Wilsonianism Then and Now. Would The Real Woodrow Wilson Please Stand Up

Essay from the year 2016 in the subject Politics - Political Theory and the History of Ideas Journal, grade: A+, Johns Hopkins University, course: American Political Theory, language: English, abstract: In this paper, Canadian writer and educator, Michael Ernest Sweet, explores the topic of Woodrow Wilson, the 28th president of the United States of America. The paper seeks to uncover Wilson’s thought, his influences (with a detailed look at Hegel’s influence) and his impact on American government then and now. Additionally, his legacy is examined in terms of what he actually inspired in American political science, and what he is often, wrongly, attributed to him and his administration. Both foreign and domestic policy is considered. The paper concludes that Wilson’s legacy is, most correctly, that he opened the American mind toward a new political era - an era that is not fixed and static like that of the founding and its confining Constitutionalism, but rather one with an eye toward the inevitability of progress in history and, ultimately, a new freedom.