03/10/2011
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7:00 PM
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* PROGRESSIVISM:
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NOUVEAU SOCIALISM?
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WOODROW WILSON,
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EARLY 20th CENTURY PROGRESSIVE
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IS THIS*
WHAT WE ARE BEING LEAD
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TO THINK?
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TIME TO RETURN
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TO OUR NATIONAL COMPASS
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There seems to be some confusion, some of it intentional, about the meaning of the ideology behind 'Progressivism.'
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People read the term and immediatelly see its root, 'Progress,' so they of course assume it has to do with progress, which is a positive term.
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They most likely think of this Merriam-Webster dictionary definition, one of several: 'gradual betterment; especially : the progressive development of humankind'
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That's it, 'The progressive development, the betterment of humankind.'!
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But they could not be any further from the true meaning of the political and social ideology today known as 'Progressivism.'
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Today you can equate Progressivism with Liberalism.
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TIME TO RETURN
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TO OUR NATIONAL COMPASS
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*A DISSERTATION
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ON PROGRESSIVISM:
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'NOUVEAU SOCIALISM'?
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There seems to be some confusion, some of it intentional, about the meaning of the ideology behind 'Progressivism.'
*
People read the term and immediatelly see its root, 'Progress,' so they of course assume it has to do with progress, which is a positive term.
*
They most likely think of this Merriam-Webster dictionary definition, one of several: 'gradual betterment; especially : the progressive development of humankind'
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That's it, 'The progressive development, the betterment of humankind.'!
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But they could not be any further from the true meaning of the political and social ideology today known as 'Progressivism.'
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Today you can equate Progressivism with Liberalism.
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Liberalism became too associated with being leftist or socialist, so they conveniently replaced it with Progressivism, which as I said does have a positive ring to it.
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Actually, progressivism has been around since late in the 19th century, but after WWII it morfed into liberalism and once liberalism became so connected to the left and socialism, then 'progressivism' was resurrected in order to continue misleading the people as to the true beliefs and intentions of its followers, many of which were politicians desperate to hang on to power.
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So being 'progressive' became a good thing, mainly with the liberal elite.
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The fact is that the present group of US senators and congressmen considered the most liberal, the most leftist, all call themselves 'Progressives.'
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Eighty three members of congress belong to the 'Progressive Caucus', the 83 most liberal members of our legislature, among them,
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John Conyers, (he of "I never read the bills I vote on, as they are too long and you need a lawyer to understand them." fame)
Barney Frank
Luis Gutierrez
Alcee Hastings
Jesse Jackson, Jr.
Sheila Jackson Lee
Dennis Kucinish
Barbara Lee
Nancy Pelosi
Charles Rangel
Bernie Sander
Tom Udall
Maxine Waters
Henry Waxman
The fact is that the present group of US senators and congressmen considered the most liberal, the most leftist, all call themselves 'Progressives.'
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Eighty three members of congress belong to the 'Progressive Caucus', the 83 most liberal members of our legislature, among them,
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John Conyers, (he of "I never read the bills I vote on, as they are too long and you need a lawyer to understand them." fame)
Barney Frank
Luis Gutierrez
Alcee Hastings
Jesse Jackson, Jr.
Sheila Jackson Lee
Dennis Kucinish
Barbara Lee
Nancy Pelosi
Charles Rangel
Bernie Sander
Tom Udall
Maxine Waters
Henry Waxman
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Poster children of the US left.
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President Obama considers himself a Progressive, as so does Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, as well as the late senator Ted Kennedy.
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In addition, an array of national liberal organizations work to support the efforts of the progressive caucus, including the Institute for Policy Studies,The Nation magazine, George Soro's MoveOn.org, National Priorities Project, Jobs with Justice, Peace Action, Americans for Democratic Action, and Progressive Democrats of America, the NAACP, ACLU, Progressive Majority, League of United Latin American Citizens, Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, National Council of La Raza, Hip Hop Caucus, Human Rights Campaign, Association of Farmworker Opportunity Programs, and the National Hip Hop Political Convention, as well as the most well known leftist blogs, like The Daily Kos, The Huffington Post, and others.
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President Obama considers himself a Progressive, as so does Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, as well as the late senator Ted Kennedy.
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In addition, an array of national liberal organizations work to support the efforts of the progressive caucus, including the Institute for Policy Studies,The Nation magazine, George Soro's MoveOn.org, National Priorities Project, Jobs with Justice, Peace Action, Americans for Democratic Action, and Progressive Democrats of America, the NAACP, ACLU, Progressive Majority, League of United Latin American Citizens, Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, National Council of La Raza, Hip Hop Caucus, Human Rights Campaign, Association of Farmworker Opportunity Programs, and the National Hip Hop Political Convention, as well as the most well known leftist blogs, like The Daily Kos, The Huffington Post, and others.
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All a who's who of the left, including the very radical left.
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According to its website, thttp://cpc.grijalva.house.gov/, the CPC advocates "universal access to affordable, high quality healthcare," fair trade agreements, living wage laws, the right of all workers to organize into labor unions and engage in collective bargaining, the abolition of the USA PATRIOT ACT, the legalization of same-sex marriage, repeal of 'don't ask, don't tell,' US participation in international treaties such as the climate change related Kyoto Accords, strict campaign finance reform laws, a complete pullout from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, stay away from foreign conflicts, a crackdown on corporate welfare and influence, a sharp increase in income tax rates on upper-middle and upper class households, tax cuts for the poor, (Tax cuts? They don't pay taxes!), and an increase in welfare spending by the federal government.
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But that is just their public agenda.
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Progressives also support government control of industry and finance as well as the horrific practice and belief called Eugenics, which would give government the means to interfere with the national gene pool (yes, I said 'gene pool') in order to do away with inferior and ill, or in their words 'defective' citizens, while promoting a superior, defect and disease-free race.
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According to its website, thttp://cpc.grijalva.house.gov/, the CPC advocates "universal access to affordable, high quality healthcare," fair trade agreements, living wage laws, the right of all workers to organize into labor unions and engage in collective bargaining, the abolition of the USA PATRIOT ACT, the legalization of same-sex marriage, repeal of 'don't ask, don't tell,' US participation in international treaties such as the climate change related Kyoto Accords, strict campaign finance reform laws, a complete pullout from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, stay away from foreign conflicts, a crackdown on corporate welfare and influence, a sharp increase in income tax rates on upper-middle and upper class households, tax cuts for the poor, (Tax cuts? They don't pay taxes!), and an increase in welfare spending by the federal government.
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But that is just their public agenda.
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Progressives also support government control of industry and finance as well as the horrific practice and belief called Eugenics, which would give government the means to interfere with the national gene pool (yes, I said 'gene pool') in order to do away with inferior and ill, or in their words 'defective' citizens, while promoting a superior, defect and disease-free race.
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No, they did not learn this from Adolf Hitler. Adolf Hitler learned this from early 20th Century American progressives, two of them none other than presidents Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
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Yes, that FDR. A president that had his presidency not been 'interrupted' by WWII would have turned the US into a socialist state.
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Yes, that FDR. A president that had his presidency not been 'interrupted' by WWII would have turned the US into a socialist state.
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He already set up the framework with his 'New Deal,' and his social policies, which contrary to what liberal historians would have you believe were immersing the US into a much deeper hole than the Great Depression did.
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We were attacked by Japan on December 7th, 1941. On December 6th our unemployment rate was 17% officially. In reality it was closer to 25%, as millions of Americans had just given up on finding work and found themselves absent from the statistics.
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Just as the official unemployment rate today is about 9%, while in reality it is closer to 12%, as millions have stopped looking for work and therefore are not counted.
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So the Great Depression began on October 29th, 1929, also known as Black Tuesday, as that is when the stock market crashed.
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FDR became our president in 1932, and over the next 9 years, although spending at a frantic rate, in its time even more frantic than president Obama's in the present, believing that the way out of the depression was to spend money. He instead made things worse.
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We were attacked by Japan on December 7th, 1941. On December 6th our unemployment rate was 17% officially. In reality it was closer to 25%, as millions of Americans had just given up on finding work and found themselves absent from the statistics.
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Just as the official unemployment rate today is about 9%, while in reality it is closer to 12%, as millions have stopped looking for work and therefore are not counted.
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So the Great Depression began on October 29th, 1929, also known as Black Tuesday, as that is when the stock market crashed.
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FDR became our president in 1932, and over the next 9 years, although spending at a frantic rate, in its time even more frantic than president Obama's in the present, believing that the way out of the depression was to spend money. He instead made things worse.
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Sounds familiar?
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Left alone, the nation, or rather the economy was recovering from the depression, as we believe it would recover today if the government would just leave it alone. But FDR's New Deal and its frantic spending and expansion of government pushed the country into a much deeper abyss after 1935.
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So FDR did what many presidents do as a last resort to jumpstart the economy and mainly save his job, which was to find himself a nice war, even if it ran against his Progressive ideology.
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I guess that besides being a progressive, FDR was a pragmatist and a realist, something our present president has started to exhibit a bit, (see Guantanamo and military tribunals, Iraq and Afghanistan, flip-flop after flip-flop).
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Like I said, on December 6th, 1941 our unemployment rate was somewhere between the official 17% and the unofficial 25%. By the middle of 1942 everybody had a job. Seventeen million, (17 MILLION) men and women where in the armed forces, while most of the rest worked in factories that built the war machinery needed for such a war, including millions of women that had never worked before in their lives. That alone illustrates how busy our national economy was. There was no unemployment, period.
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When we were attacked on 12/07/41 the US had a population of 132 million people, roughly one third of the present population of 310 million. Seventeen million men and women in the armed forces then was the equivalent of a 51 MILLION-man armed forces today (we roughly have about 3 million today), so that is a hell of a lot of jobs.
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If WWIII were to start tomorrow and we needed the same proportion of men and women in uniform we would be in deep trouble, as there are 30 million unemployed men and women presently. That means that the nation would need an additional 18 million men and women who presently have jobs. So following this logic corporate America would be in deep trouble, missing 18 million workers.
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Hear that, Mexico?
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Left alone, the nation, or rather the economy was recovering from the depression, as we believe it would recover today if the government would just leave it alone. But FDR's New Deal and its frantic spending and expansion of government pushed the country into a much deeper abyss after 1935.
*
So FDR did what many presidents do as a last resort to jumpstart the economy and mainly save his job, which was to find himself a nice war, even if it ran against his Progressive ideology.
*
I guess that besides being a progressive, FDR was a pragmatist and a realist, something our present president has started to exhibit a bit, (see Guantanamo and military tribunals, Iraq and Afghanistan, flip-flop after flip-flop).
*
Like I said, on December 6th, 1941 our unemployment rate was somewhere between the official 17% and the unofficial 25%. By the middle of 1942 everybody had a job. Seventeen million, (17 MILLION) men and women where in the armed forces, while most of the rest worked in factories that built the war machinery needed for such a war, including millions of women that had never worked before in their lives. That alone illustrates how busy our national economy was. There was no unemployment, period.
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When we were attacked on 12/07/41 the US had a population of 132 million people, roughly one third of the present population of 310 million. Seventeen million men and women in the armed forces then was the equivalent of a 51 MILLION-man armed forces today (we roughly have about 3 million today), so that is a hell of a lot of jobs.
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If WWIII were to start tomorrow and we needed the same proportion of men and women in uniform we would be in deep trouble, as there are 30 million unemployed men and women presently. That means that the nation would need an additional 18 million men and women who presently have jobs. So following this logic corporate America would be in deep trouble, missing 18 million workers.
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Hear that, Mexico?
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Actually, that will never happen.
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During WWII, being a conventional war the US had the luxury of taking months and even years to build up such a behemoth of an army, as well as the war materiel needed to fight it. Today we have to do with what we already have, the 3-million-strong armed forces and our technological and nuclear capabilities, as the next major war will be over within a week, if not less.
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Anyway, here is a memo to our president: Are you listening, Barack? You said you would create millions of new jobs? Well?
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Events in the Middle East seem to be custom-made for you.
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Anyway, here is a memo to our president: Are you listening, Barack? You said you would create millions of new jobs? Well?
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Events in the Middle East seem to be custom-made for you.
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As a young man one of my bosses used to say that in order to 'shake things up' we only need to create a crisis, and everyone will fall in line.
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Rahm Emanuel, Obama's former Chief of Staff used to say that "a good crisis should never go to waste."
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I just went through this long historical exercise to illustrate how FDR's progressive agenda was derailed. His dying salvo was conceding half of Europe to the Russians, perhaps his warped idea of 'globalization' and a new 'world order.' But he died before he could resume his agenda and emerge from WWII with a nation practically ruled by Washington.
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All the pieces were in place, as during WWII there was a form of martial law and a centralized control of the economy. But thankfully Harry S. Truman, followed by Eisenhower and Kennedy (his Democratic platform in 1961 would pass for the Republican platform of 2008) had different ideas, 'strange ideas', such as easing the constraints on the economy and our corporations and allowing the country to grow with little intrusion from Washington, and that is how we became the most powerful nation on earth.
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But the progressive movement did not die with FDR. The seeds had been planted too deep and too broadly. Baby boomers, the children of the 60s rebelled against everything their parents stood for and gave new life to progressivism, then called liberalism, radicalism, socialism. Those flower children and anti-war activists are the men and women ruling this nation today. That is why we are in the mess we find ourselves today in.
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Many on the left today call themselves “progressive,” and they do so not just because it’s a nicer way of saying “liberal,” but also because they very much intend to revive the political principles of America’s original Progressives, from the Progressive Era of the 1880s through World War II.
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Why would leftist politicians, like Mrs. Clinton, purposely identify themselves with this Progressive movement?
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The reason is that America’s original Progressives were also its original, big-government liberals.
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Again I remind you that most people point to the New Deal era as the source of big government and the welfare state that we have today. While this is perfectly accurate, it is important to understand that the principles of the New Deal did not originate in the New Deal; rather, they came from the Progressives, who had dominated American politics and intellectual cultural a generation prior to the New Deal.
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Does that sound like what we today call 'liberal elitism?'
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Again, we have no less an authority on this connection than Franklin Roosevelt himself. When FDR campaigned in 1932, he pointed to the Progressives – and in particular to Woodrow Wilson – as the source of his ideas about government.
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In terms of the personalities who made up the Progressive movement, some are familiar to us and others are not.
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The movement was comprised of well known politicians like Woodrow Wilson; but it was also comprised of intellectuals and writers who are less well known but who have been very influential in America.
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That sounds eerily familiar today, when we examine the 'intellectuals' spread all over the Obama administration.
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There were folks like John Dewey, who was America’s public philosopher for much of the early 20th century. Even less well known was Herbert Croly, but Croly was highly influential, since he founded and was the first editor of The New Republic – which became the main organ of Progressive opinion in the United States, and is still one of the most important journals on the Left today.
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I should add here that Woodrow Wilson actually fell into both of these categories – he was both a well known politician and president, but also was, for decades prior to his entry into politics, a prominent intellectual (a college professor and president of Princeton) who wrote many books and influential articles, including his creepy essays about Eugenics.
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My definition of Eugenics: 'Elitist Racism.'
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At this point I must mention that serious, impartial historians, not the progressive revisionists that author the history books our children are taught today, also have written broadly about President Teddy Roosevelt as one of the original progressive politicians.
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I am not doubting their data. Except that I find Teddy Roosevelt as a bit of a contradiction.
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While he did use a 'big stick' in dealing with corporate America, believed in Eugenics and did play with the idea of centralized government and was no fan of the founding fathers or the constitution, he was very conservative in other areas and for sure was a hawk when it came to foreign policy.
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In my estimation he was not a progressive in the mold that Woodrow Wilson was.
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These Progressives wanted a thorough transformation in America’s principles of government, (Obama: "I will lead a fundamental transformation of America!") from a government permanently dedicated to securing individual liberty to one whose ends and scope would change to take on any and all social and economic ills.
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For one, progressives deride America's founding, and they want to eradicate its principles. They dare say that our constitution is a living and evolving document, code for 'we can change it as we see fit.'
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America’s Progressives aim for a thorough transformation in America’s principles of government.
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While our founders understood that our national government must have the capacity to be strong and vigorous, they also were very clear that this strength must always be confined to very limited ends or areas of responsibility. Government, in other words, while not weak or tiny, was to be strictly limited.
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The roots of my Libertarianism.
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The Progressive conception of government, on the other hand, is quite the opposite.
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Progressives had an “evolving” or a “living” notion of government (again, we get the term “living constitution” from the Progressives), and thus want government to take on whatever role and scope the times demand.
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The Progressives reason that people of the founding era may have wanted a limited government, given their particular experience with George III, but they argue that people today want a much more activist government, and that we should adjust the constitution accordingly.
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Progressives hate the principles of American government.
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They hate the Declaration of Independence, which established the protection of individual natural rights (like property) as the unchangeable purpose of government; and they hate the Constitution, which places permanent limits on the size of government and is structured in a way that makes the extension of national power beyond its original purpose very difficult.
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“Progressivism” was, for them, all about progressing, or moving beyond, the principles of our founders. Again, 'the living and evolving' constitution.
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This is why the Progressives were the first Americans to denounce openly our founding documents.
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Woodrow Wilson, for example, once warned that “if you want to understand the real Declaration of Independence, do not repeat the preface” – i.e. that part of the Declaration which talks about securing individual natural rights as the only legitimate purpose of government.
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Under the system of our founders, government was to have sufficient strength and energy to accomplish its ends, but those ends were strictly limited by the Constitution. The principal way in which the Constitution keeps the government within its boundaries is through the separation of powers.
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The Progressives, especially Woodrow Wilson, hated the separation of powers for precisely this reason: it made government inefficient, and made it difficult, if not impossible, to expand the power of government so that it could take on all of the new tasks that Progressives had in mind. So they looked to the presidency as a way of getting around this obstacle.
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See: 'Multiple Czars in charge of government agencies without accountability to congress.' Also see: Executive orders, also known as 'ruling by decree'.
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Under the original system, the president was merely leader of a single branch, or part, of the government.
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In his book Constitutional Government, Woodrow Wilson wrote that “leadership and control must be lodged somewhere.”
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The president, Wilson pointed out, was "the only politician who could claim to speak for the people as a whole," and thus he called upon the president "to rise above the separation of powers – to consider himself not merely as chief of a single branch of government, but as the popular leader of the whole of national politics."
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A sort of modern 'king,' or 'benign' dictator?
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Wilson called for the president to have the power to circumvent the other branches of government in order to 'serve the people' that elected him to power.
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It was in this way that Wilson believed the original intention of the separation of powers system could be circumvented, and the enhanced presidency could be a means energizing the kind of active national government that the progressive agenda required.
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Since the Progressives have such a limitless view of state power, and since they want to downplay the founders’ emphasis on individual rights, it is only natural to ask if they are indeed socialists.
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First, when comparing progressivism and socialism, we must be clear that we are talking about the similarity in the philosophy of government; we are not suggesting that America’s progressives were the kind of moral monsters that we see in the history of some socialist or fascist regimes (although it is the case that their racial views – particularly those of Woodrow Wilson, i.e. Eugenics – were indeed morally reprehensible).
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It is also hard to compare the two, unless you compare the pure philosophies, as there is not one single purely socialist government in the world, nor has there ever been one.
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While their beliefs and aims are similar, progressives say they oppose socialism, when they are really competing with them for the same loot.
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Hitler's Fascism was not that dissimilar to Stalin's Communism, and yet they hated each other to the point of killing over 60 million of their countrymen.
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In fact, Wilson ran against a socialist candidate in the 1912 election (Eugene Debs).
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The progressives were weary about the socialist movement of their day not so much because they disagreed with it in principle, but because the American socialist movement was a movement of the lower classes.
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The progressives were elitists; they looked down their noses at the socialists, considering them a kind of rabble.
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Sounds familiar? Obama and his elitist 'intelligentsia' considering middle America a bunch of bible-holding and gun-toting hicks?
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Keeping these points in mind, it is, nonetheless, the case that the progressive conception of government closely coincided with the socialist conception.
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Look at it like the movie 'Alien vs. Predator.' They fought each other to death. But both were monsters nevertheless.
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Both progressivism and socialism promote the philosophy that the state rules over the individual.
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Wilson himself made this connection very plain in a revealing essay he wrote in 1887 called “Socialism and Democracy.”
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Wilson’s begins this essay by defining socialism, explaining that it stands for absolute state power, which trumps any notion of individual rights.
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It “proposes that all idea of a limitation of public authority by individual rights be put out of view,” Wilson wrote, and “that no line can be drawn between private and public affairs which the State may not cross at will.”
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Read that once again, as it is a chilling statement.
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After laying out this definition of socialism, Wilson explains that he finds nothing wrong with it in principle, since it was "merely the logical extension of genuine democratic theory. It gives all power to the people, in their collective capacity, to carry out their will through the exercise of governmental power, unlimited by any undemocratic idea like individual rights."
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Progressives argued for a new concept of government, where individual natural rights no longer serve as a boundary that the state was prohibited from crossing.
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Progressives call for the state to take an active role in creating economic equality (Hmmm, "spreading the wealth"?) by way of controlling the use of private property.
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Progressives argue that private property rights, are to be respected only insofar as the government approved.
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If the government believes that any private property would better serve the collective (the people) in the control of the government, then it has the right to confiscate or to apply strict controls to such property.
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GM? Chrysler? Wall Street?
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So is our current national crisis the result of progressive policies?
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Duh!
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The first connection concerns the official ignorance of the Constitution.
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And this is one main reason why I am not a Republican, much less a Democrat. This is why I am Libertarian.
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The present crisis did not appear out of nowhere, and didn’t simply begin with the election of Barack Obama, as much as I would love to blame him for all of this disaster.
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Politicians of both parties spent the better part of the 20th century disregarding the Constitution, as they looked to have government step up to solve every conceivable human problem.
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From the New Deal, through The Great Society, through Bush's benign, or 'compassionate conservatism' our government has been growing at an accelerated rate into the monster it is today which in its unending hunger it is consuming itself and everything around it with no means to slow it down, much less stop it.
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Thus it ought to be no surprise that the Constitution’s limits on government aren’t even part of the conversation today as our politicians debate the new interventions in our economy and society that seem to come daily.
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Basically, progressives believe that the role of government should be determined not by our Constitution, but by whatever the needs of the day happen to be.
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This is why they try to eradicate talk of the Constitution from our political discourse.
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They have been quite successful at it for years.
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Progressives know that our original system of government is not capable of handling all of the new tasks that they have in mind for it. So they have created a vast set of bureaucratic agencies, lead by the afore mentioned and unaccountable 'Czars'.
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They believe that Congress should enact very broad and vague laws for supervising more and more facets of the American economy and society, and then delegate to the bureaucratic agencies the power and discretion to enact specific policies, bypassing congress and thus constitutional scrutiny.
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The New Deal, Great Society, etc. certainly went a long way toward implementing this progressive vision, and what we have seen in our own situation with TARP, Stimulus and the various other interventions is simply greater steps toward the progressive plan.
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Our Congress has simply said to the Treasury agencies: here’s a trillion dollars, here’s all the legal authority you need, now go out, determine what is in the public interest, and spend and regulate accordingly.
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That is the progressive vision of government, in a nutshell.
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But the tide may be changing, as today there is a new breed of American: educated, intellectual, yet approachable constitutionalists that have been catching the attention of mainstream America, reminding us all what America was and is all about, returning us back to our principles, the principles of our founding fathers.
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These men and women, from their radio, TV, Internet and printed media pulpits have been reeducating us about our founding fathers, our constitution and the principles our nation was founded on, the principles that no matter the passing of time, will hold strong and true forever.
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The Newt Gingriches, Rush Limbaughs and Glenn Becks of the world are very controversial due to their so-called 'bombastic' and supposedly 'fear mongering' styles, according to the liberal, or progressive media and politicians.
I just went through this long historical exercise to illustrate how FDR's progressive agenda was derailed. His dying salvo was conceding half of Europe to the Russians, perhaps his warped idea of 'globalization' and a new 'world order.' But he died before he could resume his agenda and emerge from WWII with a nation practically ruled by Washington.
*
All the pieces were in place, as during WWII there was a form of martial law and a centralized control of the economy. But thankfully Harry S. Truman, followed by Eisenhower and Kennedy (his Democratic platform in 1961 would pass for the Republican platform of 2008) had different ideas, 'strange ideas', such as easing the constraints on the economy and our corporations and allowing the country to grow with little intrusion from Washington, and that is how we became the most powerful nation on earth.
*
But the progressive movement did not die with FDR. The seeds had been planted too deep and too broadly. Baby boomers, the children of the 60s rebelled against everything their parents stood for and gave new life to progressivism, then called liberalism, radicalism, socialism. Those flower children and anti-war activists are the men and women ruling this nation today. That is why we are in the mess we find ourselves today in.
*
Many on the left today call themselves “progressive,” and they do so not just because it’s a nicer way of saying “liberal,” but also because they very much intend to revive the political principles of America’s original Progressives, from the Progressive Era of the 1880s through World War II.
*
Why would leftist politicians, like Mrs. Clinton, purposely identify themselves with this Progressive movement?
*
The reason is that America’s original Progressives were also its original, big-government liberals.
*
Again I remind you that most people point to the New Deal era as the source of big government and the welfare state that we have today. While this is perfectly accurate, it is important to understand that the principles of the New Deal did not originate in the New Deal; rather, they came from the Progressives, who had dominated American politics and intellectual cultural a generation prior to the New Deal.
*
Does that sound like what we today call 'liberal elitism?'
*
Again, we have no less an authority on this connection than Franklin Roosevelt himself. When FDR campaigned in 1932, he pointed to the Progressives – and in particular to Woodrow Wilson – as the source of his ideas about government.
*
In terms of the personalities who made up the Progressive movement, some are familiar to us and others are not.
*
The movement was comprised of well known politicians like Woodrow Wilson; but it was also comprised of intellectuals and writers who are less well known but who have been very influential in America.
*
That sounds eerily familiar today, when we examine the 'intellectuals' spread all over the Obama administration.
*
There were folks like John Dewey, who was America’s public philosopher for much of the early 20th century. Even less well known was Herbert Croly, but Croly was highly influential, since he founded and was the first editor of The New Republic – which became the main organ of Progressive opinion in the United States, and is still one of the most important journals on the Left today.
*
I should add here that Woodrow Wilson actually fell into both of these categories – he was both a well known politician and president, but also was, for decades prior to his entry into politics, a prominent intellectual (a college professor and president of Princeton) who wrote many books and influential articles, including his creepy essays about Eugenics.
*
My definition of Eugenics: 'Elitist Racism.'
*
At this point I must mention that serious, impartial historians, not the progressive revisionists that author the history books our children are taught today, also have written broadly about President Teddy Roosevelt as one of the original progressive politicians.
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I am not doubting their data. Except that I find Teddy Roosevelt as a bit of a contradiction.
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While he did use a 'big stick' in dealing with corporate America, believed in Eugenics and did play with the idea of centralized government and was no fan of the founding fathers or the constitution, he was very conservative in other areas and for sure was a hawk when it came to foreign policy.
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In my estimation he was not a progressive in the mold that Woodrow Wilson was.
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These Progressives wanted a thorough transformation in America’s principles of government, (Obama: "I will lead a fundamental transformation of America!") from a government permanently dedicated to securing individual liberty to one whose ends and scope would change to take on any and all social and economic ills.
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For one, progressives deride America's founding, and they want to eradicate its principles. They dare say that our constitution is a living and evolving document, code for 'we can change it as we see fit.'
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America’s Progressives aim for a thorough transformation in America’s principles of government.
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While our founders understood that our national government must have the capacity to be strong and vigorous, they also were very clear that this strength must always be confined to very limited ends or areas of responsibility. Government, in other words, while not weak or tiny, was to be strictly limited.
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The roots of my Libertarianism.
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The Progressive conception of government, on the other hand, is quite the opposite.
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Progressives had an “evolving” or a “living” notion of government (again, we get the term “living constitution” from the Progressives), and thus want government to take on whatever role and scope the times demand.
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The Progressives reason that people of the founding era may have wanted a limited government, given their particular experience with George III, but they argue that people today want a much more activist government, and that we should adjust the constitution accordingly.
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Progressives hate the principles of American government.
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They hate the Declaration of Independence, which established the protection of individual natural rights (like property) as the unchangeable purpose of government; and they hate the Constitution, which places permanent limits on the size of government and is structured in a way that makes the extension of national power beyond its original purpose very difficult.
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“Progressivism” was, for them, all about progressing, or moving beyond, the principles of our founders. Again, 'the living and evolving' constitution.
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This is why the Progressives were the first Americans to denounce openly our founding documents.
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Woodrow Wilson, for example, once warned that “if you want to understand the real Declaration of Independence, do not repeat the preface” – i.e. that part of the Declaration which talks about securing individual natural rights as the only legitimate purpose of government.
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Under the system of our founders, government was to have sufficient strength and energy to accomplish its ends, but those ends were strictly limited by the Constitution. The principal way in which the Constitution keeps the government within its boundaries is through the separation of powers.
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The Progressives, especially Woodrow Wilson, hated the separation of powers for precisely this reason: it made government inefficient, and made it difficult, if not impossible, to expand the power of government so that it could take on all of the new tasks that Progressives had in mind. So they looked to the presidency as a way of getting around this obstacle.
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See: 'Multiple Czars in charge of government agencies without accountability to congress.' Also see: Executive orders, also known as 'ruling by decree'.
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Under the original system, the president was merely leader of a single branch, or part, of the government.
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In his book Constitutional Government, Woodrow Wilson wrote that “leadership and control must be lodged somewhere.”
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The president, Wilson pointed out, was "the only politician who could claim to speak for the people as a whole," and thus he called upon the president "to rise above the separation of powers – to consider himself not merely as chief of a single branch of government, but as the popular leader of the whole of national politics."
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A sort of modern 'king,' or 'benign' dictator?
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Wilson called for the president to have the power to circumvent the other branches of government in order to 'serve the people' that elected him to power.
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It was in this way that Wilson believed the original intention of the separation of powers system could be circumvented, and the enhanced presidency could be a means energizing the kind of active national government that the progressive agenda required.
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Since the Progressives have such a limitless view of state power, and since they want to downplay the founders’ emphasis on individual rights, it is only natural to ask if they are indeed socialists.
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First, when comparing progressivism and socialism, we must be clear that we are talking about the similarity in the philosophy of government; we are not suggesting that America’s progressives were the kind of moral monsters that we see in the history of some socialist or fascist regimes (although it is the case that their racial views – particularly those of Woodrow Wilson, i.e. Eugenics – were indeed morally reprehensible).
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It is also hard to compare the two, unless you compare the pure philosophies, as there is not one single purely socialist government in the world, nor has there ever been one.
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While their beliefs and aims are similar, progressives say they oppose socialism, when they are really competing with them for the same loot.
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Hitler's Fascism was not that dissimilar to Stalin's Communism, and yet they hated each other to the point of killing over 60 million of their countrymen.
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In fact, Wilson ran against a socialist candidate in the 1912 election (Eugene Debs).
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The progressives were weary about the socialist movement of their day not so much because they disagreed with it in principle, but because the American socialist movement was a movement of the lower classes.
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The progressives were elitists; they looked down their noses at the socialists, considering them a kind of rabble.
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Sounds familiar? Obama and his elitist 'intelligentsia' considering middle America a bunch of bible-holding and gun-toting hicks?
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Keeping these points in mind, it is, nonetheless, the case that the progressive conception of government closely coincided with the socialist conception.
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Look at it like the movie 'Alien vs. Predator.' They fought each other to death. But both were monsters nevertheless.
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Both progressivism and socialism promote the philosophy that the state rules over the individual.
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Wilson himself made this connection very plain in a revealing essay he wrote in 1887 called “Socialism and Democracy.”
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Wilson’s begins this essay by defining socialism, explaining that it stands for absolute state power, which trumps any notion of individual rights.
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It “proposes that all idea of a limitation of public authority by individual rights be put out of view,” Wilson wrote, and “that no line can be drawn between private and public affairs which the State may not cross at will.”
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Read that once again, as it is a chilling statement.
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After laying out this definition of socialism, Wilson explains that he finds nothing wrong with it in principle, since it was "merely the logical extension of genuine democratic theory. It gives all power to the people, in their collective capacity, to carry out their will through the exercise of governmental power, unlimited by any undemocratic idea like individual rights."
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Progressives argued for a new concept of government, where individual natural rights no longer serve as a boundary that the state was prohibited from crossing.
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Progressives call for the state to take an active role in creating economic equality (Hmmm, "spreading the wealth"?) by way of controlling the use of private property.
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Progressives argue that private property rights, are to be respected only insofar as the government approved.
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If the government believes that any private property would better serve the collective (the people) in the control of the government, then it has the right to confiscate or to apply strict controls to such property.
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GM? Chrysler? Wall Street?
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So is our current national crisis the result of progressive policies?
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Duh!
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The first connection concerns the official ignorance of the Constitution.
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And this is one main reason why I am not a Republican, much less a Democrat. This is why I am Libertarian.
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The present crisis did not appear out of nowhere, and didn’t simply begin with the election of Barack Obama, as much as I would love to blame him for all of this disaster.
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Politicians of both parties spent the better part of the 20th century disregarding the Constitution, as they looked to have government step up to solve every conceivable human problem.
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From the New Deal, through The Great Society, through Bush's benign, or 'compassionate conservatism' our government has been growing at an accelerated rate into the monster it is today which in its unending hunger it is consuming itself and everything around it with no means to slow it down, much less stop it.
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Thus it ought to be no surprise that the Constitution’s limits on government aren’t even part of the conversation today as our politicians debate the new interventions in our economy and society that seem to come daily.
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Basically, progressives believe that the role of government should be determined not by our Constitution, but by whatever the needs of the day happen to be.
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This is why they try to eradicate talk of the Constitution from our political discourse.
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They have been quite successful at it for years.
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Progressives know that our original system of government is not capable of handling all of the new tasks that they have in mind for it. So they have created a vast set of bureaucratic agencies, lead by the afore mentioned and unaccountable 'Czars'.
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They believe that Congress should enact very broad and vague laws for supervising more and more facets of the American economy and society, and then delegate to the bureaucratic agencies the power and discretion to enact specific policies, bypassing congress and thus constitutional scrutiny.
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The New Deal, Great Society, etc. certainly went a long way toward implementing this progressive vision, and what we have seen in our own situation with TARP, Stimulus and the various other interventions is simply greater steps toward the progressive plan.
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Our Congress has simply said to the Treasury agencies: here’s a trillion dollars, here’s all the legal authority you need, now go out, determine what is in the public interest, and spend and regulate accordingly.
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That is the progressive vision of government, in a nutshell.
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But the tide may be changing, as today there is a new breed of American: educated, intellectual, yet approachable constitutionalists that have been catching the attention of mainstream America, reminding us all what America was and is all about, returning us back to our principles, the principles of our founding fathers.
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These men and women, from their radio, TV, Internet and printed media pulpits have been reeducating us about our founding fathers, our constitution and the principles our nation was founded on, the principles that no matter the passing of time, will hold strong and true forever.
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The Newt Gingriches, Rush Limbaughs and Glenn Becks of the world are very controversial due to their so-called 'bombastic' and supposedly 'fear mongering' styles, according to the liberal, or progressive media and politicians.
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Except it is not 'fear mongering' when you are telling the truth, and perhaps you need to be somewhat bombastic if you are to be heard.
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Nevertheless, if you would just ignore the noise, the made for radio and TV antics and listen closely, you would hear the truth that has been missing from the national discourse for so long.
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Not that I particularly support him for president in 2012, but if Newt Gingrich were the Republican candidate he would wipe the floor with Barack Obama each time they faced each other in a debate. Gingrich, a history professor and author by profession is as big an authority on American and world history, our founding fathers and most of all our constitution as you will ever find among politicians.
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He carries a lot of baggage, but man he sure knows the subject.
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They are reawakening the American spirit, the spirit of 1776.
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Now you have a choice, having learned about Progressivism.
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Do you now understand why we are in the state we are in? Do you now understand what our elected 'leaders' are up to?
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It is up to you to do something about it, before they take that right away from you.
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Exercise that right.
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60's Child
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Nevertheless, if you would just ignore the noise, the made for radio and TV antics and listen closely, you would hear the truth that has been missing from the national discourse for so long.
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Not that I particularly support him for president in 2012, but if Newt Gingrich were the Republican candidate he would wipe the floor with Barack Obama each time they faced each other in a debate. Gingrich, a history professor and author by profession is as big an authority on American and world history, our founding fathers and most of all our constitution as you will ever find among politicians.
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He carries a lot of baggage, but man he sure knows the subject.
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They are reawakening the American spirit, the spirit of 1776.
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Now you have a choice, having learned about Progressivism.
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Do you now understand why we are in the state we are in? Do you now understand what our elected 'leaders' are up to?
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It is up to you to do something about it, before they take that right away from you.
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Exercise that right.
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60's Child
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