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Quote of the Day: Progressives Deny Progress
Dennis Prager has been saying for as long as I’ve been listening: Movements don’t close shop when they’ve achieved their original aims; they radicalize.
It’s certainly true of feminism, which went from winning the vote for women, to burning bras in the streets, to bitter hatred of men, to the NFL Halftime Porn Show “empowering” women to . . . pole dance for a national audience including children? I think I’ll pass on the new empowerment if it requires pornographic sexual objectification or defines womanhood as being more like men. Like coaching an NFL team? Seriously 49ers? Turn in your man-cards.
The same could be said about the civil rights movement, which started with the abolitionists, went through MLK, and ended up with Black Lives Matter. What the heck?
Or, how about the environmental movement? Conservation was a good thing as was the goal of cleaning up the polluted air and water in our cities (I grew up playing near the infamous burning Cuyahoga River and remember seeing detergent suds floating down the feeder creeks). It worked. We improved air and water quality, so now what? Groups like ELF (Earth Liberation Front) and Earth First grew up and started bombing science labs, and elected representatives proposed commie takeovers of the entire energy sector (energy = life) and they’re taken seriously!
Andrew Klavan has been making similar observations in his podcasts over the past weeks. Progressives take no account of the progression of time. The 1619 Project is all about teaching our kids that America is as racist and oppressive to blacks as it ever was. Trump hatred has people believing nonsense like we’re living in Germany in 1939, or we’re going down the path of Venezuela — because of Trump(!) and not the socialists in the Democrat party, according to Anne Applebaum (@rufusrjones post).
R.R. Reno has a nice synthesis of what’s happened in the introduction to his new book, Return of the Strong Gods: Nationalism, Populism, and the Future of the West:
A young friend in Australia sent me an essay that read like a flaming indictment of the status quo. It ended with the arresting sentence, “I am twenty-seven years old and hope to live to see the end of the twentieth century.”
He explains that the driving forces of a given era don’t neatly line up with aughts and we’re still living in a continuation of the 20th century:
The violence that traumatized the West between 1914 and 1945 evoked a powerful, American-led response that was anti-fascist, anti-totalitarian, anti-colonialist, anti-imperialist, and anti-racist. These anti imperatives define the postwar era. Their aim is to dissolve the strong beliefs and powerful loyalties thought to have fueled the conflicts that convulsed the twentieth century.
…But, as my young correspondent recognizes, the fall of the Soviet Union did not bring the postwar era to a close, for it marked not the end of the anti imperatives but rather their intensification [emphasis mine].
He continues:
The death grip of the anti imperatives on the West is plain to see. After Donald Trump’s election, a number of mainstream journalists collapsed in hysterics: He was an “authoritarian” of one sort or another. The same goes for European populism. A specter is haunting Europe, countless journalists and opinion writers warn — the specter of fascism. Tract after tract has likened our times to Germany during the 1930s. Indeed, it is a sign of nuance when a member of our chattering class compares Trump to the Spanish strongman Francisco Franco rather than Hitler. Today’s intelligentsia compulsively return to the trying decades of the early twentieth century. It is as if they desperately want to keep the last century going, insisting that the fight against fascism remains our fight.
This is absurd. It is not 1939. Our societies are not gathering themselves into masses marching in lockstep. Central planners do not clog our economies. There is no longer an overbearing bourgeois culture bent on “exclusion.” Bull Connor isn’t commissioner of public safety in Birmingham. Instead, our societies are dissolving. Economic globalization shreds the social contract. Identity politics disintegrates civic bonds. A uniquely Western anti-Western multiculturalism deprives people of their cultural inheritance. Mass migration reshapes the social landscape. Courtship, marriage, and family no longer form our moral imaginations. Borders are porous, even the one that separates men from women. Tens of thousands die of heroin overdoses. Hundred of thousands are aborted. Of course my young friend wants the twentieth century to end. So do I.
By denying the progress that’s been made, progressives have become what they claim to hate: fascistic, totalitarian, culture colonizing, credentialed authoritarians, and, yes, even racist. Look at how they treat blacks who are not in lockstep with their agenda.
I agree with Reno and his young friend. #Endthe20th already.
Published in Group Writing
When your political ideology and career are based on fear mongering and stoking outrage, the last thing you can afford is to admit there is nothing left to fear or be outraged over.
They are professional grievance advocates, and it turns out that means they advocate grievance, not solutions. They are not progressive, in the literal sense. But then, liberals are not anything they claim to be ( starting with liberal!) in the literal sense.
They are protecting their jobs. If the problem (pick one) is solved, that means there is no need anymore for someone to be paid to solve the problem. They have to continue to see the problem everywhere so they can continue to get free money.
Your title caught my eye because this is something I once told my daughter when relating my disillusionment with the Left when I was in my 20s. I had been a leftist campus crusader. When the Vietnam War ended, I looked around at my compatriots, waiting for the celebratory “We did it!” hugs, but that never happened. Instead they were already casting about for the next Cause, the next new reason to block traffic or chain themselves to a fence while singing “We Shall Overcome.” At the age of 22, I clearly saw that the stated agenda of these people is never their real one. That’s what I wanted my daughter to remember.
There are a couple of tiers to the Left: There’s the Left capital “L”,” and there are liberals, their useful idiots. The liberals’ entire raison d’etre is to feel like they’re ‘Making a Difference” or “Stickin it to The Man.” So when things are going pretty good, they have to stir up the bad stuff again to give themselves a feeling of accomplishment. It’s why Obama stirred up old racial tensions and set race relations back 40 years. It’s why by the time he left office, he had nearly half the country on food stamps. If that’s their idea of “progress,” leave me out of it.
What kills me is that they stole and ruined the term “liberal,” and once it became a term of ridicule because of who it applied to (themselves), they suddenly wanted to be called “Progressives” again like in the time of Wilson. But the truth is they hate real progress because when things are going well, they have to go home and get a damn job and grow up.
Absolutely right.
The March of Dimes (founded to fight Polio) is still in operation.
MoveOn.org, founded to support Bill Clinton during his impeachment, working for Trump’s impeachment.
Yes, there is that, but there is also more….after all, the *followers* in these movements are mostly motivated by other reasons than protecting their jobs.
Arthur Koestler wrote about ‘the tragic and the trivial planes’ of life. As explained by his friend, the writer and fighter pilot Richard Hillary:
K has a theory for this. He believes there are two planes of existence which he calls vie tragique and vie triviale. Usually we move on the trivial plane, but occasionally in moments of elation or danger, we find ourselves transferred to the plane of the vie tragique, with its non-commonsense, cosmic perspective. When we are on the trivial plane, the realities of the other appear as nonsense–as overstrung nerves and so on. When we live on the tragic plane, the realities of the other are shallow, frivolous, frivolous, trifling. But in exceptional circumstances, for instance if someone has to live through a long stretch of time in physical danger, one is placed, as it were, on the intersection line of the two planes; a curious situation which is a kind of tightrope-walking on one’s nerves…I think he is right.
Much of the appeal of apocalyptic thinking, I suspect, is due to the desire of individuals to get more of a sense of meaning in their lives by elevating issues to the level of ultimate things, of what Koestler called the Tragic plane of existence.
Continuing my previous comment: Sebastian Haffner, who grew up in Germany between the wars and in the early Nazi era, observed that when the political-social-economic under Weimar finally began to stabilize, most people were happy—but not everybody:
A generation of young Germans had become accustomed to having the entire content of their lives delivered gratis, so to speak, by the public sphere, all the raw material for their deeper emotions…Now that these deliveries suddently ceased, people were left helpless, impoverished, robbed, and disappointed. They had never learned how to live from within themselves, how to make an ordinary private life great, beautiful and worth while, how to enjoy it and make it interesting. So they regarded the end of political tension and the return of private liberty not as a gift, but as a deprivation. They were bored, their minds strayed to silly thoughts, and they began to sulk.
and
To be precise (the occasion demands precision, because in my opinion it provides the key to the contemporary period of history): it was not the entire generation of young Germans. Not every single individual reacted in this fashion. There were some who learned during this period, belatedly and a little clumsily, as it were, how to live. they began to enjoy their own lives, weaned themselves from the cheap intoxication of the sports of war and revolution, and started to develop their own personalities. It was at this time that, invisibly and unnoticed, the Germans divided into those who later became Nazis and those who would remain non-Nazis.
Move on was always a lefty front organization.
March of dimes was an organization with a distinct purpose. That purpose was satisfied, but the organization didn’t disband.
The best example of this I know is “The March of Dimes,” founded by Roosevelt to cure polio. In the 1960s, polio was cured/prevented. What did “The March of Dimes” do? They found another cause almost certain to never go out of fashion or be stopped. Birth Defects !
“Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.”
Eric Hoffer, The Temper of Our Time
“Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.”
–E. Hoffer, The Temper of Our Time
Something like this happened after the end of the Soviet Union. Before that, I had never heard of Earth Day, even though it had been around for a long time. But in 1992 it became a huge cause on college campuses. It seemed to literally come out of nowhere.
In this case the left had not achieved a previous goal and then moved on to a new one. Rather, the fall of the Soviet Union cast a terrible doubt on the left’s worldview, and they needed to assuage the resultant cognitive dissonance with a new one which challenged the status quo and made them look morally superior.
These “isms” are religion to the left. Most of these people have no agency in their lives outside of their ism. You get rid of their cause and you take their entire livelihood away.
Yes, and it’s so much easier to take up battles that have already been won! Today’s #Resistance would like to believe they have something in common with the French Resistance of Nazi occupied France. The status and self-regard that comes with such borrowed valor gives them the sense of superiority needed to silence the rest of us who disagree. #ShutUp they say.
David Horowitz says they’re “intoxicated by their virtue.”
There was quite a bit of time between these two, and a certainty that none of the participants were the same.
Movements may radicalize, but people do not continue. this makes them really new movements.
A conservative is a progressive who has stopped.
Actually, they have more in common with the Nazis (and the Communists) who resisted the Weimar government.
The feminists have run headlong into the transgenders.
See also Frankl, Viktor E. on that search for meaning. Radical politics can serve that need.
I’ll just leave this here:
https://amgreatness.com/2020/02/11/conservatism-is-the-real-resistance/
Have to disagree. Conservatism means something other than resting on one’s laurels or I’m not a conservative. As Mark Bauerlein says in the linked article above, the basics of conservatism are God, family, country. Pretty much in that order.
“God” not only for individual sanctification and salvation, but for societal good and stability. The recognition that all men are sinners and need a Redeemer presupposes the necessity of limited government. “Family” for the bedrock institution of moral formation and independence from would-be government
nanniestyrants. “Country” for the common culture (“shared values,” moral consensus, . . .) and, lately, resistance to globalism. Prioritizing country is ultimately about the sovereignty of the people within its boundaries and living under its institutions (rule of law, constitutional order).Conservatives are for “change,” too. But, not just any change — change that leads to human flourishing. Progressives believe in themselves, making their only standards double standards and their main motivator the acquisition of power to rule over others. They’re extremely capricious and dangerous people.
Another good insight:
https://thefederalist.com/2017/01/23/donald-trump-first-president-turn-postmodernism/
More from the above “postmodern” piece:
Actually, much about the French Resistance was romanticized. It wasn’t terribly effective, as very severe retribution certain kept actions low level (Germans used a 10-1 value). And it had a very high number of informants. And many of its more effective leaders were female.
And a lot of French collaborated at some level.
That is what a progressive will say. With a caveat of “all humans”.
Progressives have lately been heard promoting human extinction as a means to solve the climate change problem. That doesn’t sound like “flourishing” to me. Barack Obama intended to manage the decline of America. Instead he contributed to it. Their watchword is “equality,” but what they really mean is “some pigs are more equal than others.”
There may be one or two wackos out there saying this, but not progressives. Some may want to limit population growth, but not extinction. I credit capitalism.
Forty years ago the world was concerned about global starvation. But we have been able to learn to be more efficient in producing food.
Progressives are not unlike conservatives. Most of the goals are the same. I do not know of a conservative who would oppose 0 carbon emissions (excluding those of us who like to roast marshmallows).
Here is an example. There is an organization that teaches farmers in poor nations to raise crops that are profitable, the theory being that they can make more money, buy food from others and still be ahead.
Don’t know many conservatives then, do you?? Carbon dioxide is plant food! Carbon is the stuff of life. Zero carbon emissions is fantasy and would have us living stone age style. I would be surprised if the percent of conservatives who support zero carbon emissions breaks single digits.
We definitely do not share the same goals with progressives. That’s propaganda I thought we debunked a long time ago. “Oh, we want the same things, we just have different methods.” No, no we don’t. Conservatives want ordered liberty. Progressives want to tear down the old order and replace it with leftist globalism. They’re all about conformity and yet, oddly, get away with touting “diversity” and “multiculturalism.” Or haven’t you noticed political correctness and cancel culture?
I must be missing something. Are we supposed to be thinking the “twentieth century” began in 1973 with Roe v Wade? That would represent a LOT of overlap!
No, the 20th century is characterized by the anti imperatives gone wild. “Anti-fascists” now show up in street protests wearing masks and all black clothing busting up store fronts and bashing people over the head with bike locks — in other words, acting like fascists. And, have you noticed they’re almost all young white kids? Aryan much?
No. If everything was electric and we used nuclear power, we’d drop quickly. And this is doable.
You are conflating tactics with goals. Cancel culture is a tactic, not a goal. Everyone supports free speech, and polite speech. A progressive tactic is to punish hurtful speech. A conservative tactic is to encourage polite speech.
When you make the other side the enemy, you have lost the way.I cannot and will not do so. I have been on that side. In 1972-73, attended 2 anti-war protests.
I am a big fan of Winston Churchill. He was a founder of The Other Club. It was founded for 2 reasons: to give junior “elites” a place to meet and discuss as they are frozen out of the highest elite club (The Club), and to bring together different views. Churchill switched parties twice in his career, and he was often opposed to his best friends.
About a friend in the club, a former Admiral who was a vocal opponent of Churchill’s, Churchill said (of this friend):
Rule 12 of the club:
Though the discussions were always civil, though spirited.