Replies

"Like pretty much every other politically charged word -- "fascist", "Nazi", "Communist", etc. -- "Progressive" can mean whatever people want it to mean, either positively or negatively.

I appreciate the honesty.

There is nothing else left here.

"I'm only saying that you'd be hard pressed to prove that Pres. Teddy Roosevelt believed even 10% of that while he was in office."

Easy pressed. It's in his autobiography - which I referenced elsewhere directly to you so no need to re-hash it here.

Your belief that the word progressive is a "nothing" means there is nothing else left here. Our work is finished.

ProgressingAmerica: "This book is very much a "communist manifesto" of sorts for Progressivism."

"Manifesto" or not, you are assigning vastly more importance to Croly's book than it deserves, at least among Republicans.

So, you rightly point out that then ex-President Teddy Roosevelt adopted Croly's term "New Nationalism" for TR's 1912 Bull Moose Progressive Party campaign -- an election that Roosevelt lost.

What you don't mention is that already in 1914, Roosevelt split away from Croly over several issues, including:

Foreign policy -- TR was more "big stick" than Croly
Economic regulations -- TR was only concerned with reigning in Big Business monopolies, not with small businesses as Croly wanted.
Labor relations -- TR supported labor rights but, unlike Croly, TR was just as concerned about powerful Big Unions as he was about Big Businesses.
Social Welfare -- Croly wanted vastly more government sponsored social welfare than TR was ever willing to support.

In short: relatively conservative Republican, Teddy Roosevelt was in no way the radical progressive that Croly and our Leftist Democrats later became.

Finally, a reminder of perspectives -- under Teddy Roosevelt, the US Federal spending averaged 2.3% of GDP, while today it is more than ten times that amount, and no politician today, regardless of how conservative they are, has ever proposed returning federal government to what it was under Teddy Roosevelt.

So, your claims that TR was just a wild-eyed radical progressive are losing all sight of the reality, then versus now.