Posted on 12/12/2021 10:51:12 AM PST by ProgressingAmerica
In understanding why progressivism and liberalism are not the same thing and even moreso, why progressivism hates liberalism, there are two inescapable facts:
1) During the progressive era, progressives were everywhere.
2) Today, progressives are everywhere.
Well, what's in the middle? For some reason, no matter where I go there is an extreme resistance on the part of conservatives to admit (out loud or even perhaps even to themselves) that progressives re-labeled themselves as liberal and are now wearing camoflage. Why is this? I don't know. Every now and then you see someone attempt to dig it out and they do get it right, but those are far and few between.
We know where the progressives are during the 1900s, they're in the White House they're controlling many parts of the senate and they're setting up the beginnings of the bureaucratic state. We know where the progressives are during the 1910s, we see several destructive Constitutional amendments, and things kind of (we are told by historians) come to a closing right at the end of 1919 going into 1920. Well wait just a minute! No no, stop right here. Examine this. Starting in 1920 where did all the progressives go?
Yes, they got routed politically in the 1920 election and through the remainder of Calvin Coolidge's presidency the progressives got smoked really bad. But did the progressives disappear? No. Progressivism doesn't die. So where did it go? Where did all of the progressives go?
Well the short answer is, the progressives came back as strong as possible during the presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. That's easy, everybody knows that. Except for one problem. Nobody knows it. Let me explain. Is FDR a liberal president or a progressive president? You have to pick, and there's a 50% chance you'll get the answer incorrect.
The answer is that FDR was never ever a liberal president. He was always a progressive. Calling these people "liberal" is the great historical lie. "The Big Lie". But the amount of people who are wedded to this lie is astounding. It is a bi-partisan lock.
So FDR was a liberal. THEN WHERE DID ALL OF THE PROGRESSIVES GO??? See, that's the question that destroys it all. Where. Did. All. The. Progressives. Go? No conservative believes that the progressives just magically went away, did they go "poof"? Did they go to mars? Are they butterflies, did they flutter away up to Greenland? No. They were here all along, they stayed right here, peddling their poisonous wares until the time was right. Like cockroaches in the night. But yet, far too many ignore this. After the 1930's, the progressives came roaring right back again a few decades later in the 1960's. But that's another topic in itself as well.
Where did all of the progressives go? Right here, here is where they went. In his speech on July 02, 1932, accepting the nomination for President of the United States, FDR said:
Let us feel that in everything we do there still lives with us, if not the body, the great indomitable, unquenchable, progressive soul of our Commander-in-Chief, Woodrow Wilson.
So progressive FDR waves high and proud to their history as fellow progressives, then he says this:
Yes, the people of this country want a genuine choice this year, not a choice between two names for the same reactionary doctrine. Ours must be a party of liberal thought, of planned action, of enlightened international outlook, and of the greatest good to the greatest number of our citizens.
There it is. With that, progressivism had successfully been re-named. Our party must be the liberal party he says.
Where did all of the progressives go? Mark the day.
On July 02, 1932, that's the day every progressive died. That's their birthday. July 02, 1932. This sentence is not a contradiction.
Where did all of the progressives go? Look for the camoflauge. This camoflauge is brought to you by the letters "L". "I". and "B".
Some day, I don't suspect it will be within my lifetime, but some day. Some day, conservatives are going to have to go to war to reclaim this word. "Liberalism". They stole it, they don't deserve it, and they certainly didn't do a thing to earn it. Within whatever the final defeat of progressivism entails, this word must be restored away from them. And this word will be a benchmark. Long before progressivism's final defeat, the mask must be ripped off for all time. No enemy is truely defeated who still possesses their camoflage or other tools of war.
they are all collectivist control freaks ...
There are plenty of progressives in the GOP.
I call them Bush League Republicans.
If they want open borders/amnesty, they are Bush League Republicans.
“Where did all of the progressives go?”
six feet down, or much further
They are neither liberals nor progressives.
Call them what they really are: Communists
It is a very strange beast that calls itself a “liberal” that wants to terminate the employment of people who wish to retain control over bodies entirely their own.
After 1965, and getting stronger and stronger, the Progressive were of a majority world view that put "the world" ahead of America, and viewed the USA as more of a problem than a solution.
Stalin was the ultimate “progressive”—killed off half of the Party Congress because they were not progressive enough...
Call them what they really are: Communists
ABSOLUTELY right! I searched for the word "communist" in the article and didn't find it which made me immediately know the author is an uneducated boob. By the 30s, the communist infiltration of the government was large, but kept hidden...unlike today.
Today we get hard-core, Moscow-trained commies like Omarova nominated to head the US banking system.
At least in the 20s and 30s we had the legitimate "Red Scare." The Reds denounced it as a baseless, irrational fear which was a joke.
Tenth, the thinking conservative understands that permanence and change must be recognized and reconciled in a vigorous society. The conservative is not opposed to social improvement, although he doubts whether there is any such force as a mystical Progress, with a Roman P, at work in the world. When a society is progressing in some respects, usually it is declining in other respects. The conservative knows that any healthy society is influenced by two forces, which Samuel Taylor Coleridge called its Permanence and its Progression. The Permanence of a society is formed by those enduring interests and convictions that gives us stability and continuity; without that Permanence, the fountains of the great deep are broken up, society slipping into anarchy. The Progression in a society is that spirit and that body of talents which urge us on to prudent reform and improvement; without that Progression, a people stagnate.
Therefore the intelligent conservative endeavors to reconcile the claims of Permanence and the claims of Progression. He thinks that the liberal and the radical, blind to the just claims of Permanence, would endanger the heritage bequeathed to us, in an endeavor to hurry us into some dubious Terrestrial Paradise. The conservative, in short, favors reasoned and temperate progress; he is opposed to the cult of Progress, whose votaries believe that everything new necessarily is superior to everything old.
Change is essential to the body social, the conservative reasons, just as it is essential to the human body. A body that has ceased to renew itself has begun to die. But if that body is to be vigorous, the change must occur in a regular manner, harmonizing with the form and nature of that body; otherwise change produces a monstrous growth, a cancer, which devours its host. The conservative takes care that nothing in a society should ever be wholly old, and that nothing should ever be wholly new. This is the means of the conservation of a nation, quite as it is the means of conservation of a living organism. Just how much change a society requires, and what sort of change, depend upon the circumstances of an age and a nation.
https://isi.org/modern-age/ten-conservative-principles/
Very few will read the original article.
What is the conservative position on progression?
Remember our founding fathers created a very inefficient government with lots of checks and balances.
Too many here want an efficient government to implement their “conservative” ideas.
The modern left are not liberal. What they are is corrupt political figures. Possibly you could call them neo-psudo-communist?
Also,i wish the RINOs,essentially the same, would take a long walk off a short pier.
Yep!
There’s still some liberals out there. They live in blue states and vote for RINOs like McCarthy, Graham etc. The progressives are now global communists. Citizens of the world like their savior obama.
You might add a little Burke to that formula... But the point is a good one; however I’d use “renewal” instead of “progression.”
The reason the early 20th century progressives were so enamored of “commissions” was they were so sure of their “scientific” ideas that they had neither patience nor willingness to process their ideas through the checks & balances and regular order of the constitutional structure.
Great concisely stated comment at the bottom, thanks.
I will ultimately read that article you cite, looks good but long and will be a slow read for me.
I might add that another “inefficiency” the Feds are SUPPOSED to suffer from is lack of money.
Properly starving the Feds by limiting the money we provide them forces them to focus on appropriate things to an appropriate degree.
Low taxes empower We the People and limit the government. They are not selfish, we use money better, and having government on a diet protects us from that government.
When they starve We the People by gathering in high taxes, PLUS (via lackeys) steal even more by printing money, it is another avenue of escape by Progressives from our planned constitutional inefficiencies, and evil ensues.
I hope more people recognize your point. Anyone who has studied the progressive era would immediately recognize all the same old progressive ideas and names in the New Deal, the FDR administrative state, Congress, and the states (such as governors Pinchot in PA and Olson in CA).
Oh, yeah, and then there’s Truman...
I never liked it when GHWB used the word liberal. It is the wrong word. Leftists was the better choice. Progressives is just a kinder gentler word because it sounds nice e.g. “who is against progress?”
Everyone knows what a Leftist wants.
I agree with you completely about communism in these evil times.
I have been for years calling it “communofascism” to fight against the way that the communists always want to call us fascists, as though fascism is not just an even lazier form of communism in which the state makes the people oppress themselves through their corporations.
However (maybe you do not know) ProgressingAmerica is a Freeper who DOES INTERACT here on the articles he posts, he is anything but uneducated, and is not a “boob.” He posts his articles in their entirely here, no one has to go to his blog, and if you do there are no ads.
I will be simple to ask him (and by this I am asking him) why he chose to not use the word Communist in this article that he wrote and posted in its entirety here.
Sometimes our attacks on enemy positions need to be done with subtlety, and I think he is educating us to have a broader menu of ways to see and fight communists and those supporting them. So he focuses on Progressivism.
I think there are good educational and strategic reasons why we should be learning how to deal with the re-branding that is always going on on the “left,” just like the progressive-liberal-progressive re-brandings that ProgressingAmerica discusses in his article. I always appreciate his posts.
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