The Political Thought of Calvin Coolidge. Thomas J. Tacoma

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СКАЧАТЬ Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, ed. by Thomas H. D. Mahoney (Indianapolis, IN: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1955), 38. Calvin Coolidge, “Great Virginians,” in The Price of Freedom: Speeches and Addresses (New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1924), 173.

      23.

      On Burke’s thought generally, see Jesse Norman, Edmund Burke: The First Conservative (New York: Basic Books, 2015); and Yuval Levin, The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Right and Left (New York: Basic Books, 2014). The new standard study of Burke is Richard Bourke, Empire and Revolution: The Political Life of Edmund Burke (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015); David Bromwich’s The Intellectual Life of Edmund Burke: From the Sublime and Beautiful to American Independence (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014) is another fine study of Burke’s thought.

      24.

      Coolidge, “Governor Coolidge’s Acceptance Speech,” in The New York Times, 28 July 1920.

      25.

      Coolidge, “Address at the Commencement of George Washington University,” 22 February 1929. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, accessed January 16, 2019, The American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=382&st=&st1=.

      26.

      See Greg Weiner, American Burke: The Uncommon Liberalism of Daniel Patrick Moynihan (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2015), or Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953).

      27.

      Coolidge’s private secretary agreed on this, and the point is essentially demonstrated in the volumes that collected Coolidge’s ideas in similar form during his lifetime—see Coolidge’s own remarks on Bascom Slemp’s collection from 1926 in The Talkative President, 27.

      Chapter 1

      Coolidge’s Era

      A Progressive America

      The Roots, Principles, and Achievements

      of American Progressivism

      American Progressives self-consciously rejected the principles and institutions of America’s founding regime. They did not hide this fact from the American public, although their language often presented their reforms as part of a trajectory of development and growth rather than revolution. The doctrines of universal human rights announced in the Declaration of Independence were replaced with contingent rights dependent upon time and place. The institutions of government created by the federal Constitution were criticized as insufficient for the needs of the new era, out of date, or as obstacles to further development.^[1] In their place, key Progressives proposed new principles and new institutions that would allow for more organic political growth and greater flexibility of means and ends.^[2] The goal of this chapter is to provide an overview of Progressive ideas and reforms in order to set Coolidge’s thought in the context of (and at times in contrast to) the Progressive movement. This chapter therefore aims (1) to identify the economic and cultural background of Progressivism, (2) to survey its philosophic background, (3) to describe the core principles that united Progressives of all kinds in their roles as political reformers and critics of the existing regime, and (4) briefly to enumerate some of the major political and legal reforms enacted during the Progressive era.

      Before delving into the roots of Progressivism, however, some clarification of who and what is meant by “the Progressives” is in order. The Progressive movement as a movement lasted from roughly 1890 to 1920. Some scholars date the beginning of the movement earlier, back to 1880 or even 1870 and the movement then for civil service reform. Some also argue for extending the dates of the Progressive movement into the 1920s.^[3] Whatever the date range, the years in between witnessed a searching investigation and debate over fundamental American ideas about government—over the meaning and propriety of republicanism, constitutionalism, democracy, and natural rights. Those doing the searching and debating were an initially loose coalition of political reformers who grew to recognize their shared principles and aims while they sought to transform American government at the national, state, and local levels. Their leadership ranks included the presidents of the era, Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson in particular, though President Taft was unquestionably a moderate Progressive.^[4] Numerous journalists and their muckraker colleagues were influential in the movement. Herbert Croly, Walter Lippmann, and lesser-known figures such as William Allen White played key roles in developing and popularizing Progressive ideas and reforms.^[5] At the state level, various governors earned national recognition for their Progressive bona fides, including Robert La Follete of Wisconsin, Hiram Johnson of California, and Charles Evans Hughes of New York. Urban reform leaders, such as Jane Addams, legal minds such as Louis Brandeis and Ernst Freund, historians such as Charles Beard and Frederick Turner Jackson, and political scientists such as Frank Goodnow played a significant part in pressing for reforms in their respective spheres.^[6] The Progressives were initially split between the major political parties, favoring the Republicans, but ultimately they formed a new political party in 1912 to support Roosevelt’s campaign for the presidency. The Progressive Bull Moose Party brought most of the outspoken Progressives together, and their Party Platform of 1912 provides a clear picture of what reforms they believed were still needed to fix the nation’s unresolved problems.^[7] The institutional Progressive Party waned in strength in the 1910s and was all but gone by the early 1920s.

      Pre-Conditions of Progressivism: Economic and Cultural Developments

      Ideology alone does not make a social reform movement successful. The Progressives were reacting against what they believed were grave injustices in the public order. Their major concerns included the destabilizing impact of industrialism, the contentious relations between labor and capital, child labor, the growth of an uncertain global market, the emergence of enormous and powerful corporations, and other economic factors. Politically, Progressive reformers abhorred the corruption they believed rampant in the two major political parties, particularly the problems of big business bribing state legislators and through them controlling the U.S. Senate. Added to this mix was the closing of the American frontier, the rapid influx of millions of immigrants from new regions of Europe, and the surging growth of American cities. In short, tremendous economic and cultural change challenged the nation in a way that broadened the appeal of new ideas and social philosophies.

      Postbellum America entered what Mark Twain called the “Gilded Age.”^[8] As narrated by many historians, this was the era of growth in industry, expansion of railroads, and concentration of wealth in the hands of the few and mighty. Americans were greedy, life was sordid, and politics was the province of corrupt dealmakers. This story of sharp relief between the rich and poor, embraced by Progressive reformers, carried great political weight. Historian Michael McGerr contrasts the lives of the wealthy with the uncertain circumstances of the poor, writing:

      Wealthy capitalists, manufacturers, merchants, landowners, executives, professionals, and their families made up not “ten,” but only 1 or 2 percent of the population. These were the people who owned the majority of the nation’s resources and expected to make the majority of its key decisions. . . . Their most visible and powerful members were the two hundred or so families worth at least $20 million, fortunes with few parallels in history.^[9]

      Juxtaposed against such wealth and power was the plight of the hardworking poor: “All of them, even the best-paid skilled workers, lived circumscribed, vulnerable lives, constrained by low pay СКАЧАТЬ