Ian Sykes ‘28
Opinions Editor
When our nation’s founders wrote America’s founding documents, they envisioned a free country—free from repression, government overreach, lawlessness, unaccountable representation, and most importantly, injustice. Today, our country is far from free from these diseases, and there is no doubt in my mind that the Founders are rolling in their graves. So hear me out: if they lived today, the founding fathers would be progressive. They’d take a stand against 3 contemporary ailments of our modern late-stage capitalistic, pseudo-democratic nation: wealth inequality, needless war, and uncontrolled executive power / unrepresentative government. Using the platform of the Democratic Socialists of America, one of our nation’s largest progressive organizations, as a key example, it will be clear that in order to preserve the American dream, America must embrace progressivism.
Starting with wealth inequality, while our founding fathers famously enshrined respect for private property throughout many components of their documents, some of them also aptly recognized the perilous ramifications to unchecked wealth inequality. James Madison, a key craftsman of our Constitution, warned that inequality in property ownership could threaten democracy by means of an “oligarchy founded on corruption”—with the word “oligarchy” being one which Joe Biden warned us about only a few years ago. They did clearly believe that free enterprise was to be the center of American society, but there is absolutely no way that our Founders could’ve accounted for the economic realities of today—of corporations that destroy our liberty by binding us to wages and encumbering our lives to work for someone else at our expense, undermining our liberty in the process. In their time, there was no such thing as a monopoly, nor was there the Citizens United court decision, which in our time allows corporations to uncontrollably bankroll elections and subvert our political liberty. They founded their country as a rebellion against an unaccountable government that unduly exploits the people; in their time it was taxation without representation, and in our time it is tax cuts for the rich that show just how captured our government is. Our government’s consistent, undue bias against labor and the worker and in favor of corporations makes the democracy that they fought for seem immaterial, and since our government is increasingly unresponsive to the people yet staunchly dedicated to furthering private interests, preserving the American dream of freedom and prosperity means giving power back to the people, and the progressive answer to wealth inequality (and its resulting political inequality) is simple: tax the rich.
The second issue, needless war, ails our nation currently in the form of Trump’s war in Iran. Put simply, our Constitution clearly lays out that only Congress has the power to declare war, and Trump’s unilateral declaration of war on Iran, a country who posed to us no imminent threat which would justify his use of his commander-in-chief powers to repel, is unconstitutional. The prospect of Trump bothering to follow the War Powers Resolution’ deadline of May 1 to “affirm” this war in Congress is doubtful, given his lack of respect for institutions that check his power, and after all, if he wanted Congress’ approval at all, he would have consulted with them to begin with. In this case, the American dream has yet again been lost as our interests of not going to war in Iran have been blatantly disrespected, and the vision of a future of our own making has been lost. George Washington’s reminder that “overgrown military establishments are under any form of government inauspicious to liberty, and are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty,” has been lost on our government, and progressivism’s answer to end pointless wars and invest more in the people is a clear solution to reclaim power from those who have traded our power for bloodshed.
As for uncontrolled executive power, our government’s very structure reflects a clear animosity towards what exists now: an executive that wrongly embraces “unitary executive theory,” or in other words, working around checks and balances. When considering John Adams’ remarks that “power must never be trusted without a check,” Madison’s warnings of the potential of factions to be “[adversarial] to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community,” and Thomas Jefferson’s argument that transplanting the interests of powers meant to be checks into one branch of government is despotism, our government today appears to be that very despotism, and in dire need of pro-democracy reforms. The founding fathers, if they were to look at parties today, would most certainly see their existences to be ones of partisan grift, and as factions who fail to represent the people. A sizable number of Americans believe that both mainstream parties don’t represent them and have also identified as independent for that reason. As such, they have every reason to believe that given the overwhelming influence of money in our current government which consistently usurps the people’s interests and makes government all but useless in making people feel heard. Progressive solutions for this problem are vast, including proportional representation in elections, strengthening the power of labor so that it can check moneyed interests in politics, and most of all, overturning Citizens United. By many accounts, the U.S.’ democracy is on an unhealthy decline, and this when coupled with Trump and Congress’ record-low approval ratings alike show that American democracy is in desperate need of revitalization and reform. It can, and must, be done, and with progressivism we can reclaim democracy for the people, and away from corporations.
Today, it is abundantly clear that the American dream is no longer attainable by the people, nor does our government help us find it. Progressive initiatives pledge to restore it. Progressivism, as I perceive it, will re-establish the American dream and preserve what it meant centuries ago: a feasible and prosperous future for every American, not just a select, unaccountable few. I believe that progressivism is possible, and with a mass embrace of its best elements can the American dream be reclaimed from the death grip of the wealthy into the hands of everyday Americans.
Progressivism is the American dream. May we find it again.
Featured image courtesy of ABC News
Copy Edited by Sophia Mariani ‘26
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