Thomas addressed a crowd on Wednesday at the University of Texas at Austin, where he discussed the semiquincentennial on July 4, in a roughly 50-minute speech. He warned that it is “unclear” if the founding principles of limited government and individual rights will endure, pointing to the rise of progressivism, which began during Woodrow Wilson’s presidency in the 1910s.
“Since Wilson’s presidency, progressivism has made many inroads into our system of government and our way of life,” Thomas said. “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.”
Thomas said that, with the exception of “pro-slavery reactionaries on the eve of the Civil War,” progressivism was the first major political movement in the U.S. to oppose the country’s founding principles. He said that the movement “strove to undo the declaration’s commitment to equality
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