Many Americans in the late 19th and early 20th century suffered from real poverty, which differed from today’s poverty in that it included large amounts of hunger and misery. Perhaps we should grant the progressives of that era some credit for seeking to bring relief to real suffering. Perhaps we might even credit them with a great deal of success.

But today, the progressive moral ground of the last century is mostly gone. The poverty of today often includes healthy amounts of food and leisure, evidenced by the growing problem of obesity among the poor. However, modern progressives continue to appeal to the misery of the poor as a pretext for their drive to suffocate us with ever-increasing government.

Why is this? Perhaps a genuine concern for people has been replaced by an urge to limit the chaos of the combined activity of 300,000,000 people. Genuine concern has become a ploy that enables some to indulge an obsessive-compulsive disorder.