Even Earliest “Progressives” Wanted World Government

John Burgess, one of America’s first Progressives, was born in 1844 and went on to study with Hegelian scholars in Germany before becoming the father of American political science. Though he’s not as well-known as some of his contemporary Progressives such as Woodrow Wilson, his influence was monumental, nonetheless. Decades before the British Socialist H.G. Wells was popularizing the idea of a world government, there was John Burgess, America’s own, writing about a world-state in his first and most impactful book – Political Science and Comparative Constitutional Law – published in 1890. In this work, Burgess explains that the State has three ends to achieve: a primary, a secondary, and an ultimate end. He gives us the ultimate end first:   

“This is the universal human purpose of the state. We may call it the perfection of humanity; the civilization of the world; the perfect development of the human reason, and its attainment to universal command over individualism; the apotheosis of man. This end is wholly spiritual; and in it mankind, as spirit, triumphs over all fleshly weakness, error, and sin. This is what Hegel meant by his doctrine that morality (Sittlichkeif) is the end of the state.” (pg. 85)

It’s fitting that he mentions Hegel there since that’s straight out of Hegel. The State is to perfect humanity, literally transform mankind as a collective into a god (that’s what apotheosis means). He then goes on to write,

“The state cannot, however, be organized from the beginning as world-state. Mankind cannot yet act through so extended and ponderous an organization, and many must be the centuries, and probably cycles, before it can. Mankind must first be organized politically by portions, before it can be organized as a whole.” (pgs. 85-86)

I’ve bolded those keywords that make it clear that Burgess was talking about a global government – the world-state. Though Burgess thought it would be many centuries before the world-state could be instantiated, the rapid advancements in technology have created a situation where mankind could now be organized as a whole if somebody like Klaus Schwab got his wish. Burgess goes on to write that people like you and me, who believe in unalienable rights and God’s Natural Law are making,  

“[E]rroneous assumptions that the state does nothing except what it does through the government; that the state is not the creator of liberty; that liberty is natural right, and that the state only imposes a certain necessary restraint upon the same. This doctrine of natural rights or anti- or extra-state rights, which led to the revolutions of the eighteenth century, still exercises a sort of traditional power over popular thinking; but the publicists and the jurists have, most largely, abandoned it as unscientific, erroneous and harmful.” (pg. 88)

“Liberty,” he declares, “is as truly a creation of the state as is government.” (pg. 88)

He goes on to close the chapter by explaining that the nation-state must first establish a powerful government (primary end of the state) that can effectively create liberty (secondary end of the state) rather than secure it, since there are no such things as God-given rights as he sees it. Once this has been accomplished around the world, then 

“[F]inally, the world’s civilization may be surveyed upon all sides, mapped out, traversed, made known and realized. This proposition contains a plan for every appearance and product of human history; for private law and internal public law, for the law between nations and the law of nations, for war and for peace, for national exclusiveness and universal intercourse. Take these ends in their historical order, and pursue them with the natural means, and mankind will attain them all, each in its proper time. But this order cannot be successfully reversed, either in part or whole. The state which attempts to realize liberty before government, or the world-order before the national-order, will find itself immediately threatened with dissolution and anarchy. It will be compelled to begin de novo, and to do things in the manner and sequence which both nature and history prescribe.” (pg. 89)

According to The Declaration, it is self-evident that we are endowed by the “…Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. – That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…” But for Burgess, Wilson, and other prominent Progressives, the self-evident truth would read as follows: “we are endowed by the Government with certain State-given rights, that it is the State’s prerogative to determine the scope of these rights. – That to Create these rights, Governments are instituted among men, deriving their powers from the unelected experts.” That is explicitly what Burgess calls for in the primary and secondary ends of the State, which he claims needs to be accomplished before we can actualize the holy grail – the World-State.  

Ah, the marvelous world-order/World-State, the ultimate end of the State. When we talk about global tyranny today, we’re usually thinking of the United Nations and Robert Muller and Alice Bailey, the World Economic Forum and Klaus Schwab, and of course, we should. But it’s interesting to note the early Progressive homegrown ties to this as well. Burgess created the first political science department in the U.S. at Columbia University in 1880. No small feat and we see what his political “science” looked like above.    

Furthermore, Burgess taught another Progressive – Frank Goodnow – who graduated from Columbia Law School in 1882 and began teaching administrative law at Columbia in 1884. Goodnow, for his part, came up with the idea of a judiciary that is part of the executive branch, rather than simply adjudicating laws as the judicial branch was supposed to. In Politics and Administration (1900) Goodnow rejected Montesquieu’s and the Founding Father’s division of government into the legislative, executive, and judicial branches. Like Woodrow Wilson, he saw unelected “expert” administrators as key lawmakers who could move the State closer to perfection without those annoying American people getting in the way, but Goodnow went further than Wilson by adding judges to the picture. Judges were also unelected and if they gave the green light to administrators to make laws, even though administrators are part of the executive and not legislative branch, then the State’s power would only grow. In Goodnow we can see how Burgess’ primary and secondary ends for the nation-state are bolstered. The State grows in its power (primary end) and because of that growth it is able to create “liberty” as the unelected “experts” define it (secondary end), rather than securing our unalienable rights endowed to us by the Creator, as the Declaration of Independence stated was government’s purpose.

Only one step remains – the ultimate end – the World-State. This is just further proof of the globalist plot. A plot that American elites like Burgess have been part of for a very long time!

References:

John W. Burgess, Political Science and Comparative Constitutional Law (Volume 1: Sovereignty and Liberty), 1890, published by Baker and Taylor Company. Here’s a link to the archived book: https://archive.org/details/politicalscience01burgiala/page/n5/mode/2up.

Columbia 250, “C250 Celebrates Columbians Ahead of Their Time: John William Burgess,” Columbia University, 2004, retrieved from https://c250.columbia.edu/c250_celebrates/remarkable_columbians/john_burgess.html.

Frank J. Goodnow, Politics and Administration: A Study in Government, 1900, published by The Macmillan Company. Here’s a link to the archived book: https://archive.org/details/politicsadminist00goodrich/page/n3/mode/2up.