Saturday, December 1, 2018

Progressivism is Not Leftism, It's Statism


     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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