From the historic campus of Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan,

where the good, the true, and the beautiful are taught, nurtured, and honored,

this is the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour, bringing the activity and education of the college to listeners across the country.

What Wilson noticed was that while it's true we have this divided government, that in fact there's a central focus, and it's the presidency.

And the president can use his popularity to move all of these kind of divided parts of the government

in a single direction. This is your host, Scott Bertram, and that's Dr. Ronald Pistrito, our first

guest on today's program. Dr. Pestrito is dean of the graduate school, professor of politics, and

chair in the American Constitution at Hillsdale College.

He's also the author of a brand new book, America Transformed the Rise and Legacy of American Progressivism.

Ronald, thanks for joining us.

Thanks for having me.

People may look at progressivism when they hear the word progressive and think of it as just

an adjustment, a strain of political thought.

Why do you make the argument that it is so much more than that?

Yeah, it's a good question because, of course, we know that any good government has to be

able to adjust to changing circumstances, and certainly the American founders believed that. They didn't

labor under the misimpression that, you know, the exact means and mechanisms of government that

they had designed back in the 1780s would somehow be the only ones that would ever be

appropriate. And in fact, they themselves make an argument about that, you know, in the Federalist

papers and elsewhere, they talk about the fact that the science of politics had received

great improvement since previous attempts and that that's why their republic was going to

be so much better.

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