AUSTIN, Texas–The 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence is at hand.

America needs history-rooted expositions of founding ideas to celebrate this semiquincentennial. It’s also called the bisesquicentennial, sestercentennial, or quarter millennium.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has ably provided such an exposition.

You, faithful reader of this column, will recall the principle that in America, government has only those powers that We the People surrendered to government in the first place.

This is the default setting. It’s like the default settings on your computer or your cellular telephone.

In America, the default setting isn’t that government has all power and, by grace, cedes liberty to the people.

Thomas–who in 2026 becomes the second-longest-serving, and who in 2028 becomes the longest-serving, Supreme Court justice in American history–sees this principle in the Declaration of Independence.

You can–and would do well to–watch Thomas’s April 15, 2026, speech at the University of Texas at Austin at https://www.c-span.org/program/public-affairs-event/justice-thomas-speaks-in-honor-of-250th-anniversary-of-us/677395.

His points include that “progressivism” is incompatible with the Declaration of Independence.

Keeping in mind that “progressivism” is a form of statism more commonly known in the United States as liberalism, here’s some of his speech.

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“The Constitution is the means of government; it is the Declaration that announces the ends of government. …

“Human history teaches us, alas, that numerical majorities frequently seek to control government, and use the state to violate rights of the minority. Because man is fallen and the desire for power was, as James Madison described it, ‘sown in the nature of man,’ government had to be limited. For, as Madison also said, … men are not angels. The slaveholders used the power of government to deny the fundamental natural rights of the slaves; the segregationists used the state to oppress the freed men and women–including my ancestors.”

Then, “at the beginning of the 20th century, a new set of first principles of government was introduced into the American mainstream. The proponents … , most prominent among them the 28th president of our country, Woodrow Wilson, called it progressivism. Since Wilson’s presidency, progressivism has made many inroads into our system of government and our way of life. 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.

“Progressivism was not native to America. Wilson and the progressives candidly admitted that they took it from Otto von Bismarck’s Germany, whose state-centric society they admired. Progressives like Wilson argued that America needed to leave behind the principles of the founding and catch up with the more advanced and sophisticated system of relatively unimpeded state power. … He acknowledged that it was ‘a foreign science, speaking very little of the language of English or American principle,’ which ‘offers none but what are to our minds alien ideas.’ He thus described America, still stuck with its original system of government, as ‘slow to see’ the superiority of the European system.

“Progressivism was the first mainstream American political movement–with the possible exception of the pro-slavery reactionaries on the eve of the Civil War–to openly oppose the principles of the Declaration. Progressives strove to undo the Declaration’s commitment to equality and natural rights, both of which they denied were self-evident. To Wilson, the inalienable rights of the individual were ‘a lot of nonsense.’ Wilson redefined ‘liberty’ not as a natural right antecedent to the government, but as ‘the right of those who are governed to adjust government to their own needs and interests.’ In other words, liberty no longer preceded the government as a gift from God, but was to be enjoyed at the grace of the government. The government, as Wilson reconceived of it, would be ‘beneficent and indispensable.'”

Thus, “progressivism seeks to replace the basic premises of the Declaration of Independence, and hence our form of government. It holds that our rights and our dignities come not from God, but from the government. It requires of the people a subservience and weakness incompatible with a Constitution premised on the transcendent origin of our rights.

“You will not be surprised to learn that the progressives had a great deal of contempt for us, the American people. Before he entered politics, Wilson would describe the American people as ‘selfish, ignorant, timid, stubborn’ and ‘foolish.’ He lamented that we ‘do too much by vote’ and too little by expert rule. He proposed that the people be ruled by administrators who use them as ‘tools.’ He once again aspired to be like Germany, where the people, he said admiringly, were ‘docile and acquiescent.’

“The century of progressivism did not go well. The European system that Wilson and the progressives scolded Americans for not adopting, which he called nearly perfect, led to the governments that caused the most awful century that the world has ever seen. Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, and Mao all were intertwined with the rise of progressivism, and all were opposed to the natural rights on which our Declaration are based. Many progressives expressed admiration for each of them shortly before their governments killed tens of millions of people.

“It was a terrible mistake to adopt progressivism’s rejection of the Declaration’s vision of universal, inalienable natural rights.”

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For a brief summary of these principles framed another way, please see pages 38-40 of Dr. Randy Elf’s 2016 law-review article, at https://ssrn.com/abstract=5283417.

COPYRIGHT © 2026 BY RANDY ELF