Progressives Without Progress

[boomerang]

A thought provoking article.

The left is actually deeply conservative.

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2014/01/progressives-without-progress.html

There isn't very much progress in the progressive movement. Progress is the expansion of possibilities. Progressives however have a Malthusian obsession with the scarcity of all things. They believe that we are about to run out of everything from energy to water to wealth and education and that like starving survivors on a lifeboat we have to redistribute everything.

Sound familiar? Scarcity and redistribution. The cornerstones of current progressive thought. Except it's always been at the heart of their movement which is actually based in extreme conservatism.

The progress of progressives is not a rocket to the stars, but a slow elevator climbing up a constricted shaft to their ideal society. It's only progressive in the same sense that a television channel that moves from one show to the next within the confines of its programming is. It's programmed progress, not the progress of exploring infinitely expanding possibilities.

The left is actually deeply conservative. It is difficult for people in countries being contested by the left to see this because they observe the left as revolutionary and destructive. But every attempted conquest is accompanied by violent disruptions. The domestic left destroys everything it does not control as part of a cultural war; not because it seeks an open society of perpetual creative ferment.

Once the left achieves its dream of absolute power in a nation, that nation becomes socially backward, technologically backward and culturally backward. There is a reason that the USSR, Cuba and North Korea were not producing compelling new cultural products for export the way that their sympathizers in Hollywood did and do. It's the same reason that they don't keep having revolutions.

Americans had trouble believing that the left of the counterculture had much in common with the conformist cultural factory of the USSR until the flower children became professional activists and politicians and ran a system of stale conformity interspersed with tedious displays of traditionally transgressive arts. The very slogan, Keep Berkeley Weird, is not revolutionary. It's traditionalist.

Nothing is more conservative than keeping things the way that they used to be.

There is no progress in progressivism. There is instead a deep fear of progress. Utopians fear the unregulated and unplanned and they replace the true expansive progress of the human spirit with the false progress of social controls. Human genius is sold on the block in exchange for bureaucracy.

Progressives view every element of the world, from the grand vistas of oceans and skies to the minute intersections of human society as too fragile and limited for unregulated progress. Under their rule, progress in this country, once its secular faith, has slowed to a crawl outside of a few select industries that are able to move faster than the speed of progressive regulations.

The only way to resume progress is to fight the progressive movement.

I would have loved to quote the whole article but attention spans are short.

 

[Orignal Earl]

I think that guy is obsessed with the word progress.
You probably are too, that's why the article made things click in your brain

 

[boomerang]

I think that guy is obsessed with the word progress.
You probably are too, that's why the article made things click in your brain

I'm glad that your simple explanation satisfied your simple mind. :thumbsup:

 

[Orignal Earl]

I'm glad that your simple explanation satisfied your simple mind. :thumbsup:

Keepin it simple since 63

 

[fskimospy]

You really get a lot of insight into people by the types of articles that they link. Despite the fact that his link is nothing more than the type of pseudo-philosophical ranting you would hear in a freshman dorm I imagine boomerang totally believes this shit.

I can totally see him reading this and thinking he's uncovered some deep truth too. What's strange is that delusions like that usually require a lot of weed, but Sunday morning seems a bit early for that.

 

[Anarchist420]

i agree with the OP 100%... progressives aka "modern liberals" like to force their own cultural policy against everyone rather than usually supporting or even being willing to compromise for a decentralized position (liberalism was originally confederalist while conservatism has always been centralist) AND the wealthy ones refuse to help the poor only on their own dollar (look at those who voted for McAwful in NoVA) AND the poor redistributionists behave very authoritarian/irrationally (like DMcOwen wanting all rich people deported).

hamiltonians, the original conservatives, did not like ingenuity and they loved authority... progressives ask for the authorities to implement their cultural policies and their economic policies just like the hamiltonians did.

 

[Lash444]

I think that guy is obsessed with the word progress.
You probably are too, that's why the article made things click in your brain

He most certainly is. Go ahead and read his posts in the past. Usually its "The progressive left" that he repeats ad nauseam in his first sentence.

 

[dphantom]

So rather than refute the premise of the article, our progressives simply attack the messenger.

 

[dmcowen674]

Conservatism is a Mental Illness

 

[fskimospy]

So rather than refute the premise of the article, our progressives simply attack the messenger.

Did you not read my post? It has no premise outside of pseudo philosophical ranting. There is nothing to refute.

 

[boomerang]

So rather than refute the premise of the article, our progressives simply attack the messenger.

Yeah, so far all I have read is variations of "You're just a, a, a, stupid!" Heady stuff.

 

[glenn1]

Did you not read my post? It has no premise outside of pseudo philosophical ranting. There is nothing to refute.

The article uses a lot of words to state the obvious; many progressives are deeply conformist and the movement itself is authoritarian at heart. The author conflates progressive objectives with its means.

 

[TreVader]

I think that guy is obsessed with the word progress.
You probably are too, that's why the article made things click in your brain

LOL the first thing I thought when I read that was "I think this guy has been staring at the dictionary for too long". It's semantics!


There was an interesting article that said that conservatives always assume that more people agree with them than actually do, and that's why it's so easy to find "consensus" amongst conservatives. They're natural Sheeple.


Liberals think they're "different", when in reality people are more liberal than they think. Even "conservative" people are more liberal than they think.

 

[boomerang]

Did you not read my post? It has no premise outside of pseudo philosophical ranting. There is nothing to refute.

Love this! "Did you not read my post?" Our self-appointed fascist leader has declared this topic unworthy of discussion. Obey minions, obey!

 

[TreVader]

Love this! "Did you not read my post?" Our self-appointed fascist leader has declared this topic unworthy of discussion. Obey minions, obey!

Fascism is a far right-wing philosophy. You should probably know what fascist means before you call the POTUS Fascist.

 

[boomerang]

Fascism is a far right-wing philosophy. You should probably know what fascist means before you call the POTUS Fascist.

eskimospy is not the POTUS although he evidently does feel he wields great power. Using the premise of the article, eskimospy is most definitely a fascist. He's as far right wing as they come.

 

[TreVader]

eskimospy is not the POTUS although he evidently does feel he wields great power. Using the premise of the article, eskimospy is most definitely a fascist. He's as far right wing as they come.

I thought you were referring to Obama.

 

[nehalem256]

It actually makes complete sense.

Progressive are all about equality.

But if any one person or group progresses then that person or group would be superior to others.

Equality inherently requires stagnation.

 

[Moonbeam]

So rather than refute the premise of the article, our progressives simply attack the messenger.

I have only so far read to your post and don't know how many more there are till this one, but I really do agree. I think this OP is worth the effort to consider and analyze. I can see where somebody could easily make such a case.

 

[nehalem256]

Fascism is a far right-wing philosophy. You should probably know what fascist means before you call the POTUS Fascist.

Well lets look at the most well known fascist group:

The Nazis argued that capitalism damages nations due to international finance, the economic dominance of big business, and Jewish influences.[157] Nazi propaganda posters in working class districts emphasised anti-capitalism, such as one that said: "The maintenance of a rotten industrial system has nothing to do with nationalism. I can love Germany and hate capitalism."[164]
Adolf Hitler, both in public and in private, expressed disdain for capitalism, arguing that it holds nations ransom in the interests of a parasitic cosmopolitan rentier class.[165] He opposed free market capitalism's profit-seeking impulses and desired an economy in which community interests would be upheld.[144]
Hitler distrusted capitalism for being unreliable due to its egotism, and he preferred a state-directed economy that is subordinated to the interests of the Volk.[165] Hitler said in 1927, "We are socialists, we are enemies of today's capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are determined to destroy this system under all conditions."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazism#Anti-capitalism

Now does that sound like what a lefty or what a righty would say?

with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are determined to destroy this system under all conditions."

Okay, you got me. Fascists believe in valuing people according to them taking responsibility. That really does seem like a right-wing ideology after all

 

[Moonbeam]

Did you not read my post? It has no premise outside of pseudo philosophical ranting. There is nothing to refute.

I just woke up. Could you explain this a bit.

 

[theeedude]

Another display of conservative "left is right" "up is down" "rich are too poor" "poor are too rich" mentality.

 

[Moonbeam]

It actually makes complete sense.

I don't know what a progressive is but I think of myself as one. I don't give a fig about equality. Progressive to me means the elimination of the exploitation of the bottom that occurs from greed and indifference from the top, the elimination of barriers that prevent people from progressing at all, the stagnation of the 90% at the cost of progress for a few.

It makes not the slightest difference if some progress faster than others so long as the same advantages are available to all. And this progress should have nothing whatsoever to do with only fucking money, the one thing self haters gravitate toward to cover their feelings of worthlessness and which they lust to keep exclusively for themselves so they can gloat at their superiority over others. A society built like this is the definition of stagnation and even retrograde decline.

The progressive goal is to reestablish the meaning of value to what it really is, a world without war fear and wont and hatred that destroys children before they have a chance. We have built a world on competition rather than cooperation and competition is hate. The goal of a progressive is to create social structures that allow people to self fulfill their human potential. Huge amounts of money can be made filling human need and that's where capital needs to be directed.

So:

Progressive are not all about equality.

Progress of one person is progress for all because there is only the planet itself. The concept of superiority and inferiority is a product of self hate.

Inequality is the result of competition which is hate and all hate originates in hate of the self.

Progress is a function of the golden rule, whether we feel it within or we do not. It is the natural practice of a healthy mind so progress is about increasing the mental health in the world. The only wealth on the planet are people with real knowledge, people who own the universe and give it away for free.

But I can tell you it's hard to give to light to cockroaches for some odd reason. Maybe we need to think more along the line of metamorphosis and cockroach progress.

 

[IGBT]

liberals play games with words and definitions. They redefine "progressive" to fit their failures. Thus a failure becomes progressive.

 

[Double Trouble]

Fascism is a far right-wing philosophy. You should probably know what fascist means before you call the POTUS Fascist.

I beg to differ. Fascism is by no means a right wing philosophy. It's a philosophy shared by many all all over the right-left spectrum. The only thing that is different is which 'values' they seek to impose on their fellow man. Some want to impose their moral values, some seek to impose political correctness, some seek to impose their notion of virtue, some seek to impose their concept of fairness. In reality, there is no shortage of fascist ideas on the left or the right of the spectrum.