The New Progressivism: Same as the Old Progressivism?
The original progressivism arose in the 1880s and 1890s and flourished during the first two decades of the twentieth century. It is associated with Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, scholars Fredrick Jackson Turner and Charles Beard, reformer Jane Addams, theologian Walter Rauschenbusch, philosopher and educator John Dewey, and journalist and New Republic founder Herbert Croly. And it laid the foundations for FDR’s New Deal and the centralized regulatory and redistributive state under which we live today.
At their best, progressives grappled with dramatic social and economic transformations produced by the Industrial Revolution, opposed real Gilded Age abuses, and promoted salutary reforms. In a rapidly changing world, they took the side of the exploited and the weak, and sought to make political institutions more responsive to popular will.
Much also could be said about progressivism’s errors. Most damagingly, it argued that because progress had improved humanity and dissolved or overcome legitimate differences of opinion about morals and politics, the Constitution’s checks and balances and separation and dispersing of power were no longer necessary to prevent majority tyranny and officeholders’ abuse of power.
A central paradox of American progressivism arises from the divergence between its democratic aspirations and its aristocratic ambitions. On the one hand, progressives sought to democratize American politics by putting government in the service of, and giving greater say to, the people. On the other hand, they favored the enlargement of a distant national government, and the creation of an administrative elite that reduced popular accountability.
In the progressive classic The Promise of American Life (1914), Herbert Croly identified the source of this paradox with startling candor. Centralization and elite control were necessary to advance democratic ends because American constitutional government was based on “erroneous and misleading ideas,” and “the average American individual is morally and intellectually inadequate to a serious and consistent conception of his responsibilities as a democrat.”
The new progressivism is not so bold. Or rather, it boldly seeks to obscure its awkward combination of egalitarianism and elitism through a rhetoric of reform that presents partisan and eminently debatable goals as dictates of reason, practical imperatives, or truths of the heart. Academic schools have arisen to refine this rhetoric, and President Obama has brought leading representatives into his administration.
For example, former Yale Law School Dean and now State Department legal counsel Harold Koh is a prominent advocate of transnationalism, which purports to derive universal principles of international law from moral reflection on the conduct of states, and vests power to enforce these derivations in unaccountable foreign courts and officials.
Harvard Law School professor Cass Sunstein, now head of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, has championed pragmatism, a theoretical approach popular among law professors and political theorists that overtly reduces questions of principle to questions of what works, and then covertly transforms these into questions of what works to advance progressive goals.
Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, like President Obama, extols empathy. Law professors have burnished the idea that empathy for the ways of ordinary people based, however, on experiences of exclusion and oppression available only to minorities and women, provides grounds for deciding the hardest constitutional law questions.
All three approaches equate the progressive agenda with justice itself. All three provide rationales for circumventing people’s expressed preferences. And all three present end runs around voters’ wishes as higher, purer forms of democracy.
This is, or ought to be, an awkward orientation for progressives. Among other things, it insults the public by treating us as too simple-minded or bitter to adopt the correct policies for the correct reasons, and it diminishes our freedom by depriving us of responsibility for our choices.
The danger posed by the new progressivism does not lessen a free society’s ever-present need for reform. But to secure liberty for all, we should follow the Federalist authors, who believed our experiment in self-government, which is grounded in the consent of the governed, must avoid both pandering to democratic prejudices and despising the people’s opinions.
Thank you. Your quote from Herbert Croly was shocking. I never realized progressives had spelled it out so baldly.
Excellent commentary. Very informative and spot on. Progressivism is built on lies. But lies that are shaped, refined and told so many times they become truths. Someone else in a fascist dictatorship used the same trick. Anyway the lies were always soft lies and lies that tugged at your heart and made you emote and drop all your reasoning ability.
Furthermore, progressivism would not have gotten this far had it not been for a compliant and sycophantic MSM who covered up the lies. So not only did the American public get spoon fed the lies from lawyers from Harvard, Yale and Princeton, but the lies from the daily newspapers, nightly news. The NYT/WaPo legitimized all the lies.
Lastly, because of progressive educators like Dewey, our education system has dumbed down our citizens to the point where critical thinking is actually abjured. And certainly in college, students are indoctrinated by professors who not only espouse progressivism but shamelessly denigrate American ideals to do it.
Obama is simply a snake-oil salesman. The progressive system pushed him along; his race being the tantamount factor in his meteoric rise. Progressive elites think of us as dumb and use our trust in the Constitution and our inherent goodness against us in order to achieve power and position.
If we had a parliamentary system of government, progressives and libertarians would have their own separate parties, but that ain’t the case. Libertarians are much closer to old school Republicans than the current crop of carpet chewers, and nearly all of the new, cool, and smart ideas to move government forward into the future come from progressives.
Progressivism is just the pretty term for classical (not name calling) Fascism. Traditional American Progressives differentiated themselves from the Socialist variant of Fascism by actually favoring technological and social advancement. They were much closer to Sorel then Marx in thought and more enamored with Mussolini then Lenin in deed.
Sometime during the 1930′s the Communist movement subverted and captured the Progressive movement and reduced it to a respectable front organization. Socialism is a static concept that Robert Reich captured nicely in his talk on healthcare talk at Cal Berkley when he said that “…you should not expect to live longer than your parents … .” To the socialist nothing gets better after a ’57 Chevy.
Good essay. However, I think there is far more nuance in the whole original “progressive” phenomenon to see it as purely a prot-statist elitism. As an example, I would point to California’s 1910 Progressive Revolt led by Hiram Johnson, who later became one of the few Senators to vote against entry into World War I, and who was very much a champion of small “d” democratic reform and popular sovereignty. There is a world of difference between Johnson, and other “goo-goo” mostly Republican progressives of the pre-Bull Moose Theodore Roosevelt ilk and the openly statist Democratic progressives of the Woodrow Wilson – Col. Edward House (he of Philip Dru: Administrator and the notorious phony neutrality during WWI) variety. Note also that Croly’s The Promise of American Life was heavily criticized at the time for its totalitarian tendencies and did not sell well, though he did attract attention from a post-presidential Teddy Roosevelt and others.
There is much good, even classically liberal, in the early progressives, which should not be thrown out with the Democratic and statist progressives whose influence came to predominate intellectual life after the election of 1912.
BC:
Tell us what these new, cool and smart ideas are. The world wonders
obama is a far left person, with the same beliefs as people who describe themselves as maoists or communists. he cannot be upfront about his ideology because this is America. He also has a plan for how to do things, which includes giving the other side what they seem to want to pacify them for the moment. Fighting terrorism matters, so he sends troops although clearly he does not want to. How ruthless and coldblooded to send our young people to fight for something that he does not believe in. Only a belief that you are doing the right thing justifies sending people to kill and die. And once you do that, you must see it through. But he does it for another purpose, to keep his agenda alive and to be able to realize parts of it. So he will send them for a cause in which he does not belief and in regard to which he is on the other side.
Remember:
The issue is never the issue.
The issue is control.
If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and looks like a duck, odds are it is a duck.
Progressive, Marxist, Socialist, Liberal, Liberterian, Fascist, the distinctions matter only to them. That is why I call ALL of them 4th worlders. Obviously they live on some planet besides the planet Earth (Terra). 1st 2nd and 3rd were already taken, so…….
They would have to, given what they see as reality is so different from reality on Terra (Earth).
Not that it matters. The real part of reality always makes itself known. In the 4th world, a massive bailout provides jobs and fixes the economy. In the real world, most of the bailout is stolen to make a few rich, leaving the unemployed still unemployed. And that is using the 4th world definition of employment, which is workers pretending to work and government pretending to pay them. In the real world, an employee is someone that produces income for their employer.
4th worlder’s solutions never work because the 4th worlders never figure out that they ARE the problem. It doesn’t matter what name they are hiding behind today.
Today’s Progressives are particularly dangerous because they are convinced of their wonderfulness. Power and well paying positions are due them because of their altruism and academic credentials. The common folk are fortunate that they are willing to sacrifice so much on their behalf. It should be patently obvious that only a disgusting and reactionary person could possibly disagree.
The irony is that few realize that Progressivism is inherently anti-intellectual. These individuals argue backwards. Big government policies are great for them—and therefore must be fantastic for the unwashed masses. Indeed, the anti-intellectualism must be mentioned far more often. The typical Progressive thinker inhabits an echo chamber cultural milieu. They read each other, and pretend that no competitive ideas even exist. Progressives, for instance, did not thoroughly study the works of Ludwig Von Mises or Friedrich Hayek and found them wanting. On the contrary, the latter writers are essentially ignored.
3. BC.
“…nearly all of the new, cool, and smart ideas to move government forward into the future come from progressives.”
Ah yes, the ultimate Modern Liberal goal, to appear to be “smart” and “cool”. And to therefore, be your master.
Just like Mr. President.
Perfect confirmation by BC of the ideas presented in this article by Mr. Berkowitz.
Definitions of words are dynamic. The term “progressive” associates itself to Teddy Roosevelt, who made it to Mt. Rushmore. Somewhere between then and now the meaning of the word was hijacked in a true terrorist fashion. Progressive now seems to mean ‘anything goes, less work, and path of least resistance to the general welfare and the pursuit of happiness.
From Teddy Roosevelts book,”The Strenuous Life”, his idea of progressive is anything but a social welfare state. His “Progressive” was hard work and duty to a personal evolution. His legacy is carved in granite, not whimsy, despite the theft and lie of his agenda.
Umm, thinking ahead for the long term, and coming up with ways like to be more eco-friendly and efficient with resources and energy, as well as not run out of stuff, like, oh, fish, are examples of progressive ideas. If the current crop of Republicans had been running things their way, we’d all be driving V8′s in smog storms, and fish would be so contaminated with mercury that it would only be used to poison the rats at the mountain-size trash dumps building up outside towns.
The controlling mindset of the “progressive” is that of an insular moral and intellectual superiority toward anyone who disagrees with them. This is based not on deeds or argument but rather on the assumption of a set of attitudes. Adoption of the “right” attitudes toward health-care, economics, the environment and the role of government automatically opens the gates to membership in this elect group. Once “inside” it also bestows the right to demonize opponenets in the most vitriolic, scatalogical and defamatory language possible. For progressives this is acceptable because they are fighting “the good war” from the heights of moral aggrandizement. The near-psychotic nature of Keith Olberman’s attacks on Scott Brown are a good example of this attitude.
There is a facinating analysis of this and its relation to the “Obama phenomenon” in this week’s edition of The Weekly Standard. Entitled “The Roots of Obama Worship” by James W. Ceaser it perfectly captures the attitudes of the progressive elite and their dismissive attitude toward, what can only be called, “the rest of us.” A darn good read.
“Progressive now seems to mean ‘anything goes, less work, and path of least resistance to the general welfare and the pursuit of happiness.”
The affirmative action policies implemented in the mid to late 1960s are greatly responsible for this intellectual laziness. Politically protected minorities were the first to obtain phony degrees behind their name. The white majority students also jumped aboard the bandwagon sometime in the mid 1970s. Only the hard sciences generally avoided a sharp decline in standards. The liberal arts have been devastated. A soft science degree from Harvard, Yale, and the other Ivy League institutions is often not worthy of respect. It has the value of a three dollar bill.
13. BC.
“Umm, thinking ahead for the long term…”
Sure. Haven’t “Progressives” pretty much run the country for the last 100 years or so?
“…oh, fish, are examples of progressive ideas. ”
Oh fish, oh fish. Praise thee oh fish. Are you talking about what emanates from Berkeley Womym’s Studies programs?
“…and fish would be so contaminated with mercury that it would only be used to poison the rats at the mountain-size trash dumps building up outside towns.”
Wow. How apocalyptic! “Cool”!
As opposed to the Modern Liberal monuments presently existing in the Progressive Dream created inner cities. Build more Projects!
Just throw more of other people’s money at it. But please, keep “them” away from my precious Modern Liberal World.
Come on BC, be “cool”. Break out in a Negro dialect or… something. Go to the local nursery and free an oppressed tree. Eat some organic tree bark. Grow your own 4 cylinder. But be “cool”.
Lucky 13
BC say: “Umm, thinking ahead for the long term, and coming up with ways like to be more eco-friendly and efficient with resources and energy, as well as not run out of stuff, like, oh, fish, are examples of progressive ideas.”
No. sir, no, no. A Progressive idea is Global Warming. Sell the people on the fact that the climate is suddenly warming out of control as a result of manufacturing and other people activities (breathing), causing mass devastation. Unless we set up a big sort of stock exchange to sell pollution tickets, all will be kaput. The is an open market solution, an open pollution market solution, as it were. Nuts, simply nuts, but very, very progressive.
BC:
You have reached a level of incoherence that I though impossible from a troll.
“Umm, thinking ahead for the long term, and coming up with ways like to be more eco-friendly and efficient with resources and energy, as well as not run out of stuff, like, oh, fish, are examples of progressive ideas.”
Paul Ehrlich has been thoroughly debunked for some 30 years now. Resources follow capital, not the dictates of scientific advisory committees.
Actually the progressive climate exchange (“stock exchange”) already exists: http://www.chicagoclimatex.com/ Progressive nut-cases galore can be found at various links at that site.
An interesting case-study, published at the Claremont Institute, details how progressivism (established there in the early 1900′s) led directly to California’s current status as a failed state. It explains how the good intentions — usually reform on the grand scale — of political elites pave the road to serfdom and chaos.
Ref. http://www.claremont.org/publications/crb/id.1650/article_detail.asp
Another killing quote from an early 20th Century progressive comes from Richard Ely: “Freedom today means something more than being let alone.”
Let the implications of that sink in for a moment.
Basically, the progressive mindset reduces to what Thomas Sowell has called “the vision of the anointed.” In his book by that name, he delineates left-liberal / progressive fundamentals from their specific policy positions and a posteriori justifications for their failure. In summary, progressivism’s principles reduce to this:
1. All states of affairs viewed as unsatisfactory (by progressives) are problems to which we owe solutions.
2. Once a problem has been identified, a solution is morally mandatory. Any costs to be incurred in the search for and implementation of a solution are irrelevant.
3. Systemic processes such as markets and individual choice are not to be trusted; giving the right people (i.e., progressives) the right amount of power is the key to solving problems.
Note that this is fundamentally a moral posture. As a moral posture, it reacts to anyone who differs with it by styling him an enemy. Thus, there can be no accommodation between the progressive and the dissenter; the progressive must prevail as a matter of right and justice, in whose pursuit any and all means are acceptable.
In other words, the progressives’ contest with conservatives and libertarians is, to their way of thinking, a religious war — and in a religious war, the only possible outcomes are victory and death.
Draw the moral.
Very nice piece, this one. It explains why the Progressives are so contemptuous of the Constitution — they just know better. For example, the health care bill was clearly unconstitutional in three respects: the unprecedented individual mandate (govt forcing people to buy a privately produced service, see Randy Barnett), the insurance company profit limitation (which is a fifth amendment violation, see Epstein), and the unfair advantages to certain groups (unions, some areas in Florida exempt from Medicare Advantage cuts, the Louisiana Purchase, the Corhusker caper), all of which seem to violate the equal protection clause. You could go on and also attack the bailouts of banks and auto companies, the forcing of banks to take TARP money, possibly the AIG takeover. We’ve seen an unprecedent assault on the Constitution in the name of progressivism during this last year. No wonder people are fed up. And now, the real progressives are asking Obama to declare war on the American people too. These people are really, really dangerous.
No presidential candidate in living memory has more successfully put forward competing faces than Barack Obama.
What, you can’t remember the Nixon? The man who would, “Heal the Nation” and join Left and Right wings only to have the country polarized more clearly than ever at Ohio State. The President who publicly told Americans he was negotiating an end to the war while conducting secret bombing raids on Laos and Cambodia? The leader who sicced Agnew and Bob Dole on the Media?
May I nominate Richard Nixon by a landslide?
22. Francis W. Porretto:
2. Once a problem has been identified, a solution is morally mandatory. Any costs to be incurred in the search for and implementation of a solution are irrelevant.
I think that we may include “invented” as well as “identified.”
Thank you.
“In the progressive classic The Promise of American Life (1914), Herbert Croly identified the source of this paradox with startling candor. Centralization and elite control were necessary to advance democratic ends because American constitutional government was based on “erroneous and misleading ideas,” and “the average American individual is morally and intellectually inadequate to a serious and consistent conception of his responsibilities as a democrat.””
Sounds about right for the barely concealed mindset of the current DC cabal, the President himself and sundry hangers on, most notably, or infamously, Cass Sunstein. Such thinking underpins Obama’s characterization of the the Bill of Rights as “negative” rights. Ideally (I’m not kidding) to be rendered null & void (the FCC is working very hard on suppression of free speech at the moment) or, at the very least, superseded by all the positive rights (gov’t as the source) that he and élitist cronies dream up to grant the little people, the “intellectually inadequate” folks.
I wonder how much longer we can let this cabal continue without permanently damaging the soul of this country. They hold the reins of power at present & will not quit the agenda without a very prolonged battle. Any heads up they get in the way of a word from the population (like Scott Brown’s election) will be spun and denied and worked around.
Here is an interesting read on the Democrat 40-year-ago Faustian bargain with the unions, shedding more light on the current government’s agenda.
The battle over who defines the work and institutions that make a nation thrive and grow
To Mike C: No, no and no.
@9 Rosinante, how dare you type “libertarian” and those other names in the same sentence. Where do you think you are? Were we at the tavern, that would earn you the back of my glove. Fie. You must not know what words mean.
Anon24, you must mean Kent State, don’t you? Other than Phil Ochs and Woody, what ever happened at Ohio State?
#22 JED
Jed, I think you’ve mislead yourself. Teddy was as progressive as they come.
He gave us the massive federal land grabs under the National Park System.
“Every man holds his property subject to the general right of the community to regulate its use to whatever degree the public welfare may require it. The New Nationalism (1910-08-31)”. Goody, the govt ought to tell me what I can do on my own land.
“We wish to control big business so as to secure among other things good wages for the wage-workers and reasonable prices for the consumers. Wherever in any business the prosperity of the businessman is obtained by lowering the wages of his workmen and charging an excessive price to the consumers we wish to interfere and stop such practices. We will not submit to that kind of prosperity any more than we will submit to prosperity obtained by swindling investors or getting unfair advantages over business rivals.” Speech at Progressive Party Convention, Chicago (1912-06-17) I dunno. Sounds to me like a belief in our communist union system.
24. Anonymous:
No presidential candidate in living memory has more successfully put forward competing faces than Barack Obama.
What, you can’t remember the Nixon? The man who would, “Heal the Nation” and join Left and Right wings only to have the country polarized more clearly than ever at Ohio State. The President who publicly told Americans he was negotiating an end to the war while conducting secret bombing raids on Laos and Cambodia? The leader who sicced Agnew and Bob Dole on the Media?
May I nominate Richard Nixon by a landslide?
apart from your mis-reading of history. I think Richard Nixon would beat Obuma in an election held today.
Yes, the progressivists forge ahead in the teeth of the evidence.
I’ve seen similar behavior by elements of the religious right.
The opposing coalitions in the Culture Wars are not mirror images of each other, but similarities do exist. One thing they have in common is the determination to have the war.
#12 JED – Sorry Jed, you been drinking the sauce. Ol Teddy was as progressive as they come.
His progressive agenda gave us the massive federal land grabs under the Natl park system.
“… I believe in a graduated income tax on big fortunes, and in another tax which is far more easily collected and far more effective — a graduated inheritance tax on big fortunes, properly safeguarded against evasion and increasing rapidly in amount with the size of the estate. ” Sounds positively progressive to me.
“No hard and fast rule can be laid down as to where our legislation shall stop in interfering between man and man, between interest and interest.”
“We wish to control big business so as to secure among other things good wages for the wage-workers and reasonable prices for the consumers.”
And lets not forget this goody, “Every man holds his property subject to the general right of the community to regulate its use to whatever degree the public welfare may require it. “
FW Porretto,#22.
so, psychologically, the modern day progressive is obsessed with laying out the world as a set of assumptions and, concomitantly, he or she being the only elephant in the room with meaningful, not to mention “moral”, solutions to said problems
It’s a rigid mindset, maybe a wonk mindset. Likely, progressives are really just neatniks of the mind, cultivated in the hothouse atmosphere of academic institutions with little or no practical experience in the “real” world.
Reinforcing each other and not having seen any challenges to their self-righteous little ideas or the worth of their capacities & analysis, in their own minds they are ipso facto always right.
…specific policy positions and a posteriori justifications for their failure
The explanation this President offered up for MA vote yesterday (“people expressed the same frustration they did after 8 years of Bush”) certainly qualifies as “a posteriori justification”.
27. BC:
Funny how that last 30 years has seen more persons move out of the conditions of material privation that any other period of history and possibly all other periods of history combined…
And it was done without the wit and wisdom of the “progressives.”
In fact it was done by a perfect storm of Reagan Tax Cuts and Chinese capitalism.
I seem to recall that the material conditions were what materialist (i.e. your alleged form) analysis looked at….
Sucks to be you!
29. CJ:
#22 JED
Jed, I think you’ve mislead yourself. Teddy was as progressive as they come.
32. anti-big govt:
#12 JED – Sorry Jed, you been drinking the sauce. Ol Teddy was as progressive as they come.
Thank you for your perspective. I shall not argue the content. The era of the robber barons needs to be held in relativity to Roosevelts’ progressiveness. Perhaps we can agree, as he moved the country from an isolated agrarian country to a world power, that he did not have the spine of a chocolate eclair.
BC is right. The only reason you troglodytes disagree with him is that true progressive leaders have never been quite successful enough to get you properly murdered as planned.
The whole troglodyte world ganged up on poor Adolf Hitler and Pol Pot –their cool new programs never got hardly any global support at all. And poor Joe Stalin! Forced by the accursed free markets to imprison, enslave, and terrorize the proletariat, the poor dear.
Teddy R’s great personal ‘live the strenuous life’ drive led him to his third-party ‘Bullmoose’ run –which is what elected Woodrow Wilson (Teddy & Taft split a la Bush & Perot) and the world’s first Progressive gov’t. The following global Progressive parade featured the 20th century hundred year’s war and (so far, to date) a hundred million human beings zapped.
B.C. – you’re late for your Soc 101 lecture.
I checked the new Republican leader, Senator Scott Brown’s position’s on progressive programs like the environment, human rights and health care reform and his campaign says they believe in the progressive view on these (and many other) issues so to speak against your new senator is leading you the wrong way. So I am sure that Senator Brown would advise you, the t-bags to get in line and get with the “new” program for real Republican leadership in the 21st century. Good Luck with that !
While history books, 80% of which were written by progressive minds, portray Hitler as the archetypical 20th century mad man mass murderer, if you want the truth, it’s a different story.
Fact is, it was the Communists who were the killing kings, having slaughtered in China and Russia more than 80 million people. Let that figure sink in for
a moment or two. To think of 80 million people, men women and children being butchered by a political philosophy, how does one sort that out?
So why the emphasis on Hitler in the history books? Not to downplay that piece of human excrement, but hate to say it, but there were worse.
Because the progressives writing the books are Maoists, socialists and, or, communists, themselves, they don’t want to tell the progressive Communist killing story. After all, it might give progressivism a bad name. Reflect back on themselves.
When the mass killers of the 20th century are discussed in schools or homes or political headquarters or television, the progressive fingers naturally want to point to the fascists; at Hitler. And away from the Lords of mass killing; the Communists. The ones who out-murdered Hitler 6 and 7 to one.
One may ask in all honesty. Is this the progressive star Obama has hooked his wagon to?
The answer is a definite, definitive YES.
Once Obama settled on who he was, a disciple of the 20th century Communist killing machines, he quickly realized as they all do, that it’s not the kind of thing that gets you votes; at least not
in the United States (except of course from Acorn and the big thug labor unions).
So that great speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention was all talk? Yes. Nice words, great oratory, but all for show, all for politics.
Actually, this is where the great tension inside of Obama goes into high gear. He’s had to learn how to deflect questions about it. He found he could avoid them, often, with his, “let me make this clear” set up.” He found the rhetorical device, “There are those
who say” as a great set up for knocking down straw men and thus avoiding questions on the subject. His boots shake when he thinks somebody’s
going to ask him about the roots of progressivism.
And you’ll notice that he rewards good questions from reporters and has a hissyfit when a bad one is asked. Gets on the high horse and often tries to embarrass the questioner. In a friendly group, of which most of his are, he’ll simply avoid or sluff off the question, saying something like, when Stephanopoulos asked Obama a tough question about Bill Ayers at the ABC primary debate, Obama groaned and moaned and tried to ridicule Stephanopoulos, and next day the main stream media raised holy hell about it, trying to send a message to other reporters that if they ask a question Barack doesn’t like, they’ll be hell to pay.
The leftists being the world’s premier murderers row doesn’t fit with the romantic picture today’s disingenuous progressives like Obama and Hillary Clinton want to paint with a friendly brush.
And they’ve done a good job scrubbing the killing facts of the communists off high school and other history books. But sooner or later, somebody’s going to expose the dirty heretofore unknown facts on TV, and the left will moan and groan and the mainstream media will stay silent on the subject, but the world won’t quite be the same. Political correctness might even start to work against the apologists for the historical left progressive killing machines.
Someday, some enterprising American will expose the truth. And then the millions of pictures of communist death and destruction will be there for all
to see and be sickened by. Only then will the true perspective of the past be revealed. When Barack calls himself a progressive you’ll have a much better
idea what he’s referring to.
The great Obama irony continues to be the inability to articulate what he stands for really feels.
Obama claimed to possess an assortment of objectives for this country like transparency, no earmarks, hope, change, no lobbyists in his administration, a continued strong military, freedom of religion, the belief in our constitution, the oath to preserve, protect and defend this nation from all enemies foreign and domestic.
But it was all window dressing. It doesn’t fit with socialism. Or progressivism. In fact, it run counter to them. Just like independence, liberty and self reliance. Terrorists are trying to kill this country. We all know that. But so they have allies with the same ends but different goals?
Ever wonder why Obama treats enemy combatants like house guests? Why he insists on giving them all protections that U.S. citizens receive under our constitution. Really, Obama should be spending money on weapons to stop terrorists, not spending money on lawyers to defend them. Obama should be touting free enterprise and letting it create jobs and heal the economy naturally, not trying to kill free enterprise in its tracks. Obama should treat the banks like birds with broken wings that need to fly on their own, not make subtle cracks about Fat Jewish Bankers and start class warfare brush fires by
saying they make too much money and receive fat bonuses.
Like a true Communist; I mean progressive, Obama believes jobs are created out of then air. Any businessman or woman will tell you that the profit motive is what creates jobs.
Obama promised a bunch of things, from no earmarks, to transparency to healthcare meetings on CNN to being a new post racial president to bipartisanship.
But, boys and girls, sorry to say, but that was just fodder for the peanut gallery. In Obama’s first week, he had Eric Holder call while males racial cowards. He’s nominated a leftist bigot (“white men are inferior”, she says) to the supreme court. He’s attacked one of the country’s greatest cops for “stupidly” arresting an Obama elitist Harvard professor buddy. He’s tried to kill the world’s best healthcare system by taking things like preexisting conditions and using them as a pretext to
overhaul the whole system and put it all under nice kind progressive socialist control. He controls GM. Wants to control all biggest U.S. means of production. He’s trying to spend us into oblivion, not to mention bankruptcy. Next month, he’ll announce, we don’t have enough money for missile defense. And scrap it. Folks, like disease is bad for pets, livestock and people, Obama’s bad for this country
Not only that, but Obama’s a huge supporter of unborn slaughter, killing them at a rate of 1.5 million a year, which, incidentally exceeds the rate Hitler killed the Jews.
If, before he was elected, Obama admitted his commitment to socialism, his unbreakable alliance with Bill Ayers and the old and new types of progressivism that they both embrace. If he admitted that he and Bill Ayers got a kick not of champagne, but, rather, out of the Chicago Magazine cover of five years ago showing Bill Ayers stomping on an American flag. If he exposed a number of his left leaning predilections, then comrade Obama I do declare wouldn’t have been able to attract many votes, only flies.
The reason Obama can’t talk off a teleprompter is because he can never say what he actually believes.
Don’t forget it was that one tiny off the cuff honest remark to Joe the Plumber about wanting to redistribute the wealth that almost cost
Barack-the-progressive, the election.
Progressivism may sound positive, but I wouldn’t call yourself one.
There are just too many skeletons in the closet.
I think you need to ask the Native Americans who hold the top spot in killing. It ain’t the commies.
RP/38; –today at 5pm EST on FoxNews’ Glenn Beck show, just what you are saying the people need to see.
oops –the comment order changed –now i mean
RP/40;
poor citizen, ever notice how a one dollar bill is the same size as a hundred dollar bill? crazy, ain’t it! Good luck with that!
Intensely apropos the topic:
http://www.financialsense.com/stormwatch/geo/pastanalysis/2010/0122.html
Absolutely great article!!! Fair and moderate is nice after the usual deluge of partisan prattle.
In fact the ONLY thing I can find to quibble about isyour wording of:
“…it boldly seeks to obscure its awkward combination of [pretending to do good] and [consolidating power while denying it to others] through a rhetoric …that presents partisan and eminently debatable goals as dictates of reason, practical imperatives, [dictates of God], or truths of the heart.”
Let us be honest, it is PARTISANS on BOTH sides that use this tactic, and always have!!!
I BELIEVE MY COUNTRY IS IN TROUBLE. GLOBEL WARMING IN THE LATE 1970 WAS WE WERE GOING BACK TO ICE AGE. NOW ITS WARMING . I DON’T BELIEVE WHAT MOST POLITICANS SAY. THE HEALTH CARE AND CLIMATE CHANGE IS ALL ABOUT CONTROL .IT IS ONE WAY ALONG WITH CAP AND TRADE THEY WILL HAVE A LARGE PART OF CONTROL. SCHOOL ARE A MESS . GOVERNMENT DOES RUN ANYTHING GOOD.PROGRESSIVE A MESS
PROGRESSIVE POLITICIANS ARE NOTHING MORE THAN DUPES OF THE MARXISTS WHO HOLD HIGH KEY POSITIONS SURROUNDING THE PRESIDENT AND KEY POSITIONS ACROSS THE NATION. WHEN THEY NO LONGER NEED THE PROGRESSIVES OR HIM, THEY WILL START A CIVIL WAR AND MOVE INTO THE VACUUM OF LEADERSHIP THAT IT CREATES. AMERICA WILL NO LONGER BE A REPUBLIC, AND THE AVERAGE JOE WILL NEVER KNOW WHAT HAPPENED BECAUSE HE WAS TOO BUSY IN UNGODLY MATERIALISTIC PURSUITS TO FIND OUT. IT WILL BE TOO LATE TO PULL HIS HEAD OUT OF THE SAND. FEW BELIEVE THIS. WAKE UP AND PRAY THAT GOD STOPS IT, BECAUSE IT IS LATER THAN ANYONE BELIEVES.
What planet are you all people living on? I don’t think any of you know what any ‘ism it is you think you are talking about. It would be far better if folks would try to be objective and see what it is that is really happening instead of crying that this ism is bad or that ism is bad. I certainly wouldn’t believe a word coming from Fox or Glenn Beck since it appears they are more interested in attracting advertisers then telling us anything ‘fair’ or ‘balanced’. I seriously doubt that Obama is a socialist or that George W. was a fascist. As much as one might believe the opposite I don’t think either men want (or wanted) to hurt America. You people all need to lighten up.