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… is from page 137 of Richard Epstein’s insight-filled 2006 book, How Progressives Rewrote the Constitution [2]:
[Progressives of the 1930s] were determined that their vision of the managed economy should take precedence in all areas of life. Although they purported to have great sophistication on economic and social matters, their understanding of those matters was primitive, and their disdain for the evident signs of social improvement colored their vision of the success of the older order…. The Progressives and their modern defenders have to live with the stark truth that the noblest innovations of the Progressive Era were its greatest failures.
DBx: Yes – as any careful student of American history must conclude. Yet the fantasy that society in general, and the economy specifically, can be consciously engineered through coercion to produce outcomes fancied by Progressives lives on. Nothing can destroy this belief in miracles. Not reason. Not facts. Nothing. This belief is an article of faith, nothing more or less.
Making matters worse is this sorry reality: Progressives today are increasingly being joined by conservatives in their mad belief in the miraculous powers of coercion to improve economic outcomes.