A Fierce Discontent

“So far as this movement of agitation throughout the country takes the form of a fierce discontent with evil, of a firm determination to punish the authors of evil, whether in industry or politics, the feeling is to be heartily welcomed as a sign of healthy life.” 

McGerr includes this quotation by President Theodore Roosevelt at the very beginning of the book to provide the origin of the book’s title. The phrase “a fierce discontent” refers to the middle-class progressive reformers’ dissatisfaction with cultural values and behaviors that they considered “evil” in American society around the turn of the 20th century. President Roosevelt seemed to believe that as long as the progressives sought to eradicate “evil”—whatever that may mean—through their reform efforts, their efforts would be welcome.

“The Progressive Era is more than a matter of nostalgia. It is the argument of this book that progressivism created much of our contemporary predicament.”

In the Preface, McGerr explains how the Progressive Era is relevant to contemporary American life. He argues that today, Americans are extremely disengaged with the government and with political life, and politicians are still wary of overstepping the boundaries that progressive reformers boldly overstepped years ago. Progressive reformers had huge expectations for the future of society, which they believed their reform efforts could achieve. Those expectations were never met; observant of the great disappoint these unmet expectations brought to society, politicians have since been cautious to set new expectations. 

“Americans’ ambivalent attitudes toward politics and the state, our skepticism about reform, our fear of government’s power, and our arm’s-length relationship with political leaders have their roots before the ages of Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, and Ronald Reagan, in the few dramatic decades at the turn of the previous century.” 

McGerr identifies the specific contemporary political attitude that he believes resulted from America’s Progressive Era. These attitudes—ambivalence, skepticism, fear, and distance—stand in stark contrast to the attitudes of Americans toward politics and government power during the Progressive Era.