Of course, progressives do have a justified reason to hate globalization for the same reason that federalism proves frustrating: because it puts their tax and regulatory theories to a real world test and exposes them to competition. This requires prohibitions on entry and escape – when companies want to leave, or imports want to enter, the progressives’ only response can be using government force to prevent that from happening lest it expose the destructive policies for what they are. This requires higher and higher levels of authority and centralization of decision making, giving the bureaucratic class more power to make society in the image they wish it to be, an economic Fortress America.

This is not a new motivation. Progressivism has, from its inception, used the manipulative power of populist arguments to achieve statist ends – in Woodrow Wilson’s framing, a belief that the industrial age and made people beholden to great corporate powers, and that government must adjust to meet these challenges. And what should that adjustment be? The evolution of an enlightened age which moved beyond the rights given by Nature’s God: the elimination of checks and balances of government, and the creation of a neutral, high-minded, enlightened Administrative State to manage the lives of the people and the business of the country.