Viewing Progressivism With Perspective

Accuracy in Academia ^ | November 10, 2009 | Allie Winegar Duzett

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Viewing Progressivism With Perspective

Allie Winegar Duzett, November 10, 2009

“To see what is truly afoot,” the Heritage Foundation’s Matthew Spalding argued, current events need to be looked at with “perspective.”

“Nothing that is being proposed right now, including health care, is a new idea,” Spalding said at last week’s Bloggers’ Briefing. “These are old, tired ideas that all go back about a hundred years or so. The first time national federal health care was proposed was in 1904; it was in the 1912 Progressive platform. These are ideas that have a pedigree in this country.”

Spalding explained that while nationalized health care is an old idea, the version we face today in America is far more intense than it has been in the past. Spalding called the current health care reform a “radicalized version” of progressive idealism—an idealism Spalding argued is “deeply misguided.”

“Barack Obama has said many times that he wants to ‘remake America,’” Spalding pointed out. “That’s more than a rhetorical flourish. A progressive in America has set [remaking America] out as his goal to essentially deny … the notions of limited government set up by America’s founders.” Indeed, President Obama has certainly been clear about both his inherent progressivism as well as his intentions with America.

Spalding argued that property rights, constitutionalism, limited government, and liberty all “represent the inheritance from western thought into the American founding.” He said that these principles “largely explain the great prosperity and success in this country.”

By contrast, said Spalding, “Progressivism took as its aim to reject those things …They want to get the Constitution out of the way.” Spalding related the story of Nancy Pelosi’s reaction to someone asking about the constitutionality of mandated health care. Pelosi asked the questioner, “Are you serious?”...

[JMS]

It’s true, Progressives are Luddites.

[Vaduz]

Obama,Pelosi,Reid did get the Constitution out of the way,Your on your own now.

[frog in a pot]

Thanks for an interesting link.

“This is really a fundamental debate…”
Give O the Congress and the Judiciary and it will no longer be a debate.

Nonetheless, many expected what we see today from a candidate who has been surrounded by communists since his highchair days; a candidate that argued the U.S. Constitution was “fundamentally flawed” and as the author points out: a candidate that promised to remake America.
What else would a rational person expect?

“…a nanny state…in which the citizen becomes the child and the government is the parent.”
Notice how O’s manner of speaking is that of the warning/scolding parent? He knows they are out there, easily frightened and susceptible to manipulation.

Health care and climate control are thought to be the two most effective ways for a government to cut into a free society. Gorbachev become an active international spokesman for both during the 80’s and 90’s while he was looking for a day job.