The irony of Progressivism is that it accomplishes the exact opposite of its stated intentions. First, let me define Progressivism in a way that most people will recognize it. People who consider themselves Liberal (big L) are in actuality Progressives. Progressives believe in things like economic justice and social justice. They believe that wealth is unfairly distributed and that certain social classes are at an unfair disadvantage and that it is the Governments primary role to make things fair (as they, the Liberals define fairness). Progressives dominate both major political parties in the United States today. The difference between Democrat progressives and Republican progressives is mostly superficial. Democrats have however capitalized on their economic and social fairness far more successfully. They have as their allies most of the institutions of higher learning and most of the media including Hollywood producers, directors and actors, nearly all of the television media, all of the print media, labor unions, ecologists, so called minority leaders, and even most Christian and Jewish religious leaders. Because Progressivism claims as its goal fairness it is appealing to most people. Interestingly, the first Progressive President was Theodore Roosevelt a Republican! Teddy (as he is affectionately called) began the war on large corporations, using the Federal Government to fight what he called unfair competition and caused to be outlawed certain types of monopolies and trusts that he said eliminated competition. I know that you learned in school as I did, that monopolies are bad while those same teachers ignored that the Federal Government is itself a Monopoly! So when those evil robber barons where creating incredibly efficient production and distribution systems and eliminating weak and inefficient competition they were vilified as unfair and greedy. Of course the economic principle that Roosevelt and his followers ignored was that as a system grows, it must become less efficient, ultimately it becomes so inefficient that it collapses and is replaced by something faster, better and cheaper. So Teddy broke up the oil companies and the railroads and the steel mills and was hailed as a hero of the little guy. The owners of those evil corporations adapted and continued to create wealth, though not as efficiently. Their consortia did not get replaced, only divided up. Im sure you have heard the names Carnegie, Westinghouse, Vanderbilt, Bell and Rockefeller among others. They werent impoverished, they followed the new laws, most of them became Progressives themselves because they were smart men and saw on which side of their bread existed the butter. Another example of this kind of Progressivism was the breakup of AT&T in the 70s. Nearly every one of the Telecommunications companies of today have as their roots one of the Baby Bells that resulted from that breakup. A successor to Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson a revered Democrat, pushed even further, expanding all of Roosevelts programs and getting involved in the control of much smaller businesses. He also oversaw the adoption of the 15th and 16th amendments. The 15th allows the Federal Government to collect income tax and the 16th takes away the power of the State Legislatures to elect Senators and gives that power to the populace. The 15th gave the Congress and the President huge influence over the economy by allowing not only the collection of income taxes but also the power to create loopholes in order to encourage or discourage certain (whatever they think is best for the economy and ultimately whatever is best for their supporters) economic behaviors. The 16th Amendment in essence destroyed any semblance of a Republic (a coalition of States united for the common good of each) that still existed, and took us far closer to a pure Democracy. This was done in order to minimize the influence of greed and back room dealing and we can see today how well that worked! The next huge leap for Progessivism was brought to us by Teddys distant cousin Franklin Roosevelt. He used the Great Depression as an excuse to insert the Federal Government into nearly every aspect of the American economy and life. He confiscated all of the privately held gold in the country to stop what he called hoarding by the wealthy. He instituted price fixing and wage freezes (except for certain of his loyal supporters), he spent huge amounts of money on make work projects like the WPA and others (which did at least require people to show up and pretend to work instead of just sitting home collecting benefits) which did actually build some roads and parks, though arguably created little wealth or long term employment. When his policies were challenged in the Supreme Court as unconstitutional, he ranted, raved, defied and ultimately successfully stacked the Court with his supporters. This is something every President since has tried to do but presidential term limits make it far more difficult today. When WWII broke out, he overstepped his bounds even more by nationalizing nearly all of the industrial output of the country, rationed all necessary commodities like food and gasoline and interred thousands of Japanese American citizens in the name of security with no due process. He had no respect for the Constitution thinking that we had to progress beyond the limitations of power imposed by that document on our Government, a view shared today by nearly every politician of both major parties. Since FDR, there has not been one President who didnt assume that his job was to fix America, even Ronald Reagan the most Conservative President since Hoover, wasnt a Libertarian in the traditional sense. He still believed that Government spending could fix an economy, he preferred defense spending to domestic make work projects and welfare, and buying planes and ships does at least create a value and gainfully employs people, but not anywhere near the extent that a free market does. So after over 100 yrs of Progressivism the question is are we better off? Certainly the Civil Rights movement has given minorities, primarily those of African decent, a greater voice in Government but that was (or should have been) a Libertarian ideal, not a Progressive one and the truth is that it was Republicans (less Progressive then than now) who pushed both Civil Rights acts through Congress over the opposition of Democrats whose power base at that time were Southern Democrats who controlled (or were controlled by) the Ku Klux Klan. The truth is that we now have a Government that is so big and so expensive that our economy cannot support it. The Federal Deficit is between $1T and $2T per year and will only keep going up. The Federal Debt is today higher than the value of the entire economy (Debt - roughly $17T and economy roughly $15T)! But is the average person better off? The numbers say not, the percent of the population in poverty is the highest in history, the percent of the available workforce gainfully employed full time is nearly at the lowest point in history. Sure we have a lot of technology our grandparents didnt have, but that small reward for the fact that we spend a higher percentage of our income on taxes to support duplicate and inefficient government programs, food, housing and transportation than our grandparents and great grandparents did. Wealth is still unevenly distributed, because no rules of government can overcome the principles of wealth creation. No matter what a Government does, the majority of wealth will always be held by the minority of people (more on that in another post). So the irony is that Progressivism claims to be dedicated to fairness but results simply in the mass distribution of misery. If everyone is miserable, I guess thats fair. Or is it?
Posted on: Mon, 02 Dec 2013 15:13:42 +0000
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