The Origin of Progressive Hostility

There's an article recently written on a website Quillette titled The Psychology of Progressive Hostility which is very well written, I highly recommend it. One part of the article asks the following question: "So how and why have these activists become so intolerant and horrible to deal with?"

It is questions like that that this blog are built around. Due to the progressives' complete dominance of academia(history) and media(journalism), I think it is safe to say that progressivism is the least understood ideology of modern history.

For what the article is and how it is set out to examine what it examines, I could not have written it this well. That simple, I could not even have come close. That's not to say it isn't without fault, for example, when I see someone quote Mill I immediately roll my eyes. However, my main goal is to highlight the origin of progressive history, which is conspicuously absent from the article.

In short, the origin of progressive history can be summed up into one single word: rejection. That is the origin of progressive hostility.

That's it. Rejection. Before being rejected, progressives loved and I mean LOVED America - at least, loved its government and what they could do with it. Read speeches from Woodrow Wilson or Theodore Roosevelt, there is no bitterness whatsoever to be found. Progressive ideology was at its height, they were open about being progressive, and nobody could stop them, and their tone reflects this.

That came to an end in the election of 1920. There is so, so much to learn from the election of 1920. The progressives were beaten so badly, that the only way progressives could become viable again is to put on a mask and usurp the word "Liberalism" as their new home. This happened by 1932.

Think about that. Who is your worst arch-nemesis? What if Rand Paul had to wear a mask of that guy - his next door neighbor who put him in the hospital, or if Steve Scalise had to wear a mask of James Hodgkinson? What if Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had to wear a Benjamin Netanyahu mask? What if Donald Trump had to wear a Hillary mask?

You get the idea. Your rejection is so complete that you had to look like the exact opposite, otherwise face extinction. Yeah, that would piss you off too. That's what the progressives have had to deal with since the 1930s. That is the origin of progressive hostility.

And to top it all off? The progressives first time in 90 something years that the they start to take their "liberal" masks off and start calling themselves progressive again, as represented by the Hillary campaign. And they lost again. To Donald Trump of all people! (Who in the progressives' minds, is the lowest of the low)

Yeah. You'd be hostile too. This must mean that you need to wear a mask again for yet another 90 years. Who WOULDN'T be pissed and hostile about that? This is why their pitch gets so much worse after 2016. It's 1920 all over again! I challenge anybody, ANYBODY, go read Wilson's or TR's speeches, read their books. You will not find any bitterness. Contrast that with the progressives of today, and the comparison could not be more stark.

There's a strong link between rejection, bitterness, and ultimately hostility. And this is their history. The progressives own it.

I think the reason for their hostility is that they know their arguments are weak and their positions can’t be defended. That was true of socialists then and now, true of LGBT zealots, black racists, feminists, atheists, Muslims, etc. Wilson and TR weren’t bitter because they didn’t try and deny the biological reality of 2 genders, amongst other things. Back then progressivism was merely an economic ideology. Now it’s become an entire religion.

I’ve been hostile in discussions before too but on the opposite side. Whenever I was not adequately informed of my side’s arguments, I just became hostile and malicious toward my opponent because I didn’t want to look weak and like a loser, and had nothing else to resort to.

My solution? Avoid debates altogether. That and stick to your principles. Whatever the left says to argue against liberty, I simply remember that I believe in liberty for liberty’s sake. If owning guns makes us less safe, privately-run healthcare shortens our lives, and having a large carbon footprint keeps the planet on course for destruction, so be it. I’d rather be free.

Thank you, Rocky, for your response to my original post. The thought occurs that whereas the 1787 U. S. Constitution's philosophical basis--as expressly laid out in the 1776 Declaration of Independence--was formed and framed on the "natural law" foundation--is, and was, anathema to the Progressive movement from the beginning.

Their rejection of the Framers' premise continues to control their lack of vision, and their totalitarian Progressive ideology's control over the minds of its cultist followers.

Natural Law

"Man ... must necessarily be subject to the laws of his Creator.. This will of his Maker is called the law of nature.... This law of nature...is of course superior to any other.... No human laws are of any validity, if contrary to this: and such of them as are valid derive all their force...from this original." - Sir William Blackstone (Eminent English Jurist)

The Founders DID NOT establish the Constitution for the purpose of granting rights. Rather, they established this government of laws (not a government of men) in order to secure each person's Creator endowed rights to life, liberty, and property. Only in America, did a nation's founders recognize that rights, though endowed by the Creator as unalienable prerogatives, would not be sustained in society unless they were protected under a code of law which was itself in harmony with a higher law. They called it "natural law," or "Nature's law." Such law is the ultimate source and established limit for all of man's laws and is intended to protect each of these natural rights for all of mankind.

The Declaration of Independence of 1776 established the premise that in America a people might assume the station "to which the laws of Nature and Nature's God entitle them.." Herein lay the security for men's individual rights - an immutable code of law, sanctioned by the Creator of man's rights, and designed to promote, preserve, and protect him and his fellows in the enjoyment of their rights. They believed that such natural law, revealed to man through his reason, was capable of being understood by both the plowman and the professor. Sir William Blackstone, whose writings trained American's lawyers for its first century, capsulized such reasoning:

"For as God, when he created matter, and endued it with a principle of mobility, established certain rules for the...direction of that motion; so, when he created man, and endued him with freewill to conduct himself in all parts of life, he laid down certain immutable laws of human nature, whereby that freewill is in some degree regulated and restrained, and gave him also the faculty of reason to discover the purport of those laws."

What are those natural laws? Blackstone continued:

"Such among others are these principles: that we should live honestly, should hurt nobody, and should render to every one his due.."

The Founders saw these as moral duties between individuals. Thomas Jefferson wrote:

"Man has been subjected by his Creator to the moral law, of which his feelings, or conscience as it is sometimes called, are the evidence with which his Creator has furnished him .... The moral duties which exist between individual and individual in a state of nature, accompany them into a state of society. their Maker not having released them from those duties on their forming themselves into a nation."

Americas leaders of 1787 had studied Cicero, Polybius, Coke, Locke, Montesquieu, and Blackstone, among others, as well as the history of the rise and fall of governments, and they recognized these underlying principles of law as those of the Decalogue, the Golden Rule, and the deepest thought of the ages. An example of the harmony of natural law and natural rights is Blackstone's "that we should live honestly" - otherwise known as "thou shalt not steal" - whose corresponding natural right is that of individual freedom to acquire and own, through honest initiative, private property. In the Founders' view, this law and this right were unalterable and of a higher order than any written law of man. Thus, the Constitution confirmed the law and secured the right and bound both individuals and their representatives in government to a moral code which did not permit either to take the earnings of another without his consent. Under this code, individuals could not band together and do, through government's coercive power, that which was not lawful between individuals.

America's Constitution is the culmination of the best reasoning of men of all time and is based on the most profound and beneficial values mankind has been able to fathom. It is, as William E. Gladstone observed, "The Most Wonderful Work Ever Struck Off At A Given Time By the Brain And Purpose Of Man." We should dedicate ourselves to rediscovering and preserving an understanding of our Constitution's basis in natural law for the protection of natural rights - principles which have provided American citizens with more protection for individual rights, while guaranteeing more freedom, than any people on earth.

"The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom."-John Locke

Footnote: Our Ageless Constitution, W. David Stedman & La Vaughn G. Lewis, Editors (Asheboro, NC, W. David Stedman Associates, 1987) Part III: ISBN 0-937047-01-5

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