Posted on 10/19/2015 1:54:13 PM PDT by MosesKnows
All productive discourse must begin on a point of agreement in order to have meaningful results. Conservatives are not in agreement regarding the Progressive Movement.
The Progressive Movement arose around the beginning of the 20th century. Socialist support gave the movement a bad name and they began to call themselves Liberals. However, as of late, bolstered by the open Socialist support they have returned to calling themselves Progressives. The socialist support makes it nearly impossible to distinguish between Democrats, Socialist, and Socialist Democrat.
I will share my opinion about the origin and agenda of the Progressive Movement based on what I know about Americas founding. If I have a flawed understanding then perhaps this post will solicit the opinions of other interested Americans to help me correct the flaws.
The Declaration of Independence declared that the peoples rights came from their Creator.
The Declaration of Independence declared that the reason to institute a government was to protect those rights.
These two facts would later become obstacles for The Progressive Movement.
They became obstacles because Americas founders took into account the flaws in man that surface when given too much power over others when they wrote the Constitution. They wrote the Constitution to limit the governments powers of legislation. To borrow an expression from packet filtering and applying it to our Constitution, regarding government limits, All that is not expressly permitted is prohibited.
Perhaps a more apt reference is what Madison wrote in Federalist No. 45 The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite.
The Progressive Movement began on the premise that more legislative power than the Constitution provided was necessary for the progress of the nation. The movement reasoned that constitutional limits placed there by the founders were no longer necessary because man had improved since the time of the nations founding. The Socialist agrees of course that restraints on the legislative powers should lessen.
The reason a more Socialist America is possible is that we have exchanged our government by legislation for a government by administration.
Government agencies created by Congress and the president have the power to issue rules that carry the full force of law. The agencies are subordinate to the executive office. When the president issues an executive order, it only applies to his subordinates. That means that an executive order trumps legislation at the agency level.
This is the essence of an Administrative government.
all you say is so. We are being enslaved not so much by the congress or the president by by the vast array of AGENCIES THAT MAKE UP THE BUREAUCRACY
What we have is an Elective Despotism.
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