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America is a nation that celebrates diversity and freedom of conscience. Yet, as Alexis de Tocqueville observed, democratic times often demand conformity. Nowadays, conformity might be enforced in the name of diversity itself, and go so far as to infringe on the rights of conscience, expression, association, and religious freedom. Americans have recently been confronted by this paradox in various ways, from federal health care mandates, to campus speech codes, to consumer boycotts, to public intimidation, to vexatious litigation, to private corporations dismissing employees for expressing certain political views. In this book, Bradley C. S. Watson brings together leading thinkers from a variety of disciplines to examine the manner and extent to which conformity is demanded by contemporary American law and social practice. Contributors also consider the long-term results of such demands for conformity for the health—and even survival—of a constitutional republic.

In this volume, Bradley C. S. Watson brings together the leading scholars who have sparked one of the most important intellectual and political movements of our times: the criticism of the progressive intellectual synthesis that has dominated American thought and politics over much of the last century, and has provided the framework in which the administrative state has expanded and flourished. The contributors address the most important questions raised by this movement: what is the meaning of progressivism? What is the nature of the Founders'Constitution and the progressive challenges to it? What is the significance of recent scholarship and public opinion that have arisen in opposition to the progressive vision? What are the implications of American progressivism for twenty-first century politics and policy? Progressive Challenges to the American Constitution addresses the growing doubt about the scope and sustainability of expanded government power.