the end of the 19th century, Wolin says, political "liberation" had been achieved in the West (with the exception of blacks and a few other "anomalies") and enshrined in new constitutions, legislatures, and civil liberties. Progress gradually came to mean just scientific and economic advance; demands for more political rights (e.g., "participatory democracy") were viewed as threats to material progress.
Thus, the idea of "progress" embraced present-day conservatives,...