Date
8-29-2025
Department
College of Arts and Sciences
Degree
Doctor of Philosophy in History (PhD)
Chair
Sean Turchin
Keywords
Progressivism, Progressive Era, Declaration of Independence, Originalism, Natural Law, Authority, Legitimacy
Disciplines
History
Recommended Citation
Miles, Spencer D., "Hostis Humani Generis: The American Aeneid and the Nature of Progressivism" (2025). Doctoral Dissertations and Projects. 7367.
https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/doctoral/7367
Abstract
What is rational need never be rationalized; what is just, is not justified. By means of ever more ‘exceptions,’ ‘explanations,’ and ‘emergencies,’ American liberty – the freedom of her citizens – has become merely a fiction to rationalize a covert technicist oligarchy. The power structures of American government have sought out and contrived ever more justifications with only one end: to increase their own power far beyond any objective standard of limited government. The amalgamation of over a century of excuses has fundamentally revoked the possibility of the consent of the governed. American civilization is not free because American citizens cannot consent to their government. The Declaration of Independence is applied Lockean thought and declares the legitimacy of a course of action based not only on the manifest nature of rights, but also on the fundamental principle of authority produced by those rights: the consent of the governed. This work is a socio-intellectual comparative analysis of American worldviews pivoting about the Progressive Era, researched and analyzed from a universal perspective. The Progressive Era, as a broadly expanded metric, deliberately rejected the concepts of truth and principle, and therefore the entire basis of the Declaration. The result is that analysis of current society against the mountain of documentation from the Founding leaves only one possible conclusion: Americans have lost their taste for freedom. The question is “how did a people celebrated for their heritage of liberty lose their taste for freedom?” Part I: “The Design” examined the Founding as a means of deriving source-driven principles which are then compared to the dramatic turn of events between roughly 1880 and 1945. Part II: “The American Aeneid” narrates the growth of the ‘social gospel’ (“The Heresy of Perfectibility”), the rule of the ‘expert class’ (“Auto-Apotheosis”), and the total departure of American civilization from anything remotely resembling the founding (“Freedom from Fear, Fear of Freedom”). The Epilogue, “By Their Fruits” sought to make the contrast plain. Any compromise is total compromise; there are no ‘half’ slaves. The Progressive seeks only to impose his will, and by this he makes himself hostis humani generis. This is how a Republic dies.
