John Dewey, perhaps the leading progressive thinker of the early twentieth century, explained that true liberalism—as opposed to rights-based, classical liberalism—recognized the perfectibility of human beings: “liberalism knows that an individual is nothing fixed, given ready-made. It is something achieved, and achieved not in isolation but with the aid and support of conditions, cultural and physical:—including in ‘cultural,’ economic, legal and political institutions as well as science and art.” Shortcomings in man were therefore shortcomings in institutions.16
