When I was in high school, my American history teacher had a hard time convincing us kids that Prohibition was a consistent part of Progressivism.

We thought of ourselves as young progressives, and saw Prohibition as the pinnacle of conservatism.

(Image our hypothetical horror had we been told the history of the Progressive KKK or the connection between American Progressivism and the American eugenics movement!)

What we found easy to accept was the teacher’s claim that the Progressive Era ended with World War I. We Quaker-school lefties thought of war as the quintessential right-wing foreign policy (which, of course, it was in the Cold War era). This is why I find Murray Rothbard’s “World War I as Fulfillment: Power and the Intellectuals” so important. (”Fulfillment” here means “fulfillment of the Progressive agenda”).

It must be WWI weekend among the libertarians, because FEE’s lead piece right now is Sheldon Richman’s “Illiberal Means, Illiberal Ends,” about Randolph Bourne (”War is the health of the State!”) and Herbert Croly, editor of The New Republic and advocate of “new liberalism’s” new embrace of America’s new militarism. You can read all about Croly in Rothbard’s article, including this not-to-be-missed footnote:

[56] In January 1927, Croly wrote a New Republic editorial, “An Apology for Fascism,” endorsing an accompanying article, “Fascism for the Italians,” written by the distinguished philosopher Horace M. Kallen, a disciple of John Dewey and an exponent of progressive pragmatism. Kallen praised Mussolini for his pragmatic approach, and in particular for the élan vital that Mussolini had infused into Italian life. True, Professor Kallen conceded, fascism is coercive, but surely this is only a temporary expedient. Noting fascism’s excellent achievement in economics, education, and administrative reform, Kallen added that “in this respect the Fascist revolution is not unlike the Communist revolution. Each is the application by force …of an ideology to a condition. Each should have the freest opportunity once it has made a start….” The accompanying New Republic editorial endorsed Kallen’s thesis and added that “alien critics should beware of outlawing a political experiment which aroused in a whole nation an increased moral energy and dignified its activities by subordinating them to a deeply felt common purpose.” New Republic 49 (January 12, 1927), pp. 207–213. Cited in John Patrick Diggins, “Mussolini’s Italy: The View from America,” PhD diss., University of Southern California, 1964, pp. 214–217.