the actual cause of the Civil War.

I think one of the things we modern Americans have been seeing for quite a long time is the effect of influence on government coming from various corporate entities seeking to use it's power to maintain and increase their own wealth and power. It is my hope that Donald Trump will be like Teddy Roosevelt in this regard, and chop of a few of the nasty little fingers pulling on various strings of government.

There wasn’t one aspect of life that TR didn’t want to see government involved in. There wasn’t one aspect of life that TR and his followers didn’t think that long term, government shouldn’t be involved with. Government must meddle in all. Government must control all. That’s progressivism.

Once Abraham Lincoln revealed what was possible with the power of an Imperial Presidency, a lot of other people simply took what he gave them and ran with it. Roosevelt was one, Wilson another, FDR the next, and so forth right up to Barack Odumbo.

Lincoln broke the presidency away from it's previously restrained powers.

There’s 1081 executive orders with TR’s name on them to prove it. Big government for as far as the eye could see, and for longer than the human lifespan, that’s what the ideology is all about. There’s nothing like it prior in any chapter of American history. None.

How many executive orders did Lincoln write? Quite a lot, and more importantly, quite serious ones which destroyed previous restraints on power.

Arrest the legislature of Maryland? Really? Arrest News Paper editors for publishing opinions not approved by Lincoln?

Well if you can issue executive orders to do those things, you can issue orders to do pretty much anything. To quote you; "There’s nothing like it prior in any chapter of American history. None."