"Your love of liberty -- your respect for the laws -- your habits of industry -- and your practice of the moral and religious obligations, are the strongest claims to national and individual happiness."
George Washington
My post, “Progressives Want to Control Information” got this response, which I found needed more space than I had for a simple answer. Here was the comment and my answer follows.
Gaia said...
"Self proclaimed elitists?" Would you cite sources, please, because I've never come across a progressive so proclaimed. On the contrary, we want comprehensive health care for everyone; we want a good education for everyone; we want everyone to vote; we want everyone to pay a fair and reasonable amount of taxes; we want a fair judicial system for everyone. That's not elitist: that's an all-embracing populism."
It is such a simple and reasonable question, but it opens multiple avenues of responses. So I will pluck and pare down the volumes that popped into my head. First, you are intuitive in questioning my phrase “self proclaim elitists” and for good reasons. Anyone who would boldly claim such a title as elitist would come off as very egotistical and contrary to “serving the people”. I was using the term loosely, which I should have defined, to mean someone who acts upon and lives out beliefs of elitism. Self proclaimed in the sense that we act upon our philosophical beliefs. More on that in a moment but because I said it, I’ll give a couple of examples of this elitist attitude.
George Bernard Shaw has many interesting comments. Here is one. “I think it would be a good thing to make everybody come before a properly-appointed board, just as they might come before the income tax commissioner, and say every five years, or every seven years, just put them there, and say, ‘Sir, or madam, now will you be kind enough to justify your existence?’"
John Dewy – “Children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society which is coming where everyone is interdependent.”
God forbid we have no great answer for a “justify your existence” board or should we learn to think for ourselves. By the way, these two are considered fathers (of many) of the current progressive movement.
There are many others but it is really not the point here. What is actually interesting is that you ignored the fact that I tied elitism to the progressive movement and you seem to equate it to populism. Modern progressive populism is almost like saying frozen fire. It is a great creative word picture but not realistically possible. This is obviously my opinion based on my understanding of Progressives, which I’ll elaborate on later below. I understand your use of populism because it is a good argument against elitism and the philosophy seems to fit your true values.
Populism – “A type of political-social thought that juxtaposes "the people" against "the elites", and urges social and political system changes. It can also be defined as a rhetorical style employed by members of various political or social movements. It is defined by the Cambridge dictionary as "political ideas and activities that are intended to represent ordinary people's needs and wishes" - Wikipedia
We probably can agree to the idea of populism. I say right now that I don’t necessarily embrace the full concepts and the far reaching ideas related to the whole populism, but for the purpose of this apologetic I will address the simple definition above “intended to represent the ordinary people’s needs and wishes”. Where we greatly diverge is from our theoretical root for the idea. It is no secret that I get mine from our nations’ founding rooted in Judeo-Christian theology: that all men are created equal and that they have certain inalienable rights. All are also obliged to obey the natural law, under which we have not only rights but duties. We are obliged "to respect those rights in others which we value in ourselves" (Jefferson). This is my idea of an American patriot, borrowed from the Heritage Foundation.
How does a Progressive support populism? First, the predominant view and my understanding of a progressive view is one increasingly radicalized by its transformation into contemporary liberalism. Here are a few points comparing a “progressive” view from a patriots’. (I respectfully use much of the following from the Heritage Foundation)
As mentioned above, “all men are created equal and they have certain inalienable rights” is a patriot’s view. The Progressives rejected these claims as naive and unhistorical. In their view, human beings are not born free. John Dewey, the most thoughtful of the Progressives, wrote that freedom is not "something that individuals have as a ready-made possession." It is "something to be achieved." In this view, freedom is not a gift of God or nature. It is a product of human making, a gift of the state. This is a very important and contrary viewpoint.
Government's main duty for the Founders is to secure that freedom: at home through the making and enforcement of criminal and civil law, abroad through a strong national defense. The protection of life and liberty is achieved through vigorous prosecutions of crime against person and property or through civil suits for recovery of damages, these cases being decided by a jury of one's peers.
The Progressives regarded the Founders' scheme as defective because it took too benign a view of nature. As Dewey remarked, they thought that the individual was ready-made by nature. The Founders' supposed failure to recognize the crucial role of society led the Progressives to disparage the Founders' insistence on limited government. For the Progressives, freedom is redefined as the fulfillment of human capacities, which becomes the primary task of the state.
The American Founders tried to promote the moral conditions of an independent, hard-working citizenry by laws and educational institutions that would encourage such virtues as honesty, moderation, justice, patriotism, courage, frugality, and industry. Government support of religion was generally practiced with a view to these ends. One can see the Founders' view of the connection between religion and morality in such early laws as the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which said that government should promote education because "[r]eligion, morality, and knowledge [are] necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind."
In Progressivism, the domestic policy of government had two main concerns. First, government must protect the poor and other victims of capitalism through redistribution of resources, anti-trust laws, government control over the details of commerce and production: i.e., dictating at what prices things must be sold, methods of manufacture, government participation in the banking system, and so on. Second, government must become involved in the "spiritual" development of its citizens -- not, of course, through promotion of religion, but through protecting the environment ("conservation"), education (understood as education to personal creativity), and spiritual uplift through subsidy and promotion of the arts and culture.
As can be seen, the paving of a road to populism ethics could be reached by diametrically opposed political platforms: of an American patriot or a modern Progressive. A few final questions come to mind. Which political platform embraces the heart or intent of populism best? Which one has the best proven track record of intentionally protecting the people from elitism? Where should my faith be to bring about such desired principles: man or a higher power? My answer is obvious by the argument outlined. A true American patriot (to quote Gaia) “want(s) comprehensive health care for everyone; we want a good education for everyone; we want everyone to vote; we want everyone to pay a fair and reasonable amount of taxes; we want a fair judicial system for everyone.” Which is the best road to get there?
“A general dissolution of principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy. While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but when once they lose their virtue then will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader."
Samuel Adams
2 comments:
You offer me a choice between either patriotism or progressivism as though they were diametrically opposed.
You write that I ignored your tying elitism to the progressive movement, but that’s precisely why I questioned it.
Learning about lefties from our opposites on the political scale is like learning about cats from people who don’t like cats. I’ve had people tell me that cats are lazy, stupid, filthy, and steal the breath from babies. I can hardly recognize a cat from that description. I can’t recognize myself, my friends, my political allies or my representatives from your description of us. You know me, you know my values. You can apply those values to liberals in general. Most lefties would hold up Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, and Thomas Paine as our founders and role models. We revere the Constitution and hold the Bill of Rights as you do the Ten Commandments.
The reference to Shaw surprised me. George Bernard Shaw was an iconoclast who delighted in saying shocking and outlandish things to smack Victorian England’s upper crust upside its smug, self-important head. He, James Whistler and Oscar Wilde used to have verbal contests of wit. It’s odd that you would pick a nineteenth century shock-jock as an example of progressive thought. The strangest fruit in the bowl is not representative of the rest of the bowl, yet you hold it up and say, “this is what they’re all like”. Actually, most of them are like me. We are patriots.
Again, I need to refrain from using this comment area to address your comments and questions. See my next post, "Liberal or Progressive?"
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