Matt,
Had a reply typed out but IE crashed. Such is life. Anyway, point being that most of the items you mention fall under what may have been called “progressivism” in its day, but today’s “progressives” aren’t advocating things that are nearly as “commonsensical” as what ended up passing, e.g. where is the “progressive” equivalent of food safety today? Giving away condoms in public schools to promote safe sex? I think that’s a bit more controversial than telling meat packers that they can only use 5% rat anus in their hot dog mixture, don’t you?
As for healthcare being the “commonsensical” platform of today’s “progressive”, I disagree. I was just speaking to someone from
Buffalo, NY who told me that the hospitals up there are filled with Canadians trying to escape rationed care. Even the Canadian Supreme Court has found issue with their system and its contravention of human rights laws, because of the long waiting times, which are inevitable under a publicly financed system.
Furthermore, the legacy of the New Deal is mild almost entirely because Franklin Roosevelt was unable to pack the Supreme Court with extra justices when his early proposals were found unconstitutional. The US would be much further down the road of a command economy had that happened, so portraying the New Deal era as one of enlightened moderation doesn’t fit the facts of what the architects of the New Deal wanted to accomplish.
