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… is from page 7 of Thomas Leonard’s 2016 book, Illiberal Reformers [2] (footnote deleted):
The longstanding emphasis on politics and reform professionals was itself a progressive legacy. The earlier accounts of Progressivism, written by such historians as Benjamin Parke DeWitt, were self-portraits. They painted ordinary people into the background as passive victims of the rough winds of economic change. The progressives filled the foreground, a vanguard of selfless scholars and activists leading the People – if not any recognizable people – in a crusade against wealth and privilege.
Every wannabe savior – whether, in America, a Republican Führer or a Democratic czarina – needs victims who need saving [3]. What is especially discouraging is the number of people who, scared by the phantasms that these saviors insist loom as imminent dangers, cravenly bleat for such saving.