I’m happy to see that disenchantment with Woodrow Wilson – the most bizarre candidate for the pantheon of great American presidents – is reaching a wider audience on the American Right. But this nascent critique of Wilsonian progressivism seems to have missed one of his worst legacies. Namely, Wilson’s blatant disregard for civil liberties (from Wikipedia – emphasis mine):

On the home front in 1917, he began the United States’ first draft since the US civil war, raised billions in war funding through Liberty Bonds, set up the War Industries Board, promoted labor union growth, supervised agriculture and food production through the Lever Act, took over control of the railroads, enacted the first federal drug prohibition, and suppressed anti-war movements.

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To counter opposition to the war at home, Wilson pushed the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918 through Congress to suppress anti-British, pro-German, or anti-war opinions. He welcomed socialists who supported the war and pushed for deportation of foreign-born radicals.^[86] Citing the Espionage Act, the U.S. Post Office refused to carry any written materials that could be deemed critical of the U. S. war effort. Some sixty newspapers were deprived of their second-class mailing rights.^[87]

Wilson is usually associated with a stirring ideological defense of democratic self-determination. In practice, this amounted to little more than crude ethnic partitioning, but more importantly, Wilson’s respect for the forms of Republican governance was severely lacking.

Perhaps Wilson’s enthusiasm for curtailing civil liberties was entirely unrelated to his progressive politics. But it’s hard not to see the same impulses that animated Wilson’s domestic agenda – a desire for control, rank disregard for individual liberty, confidence that the messy business of civil society can be micromanaged from Washington – behind his horrific record on civil liberties.

So my question for newly-converted Wilson-phobes is simple: If you’re concerned about government overreach, why restrict your criticism his domestic legacy? Why do torture, indefinite detainment, and the PATRIOT ACT get a free pass? Compared to his draconian wartime crackdown, many aspects of Wilson’s progressive agenda look downright benign, or even admirable, in retrospect. Wilson’s blatant disregard for civil liberties, on the other hand, remains one of the most enduring – and bipartisan – legacies in contemporary American politics.

Andrew Sullivan has this map posted at the Dish today, which he found via Open Left.  What I take from Open Left’s analysis is that by and large white men are not all that progressive.  Why this should be “discouraging” to Sullivan is beyond me, unless we’re conflating a lack of progressiveness with out and out racism.  Which I think would be a mistake.  The second map shows the non-white-male voters who picked Obama.

I also wonder if Yglesias is all that correct with this assessment:

I would say that another message is that progressive politics is badly disadvantaged by a situation in which the overwhelming majorities of political leaders and prominent media figures are white men. There are plenty of white men with progressive views, but in general the majority of white men are not progressive and the majority of progressives are not white men.

I think a lot of minority voters aren’t so much “progressive” as they are in favor of more direct government assistance, something Democrats have promised to do better than Republicans.  A lot of minorities and union members also happen to be staunch social conservatives.  Support for things like gay marriage is very low among black and Hispanic populations.  Union members and minorities just have populist tendencies when it comes to economics. [Read more →]

I know this article on race and progressive cities has taken a lot of criticism, but its central observation – that liberal policies and homogeneous cities are closely correlated – seems pretty intuitive. Progressives frequently argue that American hostility to redistribution stems from lingering racial anxiety. Conservatives are less eager to blame our welfare policies on straightforward racism, but many will argue that Scandinavian-style social democracy won’t work in the United States because we lack similar levels of cultural homogeneity. Either way, there seems to be a universal consensus that people from similar backgrounds are more amenable to redistributive policies.

So is it really surprising that small, predominantly white cities like Portland or Denver are more liberal than their larger, ethnically diverse counterparts? Or does this observation confirm something we’ve already suspected? It makes intuitive sense that progressive policies like zoning restrictions or environmental regulations rest on some sort of shared consensus about what constitutes “the good life.” And cities like Portland are not only more homogeneous than New York or DC or Cleveland; their reputation as liberal havens also attracts a greater number of people predisposed to support progressive policies. Voluntary self-segregation is a depressing prospect, but I don’t think that the rise of The Progressive White City should shock anyone.

Victor Davis Hanson is visiting Europe. More precisely, Italy and Greece. Several profound insights into the nature of continental society follow:

After concluding another 16 days in Europe. I am again reminded how different their form of socialism  is, and yet how closely it resembles the model that Obama seeks for America. The vast majority of citizens lives in apartments, even in smaller towns and villages. Cars are tiny. Prices are higher than in the states; income is lower (The government taxes you to pay for things like “free” college, so you won’t have much to spend on antisocial things like your Wal-Mart plastic Christmas Tree or your second K-Mart plasma TV.)

Mass transit is frequent and cheap,  but often crowded and occasionally unpleasant. The stifled desire to acquire something—large house, car, deposit account—is of course not quite destroyed by socialism, but rather is channeled into a sort of cynicism and anger, often leading to a hedonism of few children, late and long meals, and disco hours until the early morning. The number of Gucci like stores selling overpriced label junk like 200 Euro eye-glass frames and 1000 Euro leather bags to socialists is quite amazing.

Clearly, this reflects Hanson’s experience in Greece and Italy, not “Europe.” And while Hanson’s observations are undoubtedly filtered through his own ideological lens, a lot of what he says rings true: unlike their Northern counterparts, Greece and Italy have always been on continent’s political and economic periphery. Not too long ago, Athens was being run by a military junta. Silvio Berlusconi’s checkered career is proof enough of Italy’s retrograde political culture. Taking either country as emblematic of Europe would be like using Mississippi as a prime example of the American economic and social model. Which is to say, other factors are at work here.

Cherry-picking favorable examples is a time-honored political tactic, which is why the Left is always talking about the dynamism of the Scandinavian economies – Nokia! Erickson! – or the fact that Denmark regularly tops Freedom House’s economic rankings. The bog-standard conservative rejoinder – something I happen to agree with – is that the political outcomes of small, culturally homogeneous European countries don’t necessarily track with the United States’ experience. It also follows that the defects of Greece and Italy aren’t much of a roadmap for liberalism in the Age of Obama.

Denmark and Finland do not vindicate progressive policy any more than Greece and Italy prove its ruinous consequences. The United States is a different country, and the impact of our policy choices tend to differ dramatically from the experience of even our closest political cousins. Hanson’s insights into the nature of “European” society notwithstanding, it would be better for all of us if we shied away from facile country-to-country comparisons.