Progressives and Eugenics: The Case of Justice Brandeis
18th December 2016
In his superb new book Illiberal Reformers: Race, Eugenics, and American Economics in the Progressive Era, Thomas C. Leonard of Princeton University tells the story of the “progressive scholars and activists who led the Progressive Era crusade to dismantle laissez-faire, remaking American life with a newly created instrument of reform, the administrative state.” It’s a fascinating and frequently depressing story. As Leonard documents, while the progressives did introduce a number of helpful, legitimate reforms, they also threw their weigh behind some of the most destructive government policies of the era, from race-based restrictions on immigration (justified in the name of protecting U.S. workers from degrading competition) to the South’s racist Jim Crow regime (justified on the grounds that state officials should have broad leeway to control economic affairs). The progressives were “so convinced of the righteousness of their crusade to redeem America,” Leonard observes, “that they rarely considered the unintended consequences of ambitious but untried reforms.” I would also add that the progressives didn’t just bestow vast new authority on the government, they also undermined many traditional checks on government power, such as judicial review. It was a foolproof recipe for the state-sanctioned abuses that followed.
‘Progressives’ have a lot of skeletons in their closets.