"To give or make laws, Madame, is a task which God has left to no one. Ah! What is man, to think himself capable of dictating laws to beings whom he knows not?"
-- Mercier de la Rivière
Progressives are not evil
It springs from a noble urge, this liberal love of big government, copious laws and an army of bureaucrats to direct and enforce it all. Progressivism seeks to straighten the curves, flatten the hills and fill in the valleys. It’s a naive pursuit of equality and fairness.
Power differentials and inequality have always existed and they always will
Acting otherwise is plowing the sea. The rich and well-connected will always have more power than the poor and alienated. That’s just the way the world works.
But nature is the great leveler. Sloth and complacency often stalk riches and power. Other deadly sins like pride and greed can cause a precipitous slide in fortune or a downright crash to earth. Meanwhile, being poor and powerless brings hunger, and hunger spurs industriousness. Industry leads to riches, or at least to a material improvement to one’s life.
Even now, with social mobility apparently slowing, over 80% of those born into the lowest economic quintile in America will move out of it by adulthood.
Shaw Kenaw, a very smart and quite articulate liberal, recently accused me of being nostalgic for yesteryear and longing to turn back the clock to a simpler time. Nonsense. This has nothing to do with yesterday and everything to do with tomorrow. How shall we govern ourselves going forward? More laws, more bureaucracy? It hasn’t reduced child poverty or improved our education.
More and bigger government saw short-term crashes and panics turn into depressions and double-dip recessions, stagflation, demise of domestic manufacturing, tech bubbles, dot com bubbles, housing market misery. This is progress?
Further Reading:
That is the bottom line, we do not need more laws and more bureaucracy.
ReplyDeleteProgressives are not evil
ReplyDeleteIt springs from a noble urge...
True enough.
But Hitler had the noble urge of eugenics.
So, I guess that the definition of "noble" can be subjective, too.
Progressives are not evil?
ReplyDeleteAnd The Tooth Fairy is Real!
Sorry my friends, but I believe Progressives are evil, we see them destroying this country every day.
I have come to the realization that the progressives are truly the enemy of all conservatives, they hate us and everything that we stand for. We have just witnessed this yesterday and today, by what they are saying in their blogs about the shooting. They believe that bastard Traitor Jane Fonda as long as she says these evil lies about Sarah Palin or/and Glenn Beck. And if that isn’t evil, I don’t know what evil is.
There indeed are some evil progressives, but the great majority, like Shaw, are not. These people want to build a better life for everybody, but they don't trust that people can do it on their own. Sad, but not evil.
ReplyDeleteStay patriotic my friend..no tyranny for us...:)
ReplyDeleteI think we have been inured to evil, reverend.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the compliment. My computer at work obliterates the post background, leaving just the wood background and the print, not a good combo. I hope its not happening to anyone else...
It's only progress if they get their way regardless of the consequences.
ReplyDelete