[nicollo]

Croly drones on and on... but if we step back at look at what he's saying, it's plain:

It would be based upon the very idea against which I have been continually protesting—the idea that the American nation, instead of embodying a living formative political principle, is merely the political system created by the Federal Constitution

Simple translation:

I protest the idea that the American nation is created by the Federal Constitution.

= antithetical to what American actually is: a nation created by the Federal Constitution. But that's TR's boy, Croly, for ya!

[ProgressingAmerica]

You got it.

That’s why these old books from the original progressives are so important. Progressives today won’t be nearly this honest, but back then they wrote it all down in black and white and in terms that leave very little doubt.