The Great American Story: The Progressive Era
The Hillsdale College Online Courses Podcast
Hillsdale College
4.6 • 621 Ratings
🗓️ 21 May 2026
⏱️ 53 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this episode of The Hillsdale College Online Courses Podcast, Jeremiah and Juan discuss the roots of the Progressive movement before introducing Wilfred McClay.
Americans have overcome many challenges throughout our history, including the American Revolution, the Civil War, the Great Depression, two World Wars, and the Cold War. Studying the great stories from our past inspires us to preserve the blessings of liberty in our day. Now you can study these stories with Hillsdale College.
Hillsdale’s free online course, “The Great American Story: A Land of Hope,” explores the history of America as a land of hope founded on high principles. In presenting the great triumphs and achievements of our nation’s past, as well as the shortcomings and failures, it offers a broad and unbiased study of the kind essential to the cultivation of intelligent patriotism.
The progressives attempted to address the challenges posed by modern American life through a series of institutional changes that conflicted with the founders’ understanding of constitutional government.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Hillsdale College Online Courses podcast. |
| 0:11.6 | I'm Jeremiah Regan. |
| 0:13.0 | And I'm Juan Davalos. |
| 0:13.9 | We're back with The Great American Story, A Land of Hope. |
| 0:16.6 | We're going to tackle lectures 14 and 15 today in which Dr. McLeigh covers the progressive era, which is a pivotal turning point in American political history. |
| 0:24.6 | That's right. We study the progressive era a lot here at Hillsdale because it is a time when America really departed from the founding principles. |
| 0:34.1 | The progressives very explicitly reject, well, you know, they claim that they are following the evolution of the principles. The progressives very explicitly reject, well, you know, they claim that they are |
| 0:38.6 | following the evolution of the principles of the founding, but they're really rejecting them. |
| 0:44.1 | Well, and the founders wouldn't agree that there's an evolution in the principles. They would |
| 0:47.4 | say sometimes the way you enact the principles, sometimes they play out changes based on |
| 0:51.7 | circumstances, but the principles remain the same, especially the principle of consent that's necessary for rule by the people. The progressives say |
| 0:58.5 | that people can't consent to modern society because it's too technologically advanced, too |
| 1:03.5 | complicated, and therefore we need experts to set the order of life for the regular people. |
| 1:08.9 | Right. The idea that a congressman is going to be able to understand the nuances of economic |
| 1:15.4 | policy and all the technology that is developing. Foreign affairs. That's right. That's going to be |
| 1:21.4 | impossible. So you need a new class of experts that are going to be part of agencies and they're going |
| 1:27.4 | to rule by science. |
| 1:29.1 | Right. They won't be elected. You won't even know their names. You don't need to know their names |
| 1:32.6 | because they will be impartial, as Juan said, ruled by science, not by their passions. We've solved |
| 1:37.7 | that problem, claim the progressives. And society will become much more orderly, efficient, |
| 1:42.6 | and fair. And the two main advocates that we see, and Dr. McLeigh, highlights these two gentlemen are |
| 1:47.8 | Deere Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. |
... |
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