"Sure as I know anything, I know this - they (The Interstellar Alliance's Parliament) will try again. Maybe on another world, maybe on this very ground swept clean. A year from now, ten? They'll swing back to the belief that they can make people... better. And I do not hold to that." - Captain Malcolm Reynolds (Nathan Fillion) from the 2005 science-fiction movie Serenity after the ship's crew discovered a planet where one artifically-introduced violence suppression chemical caused people to die or become the psychotic Reavers.
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the
most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." - British Author C. S. Lewis (1898-1963).
Greetings, dear reader. This touchy political subject is one I've been wanting to essay about for some time and today I finally get around to a similar theme to the one interwoven within my recent three-part polemic on how the United States of America was ruined over two centuries almost from the beginning of its creation by men and ideologies intent upon making the government's powers larger and ever expanding over lives of free citizens while enriching themselves in the devil's bargain. Call it 18th Century British Mercantilism, the American System, Crony Capitalism or the Military-Industrial Complex, it is an evil poison found within both major American political parties, but especially in the Republican Party since it was founded as a marriage of former Whig mercantilists and Free Soilers in the 1850s.
The Democratic Party has some of this greedy impulse, cloaked in high sounding phrases and slogans promising the betterment of mankind through their wise, benevolent vision for tomorrow. And all the while they and their crony friends profit from tax dollars shoveled their way for various boondoggle programs said to help the less-fortunate somehow when they truly don't. Twenty years ago it was the corrupt Bill Clinton Administration and its Arkansas connections (the infamous FOB or Friends of Bill gushed over by the sycophantic pseudo-journalists of rags like Newsweek, etc.). Now it's the ascendency of the old Daley Chicago System under new management by the half-white man from Hawaii or Kenya or whatever corner of the globe the current narcisist in chief was spawned to be inflicted upon this republic by the elites that groomed him through a charmed life of less than stellar grades (by some rumors, but who can be sure since his college and law school grades are not known) at Occidental College and Harvard Law School, groomed for power while an ineffective community organizer schooled in the Saul Alinsky radical socialist view, a two-term Illinois State Senator and incomplete one-term US Senator often voting Present in those bodies instead of yes or no, and never sponsoring any important bills. Based on his performance as a less than effective executive for four plus years, Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. is certainly the most ill-prepared and unsuited candidate for the Presidency in years. But enough about our country's current mess. That's not what I'm discussing here today.
Today I take the soapbox once again to rail against the political philosophy that first captured a significant faction within the Democratic Party around the turn of the last century - Progressivism. It is the worst utopian politial ideology still haunting and destroying America as a free nation now that socialism or hard communism have been discredited by historical experience as failed political belief systems destined for the trash can where they belong. Yet, progressivism has presisted over more than 100 years as a cancer in the body politic that rules the current White House's every calculation. Esentially progressivism is a utopian ideology that believes a group of highly-educated experts schooled in public administration are better suited to decide what is best for everyone else who must submit to their wisdom when said experts have the monopoly of force through political power to enforce their slightest intellectual whim and make it the inviolable law of the land. Essentially, progressives are yet another bunch of professional busybody do-gooders who KNOW what's best for you and everyone else they have power or want power over and will do whatever it takes to make their will LAW. They are another group of well-meaning meddlers who believe that old maxim "the ends always justifies the means." They are not like you or I, dear ordinary reader, content to live one's own life and largely want no part of telling millions of others what to do or how to do it every day in as many areas of life as possble. They believe their thoughts and beliefs are higher than those of the average person (whom they basically consider idiots fit only to be led by their evolved, enlightened wisdom).
These utopians first reared their heads within wings of both major political parties around the late 19th - early 20th Centuries, personified in the Presidency of Teddy Roosevelt within the GOP and Woodrow Wilson for the Democrats. Of course the First World War gave these progressives more of an opportunity to regiment American society toward fighting a major war to regulate and control as many aspects of life as possible during the emergency. With the war's end and the defeat of other politial progressive notions like world collective security in the League of Nations, the progressives were out of power by 1921, until the Great Engineer Republican Herbert Hoover meddled in small ways as President Harding and Coolidge's Commerce Secretary setting up unnecessary bureaucracies like teh Federal Aviation Administration (first called the Civil Aeronautics Board) and the Federal Communications Commission to regulate new technologies of fixed wing flight and wireless radio transmissions (funny, there was never any need to regulate the printing press technology in America, but maybe that's because moveable type printing had been around since about 1450, or the automobile until the Feds started pushing fuel economy standards in the 1960s).
Then under Franklin Roosevelt, those Wilson era progressives got power again to create whole new agencies to regulate commerce, industry and many other areas the government had no true original intent Constitutional authority to touch. Then in the 1960s, the do-gooder champions of LBJ's Great Society gained more power and bureaucratic rats' nests to regulate even more of human interaction and voluntary social contracts, Of course, Nixon continued these trends a bit more subtlely than he could office burglaries. But the Carter and Clinton presidencies seemed not to be dominated by the progressive mindset during the 12 years they were in power. Alas, since the Presidency of George W. Bush, the progressives have gained power again through the Annointed One elected in 2008, based on the people Barry Obama put in charge of new offices (the infamous Czars over certain economic or social policy areas - a trend begun by Reagan with his Drug Czar office), and all his old friends from Chicago seem to believe or express the same sort of progressive tendencies and viewpoints as those well-meaning fools dating all the way back to Teddy and Woodrow's eras.
I'm a Libertarian, now non-voting since the elections and system supporting it are all crooked facades controlled by powerful elites too numerous to name here as individuals or groups, My political philosophy is strictly one of non-violenece - or the Golden Rule of Jesus Christ "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you." I wish to be left alone and intend doing the same to other parties in terms of social amity and commerce, never wishing any power to force my writing upon the marketplace to make it succeed, but for it to succeed on its merits. I quoted two bits above, one from a favorite and another from a famous author, which reflect my disdain for progressivism and its staunch adherents in this country and the wider world. They are the sorts of people who believe their ideas are so great, enlightened and proper that anyone who disagrees with them is not just having a difference of opinion, but are enemies who must be silenced in their Manichean dichotomy view of good/evil that sees anyone who disagrees with their views as being evil and in need of forced reeducation (brainwashing). These progressives hold to the gospel of meliorism - that any social progress must come from human effort to be successful. The Saul Alinsky school of socialism clearly believes in meliorianism and manicheanism (derived from an ancient Persian religion but philosophically promoting dualism - such as good and evil - as existing in every situation or discussion - obviously most major religions today contain this idea). We see it in the busybody pronouncements of First Lady Michelle Obama or the soft-drink and smoking bans of despotic New York City Mayor Michael Bloomburg and dozens of other elected or appointed experts who know how a person should live his/her life better than that person ever could.
In other words, the progressive wants government to be your god, your father and mother and your guardian from cradle to grave, forever nagging you like ignorant children to buckle your seat belt, not text while driving, eat your vegetables, don't talk back and do as you are told whatever they say that is. As Lewis describes such a tyranny, it is unrelenting and all-pervasive (unlike the rapacious robber baron kings or emperors of olden times who were content to take some of what you have and then leave you alone for a time). These busybodies will never be content unless they run your entire life for you. And I can imagine some of the progressives I personally know will refute that totalitarian impulse to rule over their fellow humans, but the most extreme progressives of the world will never rest until we are all the children of big government, essentially an imperfect copy of Star Trek's United Federation of Planets and United Earth. That is the vision the progressives wish upon us all, total management of life with an illusion of freedom left to fool the gullible who don't know they are slaves in chains inside a beautiful guilded cage. Of course, the progressive utopia (sometimes labeled as social democracy by Europeans living under such a soft tyranny) Obama and his allies wish to inflict upon ordinary Americans (while the enlightened liberal elite live their extravagant lifestyles on the taxpayers' dime or enrich themselves, still believing and saying they only mean well for everyone) will not have the science-fiction perpetual motion machine technology found in Star Trek that remains beyond our reach - faster than light spacecraft engines, matter energy scrambler short range transportation and matter pattern replication. They will leave us poorer while claiming to care about our unfortunate miserable situation and quality of life as the Health Care rationing system's new death panels condemn millions to the grave. Governments have always proven they are quite capable of producing corpses and filling graveyards throughout human history.
Sadly, after more than a century of their meddling in American politics and society, it appears the Progressive Movement is on the verge of making this republic into a socialist democracy with the illusion that the tyranny of the mob (sometimes known as low-information voters or just plain morons) majority is in charge. They have used a crisis engineered by greedy crony capitalists inside and outside government trying to get rich quick for accelerating their vision of enlightened rule by experts. These politically-connected elites are actually running the show, not the voters, by deciding what is fair and rationing out scarce resources they make more scarce by controlling every aspect of creating. They will bury us all in the end. Beware the tyranny of these well-meaning busybodies.
The Democratic Party has some of this greedy impulse, cloaked in high sounding phrases and slogans promising the betterment of mankind through their wise, benevolent vision for tomorrow. And all the while they and their crony friends profit from tax dollars shoveled their way for various boondoggle programs said to help the less-fortunate somehow when they truly don't. Twenty years ago it was the corrupt Bill Clinton Administration and its Arkansas connections (the infamous FOB or Friends of Bill gushed over by the sycophantic pseudo-journalists of rags like Newsweek, etc.). Now it's the ascendency of the old Daley Chicago System under new management by the half-white man from Hawaii or Kenya or whatever corner of the globe the current narcisist in chief was spawned to be inflicted upon this republic by the elites that groomed him through a charmed life of less than stellar grades (by some rumors, but who can be sure since his college and law school grades are not known) at Occidental College and Harvard Law School, groomed for power while an ineffective community organizer schooled in the Saul Alinsky radical socialist view, a two-term Illinois State Senator and incomplete one-term US Senator often voting Present in those bodies instead of yes or no, and never sponsoring any important bills. Based on his performance as a less than effective executive for four plus years, Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. is certainly the most ill-prepared and unsuited candidate for the Presidency in years. But enough about our country's current mess. That's not what I'm discussing here today.
Today I take the soapbox once again to rail against the political philosophy that first captured a significant faction within the Democratic Party around the turn of the last century - Progressivism. It is the worst utopian politial ideology still haunting and destroying America as a free nation now that socialism or hard communism have been discredited by historical experience as failed political belief systems destined for the trash can where they belong. Yet, progressivism has presisted over more than 100 years as a cancer in the body politic that rules the current White House's every calculation. Esentially progressivism is a utopian ideology that believes a group of highly-educated experts schooled in public administration are better suited to decide what is best for everyone else who must submit to their wisdom when said experts have the monopoly of force through political power to enforce their slightest intellectual whim and make it the inviolable law of the land. Essentially, progressives are yet another bunch of professional busybody do-gooders who KNOW what's best for you and everyone else they have power or want power over and will do whatever it takes to make their will LAW. They are another group of well-meaning meddlers who believe that old maxim "the ends always justifies the means." They are not like you or I, dear ordinary reader, content to live one's own life and largely want no part of telling millions of others what to do or how to do it every day in as many areas of life as possble. They believe their thoughts and beliefs are higher than those of the average person (whom they basically consider idiots fit only to be led by their evolved, enlightened wisdom).
These utopians first reared their heads within wings of both major political parties around the late 19th - early 20th Centuries, personified in the Presidency of Teddy Roosevelt within the GOP and Woodrow Wilson for the Democrats. Of course the First World War gave these progressives more of an opportunity to regiment American society toward fighting a major war to regulate and control as many aspects of life as possible during the emergency. With the war's end and the defeat of other politial progressive notions like world collective security in the League of Nations, the progressives were out of power by 1921, until the Great Engineer Republican Herbert Hoover meddled in small ways as President Harding and Coolidge's Commerce Secretary setting up unnecessary bureaucracies like teh Federal Aviation Administration (first called the Civil Aeronautics Board) and the Federal Communications Commission to regulate new technologies of fixed wing flight and wireless radio transmissions (funny, there was never any need to regulate the printing press technology in America, but maybe that's because moveable type printing had been around since about 1450, or the automobile until the Feds started pushing fuel economy standards in the 1960s).
Then under Franklin Roosevelt, those Wilson era progressives got power again to create whole new agencies to regulate commerce, industry and many other areas the government had no true original intent Constitutional authority to touch. Then in the 1960s, the do-gooder champions of LBJ's Great Society gained more power and bureaucratic rats' nests to regulate even more of human interaction and voluntary social contracts, Of course, Nixon continued these trends a bit more subtlely than he could office burglaries. But the Carter and Clinton presidencies seemed not to be dominated by the progressive mindset during the 12 years they were in power. Alas, since the Presidency of George W. Bush, the progressives have gained power again through the Annointed One elected in 2008, based on the people Barry Obama put in charge of new offices (the infamous Czars over certain economic or social policy areas - a trend begun by Reagan with his Drug Czar office), and all his old friends from Chicago seem to believe or express the same sort of progressive tendencies and viewpoints as those well-meaning fools dating all the way back to Teddy and Woodrow's eras.
I'm a Libertarian, now non-voting since the elections and system supporting it are all crooked facades controlled by powerful elites too numerous to name here as individuals or groups, My political philosophy is strictly one of non-violenece - or the Golden Rule of Jesus Christ "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you." I wish to be left alone and intend doing the same to other parties in terms of social amity and commerce, never wishing any power to force my writing upon the marketplace to make it succeed, but for it to succeed on its merits. I quoted two bits above, one from a favorite and another from a famous author, which reflect my disdain for progressivism and its staunch adherents in this country and the wider world. They are the sorts of people who believe their ideas are so great, enlightened and proper that anyone who disagrees with them is not just having a difference of opinion, but are enemies who must be silenced in their Manichean dichotomy view of good/evil that sees anyone who disagrees with their views as being evil and in need of forced reeducation (brainwashing). These progressives hold to the gospel of meliorism - that any social progress must come from human effort to be successful. The Saul Alinsky school of socialism clearly believes in meliorianism and manicheanism (derived from an ancient Persian religion but philosophically promoting dualism - such as good and evil - as existing in every situation or discussion - obviously most major religions today contain this idea). We see it in the busybody pronouncements of First Lady Michelle Obama or the soft-drink and smoking bans of despotic New York City Mayor Michael Bloomburg and dozens of other elected or appointed experts who know how a person should live his/her life better than that person ever could.
In other words, the progressive wants government to be your god, your father and mother and your guardian from cradle to grave, forever nagging you like ignorant children to buckle your seat belt, not text while driving, eat your vegetables, don't talk back and do as you are told whatever they say that is. As Lewis describes such a tyranny, it is unrelenting and all-pervasive (unlike the rapacious robber baron kings or emperors of olden times who were content to take some of what you have and then leave you alone for a time). These busybodies will never be content unless they run your entire life for you. And I can imagine some of the progressives I personally know will refute that totalitarian impulse to rule over their fellow humans, but the most extreme progressives of the world will never rest until we are all the children of big government, essentially an imperfect copy of Star Trek's United Federation of Planets and United Earth. That is the vision the progressives wish upon us all, total management of life with an illusion of freedom left to fool the gullible who don't know they are slaves in chains inside a beautiful guilded cage. Of course, the progressive utopia (sometimes labeled as social democracy by Europeans living under such a soft tyranny) Obama and his allies wish to inflict upon ordinary Americans (while the enlightened liberal elite live their extravagant lifestyles on the taxpayers' dime or enrich themselves, still believing and saying they only mean well for everyone) will not have the science-fiction perpetual motion machine technology found in Star Trek that remains beyond our reach - faster than light spacecraft engines, matter energy scrambler short range transportation and matter pattern replication. They will leave us poorer while claiming to care about our unfortunate miserable situation and quality of life as the Health Care rationing system's new death panels condemn millions to the grave. Governments have always proven they are quite capable of producing corpses and filling graveyards throughout human history.
Sadly, after more than a century of their meddling in American politics and society, it appears the Progressive Movement is on the verge of making this republic into a socialist democracy with the illusion that the tyranny of the mob (sometimes known as low-information voters or just plain morons) majority is in charge. They have used a crisis engineered by greedy crony capitalists inside and outside government trying to get rich quick for accelerating their vision of enlightened rule by experts. These politically-connected elites are actually running the show, not the voters, by deciding what is fair and rationing out scarce resources they make more scarce by controlling every aspect of creating. They will bury us all in the end. Beware the tyranny of these well-meaning busybodies.