And you can witness its death rattles in Wisconsin (and in some cases actual death threats) and in numerous other states.
Not to mention it’s broke:
Headline via Stephen Goldsmith at the Wall Street Journal, who writes:
A hundred years ago, progressives envisioned a highly professional public-sector work force reining in exploitative corporate interests. They saw those on the margin being victimized both by corrupt government and business interests. They believed that the worst abuses of capitalism—think Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle”—would be reined in by government regulation.
Ironically, today we find that in many cases special interests are working in the bureaucracy, using Progressive Era rules to protect the status quo and themselves.
Those progressives of the past were not all democrats or republicans. Teddy Roosevelt was one of them. They were simply honest people working against corruption and unfair exploitation whether it was corporations exploiting workers or government exploiting corporations by demanding graft. Their succeses were generally by a hairs breath and always subject to relapse by further tinkering by political machines beholden to labor or to corporate interests. It really isn’t a surprise that the forces of selfishness are still with us today. It is a continuous battle because the corrupting forces are a constant component of human nature.
As a society we have to decide that selfishness is an undesirable trait and bring up our children to belive likewise. This has to be expressed in our mythology (entertainment media) to permeate society. In our current system where selfishness is admired and a person’s net worth is a measure of their self worth, corruption and exploitation will be ever present.