the clearest formulation is from herbert crowley. he allows that americans have an almost religious faith this their country. the traditional american confidence and individual freedom has resulted in a morally and socially undesirable distribution of wealth. the time has come to inject the ghosts and devote ourselves to a dominant and constructive national purpose. centered on a new theory of the state. in which expert government can regulate the economy to achieve progressive outcome. by becoming responsible for the subordination of the individual to that purpose, crowley writes, the american state will, in effect, be making itself responsible for a morally and socially desirable distribution of wealth. so teddy roosevelt is looking for a new and more comprehensive progressive philosophy. he finds it in crowley's book. somewhere out in the safaris of africa when he's reading it and gobbling it up. the material progress and prosperity of a nation are desirable chiefly so far as they lead to the moral and material welfare of all good

born attacked intellectuals like john dewey and herbert crowley, the godfather of new nationalism. he attacked them as being immersed in what he called pragmatic dispensation. that made them, he said, immensely ready for the executive order, but pitifully unprepared for the intellectual interpretation or idealistic focus. now, had he been around in 2009, born might have flagged a similar criticism against president obama's dogged but rhetorically empty leadership in the fight over national health reform. a battle he rightfully pointed out began with the progressive party campaign. he tended in his fight for health care reform, the president tended to spew exalted moral principles. for example, the claim of t.r. that health care was a human right, not a privilege, or dubious promises of greater efficiency and cost cutting. the highest rhetorical and programatic aspiration of the health care fight was the public option. you couldn't come up with a worse term, it seemed to me. my colleague, jacob hacker, came up with that term. it testifies, i think, to contemporary progressive rhetor