Thomas' 'historically illiterate' speech gets history 'wildly inaccurate': scholar
U.S. Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito (left) and Clarence Thomas on January 20, 2025 in Washington, DC. Chip Somodevilla/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo
U.S. Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito (left) and Clarence Thomas on January 20, 2025 in Washington, DC. Chip Somodevilla/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo
April 17, 2026
ALTERNET
When U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall announced his retirement in 1991 and President George H.W. Bush nominated Clarence Thomas, he wanted the seat to be held by another Black justice. Marshall was an historic figure: Appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1967, he was the first Black justice in the High Court's history.
But Thomas, now 77, was a major departure from Marshall in terms of judicial philosophy. While Marshall (who passed away in 1993) was decidedly liberal, Thomas is a far-right social conservative. And over the years, he had strong disagreements with not only the late liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but also, with retired libertarian/conservative Justice Anthony Kennedy.
Thomas looked back on U.S. history during a Wednesday night, April 15 speech at the University of Texas, Austin Law School, arguing that progressive politics are incompatible with the U.S. Declaration of Independence. But The New Republic's Matt Ford, in an article published on April 17, argues that Thomas got history wrong in multiple ways.
Thomas told attendees, "As we meet today, it is unclear whether these principles will endure. At the beginning of the 20th Century, a new set of first principles of government was introduced into the American mainstream. The proponents of this new set of first principles, most prominently among them the 28th president, Woodrow Wilson, called it progressivism. Since Wilson's presidency, progressivism has made many inroads in our system of government and our way of life. It has coexisted uneasily with the principles of the Declaration. Because it is opposed to those principles, it is not possible for the two to coexist forever."
But according to Ford, Thomas' take on U.S. history is wildly inaccurate.
"Thomas is correct that progressivism was introduced around the turn of the 20th Century, that Woodrow Wilson was the 28th president, and that Wilson was a progressive," Ford explains. "The historical accuracy ends there. Presenting Wilson as the inventor of progressivism is historically illiterate, akin to saying that Joseph Stalin invented communism or that Ronald Reagan invented conservatism. In reality, the progressive era emerged in the 1890s from the corruption and excesses of the Gilded Age."
Ford continues, "A broad range of activists, journalists, legislators, and judges challenged the societal ills that had emerged from the nation's rapid industrialization…. I'm sure that Wilson would have liked to claim credit for inventing the progressive movement, but he was one figure in a much larger social and political ecosystem. Republicans and Democrats alike both supported the movement and its reforms, and the first president to embrace it was actually Theodore Roosevelt."
Ford argues that for Thomas, it is "rhetorically advantageous to make" Wilson "the standard-bearer of progressivism" because he "was perhaps the most racist person to hold the presidency between Andrew Johnson and Donald Trump."
"It allows certain conservative intellectuals to adopt the guise of anti-racism while simultaneously opposing the civil rights laws passed decades after Wilson died," Ford notes. "I bring all of this up not to defend Wilson himself, but to point out the importance of getting history correct."
When U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall announced his retirement in 1991 and President George H.W. Bush nominated Clarence Thomas, he wanted the seat to be held by another Black justice. Marshall was an historic figure: Appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1967, he was the first Black justice in the High Court's history.
But Thomas, now 77, was a major departure from Marshall in terms of judicial philosophy. While Marshall (who passed away in 1993) was decidedly liberal, Thomas is a far-right social conservative. And over the years, he had strong disagreements with not only the late liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but also, with retired libertarian/conservative Justice Anthony Kennedy.
Thomas looked back on U.S. history during a Wednesday night, April 15 speech at the University of Texas, Austin Law School, arguing that progressive politics are incompatible with the U.S. Declaration of Independence. But The New Republic's Matt Ford, in an article published on April 17, argues that Thomas got history wrong in multiple ways.
Thomas told attendees, "As we meet today, it is unclear whether these principles will endure. At the beginning of the 20th Century, a new set of first principles of government was introduced into the American mainstream. The proponents of this new set of first principles, most prominently among them the 28th president, Woodrow Wilson, called it progressivism. Since Wilson's presidency, progressivism has made many inroads in our system of government and our way of life. It has coexisted uneasily with the principles of the Declaration. Because it is opposed to those principles, it is not possible for the two to coexist forever."
But according to Ford, Thomas' take on U.S. history is wildly inaccurate.
"Thomas is correct that progressivism was introduced around the turn of the 20th Century, that Woodrow Wilson was the 28th president, and that Wilson was a progressive," Ford explains. "The historical accuracy ends there. Presenting Wilson as the inventor of progressivism is historically illiterate, akin to saying that Joseph Stalin invented communism or that Ronald Reagan invented conservatism. In reality, the progressive era emerged in the 1890s from the corruption and excesses of the Gilded Age."
Ford continues, "A broad range of activists, journalists, legislators, and judges challenged the societal ills that had emerged from the nation's rapid industrialization…. I'm sure that Wilson would have liked to claim credit for inventing the progressive movement, but he was one figure in a much larger social and political ecosystem. Republicans and Democrats alike both supported the movement and its reforms, and the first president to embrace it was actually Theodore Roosevelt."
Ford argues that for Thomas, it is "rhetorically advantageous to make" Wilson "the standard-bearer of progressivism" because he "was perhaps the most racist person to hold the presidency between Andrew Johnson and Donald Trump."
"It allows certain conservative intellectuals to adopt the guise of anti-racism while simultaneously opposing the civil rights laws passed decades after Wilson died," Ford notes. "I bring all of this up not to defend Wilson himself, but to point out the importance of getting history correct."
“Cowering liberals think this is a manners contest while conservatives are waging an ideological war,” said one observer.
US Supreme Court Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Clarence Thomas pose for official photos on October 7, 2022 in Washington, DC.
(Photo: Eric Lee/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Brett Wilkins
Apr 16, 2026
COMMON DREAMS
While one liberal US Supreme Court justice apologized Wednesday for mildly condescending remarks about a colleague, one of the high court’s most right-wing members compared progressives to the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler—a contrast that one prominent observer called “a perfect commentary on the asymmetry in politics” between liberals and the MAGA right.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor said she apologized for “inappropriate” public comments about Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s upbringing during an April 7 speech at the University of Kansas School of Law. Sotomayor, who grew up in financial poverty in the Bronx, referred to Kavanaugh’s concurring opinion in Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo, in which the son of high-powered Washington, DC attorneys brushed off the potentially fatal consequences of immigration enforcement stops.
“This is from a man whose parents were professionals,” Sotomayor told the audience, “and probably doesn’t really know any person who works by the hour.”
Meanwhile on Wednesday, Justice Clarence Thomas linked the progressive movement—which Americans have to thank for many of the rights they have today, from the five-day, 40-hour workweek, to food safety and environmental protection, to near-universal civil and voting rights—with some of the 20th century’s worst mass murderers.
“Progressivism seeks to replace the basic premises of the Declaration of Independence and hence our form of government,” Thomas told attendees of a University of Texas event commemorating the 250th anniversary of the document’s signing. “It holds that our rights and our dignities come not from God, but from government.”
Thomas called the declaration “one of the greatest anti-slavery documents in the history of the Western civilization,” even though its proclamation that “all men are created equal” did not apply to the 20% of the American population who were enslaved Blacks, and a condemnation of slavery was stricken from the draft due to objections from slave owners.
However, Thomas argued that the ideals in the Declaration of Independence have “fallen out of favor” among progressives.
“Progressivism was the first mainstream American political movement, with the possible exception of the pro-slavery reactionaries on the eve of the Civil War, to openly oppose the principles of the declaration” Thomas asserted. “Progressives strove to undo the declaration’s commitment to equality and natural rights, both of which they denied were self-evident.”
“It requires of the people a subservience and weakness incompatible with a constitution premised on the transcendent origin of our rights,” he continued, adding that it “led to the governments that caused the most awful century that the world has ever seen.”
“Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, and Mao all were intertwined with the rise of progressivism, and all were opposed to the natural rights on which our declaration are based,” Thomas added, referring to Soviet leader Josef Stalin, the Nazi leader, and Chinese revolutionary Mao Zedong.
Balls and Strikes editor-in-chief Jay Willis responded to Thomas’ remarks on Bluesky, writing that it is “genuinely funny that Sonia Sotomayor issued a public apology today for her mild criticism of a conservative colleague on a specific, substantive issue, and then a few hours later Clarence Thomas picked up a mic and was like ALL LIBERALS ARE AMERICA-HATING COWARDS.”
“Clarence Thomas is a right-wing freak,” Willis added. “This is an indistinguishable from what unironic retvrn guys post on X about, like, women being allowed to have bank accounts. Anyone who tells you he is a profound thinker or a serious jurist or whatever is not to be trusted.”
Journalist Mehdi Hasan said on X that “if Dems had a spine, they’d run on impeaching this financially corrupt justice who got away with the allegations of sexual harassment during his hearings.”
Many right-wingers, meanwhile, applauded Thomas’ remarks, with Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah)—who helped try to steal the 2020 election for President Donald Trump—posting on X that “progressivism *is* an existential threat to America.”
During his speech, Thomas also expressed his admiration for Harlan Crow, the Republican megadonor whose largesse to the justice and his wife Virginia—who was also involved in efforts to subvert the 2020 presidential election—has included undisclosed gifts like luxury vacations and private school tuition for a relative.
He also praised John Yoo, his former clerk and senior Justice Department lawyer who authored the infamous “torture memos” for the George W. Bush administration and publicly argued that the president has the power to order the massacre of an entire village of civilians or the crushing of a child’s testicles.
Thomas closed his speech with a call to action.
“Each of you will have opportunities to be courageous every day,” he said. “It may mean speaking up in class tomorrow when someone around you expects you to live by lies. It may mean confronting today’s fashionable bigotries, such as antisemitism. It may mean standing up for your religion when it is mocked and disparaged by a professor.”
“It may mean not budging on your principles when it will entail losing friends or being ostracized,” he continued. “It may mean running for your school board when you see that they are teaching your children to hate your values and our country. It may mean turning down a job offer that requires you to make moral or ethical compromises.”
This, from a justice on the nation’s highest court whose moral and ethical compromises in the form of “the number, value, and extravagance of the gifts” he took from a billionaire linked to a case before that same court has “no comparison in modern American history,” according to a Senate report.
While one liberal US Supreme Court justice apologized Wednesday for mildly condescending remarks about a colleague, one of the high court’s most right-wing members compared progressives to the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler—a contrast that one prominent observer called “a perfect commentary on the asymmetry in politics” between liberals and the MAGA right.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor said she apologized for “inappropriate” public comments about Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s upbringing during an April 7 speech at the University of Kansas School of Law. Sotomayor, who grew up in financial poverty in the Bronx, referred to Kavanaugh’s concurring opinion in Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo, in which the son of high-powered Washington, DC attorneys brushed off the potentially fatal consequences of immigration enforcement stops.
“This is from a man whose parents were professionals,” Sotomayor told the audience, “and probably doesn’t really know any person who works by the hour.”
Meanwhile on Wednesday, Justice Clarence Thomas linked the progressive movement—which Americans have to thank for many of the rights they have today, from the five-day, 40-hour workweek, to food safety and environmental protection, to near-universal civil and voting rights—with some of the 20th century’s worst mass murderers.
“Progressivism seeks to replace the basic premises of the Declaration of Independence and hence our form of government,” Thomas told attendees of a University of Texas event commemorating the 250th anniversary of the document’s signing. “It holds that our rights and our dignities come not from God, but from government.”
Thomas called the declaration “one of the greatest anti-slavery documents in the history of the Western civilization,” even though its proclamation that “all men are created equal” did not apply to the 20% of the American population who were enslaved Blacks, and a condemnation of slavery was stricken from the draft due to objections from slave owners.
However, Thomas argued that the ideals in the Declaration of Independence have “fallen out of favor” among progressives.
“Progressivism was the first mainstream American political movement, with the possible exception of the pro-slavery reactionaries on the eve of the Civil War, to openly oppose the principles of the declaration” Thomas asserted. “Progressives strove to undo the declaration’s commitment to equality and natural rights, both of which they denied were self-evident.”
“It requires of the people a subservience and weakness incompatible with a constitution premised on the transcendent origin of our rights,” he continued, adding that it “led to the governments that caused the most awful century that the world has ever seen.”
“Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, and Mao all were intertwined with the rise of progressivism, and all were opposed to the natural rights on which our declaration are based,” Thomas added, referring to Soviet leader Josef Stalin, the Nazi leader, and Chinese revolutionary Mao Zedong.
Balls and Strikes editor-in-chief Jay Willis responded to Thomas’ remarks on Bluesky, writing that it is “genuinely funny that Sonia Sotomayor issued a public apology today for her mild criticism of a conservative colleague on a specific, substantive issue, and then a few hours later Clarence Thomas picked up a mic and was like ALL LIBERALS ARE AMERICA-HATING COWARDS.”
“Clarence Thomas is a right-wing freak,” Willis added. “This is an indistinguishable from what unironic retvrn guys post on X about, like, women being allowed to have bank accounts. Anyone who tells you he is a profound thinker or a serious jurist or whatever is not to be trusted.”
Journalist Mehdi Hasan said on X that “if Dems had a spine, they’d run on impeaching this financially corrupt justice who got away with the allegations of sexual harassment during his hearings.”
Many right-wingers, meanwhile, applauded Thomas’ remarks, with Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah)—who helped try to steal the 2020 election for President Donald Trump—posting on X that “progressivism *is* an existential threat to America.”
During his speech, Thomas also expressed his admiration for Harlan Crow, the Republican megadonor whose largesse to the justice and his wife Virginia—who was also involved in efforts to subvert the 2020 presidential election—has included undisclosed gifts like luxury vacations and private school tuition for a relative.
He also praised John Yoo, his former clerk and senior Justice Department lawyer who authored the infamous “torture memos” for the George W. Bush administration and publicly argued that the president has the power to order the massacre of an entire village of civilians or the crushing of a child’s testicles.
Thomas closed his speech with a call to action.
“Each of you will have opportunities to be courageous every day,” he said. “It may mean speaking up in class tomorrow when someone around you expects you to live by lies. It may mean confronting today’s fashionable bigotries, such as antisemitism. It may mean standing up for your religion when it is mocked and disparaged by a professor.”
“It may mean not budging on your principles when it will entail losing friends or being ostracized,” he continued. “It may mean running for your school board when you see that they are teaching your children to hate your values and our country. It may mean turning down a job offer that requires you to make moral or ethical compromises.”
This, from a justice on the nation’s highest court whose moral and ethical compromises in the form of “the number, value, and extravagance of the gifts” he took from a billionaire linked to a case before that same court has “no comparison in modern American history,” according to a Senate report.
