Heh

Walter Russell Mead, pointing out an inconvenient truth:

Third, it will be interesting to see how the left-wing revolt against [Woodrow] Wilson plays out in the broader Democratic Party. Unlike Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson (two other presidents who have recently fallen out of favor on the left), Wilson is in many ways the father of modern progressive thought. He thought the founding documents were outdated, believed strongly in the ability of government professionals to improve peoples’ lives, and—in so many words—said that opponents of his elite-approved, scientific agenda were on the wrong side of history. Perhaps an inadvertent effect of the anti-Wilson protests will be to dampen modern progressives’ crusading confidence that they are always and everywhere on the right side—but we’re not holding our breath.

Woodrow Wilson, if you haven't heard, is now in dock, especially at Princeton, because he was a bad guy. Mind you, Jonah Goldberg was all over this topic years ago, but the Wilsonian impulse never goes away. We can safely assume that our new and improved Wilsonians will simply take the formula and use it to solve our current problems without error.