Thomas' 'historically illiterate' speech gets history 'wildly inaccurate': scholar

When U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall announced his retirement in 1991 and President George H.W. Bush nominated Clarence Thomas, he wanted the seat to be held by another Black justice. Marshall was an historic figure: Appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1967, he was the first Black justice in the High Court's history.

But Thomas, now 77, was a major departure from Marshall in terms of judicial philosophy. While Marshall (who passed away in 1993) was decidedly liberal, Thomas is a far-right social conservative. And over the years, he had strong disagreements with not only the late liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but also, with retired libertarian/conservative Justice Anthony Kennedy.

Thomas looked back on U.S. history during a Wednesday night, April 15 speech at the University of Texas, Austin Law School, arguing that progressive politics are incompatible with the U.S. Declaration of Independence. But The New Republic's Matt Ford, in an article published on April 17, argues that Thomas got history wrong in multiple ways.

Thomas told attendees, "As we meet today, it is unclear whether these principles will endure. At the beginning of the 20th Century, a new set of first principles of government was introduced into the American mainstream. The proponents of this new set of first principles, most prominently among them the 28th president, Woodrow Wilson, called it progressivism. Since Wilson's presidency, progressivism has made many inroads in our system of government and our way of life. It has coexisted uneasily with the principles of the Declaration. Because it is opposed to those principles, it is not possible for the two to coexist forever."

But according to Ford, Thomas' take on U.S. history is wildly inaccurate.

"Thomas is correct that progressivism was introduced around the turn of the 20th Century, that Woodrow Wilson was the 28th president, and that Wilson was a progressive," Ford explains. "The historical accuracy ends there. Presenting Wilson as the inventor of progressivism is historically illiterate, akin to saying that Joseph Stalin invented communism or that Ronald Reagan invented conservatism. In reality, the progressive era emerged in the 1890s from the corruption and excesses of the Gilded Age."

Ford continues, "A broad range of activists, journalists, legislators, and judges challenged the societal ills that had emerged from the nation's rapid industrialization…. I'm sure that Wilson would have liked to claim credit for inventing the progressive movement, but he was one figure in a much larger social and political ecosystem. Republicans and Democrats alike both supported the movement and its reforms, and the first president to embrace it was actually Theodore Roosevelt."

Ford argues that for Thomas, it is "rhetorically advantageous to make" Wilson "the standard-bearer of progressivism" because he "was perhaps the most racist person to hold the presidency between Andrew Johnson and Donald Trump."

"It allows certain conservative intellectuals to adopt the guise of anti-racism while simultaneously opposing the civil rights laws passed decades after Wilson died," Ford notes. "I bring all of this up not to defend Wilson himself, but to point out the importance of getting history correct."

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