"The Left is Nothing Special,
They Get the Same as Everyone--
Death to America!"
Posted on 01/30/2016 5:15:35 PM PST by MtnClimber
A strange period has now passed into history. Captivated by a presidential campaign in 2008, Americans by the millions came to believe that a new leader would be able to produce more than a transformed society and an era of world peace. Politics could be extended beyond its ordinary boundaries and bring about a spiritual renewal. This exhilarating prospect fed on its own spiraling expectations, surprising even its original purveyors.
Faith in this political religion eventually dissipated. Four years into the experience, many ceased to believe. Today most have forgotten. Politics has retreated to its more usual limits, focusing on the harder core of ideology.
Modern progressivism has driven much of American politics for the past seven years. It now fully owns the Democratic party. President Obama failed to achieve the general electoral realignment that many anticipated after 2008, but he succeeded in creating an ideological realignment within his own party. The result was attained by subtraction. Advocates of rival positions - New Democrats, "blue dogs," pro-lifers - were either sacrificed or induced to sacrifice themselves. The Democratic party is now divided between a progressive wing and a more progressive wing, one that openly wears the label of socialist.
Modern progressivism is a combination of three components: theories inherited from the original progressives of the early 20th century; ideas introduced since the 1960s by the intellectual movements of the left (the New Left, multiculturalism, postmodernism); and the practices and patterns of behavior that have resulted from progressivism's central role in shaping American politics and culture.
(Excerpt) Read more at weeklystandard.com ...
A communist by any other name would stink the same.
i second that emotion
"The Left is Nothing Special,
They Get the Same as Everyone--
Death to America!"
Is there a limit on how far one can go Left?
What next? Ask Europe. Their multicultural Frankenstein experiment is reaching its inevitable conclusion.
Hilary can’t tell anyone the difference in a Democrat and a socialist. Probably not even between a Democrat and a Communist either. Fringe lunatic liberalism is all the same.
Full blown fascism or communism, or fold in with the NWO. Dissolve the US slowly, North American Union.
As of the last two presidential elections,
the parasites have overtaken the host. I’m
glad to have lived during America’s heights,
and wouldn’t give a plugged nickel for her future.
Americans by the millions came to believe that a new leader would be able to produce more than a transformed society and an era of world peace.
*************************************
Americans by the millions don’t want their country transformed and world peace is impossible as long as Islam exists.
Hellfire and damnation?
Just a guess.
Once you drain the swamp, all of those nasty, icky bottom dwellers can’t survive long in the sunlight.
There is certainly a limit on how far a nation can afford to go left. And we are about there. The key factor is interest rates. If they rise significantly, and they are already going up, the US will not be able to pay interest on the debt and for socialist programs at the same time. They will have to choose one or the other, and during the last government shutdown China promised nuclear war if we defaulted. So considering that China has more nuclear weapons than the average American welfare recipient, socialism will get rolled back in order to pay the debt.
A factor I've often wonder about that may be even more key is when we reach the point of takers outnumbering the makers. Time to get some of those acute back pain patients on Tylenol and get them back to work. Stop making it as lucrative to play all day as it is to earn an honest day's work.
Germany is fast forwarding that experiment. Muslims generally don’t immigrate to work. They immigrate to collect benefits. We’ll see how the Germans react once they realize the muslims have no intention of being productive members of society.
Progressivism's real weakness is that by nature it must always be in opposition if it is not to fall toward totalitarianism, and that it is institutionally incapable of recognizing when it is no longer in opposition and changing its behavior accordingly. We see that in the current multiculti administrations in Europe, vacillating between a stern authoritarianism extended toward their citizens and a gooey welcome to any outsider who pleads victimhood. That form of progressivism is now firmly embedded in the bureaucracy - the Professor's first point - and is stuck in an oppositional stance toward those who put it there. It is an attitude more psychological than philosophical: it must oppose injustice somewhere and since it is now in power that injustice must reside elsewhere: in its own people who would dare to defend themselves against incursion.
That such an attitude is highly corrosive to existing society is an enormous blind spot in the progressive world view: surely that structure is responsible for injustice and hence must be altered? Perhaps, perhaps not, but at least it must not be altered uncritically, and that is precisely what a reliance on progressive social doctrine does. This devolves to burning the house down because you don't like the paint.
Pace the Professor's recitation, I do not believe this began in the early years of the preceding century, rather earlier than that. It is Burke's objection to the excesses of the French Revolution. It is Machiavelli's stubborn belief in the virtu of the Roman Republic. It is Plato, it is Pericles, it is a fundamental dynamic of political philosophy since the latter began.
There is, however, an inertia in human relations that suggests that once a movement becomes institutionalized it also becomes self-preserving in the way that aristocracy was for so many centuries. Individuals who self-identify as "conservative" are confounded when existing progressives fight furiously to preserve their hold over institutions they feel that once conquered, are theirs forever. They have become, in that sense, conservatives themselves - the Professor's second point. They have also become vulnerable to the very churn that gave them political control, and become appalled when their own children insist on change of the institutions under progressive dogma. They have become The Man that they nominally despise and are incapable of managing the thing - the Professor's third point - without maintaining it through the iron grip of authoritarianism.
We see this in the cycle of Communism in the last century: the original Marxian promise of self-actualization became a demand for conformity, the original promise of the state "withering away" became a rigid police state that became only more rigid until it ended up too brittle to stand. The promises, the dreams failed in the fact of concrete reality, and all the pretty phrases used to disguise the fact came to nothing.
This strategy of linguistic manipulation has enjoyed some success in progressive circles, but outside it has fallen well short of what was hoped for. Human perceptions in the face of real conditions may be less susceptible to narrative-shaping than postmodernism has taught. The world is not a field of dreams.
That does not mean that institutionalized dreamers will not thrash desperately in an attempt to remain sleeping. And that is the future of progressivism, at least in the short term: it will thrash, it will fight, it will prefer tearing down the entire society it has subverted rather than mature (the Professor's fourth point). It will take it all down in a giant apocalyptic wreckage should it prove unworthy of the dream, as that master Progressive Adolf Hitler did. It will not be shown the door quietly or happily. Intellectual fads come and go, tyrannies need a push.
Yep. Read "Darkness at Noon."
I'd be interested in a link for this threat. Thanks.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
