There has never been a freedom, of course, that someone has not proved ingenious enough to abuse. - Allen C. Guelzo

Trying to plant such an oligarchy in the midst of what was otherwise the world's most successful republican regime was no small task, and it required the invention of ideological monstrosities to justify it. In the Southern case, the monstrosities included race-based rationales for the enslavement of Africans.

Where a republic demands equality, and equality tends to ensure mobility, oligarchy is about hierarchy and stasis.

I know it seems strange to say that Progressivism wore a white supremacist face. But the most thorough going Progressive president, Woodrow Wilson, was an unabashed white supremacist. So, it should not be surprising...