Say
what you will about the supposed devolution of progressivism into
neo-liberalism, it has always been
that way. Progressives trusted government from Day 1.
In
1924, the radical faction of the U.S. labor movement stopped pursuing political
reform. The faction of that movement that wanted to continue political
progress, became the Progressive Party, and supported people like Robert M.
LaFollette.
Progressives,
and the neo-liberals who brainwash them into doing Republicans' bidding, are not leftists. You can't assume they're
leftists just because they're left of the American center. The American center
is pretty far right. You can be left of American political center and still be
right-of-center in the big scheme of things.
Most
American progressives (at least the ones with a modicum of political power) do
not claim to be socialists; instead, they say that they support capitalism (or
else a market system) but with reform. Given that neo-liberals Nancy Pelosi and
Hillary Clinton do exactly that, what is to differentiate them from
progressives? None; it is the difference between a dog and its tail.
Most
people who conservatives call communists, socialists, and leftists are not
really leftists; they're just liberals. Liberals who are complacent with big
government, the military-industrial complex, domestic surveillance, illegal and
unconstitutional government programs, unfounded limitations on majority voting, and fiscal austerity.
Additionally, whom are OK with "limited" government regulation (that
really just limits our ability to compete against the multinational companies
that are screwing us over). Also, with what I call Nazi-Sympathizing
Rape-Enablers (N.S.R.E.s; that is, the
Republicans) being in control of our government 50% of the time.
After
the American Revolution, there were liberals and conservatives. Conservatives
wanted to conserve the gains of the Revolution, while the (classical) liberals
wanted to push that revolution even further, in order to achieve further
liberation, and to impose more limitations on the government's ability to
control our lives.
Democratic
republicanism and liberal-conservatism are what govern the U.S.. Democrats and
Republicans are much closer than politicians and the media would have us
believe. Obamacare was based on Romneycare and Pawlentycare (two proposals
pioneered and implemented by Republican governors).
Obama
supporters: stop. You are trying to
impose Republican legislation on all your Democrat friends, you have
effectively become a Republican mouthpiece (nevermind that the bill imposes an
infinite tax on a zero-dollar item, its unconstitutionality, or that the only
thing arguably redeeming about it from a freedom-loving standpoint is that it
restrains the activities of insurance companies that were created with public
approval but which should never should have been tied to the public in the
first place).
Progressives:
stop. Your cynicism of government is
healthy, but it doesn't go far enough. All states draw their legitimacy from
the normalization of political violence (a/k/a terrorism). Read the anarchists.
Progressivism
has thus far only succeeded in "solving" market failures by replacing
them with government failures. Most progressives are good and conscientious
people, but in my opinion many of them are prone to be too trusting of a system
that they want to believe is good and can change.
One
needs only look at the 40 [or more] unconstitutional wars we've waged over the
years, and the history of moral hazard and regulatory capture (short version:
government failure and mismanagement, caused by blind trust in the government
that it is doing its job) which have accompanied nearly every attempt at
progressive reform, to see that appealing to our oppressors and begging them
for more scraps has not been working.
For my explanation of what Democrats and Republicans both misunderstand about leftist ideas, please click this link to read my September 2018 article "What Liberals and Conservatives Both Get Wrong About Socialism and Communism":
http://aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2018/09/what-liberals-and-conservatives-both.html
Originally Written on October 26th, 2018
Edited on December 1st, 2018
Published on December 1st, 2018
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