The decline and revival of laissez faire in the American mind: An outline of the odyssey of progressivism in law, economics, and political philosophy

The Progressive Era ushered in a new ideology of government. The minimal "night watchman" government of laissez faire was replaced by an expansive view of the regulatory state. Progressivism also led to a bold new historiography of American constitutional and economic history, as typified by Charles Beard and Vernon Parrington, and later by Harold Underwood Faulkner, Sidney Fine, Henry Steele Commager, and others. Even though successive waves of revisionism that have diminished the clarity and coherence of Progressivism and the Progressive Era, many of the basic themes of early Progressive historiography have endured.;This dissertation surveys the implications of the contemporary ferment over the legacy of Progressive ideology, and how the Progressive argument about the economy, law, and the nature of the American Founding is being adapted to meet this new challenge.;Recent scholarship in disciplines outside of history are suggesting new vistas for revisionism of the Progressive Era and Progressive ideology. On the broadest level, the ideology of laissez faire is making a robust comeback, and this revival is calling into question the contemporary remnants of the Progressive basis for government regulation. On the historical level, free market ideology and certain offshoots such as "public choice" theory are putting the events of the Progressive Era in a new light, offering partial confirmation for the controversial thesis of Gabriel Kolko's The Triumph of Conservatism. Legal scholars have also taken a closer look at the how the idea of the "living" Constitution unfolded in the Progressive Era, and have suggested deficiencies in previously accepted historical themes.