I think the biggest beef I have against the progressives is that they are collectively allowing this decline to happen. Indeed, some seem to be positively encouraging it. You hear it in phrases like "what gives us the right?" and "America cannot dictate to the rest of the world". There is a measure of self-hatred there that I think is really rather sad. And that self-doubt is largely self fulfilling. Your country cannot be great if you continually go around thinking and saying that it isn't.
Now ok, the US is not as pre-eminent in the world as it was even 5-10 years back, but that's largely due to the rise of other nations, not because of an innate decline in US culture per se. But these people by wishing it true start to make it true. "Our industry cannot compete against these emerging nations, therefore we should move production overseas." They never consider the answer of fighting back by making industry better - by being more efficient, or making higher quality or better designed products. That's what would have happened in America's heyday. That kind of attitudinal difference is what is making the US decline. Am I being jaded to think that? Possibly. But more importanly is it true?
It wasn’t ‘progressives’ who moved inefficient, union-ridden jobs overseas for the cheap labor—it was the market. And that was better for the US than the protectionism it would have taken to keep them here.
But the combination of the new US energy boom—primarily led by gas fracking—and the increasing use of technology in manufacturing is allowing for a mini renaissance in US manufacturing. That’s exactly how and why it should have come about.
One area where progressivism (and the sellout GOP) is killing the country, however, is in the massive import of multigenerationally unskilled labor. We can’t compete with the rising labor of Asian countries with high school-dropout illegals-made-legal. That’s just a simple, ugly truth.