The Promise of American Life
The 1909 book that gave American progressivism its argument: that Jeffersonian ends now required Hamiltonian means.
Croly argued in 1909 that the Jeffersonian faith in small government could no longer deliver the Jeffersonian promise, and that democratic ends now required Hamiltonian means, meaning an active state. The book gave American progressivism its intellectual charter, shaped Theodore Roosevelt’s New Nationalism, and led to the founding of The New Republic.
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Robert Reich
The only way they are going to have more freedom is if government, as Croly envisioned, counterbalances the enormous power of the large corporations and Wall Street. But in order to do so, government has to be more responsive to average people. This, of course, gets us back to the points I was making a moment ago. We have got to have a democracy that is not corrupted by great wealth and power.
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