How Progressives Were Able to Rule the Western Nations: Good Intentions, Bad Results

By The Hermit

The story of the West in the last hundred years is not one of a secret cabal or a single mastermind. It is the story of an idea — progressive ideology — that promised to perfect society through reason, science, and planning. It appealed to the best intentions of reformers, philanthropists, teachers, and politicians. Yet, like many noble experiments, it has produced results far different from what its advocates hoped. What began as a movement to uplift and modernize has ended by weakening the civic and cultural foundations of the very nations it sought to improve.

The Origins of a New Faith

Progressivism was born in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, in an era of industrial upheaval, urban poverty, and rapid social change. Thinkers like John Dewey argued that education should not merely transmit facts but shape democratic citizens. Reformers in Europe and America believed that society itself could be engineered just as factories had engineered production. They saw the failures of capitalism in the Great Depression, the horror of two world wars, and the inequalities of industrial society as evidence that markets and tradition alone could not secure justice.

The promise was intoxicating: with enough expertise, planning, and compassion, human society could be rationally guided toward fairness and equality. Progressivism did not always call itself socialism, but it shared with socialism the conviction that human nature was malleable and that institutions could be redesigned to bring about a better world.

Building the Infrastructure of Influence

An idea alone cannot rule a civilization. It needs institutions to carry it forward. Here the great American philanthropies — Rockefeller, Carnegie, and later the Ford Foundation — played a decisive role. With immense wealth at their disposal, they poured resources into universities, teacher training colleges, and curriculum experiments. Rockefeller’s General Education Board reshaped rural schools and teacher preparation. Carnegie established professional standards and credentialing systems that defined how teachers would be trained and evaluated. Ford, in the mid-20th century, funded fellowships, think tanks, and new fields of study that reinforced progressive outlooks.

Education became the quiet engine of ideological change. By professionalizing and centralizing teacher training, foundations ensured that each generation of educators carried a certain worldview into the classroom. The heroes of American history faded into the background; civic literacy eroded; patriotism was redefined as critique rather than loyalty. At the same time, progressive journalists, artists, and Hollywood creators amplified these themes in popular culture, turning the classroom lessons into national narratives.

Why People Believed the Promise

The appeal was powerful because progressives spoke in moral absolutes: justice, fairness, equality, science. Who could oppose such ideals without appearing selfish or reactionary? At moments of crisis — the Depression, the oil shocks, racial unrest — progressivism’s message seemed even more persuasive. If the old order had produced war and poverty, then surely a new order, grounded in reason and compassion, would do better.

Progressivism became not just a policy agenda but a lens. Once adopted, it shaped how facts were interpreted. Failures of progressive policy were rarely admitted as failures of the philosophy itself; they were explained away as the result of insufficient funding, lingering prejudice, or the resistance of conservatives. In this way the ideology reinforced itself.

The Unintended Consequences

Yet the fruits have not matched the promise. Education, once a source of national pride, now graduates students who often cannot read at grade level, who know little of their history, and who lack basic civic understanding. The grand welfare systems of Europe and North America, built in an age of cheap energy and expanding populations, now stagger under demographic decline and debt. Politics has become an endless battle of identities, each group demanding recognition, while shared national loyalty erodes. Free speech, once the bedrock of democracy, is increasingly curtailed in the name of tolerance — a paradox that breeds resentment and division.

These were not the outcomes most reformers imagined. But they are the results of policies and structures that ignored limits, overestimated human malleability, and confused noble intent with practical wisdom.

Why It Is Hard to Reverse

The endurance of progressive dominance lies in institutions. Teacher colleges continue to train educators in the same frameworks. Media companies and cultural industries reproduce the same narratives. Bureaucracies, once staffed by a generation of progressive-minded graduates, perpetuate their worldview almost automatically. Opposition is cast not as disagreement but as moral failing — “hate,” “bigotry,” “reaction.” This moral framing makes resistance politically and socially costly, ensuring the ideology remains entrenched even when its results disappoint.

Good Intentions, Bad Results

The tragedy of progressivism is that it was not born of malice but of hope. Its advocates truly believed they were advancing democracy, justice, and equality. But by weakening education, by fragmenting society into competing identities, by building welfare states beyond sustainable means, and by stifling dissent, they undermined the very republic they sought to perfect.

The lesson is stark: ideas matter, but institutions make ideas endure. When ideas ignore human limits and the hard lessons of history, their consequences can be destructive, no matter how noble the intent. The West today lives with the paradox of good intentions gone awry — and until that paradox is confronted, the cycle will continue.

Posted FreeRepublic — October 2, 2025

Could Progressives Have Taken Over Europe Without Muslim Immigration and Welfare Promises?

The short answer is yes — but not to the same extent or permanence.

Progressives were already well-entrenched in post-war Europe through institutions: universities, bureaucracies, unions, and media. The welfare state, born from the ashes of WWII, gave Progressives both moral legitimacy (“we care for all”) and institutional power (vast government agencies administering redistribution). This ensured a baseline of influence without immigration.

However, the demographic decline of native Europeans created a problem: fewer workers, more retirees, and a shrinking tax base. Without large-scale immigration, the welfare model would have collapsed sooner. Muslim immigration offered Progressives a twofold solution:

Demographic Reinforcement: New populations to tax and employ, offsetting aging natives.

Political Clientele: By extending welfare and special protections, Progressives created a reliable voting bloc resistant to conservative or nationalist appeals.

The trade-off was profound. In promising permanent welfare and cultural accommodation, Progressives locked themselves into an alliance where criticism of Islam or migration policy became taboo. In effect, immigration plus welfare transformed Progressive influence from a dominant ideology into a hegemonic system — one shielded from dissent by accusations of racism or intolerance.

So, could Progressives have ruled without Muslims and welfare promises? Yes, but shakily. They would have held cultural and bureaucratic power but struggled against demographic collapse and fiscal strain. The Muslim-welfare alliance gave Progressives not just dominance but durability — at the cost of creating long-term cultural fractures.

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