The Last Progressive

 

Historian Andrew Bacevich sees Joe Biden as a progressive successor to Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and Lydon Johnson. He also sees Biden as the president who will preside over the final vestige of America's progressive century.

Joe Biden may well be fated to bring down the curtain on progressivism as a force in national politics. With American conservatism substantively defunct, Donald Trump having drained it of any lingering pretense of principle, the stage behind that curtain will then be left bare. That a mediocre Democratic senator from West Virginia and an even more obscure one from Arizona will have collaborated in sucking the last vestiges of substance from our political system should rank as one of the larger ironies of our age.

Progressivism Runs Out of Gas

The dizzying pace of contemporary history finds many Americans out of breath, angry, disgusted, or verging on despair. The magnitude of the catastrophe that befell the United States in Afghanistan and the staggering toll Americans have endured throughout the Covid pandemic await an honest examination. So, too, does last January’s assault on the Capitol, which exposed the fragility of the Constitutional order in a new way. Meanwhile, with the Lord of Mar-a-Lago and his lieutenants continuing to conspire, the possibility of the United States falling into a potentially terminal tailspin can hardly be excluded. So what is to be done?

Don’t look to the Biden White House for answers to that question. Depending on what news network you choose to watch, you’ll hear partisans describing the progressive tradition as either imperiling the Republic or offering the prospect of salvation. Neither judgment is correct. It’s more accurate to say that progressivism is now increasingly beside the point.

...To understand why this might be the case, you have to begin by acknowledging the exhaustion of the reformist heritage to which Biden adheres. That tradition emerged from an identifiable historical context, simultaneously deriving from and expressing an identifiable cultural consensus. True, in the heyday of progressivism, the voices heard tended to be mostly white and mostly male. Yet the narrow basis of American democratic practice in that era made agreement on certain fundamentals possible. However flawed and subject to recurring challenge, the resulting consensus persisted through the twentieth century, imparting not only a measure of predictability but also a modicum of cohesion to American politics.

...Here we come to the beating heart of contemporary American politics. As that system evolved toward its mature state — a mammoth enterprise that annually burns through trillions of dollars — uninhibited consumption and convenience, along with unbridled mobility came to define what citizens expected it to deliver. Hence, the outrage when store shelves are even momentarily empty and gas prices temporarily shoot up.

At root, the ultimate purpose of American politics in the modern era, seldom acknowledged but universally understood, has been to provide for more and better, quicker and easier, and faster and further. The very pursuit proved endless — the American political lexicon in those years did not include the word enough — and therefore, in the end, proved inherently disruptive.

...What the American people really care about is not getting and going but a conception of freedom worth fighting for. As my neighbors in nearby New Hampshire like to put it, “Live Free or Die.”

...Along with this love of freedom, what distinguishes Americans is their pronounced religiosity. “In God,” Americans insist, “We Trust.” A profound love of freedom and a conviction that the American experiment expresses the workings of divine (implicitly Christian) providence have ostensibly elevated the United States above other nations. Together, they imbued American crassness with a visible sheen of idealism.

Of course, in the century of George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden, neither of these claims withstand even casual scrutiny. In the present United States, freedom has become indistinguishable from the casting off of constraints. If advancing the cause of freedom entails sacrifice, citizens spare themselves the slightest inconvenience by hiring out fighting to specialists known collectively as “the troops.”

As for God, an increasingly secular society consigns him to the margins of public life. To an extent that a century ago would have been unfathomable, religion has become more or less a matter of personal taste, of no more significance than one’s preferences for movies or cuisine.

Who Knew? Well, there was this fella, a guy named Jimmy.

With the nation mired in what he termed a “crisis of confidence,” Carter declared that “we are at a turning point in our history,” obliged to choose between one of “two paths.” One path, he said, pointed toward “a mistaken idea of freedom” centered on “constant conflict between narrow interests ending in chaos and immobility.” The other, based on “common purpose and the restoration of American values,” pointed toward what he called “true freedom.”

No one has ever accused the Georgia peanut-farmer-turned-politician of being a deep thinker, so Carter was vague on what actually constituted true freedom. But his instincts were sound and his analysis prescient. Indeed, others since have rounded out his critique, even if with little more success than Carter had in persuading Americans to contemplate the true meaning of freedom more than four decades ago.

...The Biden version of progressivism may ameliorate, but it will never resolve a multi-dimensional crisis fed by soulless materialism, a deepening climate emergency, a perverse addiction to dehumanizing technology, and a bizarre conviction that military power, amassed and endlessly employed, holds the key to stemming the tide of national decline.

With the passage of time, Carter’s challenge to define true freedom has become more urgent. Time is short and global disaster looming. Yet arriving at a clearer understanding of what true freedom should entail will require more than simmering. To repurpose a phrase from an earlier era, “burn, baby, burn” may be the order of the day. At least metaphorically, identifying an antidote to our own malaise might begin not with reducing the heat, but turning it up.