Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas used a speech at the University of Texas at Austin School of Law on Thursday to contend that progressivism has increasingly conflicted with the principles of the Declaration of Independence, telling students that the movement cannot permanently coexist with the founding ideals of natural rights and limited government.
Thomas, 77, was speaking at the University of Texas at Austin School of Law, commemorating the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. The justice, who was appointed by Republican President George H.W. Bush in 1991, is the longest-serving current member of the Supreme Court and the second-longest-serving justice in the Court’s history.
During the address, Thomas traced the rise of progressivism in the American mainstream to the beginning of the 20th century and identified President Woodrow Wilson as its most prominent advocate.
Thomas said progressivism had “made many inroads into our system of government and our way of life” since Wilson’s presidency and asserted that it stood in opposition to the Declaration.
“It has coexisted uneasily with the principles of the Declaration because it is opposed to those principles,” Thomas stated. “It is not possible for the two to coexist forever.”
Thomas maintained that Wilson and other progressive thinkers believed that “America needed to leave behind the principles of the founding and catch up with the more advanced and sophisticated system of relatively unimpeded state power, nearly perfect, perfected.”
“Progressivism seeks to replace the basic premises of the Declaration of Independence and hence our form of government,” Thomas explained. “It holds that our rights and our dignities come not from God, but from government.”
Quoting Coolidge, Thomas said: “If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with unalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final.”
Thomas argued that Wilson’s distrust of popular government reflected his preference for European-style systems of centralized state power. According to Thomas, Wilson described Americans as “selfish, ignorant, timid, stubborn and foolish,” complained that they did “too much by vote and too little by expert rule,” and praised Germany because its people were “docile and acquiescent.”
Thomas contended that those ideas produced disastrous consequences in the 20th century. “The century of progressivism did not go well,” Thomas said. “The European system that Wilson and the progressives scolded Americans for not adopting, which he called nearly perfect, led to the governments that caused the most awful century that the world has ever seen.” Thomas pointed to the regimes of Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and Mao Zedong, saying they were intertwined with the rise of progressivism and opposed to natural rights.
Thomas linked progressivism to Supreme Court decisions such as Plessy v. Ferguson and Buck v. Bell. He argued that Wilson’s claim that natural rights must give way to historical progress helped justify segregation in Plessy. Thomas also observed that progressives embraced eugenics and believed Darwinian science had shown the superiority and inferiority of different races, leading Wilson to resegregate the federal workforce and later contributing to sterilization programs upheld by the Court in Buck v. Bell.
Near the end of the speech, Thomas remarked, “In my view, we must find in ourselves that same level of courage that the signers of the Declaration have so that we can do for our future what they did for theirs.”
Thomas stated that people would face moments that require courage, including speaking up in class, confronting antisemitism, standing up for religion when it is mocked, refusing moral compromises, and running for a local school board.
“I think if we don’t stand up and take ownership of our country, and take responsibility for it, we are slowly letting others control how we think and what we think,” he told the audience.
Thomas concluded by encouraging Americans to celebrate the Declaration “by standing up for it, by defending it, and by recommitting yourselves to living up to its ideals.”
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