Ideology to Eschatology

Ideology

Source: WordNet (r) 1.7

ideology
     n 1: an orientation that characterizes the thinking of a group or nation [syn: political orientation, political theory]
     2: imaginary or visionary theorization

Eschatology

Source: WordNet (r) 1.7

eschatology
     n : the branch of theology that is concerned with such final things as death and judgment; heaven and hell; the end of the world

The modern day Left started with an ideological framework that arose out of the works of Karl Marx and then added to via the International meetings on Marxism and then put through the lenses of Progressivism, Soviet Communism, socialists like Friedrich Engels who had impact on US Socialism via his works with Marx, European Anarcho-Syndicalist movements, the works of Antonio Gramsci and cultural hegemony as seen in the Frankfort School of cultural Marxism, then onto National Socialism and Nazi Fascism.  Taken as a whole, starting with Marx, the ideology derived from this school of thought is one that is based on an end of economic systems and the final removal of the capitalist or owning class of society and the rule of the Proletariat.  As an ideology it has its roots in the post-Classical period coming after John Locke, Adam Smith, and Immanuel Kant, and as a form of response to Utilitarianism.

I have gone over the ground of Marxism multiple times, most recently in What is the value of... anything? and review some of the highlights and problems of Marxism from the time of Marx.  Economically Marxism's problems with defining value, exactly who is being exploited, explaining what alienation of labor is and why its abolition is seen as a historical imperative does not address a part of Marxism that keeps it alive, and that is its sociology.  Within the Old Left (Communists, National Socialists, Anarcho-Syndicalists, American Progressivists) there was a requirement of scholarship for those on the 'inside' of the movements.  You had to know Marx and Engels, at the very least, be able to go through the rhetoric of Marxism via Hegel's Dialectical Materialism and then continue on with how bad those owning businesses were in their exploitation of labor.  Even given misplaced basis for arguments, there had to be a rational structure of argumentation on those points and defense of the critical starting points to assert the end points of the ideology.

This formed a sociological structure within Marxists circles that I got to witness first hand growing up in a family of socialist sympathizers.  It was an old First International sort of adherence, however, and had nothing to do with the Second or Third Congresses dominated by the (so-called as they put it) Communists.  Thus the first divisions were International Congress divisions and they would break out to the 'true believers, the rest of you are wrong' First Congress types and then those seen as corrupt: Communists (Soviet sort), National Socialists (all stripes), Progressives, social hegemonists... basically anyone save the strongly influenced Anarch-Syndicalists who cribbed a lot from US First International followers who themselves cribbed from Engels.  As you can tell by the long list of Marxist derivatives, there was a lot of in-fighting, factionalism and otherwise fierce boundary disputes within Marxists circles based on who you followed and what their form of argumentation was.  This could get broken down inside factions via different argument strains and who followed which form of their own particular brand of Marxism.

What this strongly looks like is a religious movement, and that is due to the fact that human nature (which Marx criticized the Utilitarians for not understanding) is seen as something that will go through a sudden, global transformation amongst the Proletariat.  Basically from nowhere, although the Marxists will point to the evils of capitalist exploitation, etc. but the actual gripes that the actual proletarians had (versus the idealized ones of the Marxists) had more to do with banal things like pay, working conditions, bad bosses and then, lo and behold, abusive Union bosses.  Labor Unions, seen as a first step towards Socialism and this grand uplifting of proletarian thought, turned out to be just another human made and manned system with all the faults of all such systems that man makes.  Instead of uplifting worker education they served to line the pockets of Union Bosses with worker funds and then walk away richer for it and cut deals with the very people they were supposed to protect the workers from.  The First Congress types saw Trade Unions as just another corrupt system and lumped them in the 'everybody else' category of 'not true socialists' right next to the National Socialists.

A strange thing happened from the days of the Old Marxist Left (roughly up to the mid-1970's encompassing the 'New Left' which was just warmed-over Old Left) and today: the grandiose vision of Marx was retained but the rhetoric, the internal logic, the ability to argue based on it all disappeared.  Lock, stock and barrel the current Authoritarian Left no longer has intellectual roots in Marx, Marxism or even logic.  Meet up with a Leftists today and they couldn't even attempt to give a good description of the Labor Theory of Value or to even explain what Alienation of Labor is.  Handwave as much as you like at the Frankfurt School, but they sought a domination through culture and have, instead, reinvented nihilism.

Nihilism

Source: WordNet (r) 1.7

nihilism
     n 1: a revolutionary doctrine that advocates destruction of the social system for its own sake
     2: the delusion that things (or everything, including the self) do not exist; a sense that everything is unreal [syn: nihilistic delusion]
     3: complete denial of all established authority and institutions

Given that Marx gave us an Eschatology of end-times, it is little wonder that those seeking a cultural domination would come up with nihilism.  Trying to unmoor past and present, seek to remove objective reasoning and, instead, personalize all political and economic points of view and then enforce those on everyone from some intellectual elite that doesn't have rational thinking as its basis, is it any wonder that you come to nihilism?

The feel-good and warm-fuzzies of Marxism are retained, that workers paradise and everyone getting goodies for nothing and their chicks for free remains to this day the heart of the Left and, in fact, dominates it.  If the Frankfurt School is to blame for its institutional marching to the point where politicians no longer believe in balancing a check book for THEMSELVES not to speak of the governments they seek to run, is it any wonder the rest of us are left scratching our heads asking: just how the hell is THIS supposed to work?

If there is no inherent difference between work and non-work, then why work?

If you hand out a dole to everyone for just existing, then who grows the food and why?  To what end?

Being generous with tax revenue and then some, means that you are taking economic vitality and encouraging non-vitality and asking our children to pay for it.  And if you don't teach them the value of actually earning a living, and they don't repay the debts, then who is going to grow the food?

Mao had the lovely idea of whipping the intellectuals into line, even a good amount of his supporters, by putting them to grow food for others and starve as they did so.  Radical material simplification, as one professor puts it about the Dark Ages: you are poor, hungry and have a short life deprived of the benefits of a civilization that once flourished.

Marxism has always had an eschatological view of the human race: it was always an end time religion because it never got the basics of human nature right and assumed a massive change intellectually that would free the working class and remove alienation of labor.  That's right, everyone would get to do the entire job for themselves!  You would be a fisher, raise wheat and corn, have chickens, read and print books, go hunting, and have the satisfaction of knowing that your labor was no longer alienated!

Unfortunately fishing is not catching.

Unfortunately hunting is not always successful.

Unfortunately chickens get sick, as do pigs, cattle, and you have to care for them as well as yourself.

To keep warm you must chop your own wood, mine your own coal or make your own nuclear reactor.

And then you would have to find the time to write about how grand your life was and how good it was to have unalienated labor.

Because all of it, from the moment you are born to the moment you die, you are going to do it all and even when you do it with your fellow liberated proletarians, you dare NOT divide up labor into different parts because that will alienate your labor from the entire affair.

To support unalienated labor is impossible, but the Left has decided to support the unemployed who should be seeking a job but now get supported for nearly two years and are taught how to live off the money taken by government for them.  Their labor is lacking.  Your labor's wages are stolen via government and given to those who have decided that living on what government gives them from you is better than working for a living and supporting themselves.  This isn't labor that is no longer alienated as their labor is no longer done: that which is not done cannot be alienated as it is never present.

What drives this is no longer an ideology but the belief in the end state of an ideology: the ideology, itself, is no longer discussed or thought about as a thing in and of itself.  At this point there is a belief in Marx that is no longer intellectual and not even rooted in his texts or the body of work of those closely associated with him.  Leftists are atheists because they want to be in the belief that Marx is right, not through reading Marx and understanding Marx, but just believing in him.  Their attacks on those who read religious texts is thus an anti-intellectual attack, no matter how dressed up and how many degrees are held by those going after religion, their own belief structure is based on unread texts and only on assumptions.

The devolution of Marxism from rhetorical premise and argumentative structure that requires thought has been slow, but has become greatly accelerated as the 'March through the institutions' is no longer based on something that has definition, but on the belief that the end result is 'good'.  Yet what is 'good' is never defined in a hard, fast and discernable way: good has no end state to it of limits to how much good any bureaucratic organization can do.  In fact the growth of bureaucracy is an in-bred 'good' in the belief that more of it and more power to it will get 'good' results.  And because human nature is no longer studied, nor the very impacts of it upon prior Marxist ideology and its factionation, it is not understood that a bureaucracy has no intellect, has no fast goal, cannot become an 'expert' no matter how many it hires, and that the Iron Law of bureaucracy is that those that further the ends of the bureaucracy get rewarded as the bureaucracy expands.  Thus the end goal a bureaucracy, any bureaucracy, is the expansion of bureaucracy by the bureaucracy for the bureaucracy.  Other goals become secondary to that quest for greater power.

Marxist ideology is not, of necessity, nihilistic and was, in fact, seen as something a bit more humanized than Utilitarianism.  Yet the very problems of Utilitarianism are seen in Marxism in its later stages of demeaning the individual, of not understanding the human nature of the individual and not addressing that there is more to the individual than, in the case of Marx, labor not utility.  Yet the very way labor is posited makes it utilitarian, thus the premise of Marx is eschatology within an ideology based on a belief and criticism that is has scant difference from the ones Marx leveled at Utilitarianism.

This cannot be argued to those who follow only the nihilistic eschatology of modern Marxism/Leftism because those inside the belief system don't bother to read and grapple with Marx.  It is always about doing 'good' through government, growing government and never asking if this is good for all the individuals in society.  Yet they speak of the 'collective' but then only want to do better for parts of it, not the whole thing, and thus they even miscomprehend what collectivism is and sacrifice it on the alter of special preferences. 

I never thought I would wish for the day of actual, intellectual Marxists arguing the rhetoric of Marx for policy, but they are not to be found.  The Marxism in the halls of power today, under a Progressivist/Liberal/Left guise is one that is rudely divorced from the ideology of Marx and connected to the end state eschatology of Marx.  Even that doesn't follow Marx as they screw up the Marxist notion of collectivism and replace it with special privileges for a few.  That is a National Socialist conception from Fascism as gone through the form of its German descendent, and this one isn't the one at Frankfurt but the one that got tried at Nuremburg.  It, too, had an end state eschatology that it elevated above ideology, and it was hard to find parsers of Marx amongst the National Socialists who started out as off-shoots of the International Socialist schools.  Gramsci would have his ideas picked up the the West but his body would be killed by Italian Fascists, which demonstrates the allure of special privilege nihilistic eschatology based roughly on Marx.

Too bad those followers of this anti-human form of Marxism don't bother to read history, either, because it is littered with such examples and death tolls attributable to it.  Better to go on pushing 'forward' never looking at where the path gets you and never asking 'just where in the hell are we going?'  The moment you do that you are decried as being against this or that special privileged group, or as someone who is an anarchist, which is strange because that is just another nihilistic eschatology.  Thus point out the bad ends of the road and you are said to be using a nihilistic eschatology by those who are using a nihilistic eschatology and don't want it mentioned that this is what they are doing.  And if you ask where they get these ideas from they just say its because it 'feels good' to do these things and have government do it for them with other people's money.

Lately, though, they are finding out they have to pay for their good ideas by finding out that their health insurance policy has been canceled and that they will have to get a much more costly one that does less for them.  Only once they start to get mugged by their own creation do they realize that there is pain involved to the many for the few with their 'good feeling' policies.  Better that it be a lot of pain, swiftly and deep today, so that more will see this is not good at all so that we can start requiring that people think and work for themselves and help the collective to get out of the mess the privileged got us into with their strange religion based only on good feelings and an nihilistic eschatology.  Ideologues you can at least argue with on the basis of something.  Those with a worldview religion based on someone they never read have belief in nothing and no idea what they are actually arguing about, just that they are always right.  Religious zealots who are unlearned and don't bother to ever think about what they say, you only can argue with and never, ever get anywhere.  I'll take the Jehovah's Witnesses, the Mormons, or any other religious sect that at least honestly reads about itself than this strange sect on the Left that just believes it is right because it said so.

Fantasy outlook and destinations

The following is a personal commentary piece of The Jacksonian Party.

The Progressive movement is embodied in one futuristic television show that gained a wide, deep and enthusiastic following for the better part of two decades after the show's demise.  And it was not the darker program of The Prisoner that I go over in this piece.  No the program I am thinking about cast itself to looking at the farther future, beyond all the wars and problems of its era and at one where mankind would finally unite and truly see Martin Luther King's dream where it was the content of one's character that you are judged by, not the color of your skin.  It projected a world in which peace is finally established for all mankind.  The program was

Star Trek and it projected a form of Kennedy forward-looking Progressivism that was not an instant hit, but gained a fanatical following and created one of the first of the fan-based systems of support for its followers.  You remember them:

You remember those folks, right?  Steadfast crew able to represent the very highest of values in the galaxy, namely the Federation's, and actually willing to fight and die for basic liberties and freedom as concepts.  And not just verbal sparring, fighting and dying on one's own argument, either.  But the real thing.

This Captain epitomized the spirit of adventure, going into the unknown, of being the youngest Captain in the Fleet, and tended not to let his good sense get over-ruled by bureaucratic dictates like the Prime Directive.  Rules were made to be broken, after all... but still it was upheld as the very meaning of a non-interventionist policy even if it only applied to thriving, growing societies, and not like the people caught under the spell of Vaal.

And to think we have had people complain about the primitiveness of the Command Line Interface for computers!  Just try to reprogram that one with that interface!  Lots of luck, I tellya.

The series also had going for it stand-ins for our Cold War adversaries: Klingons for the USSR and Romulans for the Chinese, plus assorted other races filling out the roster of places we really didn't want to think about in our real world.  Like how Ehrlich was saying overpopulation was a dire problem and that we would all end up shoulder to shoulder in the non-revolutionary way just like...

... the Gideonites.  They not only have a longer life span but, apparently, abolished all communicable diseases.

Probably by government edict.

This was a Star Trek that you could actually sink your teeth into during the Cold War: it had a bright futuristic outlook, gleaming modernity, peace and happiness on Earth that we never get to see, tradesmen plying their ways on private space craft, miners, alien races that were not all just bumpy forehead people, and actual conflict.  Plus credits just the same as cash and the common cold.  With that we could understand how that universe worked.

Jump ahead to Next Gen.

By the 1980's Gene Roddenberry had 'matured' in his Progressive outlooks and the show reflected that:

This Enterprise, the latest and greatest of starships, would have so much space on board that there would be entire families to risk in exploring the unknown.  Yes, exploring the dangerous unknown is so safe that entire families volunteer for it!

The Captain had a First Officer that would NOT take a promotion to further his career as he had a nice, safe job along with all the families and didn't want something hazardous like, say, being the captain of a Destroyer or Light Cruiser.

And in this extension of the previous universe, when the Klingon Empire faces collapse due to its main dilithium source planet blowing up, the entire Federation steps in to save this thriving culture that should be left to its own devices as stated by the Prime Directive!  You no longer need a mere captain for that as the entire Federation is willing to give up the Prime Directive for Political Expediency.  Lovely, no?

You can see from the images that while the Federation has, more or less, conquered the common cold, male pattern baldness still remains.  This captain is unable to tell the navigator where to head to and says, most royally, that he should 'Make it so'.  From captain of a mighty starship with firm direction to some minor aristocrat delegating where the ship should actually set course to winding up with a junior officer.  Hey!  I'm all for pushing responsibility downwards and such, but the actual direction of a starship really should come from something more than 'Make it so', no?

Actually fighting and dying for your beliefs and way of doing things?  That was banished until after the death of Gene Roddenberry.  Even then the guiding team behind Star Trek really didn't have a clue as to what made their universe run and Majel Barrett Roddenberry really didn't help much in that regard.  Scripts that actually required conflict on an on-going basis were doled out to non-premier programs like DS-9 and Voyager.  The disconnect between ST:TOS and ST:TNG was hard and went far beyond the fact the first three seasons were, basically, reprises of ST:TOS but with a prettier ship.

So families in exploratory vessels, captains who can't captain, first officers not looking for promotion, minor expediency as judged by military officers being replaced by political expediency of government... yeah there were a lot of changes in ST:TNG that make little to no sense whatsoever.  And all done in a single generation of the Fleet (with Sulu and Chekov representing the youngest of the previous generation with some overlap with Picard as the youngest of the Next Gen) which does not speak well to keeping tradition in a military organization as that is one of the greatest strengths of a military organization is understanding past conflicts, learning from those who came before you and upholding their traditions of service and loyalty.  We had some minor sense of that in ST:TOS and in the first movie with the historical timeline of ships named Enterprise... but that feeling is gone by Next Gen.

Plus in a single generation they went from people who actually made money, or credits...

... like that rascal... and a crew that knew what a credit was worth as you could purchase...

... goods of great value.  That has degenerated to...

... poker played with chips that represented... nothing.

This universe had gotten clean, antiseptic and represented the highest of Progressive values by doing away with money, conflict, danger and, generally, anything that could drive a plot.  In Star Trek all of this has been abolished, and you don't want to offend your enemies and, in fact, need to save them when disaster befalls them.  Like the Klingons.  So you have to invent newer and nastier foes that you can't really deal with to get any 'drama'.

For all their dark attire and nasty implants are these...

... centrally ruled drones who have their wishes over-ridden by their leader really so different than what the Federation Council did to over-ride the Prime Directive to help sustain an oppressive, repressive and totalitarian Empire?  That is being unwilling to see change happen, to try and sustain an order that can't continue, to perpetuate an eternal stasis and precedence of order that can no longer even be held in fiction.  Star Fleet gets so over-extended that when it has to actually fight the Cardassians/Dominion it has to ask for help from the Romulans and Klingons.  From Empires.  Would they really help out a Federation that actually stuck to its credos, laws and methods, and thusly remained in opposition to them?  Or is this the case of fellow totalitarians helping out their brother Empire so as to preserve their own domains from threat of change to their status quo and, perhaps, get a leg up on this competitor?

So what do you get when you don't oppose thugs or totalitarian regimes, can't abide by the rule of law at the highest of all levels, and reduce your people to having no ability to gain from their work and put them into a position of barter when they meet up with anyone 'less advanced'?  Does that get you to a nice, gleaming, everybody is happy future?  Applied NOW does that allow you to uphold the law in all circumstances, or to let it decay?

Does it get you pretty, gleaming, anti-septic starships?

Or does it get you something like this...

... a world without civilization, without laws, where the Main Force Patrol is the only thing left from prior times where the law was upheld?

A world largely reduced to barter, without cash or any monetary system to uphold.

A world in which all are equal as everyone is potential prey.

A world in which a law abiding family man is pushed in the extreme to avenge the murder of his family, and to take up war on his own, as expediency is now the only value worth having.

Do you really get this...

... or this...

... as they both have loyal and unthinking minions to take over their prey?  Both use technology to mask themselves and enhance their ability to rule over others.

And both appear when law begins to break down at the large scale and civilization begins to corrode from the inside.

The Lord Humungus of Mad Max 2/The Road Warrior uses the sweet words of 'reason' to try and get his way and even gets a gang crier, his precursor to Locutus, to serve in that role.

The Toadie

Why did the Borg Queen choose Captain Picard?  Why did Humungus choose Toadie?  Beyond serving as mouthpieces for their rule, the two men are, apparently, educated and have some technical skills that make them semi-valuable, at least on the ego-inflating side of things.  Like Locutus, The Toadie is, in the end, expendable and of little value for who he is as a person.  Thus the decision was to take someone on who would not be able to fight the desire to be a part of that larger group and would be easy to integrate into their gangs... which doesn't speak well of the Federation or Star Fleet at all.

Unfortunately there is no Max Rockatansky in Star Trek, and Star Fleet even in winning an interstellar conflict, now has to account for its losses and the outcome of that conflict which will be disorder.  Or course the Federation Council is willing to bend the rules, not obey its own laws and 'do what is necessary' to 'restore order'.  That could be done by upholding the laws and the values that went into making them, although that often leads conflict with those unwilling to uphold those values, that points out that the values, themselves, must be defended.

We have now had over a year of pandering to tyrants, dictators, despots and authoritarian regimes, and the world is not becoming a safer place: this is not seen as reason but as weakness.

Our own laws now take on the air of expediency, so as to force people to buy services because 'its good for you' and government really knows better than you how you should lead your life.

We give our allies a cold, cold shoulder and put in jeopardy the ties between us that have sustained our cultures, together, over decades, through war and peace alike.

Does that make our future vehicle more likely to look like this:

Or this?

Both come from a world where everyone is equal and your skin color doesn't matter.

Where expediency is the only law left.

Where being absorbed into a repressive gang and forced to survive in that realm is an option.

Where the rules have replaced the laws, and the rules can't cover all of life.

Progressives always want that former vehicle.

Somehow one suspects that the latter is far more appropriate.

... a world without civilization, without laws, where the Main Force Patrol is the only thing left from prior times where the law was upheld?

A world largely reduced to barter, without cash or any monetary system to uphold.

A world in which all are equal as everyone is potential prey.

A world in which a law abiding family man is pushed in the extreme to avenge the murder of his family, and to take up war on his own, as expediency is now the only value worth having.

Do you really get this...

... or this...

... as they both have loyal and unthinking minions to take over their prey?  Both use technology to mask themselves and enhance their ability to rule over others.

And both appear when law begins to break down at the large scale and civilization begins to corrode from the inside.

The Lord Humungus of Mad Max 2/The Road Warrior uses the sweet words of 'reason' to try and get his way and even gets a gang crier, his precursor to Locutus, to serve in that role.

The Toadie

Why did the Borg Queen choose Captain Picard?  Why did Humungus choose Toadie?  Beyond serving as mouthpieces for their rule, the two men are, apparently, educated and have some technical skills that make them semi-valuable, at least on the ego-inflating side of things.  Like Locutus, The Toadie is, in the end, expendable and of little value for who he is as a person.  Thus the decision was to take someone on who would not be able to fight the desire to be a part of that larger group and would be easy to integrate into their gangs... which doesn't speak well of the Federation or Star Fleet at all.

Unfortunately there is no Max Rockatansky in Star Trek, and Star Fleet even in winning an interstellar conflict, now has to account for its losses and the outcome of that conflict which will be disorder.  Or course the Federation Council is willing to bend the rules, not obey its own laws and 'do what is necessary' to 'restore order'.  That could be done by upholding the laws and the values that went into making them, although that often leads conflict with those unwilling to uphold those values, that points out that the values, themselves, must be defended.

We have now had over a year of pandering to tyrants, dictators, despots and authoritarian regimes, and the world is not becoming a safer place: this is not seen as reason but as weakness.

Our own laws now take on the air of expediency, so as to force people to buy services because 'its good for you' and government really knows better than you how you should lead your life.

We give our allies a cold, cold shoulder and put in jeopardy the ties between us that have sustained our cultures, together, over decades, through war and peace alike.

Does that make our future vehicle more likely to look like this:

Or this?

Both come from a world where everyone is equal and your skin color doesn't matter.

Where expediency is the only law left.

Where being absorbed into a repressive gang and forced to survive in that realm is an option.

Where the rules have replaced the laws, and the rules can't cover all of life.

Progressives always want that former vehicle.

Somehow one suspects that the latter is far more appropriate.

... a world without civilization, without laws, where the Main Force Patrol is the only thing left from prior times where the law was upheld?

A world largely reduced to barter, without cash or any monetary system to uphold.

A world in which all are equal as everyone is potential prey.

A world in which a law abiding family man is pushed in the extreme to avenge the murder of his family, and to take up war on his own, as expediency is now the only value worth having.

Do you really get this...

... or this...

... as they both have loyal and unthinking minions to take over their prey?  Both use technology to mask themselves and enhance their ability to rule over others.

And both appear when law begins to break down at the large scale and civilization begins to corrode from the inside.

The Lord Humungus of Mad Max 2/The Road Warrior uses the sweet words of 'reason' to try and get his way and even gets a gang crier, his precursor to Locutus, to serve in that role.

The Toadie

Why did the Borg Queen choose Captain Picard?  Why did Humungus choose Toadie?  Beyond serving as mouthpieces for their rule, the two men are, apparently, educated and have some technical skills that make them semi-valuable, at least on the ego-inflating side of things.  Like Locutus, The Toadie is, in the end, expendable and of little value for who he is as a person.  Thus the decision was to take someone on who would not be able to fight the desire to be a part of that larger group and would be easy to integrate into their gangs... which doesn't speak well of the Federation or Star Fleet at all.

Unfortunately there is no Max Rockatansky in Star Trek, and Star Fleet even in winning an interstellar conflict, now has to account for its losses and the outcome of that conflict which will be disorder.  Or course the Federation Council is willing to bend the rules, not obey its own laws and 'do what is necessary' to 'restore order'.  That could be done by upholding the laws and the values that went into making them, although that often leads conflict with those unwilling to uphold those values, that points out that the values, themselves, must be defended.

We have now had over a year of pandering to tyrants, dictators, despots and authoritarian regimes, and the world is not becoming a safer place: this is not seen as reason but as weakness.

Our own laws now take on the air of expediency, so as to force people to buy services because 'its good for you' and government really knows better than you how you should lead your life.

We give our allies a cold, cold shoulder and put in jeopardy the ties between us that have sustained our cultures, together, over decades, through war and peace alike.

Does that make our future vehicle more likely to look like this:

Or this?

Both come from a world where everyone is equal and your skin color doesn't matter.

Where expediency is the only law left.

Where being absorbed into a repressive gang and forced to survive in that realm is an option.

Where the rules have replaced the laws, and the rules can't cover all of life.

Progressives always want that former vehicle.

Somehow one suspects that the latter is far more appropriate.

... a world without civilization, without laws, where the Main Force Patrol is the only thing left from prior times where the law was upheld?

A world largely reduced to barter, without cash or any monetary system to uphold.

A world in which all are equal as everyone is potential prey.

A world in which a law abiding family man is pushed in the extreme to avenge the murder of his family, and to take up war on his own, as expediency is now the only value worth having.

Do you really get this...

... or this...

... as they both have loyal and unthinking minions to take over their prey?  Both use technology to mask themselves and enhance their ability to rule over others.

And both appear when law begins to break down at the large scale and civilization begins to corrode from the inside.

The Lord Humungus of Mad Max 2/The Road Warrior uses the sweet words of 'reason' to try and get his way and even gets a gang crier, his precursor to Locutus, to serve in that role.

The Toadie

Why did the Borg Queen choose Captain Picard?  Why did Humungus choose Toadie?  Beyond serving as mouthpieces for their rule, the two men are, apparently, educated and have some technical skills that make them semi-valuable, at least on the ego-inflating side of things.  Like Locutus, The Toadie is, in the end, expendable and of little value for who he is as a person.  Thus the decision was to take someone on who would not be able to fight the desire to be a part of that larger group and would be easy to integrate into their gangs... which doesn't speak well of the Federation or Star Fleet at all.

Unfortunately there is no Max Rockatansky in Star Trek, and Star Fleet even in winning an interstellar conflict, now has to account for its losses and the outcome of that conflict which will be disorder.  Of course the Federation Council is willing to bend the rules, not obey its own laws and 'do what is necessary' to 'restore order'.  That could be done by upholding the laws and the values that went into making them, although that often leads conflict with those unwilling to uphold those values, that points out that the values, themselves, must be defended.

We have now had over a year of pandering to tyrants, dictators, despots and authoritarian regimes, and the world is not becoming a safer place: this is not seen as reason but as weakness.

Our own laws now take on the air of expediency, so as to force people to buy services because 'its good for you' and government really knows better than you how you should lead your life.

We give our allies a cold, cold shoulder and put in jeopardy the ties between us that have sustained our cultures, together, over decades, through war and peace alike.

Does that make our future vehicle more likely to look like this:

Or this?

Both come from a world where everyone is equal and your skin color doesn't matter.

Where expediency is the only law left.

Where being absorbed into a repressive gang and forced to survive in that realm is an option.

Where the rules have replaced the laws, and the rules can't cover all of life.

Progressives always want that former vehicle.

Somehow one suspects that the latter is far more appropriate.

Where Progressivism gets you

Image Courtesy: Getty Images via US News

TR.

The first Progressive in the White House.

He had his problems with opponents in politics and could describe them quite well, these people whom he did not trust, as seen in Chapter 3 of his autobiography (at Gutenberg):

When I went into politics, New York City was under the control of Tammany, which was from time to time opposed by some other—and evanescent—city Democratic organization. The up-country Democrats had not yet fallen under Tammany sway, and were on the point of developing a big country political boss in the shape of David B. Hill. The Republican party was split into the Stalwart and Half-Breed factions. Accordingly neither party had one dominant boss, or one dominant machine, each being controlled by jarring and warring bosses and machines. The corruption was not what it had been in the days of Tweed, when outside individuals controlled the legislators like puppets. Nor was there any such centralization of the boss system as occurred later. Many of the members were under the control of local bosses or local machines. But the corrupt work was usually done through the members directly.

Of course I never had anything in the nature of legal proof of corruption, and the figures I am about to give are merely approximate. But three years' experience convinced me, in the first place, that there were a great many thoroughly corrupt men in the Legislature, perhaps a third of the whole number; and, in the next place, that the honest men outnumbered the corrupt men, and that, if it were ever possible to get an issue of right and wrong put vividly and unmistakably before them in a way that would arrest their attention and that would arrest the attention of their constituents, we could count on the triumph of the right. The trouble was that in most cases the issue was confused. To read some kinds of literature one would come to the conclusion that the only corruption in legislative circles was in the form of bribery by corporations, and that the line was sharp between the honest man who was always voting against corporations and the dishonest man who was always bribed to vote for them. My experience was the direct contrary of this. For every one bill introduced (not passed) corruptly to favor a corporation, there were at least ten introduced (not passed, and in this case not intended to be passed) to blackmail corporations. The majority of the corrupt members would be found voting for the blackmailing bills if they were not paid, and would also be found voting in the interests of the corporation if they were paid. The blackmailing, or, as they were always called, the "strike" bills, could themselves be roughly divided into two categories: bills which it would have been proper to pass, and those that it would not have been proper to pass. Some of the bills aimed at corporations were utterly wild and improper; and of these a proportion might be introduced by honest and foolish zealots, whereas most of them were introduced by men who had not the slightest intention of passing them, but who wished to be paid not to pass them. The most profitable type of bill to the accomplished blackmailer, however, was a bill aimed at a real corporate abuse which the corporation, either from wickedness or folly, was unwilling to remedy. Of the measures introduced in the interest of corporations there were also some that were proper and some that were improper. The corrupt legislators, the "black horse cavalry," as they were termed, would demand payment to vote as the corporations wished, no matter whether the bill was proper or improper. Sometimes, if the bill was a proper one, the corporation would have the virtue or the strength of mind to refuse to pay for its passage, and sometimes it would not.

A very slight consideration of the above state of affairs will show how difficult it was at times to keep the issue clear, for honest and dishonest men were continually found side by side voting now against and now for a corporation measure, the one set from proper and the other set from grossly improper motives. Of course part of the fault lay in the attitudes of outsiders. It was very early borne in upon me that almost equal harm was done by indiscriminate defense of, and indiscriminate attack on, corporations. It was hard to say whether the man who prided himself upon always antagonizing the corporations, or the man who, on the plea that he was a good conservative, always stood up for them, was the more mischievous agent of corruption and demoralization.

There! He gives two distinct classes of those he does not like: Tammany controlled politicians and conservatives. Nice and easy to describe about how the payoffs and blackmailing went on for the former, and how the latter stood up for corporations in every instance. Honest and straightforward. You can disagree with TR but you always know exactly his stance and why he takes it.

Fast forward 90 or so years.

Image Courtesy: National Ledger

Nancy Pelosi on the Tea Party, 07 AUG 2009 at Newsmax:

The mainstream media were quick to jump all over conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh when he likened President Barack Obama's healthcare logo to a swastika and compared the Democrats to the Nazis.

They were much quieter about Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's reference to a swastika when she claimed that hecklers at a pro-Obamacare town hall meeting were carrying swastikas.

During her recent visit to a San Francisco hospital, a San Francisco Chronicle reporter asked her whether there is "legitimate grass-roots opposition" to the Democrats' healthcare plan.

"I think they are Astroturf," she responded.

Then she referred to hecklers at a town hall meeting: "They're carrying swastikas and symbols like that to a town meeting on healthcare."

Yes those Tea Party National Socialist Democratic Workers Party affiliates who always show up! Nice to know those folks wanting less spending and less government are all for National Socialism... hey... wait a second... that is just the opposite of what the NSDAP wanted. If any Nazis did show up for a health care meeting they would be all for it!

But she is able to finally clarify her remarks!

From NewsBusters on 28 FEB 2010 reports on Nancy Pelosi being interviewed by Elizabeth Vargas from ABC News:

VARGAS: Is the Tea Party movement a force?

PELOSI: No - No what I said at the time is, that they were -- the Republican Party directs a lot of what the Tea Party does, but not everybody in the Tea Party takes direction from the Republican Party. And so there was a lot of, shall we say, Astroturf, as opposed to grassroots.

But, you know, we share some of the views of the Tea Partiers in terms of the role of special interest in Washington, D.C., as -- it just has to stop. And that's why I've fought the special interest, whether it's on energy, whether it's on health insurance, whether it's on pharmaceuticals and the rest.

VARGAS: So, common ground with many people in the Tea Party movement.

PELOSI: Well, no, there are some. There are some because they, again, some of it is orchestrated from the Republican headquarters. Some of it is hijacking the good intentions of lots of people who share some of our concerns that we have about the role of special interests and many Tea Partiers, not that I speak for them, share the view, whether it's -- and Democrats, Republicans and Independents share the view that the recent Supreme Court decision, which greatly empowers the special interests, is something that they oppose.

Ok, that is relatively incoherent even for Speaker Pelosi. But she is all against special interests! Hates them with a hatingness that cannot be compared with anyone else's hate!

Yes! Special interests... like the marsh mouse.

Marsh mouse?

From the Washington Times 12 FEB 2009 we get this from an article by S. A. Miller:

Talk about a pet project. A tiny mouse with the longtime backing of a political giant may soon reap the benefits of the economic-stimulus package.

Lawmakers and administration officials divulged Wednesday that the $789 billion economic stimulus bill being finalized behind closed doors in Congress includes $30 million for wetlands restoration that the Obama administration intends to spend in the San Francisco Bay Area to protect, among other things, the endangered salt marsh harvest mouse.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi represents the city of San Francisco and has previously championed preserving the mouse's habitat in the Bay Area.

The revelation immediately became a political football, as Republicans accused Democrats of reneging on a promise to keep so-called earmarks that fund lawmakers' favorite projects out of the legislation. Democrats, including Mrs. Pelosi, countered that the accusations were fabricated.

[..]

"The speaker nor her staff have had any involvement in this initiative. This is yet another contrived partisan attack," Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill said. "Restoration is key to economic activity, including farming, fisheries, recreation and clean water."

Republican lawmakers said they learned of the marsh money when asking about how various agencies plan to spend stimulus money. The vitality of the mouse has been an issue for Mrs. Pelosi and other California Democrats since the early 1990s.

Special interests need to be fought!

Unless, of course, you happen to like them, then you just let them slide with a 'fabricated charge' accusation for a marsh mouse habitat.

Or this bit from the National Ledger by Tom Fitton on 14 MAY 2007:

US Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA) isn’t the only Democratic leader in hot water for using her influence in Congress to enrich her husband (and, potentially, herself.) House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who promised a new era of ethics enforcement in the House of Representatives, snuck a $25 million gift to her husband in a $15 billion Water Resources Development Act recently passed by Congress.

[..]

In this case, the special interest may have been Pelosi’s wealthy husband, Paul Pelosi. And the pet project involved renovating ports in Speaker Pelosi’s home base of San Francisco. Paul Pelosi just happens to own apartment buildings near the areas targeted for improvement, and will almost certainly experience a significant boost in property value as a result of Pelosi’s earmark.

Remember that if a Republican had come into the House riding on making it one of the most ethical Congresses ever and draining the swamp of special interests, and then did something like this, then there would be a storm of charges about 'hypocrisy' from the Left. Nancy Pelosi? Gets a pass...

Yes she does ask for quite a few of them... 56 on her lonesome, 48 with other members and 104 that she sponsored (Source: Legistorm)

Say, what was it that TR was saying about blackmailing politicians to get legislation through?

Payoffs?

Bribes?

Earmarks?

Special interests?

What would Teddy do?

Image Courtesy: Buzzle

Progressivism just sounds so nice, so evolutionary. Yet when you go from Teddy Roosevelt to Nancy Pelosi, it seems to have gone in reverse. Both say they don't like special interests, payoffs, bribes and such... but which one actually went after them? The great opponent to the Tammany Machine? Or the marsh mouse supporter?

Ending the bipartisan era

The following is a personal outlook paper of The Jacksonian Party.

Amongst the gloomy news on economics, on inane attitudes towards terrorism and terrorists, and the general disheartening way that the current Administration treats our National Friends & Allies, there is only one back-handed way in which this attitude actually is a help.  With the election of President Obama and a Democratic super-majority in the House and Senate we have seen what you get when you aren't 'bipartisan' and don't accommodate 'across the aisle', and what happens when your ideology is put forth in mush-mouth bills that ramble on for a thousand or two pages: you get challenges to the good sense of the Nation.

Ushering in a super-majority was supposed to be a 'sea change' and a 'permanent change' in politics towards the Democratic Party, and yet that party now unravels at the seams as its most trenchant ideologues are in charge of the House, Senate and White House, yet those ideologues are finding that the only way they can pass anything is by bribing their own party members and there often aren't enough of those to form a simple majority.  Instead of offering a JFK style recovery via small business and personal tax cuts and trimming the federal budget, this group of ideologues and their accomplices have sought to expand federal spending, federal power, let repeals of taxes lapse and to put in place newer, larger bureaucracies that create nothing and manage so poorly that they aren't even efficient.  By intruding on the banking industry to cover for one large bank, Citi, and forcing other banks to take failing financial institutions, like the Bank of America in the Merrill-Lynch deal, and by not seeking to repeal the power of the FHA, Freddie, Fannie, Ginnie and Federal Reserve to push AAA security ratings on loans that are taken by those unable to pay them back, and through the threat of even more regulation, small businesses aren't expanding so as to get the economy out of the doldrums.  A large GDP growth is in inventory, only, while actual growth is at less than half the 5% mark of growth.  Talking up small businesses now, in a climate that is hostile to them, won't work until the atmosphere changes and the institutions that oversaw the financial and banking problems, including the SEC, are brought to task for their ill-advised backing of schemes that would not work.  Schemes started by Congress like CRA and its follow-ons, plus banking regulations pushing more money out the door than can be covered by borrowers.

These regulatory systems were set up by bi-partisan agreements in Congresses for decades, and the founding of financial and mortgage institutions dates back to 1914 for the Federal Reserve and to the FDR Administration for mortgages and SEC.  These institutions have never been called into account, never audited and never had the basis of their standing questioned by later Congresses to see if they were doing fiscally prudent oversight or just bowing to Congress wanting fiscally imprudent schemes.  There is no single party to blame in this as both parties have had majorities in both Houses and exchanged the Presidency multiple times over the last 60 years.  The bi-partisan of National Defense during the Cold War also ushered in an era of Progressive government expansion for social programs based on the foundations laid by Woodrow Wilson and FDR with the Federal Reserve, SEC, FHA and Social Security. To that was added more mortgage based systems, expansion of Federal Reserve powers, medical subsidies (in the form of Medicare/Medicaid), affirmative action programs (which changed government outlook from color-blind to color-biased), welfare, unemployment compensation, massive regulatory systems for 'the environment', and expansion of powers into education and firearms.

The characterization of these as Progressive Government is one that dates back to the Progressive Era in which the power of the States was reduced via the Constitution and Public Law, which I have gone over previously.  This has changed the public dialogue from the Constitution as a negative rights document, in which rights are granted to government from the people, to a 'positive rights' conception of government in which government grants and then must support new 'rights' that can only be had through government.  These new 'positive' rights, held and asserted by government, come at the cost of your own rights as an individual, which I covered previously but do let me note that many of these 'rights' derived from government are de-basement of personal liberty held by you.  A woman has the liberty to have an abortion, but may have the right to do so circumscribed by public law.  One has the liberty to seek out health care, but when that is supported by the government there are multiple problems on supply, demand and cost that get thrown into disarray as the government is not a positive economic actor (it does not create wealth) but a negative one that taxes wealth and then impedes the movement of wealth via regulation which is an impediment to personal liberty.  All regulations, good and bad, do this: they are negative in nature and stop the free flow of personal decisions based on government fiat.  Anyone has a right to seek health care, and if their liberty can provide or if the charity of society or other individuals can help provide it, then it can be received.  Government by placing a price on the priceless renders a value judgment not based on personal outlook and liberty, but governmental cost outlook, thus pricing your health and determining if you should have access to health care at all.

Encroachment of government into the daily lives of individuals to control those lives is the aim of Progressive Government, and it has many good-meaning, swell hearted backers who wish to have government tell you how to live, work, play and do every last thing in your life: from when to wake up to what you eat to how you work to what you work at to how long you work to how much you are compensated.  These are all parts of your liberty and freedom that Progressive Government aims to include in its umbrella of 'positive rights' and make it impossible for you to exercise liberty on your own behalf.  This could not happen without bi-partisanship in the Legislative Branch and appeasement of such goals from the Executive and Judicial Branches of federal government.  Time and again government 'rights' to your property and how you lead your life trump personal liberty and freedom, be it from the Kelo decision on eminent domain to the Raich decision (an article by me here on that) on being able to use plants that you grow, government at all levels has won on these grounds of property rights and personal liberty in your own home.  These are not problems that are unforeseen, and as far back as the debates over the Constitution there were those who pointed out that Congress would have this tendency over time to regulate and tax everything in sight.  What is fascinating is that this concept of government expanding was well known so far back and described, even though not named as Progressive, and even the backers of the Constitutions in the public fora (Hamilton, Madison and Jay as Publius) acknowledged that any system designed by man can be brought down via other men in later times.  It is to their great benefit that this took nearly 140 years to start as a serious project under Progressivism, and to our great dismay of not having recognized that over the next 90 years as just that: an undermining of a Constitutional Republic by Amendment and Public Law.

With the end of the Cold War, however, came the end of the rationale of the interim period of Progressive Government (1948-1991), and those coalitions of bi-partisanship frayed during the 1990's with the Moderates of the bipartisan and Progressive persuasion becoming those who would dispense the federal goodies during that decade.  Only the project to bring down unlimited welfare was achieved by those who are fiscally conservative, and while that was a great accomplishment that force was spent against the monobloc of 'moderate' Republicans and Democrats of the 'Third Way' form of Progressivism.  Socialists would describe this as incremental socialism or reform socialism that attempts to reform a capitalist system into socialist tendencies before it is ready for a full socialist transformation.  Many socialists actually were against that post-1918, not only due to the NOV 1917 Revolution, but as it put a clear and heavy dividing line between capitalism and socialism.  American Progressivism, influenced by Bismarck state-social reformism took a divergent path from European social democracy and put together a different constellation of reform-based socialism under that title of Progressivism.  Theodore Roosevelt proclaimed the marginalization of conservatives in his autobiography at Project Gutenberg in Chapter X:

For the reasons I have already given in my chapter on the Governorship of New York, the Republican party, which in the days of Abraham Lincoln was founded as the radical progressive party of the Nation, had been obliged during the last decade of the nineteenth century to uphold the interests of popular government against a foolish and illjudged mock-radicalism. It remained the Nationalist as against the particularist or State's rights party, and in so far it remained absolutely sound; for little permanent good can be done by any party which worships the State's rights fetish or which fails to regard the State, like the county or the municipality, as merely a convenient unit for local self-government, while in all National matters, of importance to the whole people, the Nation is to be supreme over State, county, and town alike. But the State's rights fetish, although still effectively used at certain times by both courts and Congress to block needed National legislation directed against the huge corporations or in the interests of workingmen, was not a prime issue at the time of which I speak.

He then goes on to speak of the matter at hand:

This had, regrettably but perhaps inevitably, tended to throw the party into the hands not merely of the conservatives but of the reactionaries; of men who, sometimes for personal and improper reasons, but more often with entire sincerity and uprightness of purpose, distrusted anything that was progressive and dreaded radicalism. These men still from force of habit applauded what Lincoln had done in the way of radical dealing with the abuses of his day; but they did not apply the spirit in which Lincoln worked to the abuses of their own day. Both houses of Congress were controlled by these men.

[..]

I made a resolute effort to get on with all three and with their followers, and I have no question that they made an equally resolute effort to get on with me. We succeeded in working together, although with increasing friction, for some years, I pushing forward and they hanging back. Gradually, however, I was forced to abandon the effort to persuade them to come my way, and then I achieved results only by appealing over the heads of the Senate and House leaders to the people, who were the masters of both of us. I continued in this way to get results until almost the close of my term; and the Republican party became once more the progressive and indeed the fairly radical progressive party of the Nation. When my successor was chosen, however, the leaders of the House and Senate, or most of them, felt that it was safe to come to a break with me, and the last or short session of Congress, held between the election of my successor and his inauguration four months later, saw a series of contests between the majorities in the two houses of Congress and the President,—myself,—quite as bitter as if they and I had belonged to opposite political parties. However, I held my own. I was not able to push through the legislation I desired during these four months, but I was able to prevent them doing anything I did not desire, or undoing anything that I had already succeeded in getting done.

The Conservative dreads radicalism and holds a 'States Rights fetish' that Theodore Roosevelt was glad to break inside the Republican Party.  Of all the issues put forward during the Cold War it must be understood that this transformation of the Republican Party from a 19th century based Conservative (which is to say conserving the Liberal basis for States Rights and the Rights of Man as an Individual, or Jeffersonian Liberalism with Federalism) to a modern Progressive Party means that the concepts of 'fiscal restraint' espoused by Moderates in the Republican Party is not one of restraining spending or government, but in restraining the expansion of both to a moderate degree.  It is not on the table that government can or should expand, but that it will and needs to do so slowly.  For all that was espoused by Ronald Reagan coming into office, the government he had under him can be described as moderate in its expansion, not that it did not expand or even retract in scope or size.  Dissolving a public union is not on the level with, say, dismantling the Dept. of Education or Energy, or stopping the excesses of HUD or Dept. of Agriculture.  In this view Ronald Reagan, scion of so many Republicans, is seen not as a Conservative, although he talked at depth about conservatism, but as a Moderate Progressive for the expansion of government.  The concept that cutting taxes would restrain the growth of government was ill-founded and actually worked contrarily as a booming economy would signal the expansion of government with added receipts from the expanding tax base.  The legislation to do that was done by Congress.  A Congress that rejected any notion of paring down government in scope and size, and only looked to make it a bit more 'efficient' in its operation and expansion.

Old line conservatism, that of Federalism, limited government, limited taxation and diverse representation with the States holding an equal spot at the table, has very, very few adherents left in DC.  Perhaps 20 or so at most, across both Houses of Congress.  Fiscal Conservatism, which serves as a public base of understanding of how income works, has a deep and strong resonance across the Nation as households are used to balancing their books, paying off their debt and going into bankruptcy when you are unable to earn your way out of debt.  Stopping that bankruptcy process for private companies via public funds is not only deeply offensive but highly disturbing as government is going outside all normal venues of operation to interfere with the standard and normal practices of finances on a grand scale.  Intrusion of the government into health care is not only offensive, but seen as a power grab by the Federal Government to directly control a major portion of the economy.  When added in to home mortgages, banking, auto industry and financial companies, the Federal Government by trying to add that portion that is health care under its purview and direct interference is seen as trying to tip its control from plurality to majority, which is sold as a 'good thing' to the people. 

What has happened with government interference in health care, to-date, with subsidies to companies and individuals via tax breaks, and direct subsidies via Medicare/Medicaid is that it sets the payments too low after having put inflators on the cost to drive them up over time.   The response by the Federal Government to inflation on payment for services is one feedback mechanism outside the Federal Reserve's purview, and by backing inflationary spending for subsidies (be it medical care or wheat futures or sugar price supports) the Federal Government takes a direct part in not only keeping up with inflation, but putting down future inflationary budgets to ensure that inflation is adopted as a means of operation.  That message comes through and the market adopts inflationary outlooks to ensure that its pricing to the government will go up at least as much as the annual budget inflators allow, if not higher.  This is not a major part of the financial system when the government is a mere consumer of goods and services, but when it directs finances and payment schedules for larger parts of the economy, the tone for minimal future inflation is set and it is the very, very rare year when prices go down or hold steady in the face of an expanding federal budget willing to pay more for what it gets.

That is minor, BTW.  Regulations pushing loans, directing finances and even directing companies to buy each other out at government behest is not only authoritarian but destructive of a financial system that depends on bankruptcy as a known failure mode.  Who will invest in a company if it is known that it will be 'allowed' to fail by government?  And why would you invest in a company 'too big to fail' and 'too big to control its finances' when it is backed by the Federal Government, as there is no way it can get a profit under public control which adds another layer of bureaucracy for 'oversight' but diffuses accountability amongst the new 'oversight' structure and the existing dysfunctional corporate structure?  Being 'too big to fail' and being supported also comes to mean you are 'too big to succeed' thus the term 'Zombie Company'.  Not dead, not on life support but undead and unable to be killed by normal means.

When business, labor and government all sit at the table together, the public is left on the outside looking in.

That is to the ends of bi-partisan government that is Progressive and expansive in its scope and depth of power: that a very unrepresentative government puts in appointed officials to run things leaving the public out of the loop.

This has been hidden by decades of talking about how 'good' bi-partisanship is, and how much it serves the public 'good' while helping get convenient means of manipulation created to the ends of such 'good' government.  Unfortunately such convenience can become too convenient, too expedient, for government:

A bank of the United States is in many respects convenient for the Government and useful to the people. Entertaining this opinion, and deeply impressed with the belief that some of the powers and privileges possessed by the existing bank are unauthorized by the Constitution, subversive of the rights of the States, and dangerous to the liberties of the people, I felt it my duty at an early period of my Administration to call the attention of Congress to the practicability of organizing an institution combining all its advantages and obviating these objections. I sincerely regret that in the act before me I can perceive none of those modifications of the bank charter which are necessary, in my opinion, to make it compatible with justice, with sound policy, or with the Constitution of our country.

Andrew Jackson in the Bank Veto Message of 10 JUL 1832.

That National Bank had nowhere near the powers of the Federal Reserve, SEC, FHA, Fannie, Freddie, Ginnie and FDIC.  Strange that all these powers got added incrementally, over time, as a 'good' way to 'regulate' the banking,financial and home mortgage systems.  While, taken as a whole, they are far outside the scope of powers the Congress has to delegate.

It is very, very good that partisanship has returned to DC.

It is exposing the underpinnings of Progressive Government that expands day by day, year by year, Congress by Congress further and further into the lives of ordinary Americans.

And gets opposed.

Bi-partisanship gives cover to this project.

Partisanship makes it clear.

I support highly partisan political parties trying to push their agenda through against an unwilling public.

It makes the public less willing to sit around.

And far more willing to stand up against those they elect who do not represent them.

Anyone wanting a return to 'bi-partisanship' is asking to return to incremental expansionism, and they deserve the cold hearing they will get.

Progressivism's pointless future

Watching Peter Robinson's Uncommon Knowledge at NRO, done in cooperation with the Hoover Institution, with Charles Kesler, Editor of the Claremont Review of Books, on the topic of the Grand Liberal Project (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5) is an exciting and yet troubling as it points out some of the problematical parts of Liberalism as it moved off of its older, individual oriented scope of the Enlightenment to mid-19th century, and went on to embrace a form of populism and group based identity based on the concept of 'progress'.  What 'progress' was conceived of was to morph government away from its known structure of limited powers granted by society, to one of making the government the focus of changing society and responding to society as it changed.  That meant, however, shifting away from understood norms of the role of government as protector via stewardship of the Nation, thus allowing each individual to achieve as they will, to one of promoting social 'good' via such activism.  This would start with Theodore Roosevelt's administration which was one that aimed at Progressive goals via Anti-Trust laws and agreeing to attend the Shanghai Convention on Opium: both areas where the federal government had little or no rightful say in the proceedings of the American people.  Additionally the Constitution was ratified by popular support to undo the restraints of the federal government both in terms of power and scope of influence: the Amendments to allow for the direct election of Senators negated the power of State government to be a countervailing influence against the federal government, and the Amendment to allow for varied income taxes based on income to be collected directly by the federal government gave it power to reach into the lives of ordinary Americans to take funds directly from the source, instead of relying upon the States for that.

Missing that is a quibble with the series of interviews, and the foundation set by Progressives under Theodore Roosevelt set the stage for Woodrow Wilson who profoundly believed that the Constitution was a 'living document' and that such things as the Declaration of Independence addressed only those things at the point of time it was written and was harshly constrained by them.  He had advocated for a move to a Parliamentary system of government while younger so as to more quickly alter the social landscape by government to 'improve' the lot of Americans.  I will be picking up some themes that I have examined previously in my writings, particularly from The 10 years that changed the path of America and Wilsonianism and the start of Transnationalism.  What watching the series brought up was a somewhat deeper interpretation of what Progressivism is from its roots and the starkness of where it winds up, today, is given in the contrast between Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson as the former address attacks by the latter in his autobiography.  This passage is the one that brings the change that Woodrow Wilson brought to Progressivism, and I think it is key and I will leave the highlighting from a previous post of mine:

After reading Mr. Wilson's book, I am still entirely in the dark as to what he means by the "New Freedom." Mr. Wilson is an accomplished and scholarly man, a master of rhetoric, and the sentences in the book are well-phrased statements, usually inculcating a morality which is sound although vague and ill defined. There are certain proposals (already long set forth and practiced by me and by others who have recently formed the Progressive party) made by Mr. Wilson with which I cordially agree. There are, however, certain things he has said, even as regards matters of abstract morality, with which I emphatically disagree. For example, in arguing for proper business publicity, as to which I cordially agree with Mr. Wilson, he commits himself to the following statement:

"You know there is temptation in loneliness and secrecy. Haven't you experienced it? I have. We are never so proper in our conduct as when everybody can look and see exactly what we are doing. If you are off in some distant part of the world and suppose that nobody who lives within a mile of your home is anywhere around, there are times when you adjourn your ordinary standards. You say to yourself, 'Well, I'll have a fling this time; nobody will know anything about it.' If you were on the Desert of Sahara, you would feel that you might permit yourself—well, say, some slight latitude of conduct; but if you saw one of your immediate neighbors coming the other way on a camel, you would behave yourself until he got out of sight. The most dangerous thing in the world is to get off where nobody knows you. I advise you to stay around among the neighbors, and then you may keep out of jail. That is the only way some of us can keep out of jail."

I emphatically disagree with what seems to be the morality inculcated in this statement, which is that a man is expected to do and is to be pardoned for doing all kinds of immoral things if he does them alone and does not expect to be found out. Surely it is not necessary, in insisting upon proper publicity, to preach a morality of so basely material a character.

There is much more that Mr. Wilson says as to which I do not understand him clearly, and where I condemn what I do understand. In economic matters the course he advocates as part of the "New Freedom" simply means the old, old "freedom" of leaving the individual strong man at liberty, unchecked by common action, to prey on the weak and the helpless. The "New Freedom" in the abstract seems to be the freedom of the big to devour the little. In the concrete I may add that Mr. Wilson's misrepresentations of what I have said seem to indicate that he regards the new freedom as freedom from all obligation to obey the Ninth Commandment.

But, after all, my views or the principles of the Progressive party are of much less importance now than the purposes of Mr. Wilson. These are wrapped in impenetrable mystery. His speeches and writings serve but to make them more obscure. If these attempts to refute his misrepresentation of my attitude towards the trusts should result in making his own clear, then this discussion will have borne fruits of substantial value to the country. If Mr. Wilson has any plan of his own for dealing with the trusts, it is to suppress all great industrial organizations—presumably on the principle proclaimed by his Secretary of State four years ago, that every corporation which produced more than a certain percentage of a given commodity—I think the amount specified was twenty-five per cent—no matter how valuable its service, should be suppressed. The simple fact is that such a plan is futile. In operation it would do far more damage than it could remedy. The Progressive plan would give the people full control of, and in masterful fashion prevent all wrongdoing by, the trusts, while utilizing for the public welfare every industrial energy and ability that operates to swell abundance, while obeying strictly the moral law and the law of the land. Mr. Wilson's plan would ultimately benefit the trusts and would permanently damage nobody but the people. For example, one of the steel corporations which has been guilty of the worst practices towards its employees is the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company. Mr. Wilson and Mr. Bryan's plan would, if successful, merely mean permitting four such companies, absolutely uncontrolled, to monopolize every big industry in the country. To talk of such an accomplishment as being "The New Freedom" is enough to make the term one of contemptuous derision.

This difference strikes at the heart of what Progressivism is and Theodore Roosevelt can be seen as the 'transitional figure' who still believed that the individual has a duty to be civilized at all times, while Woodrow Wilson sees that man is unable to rule himself while alone and only conforms to law when there is society.  Wilson's reaction to the concept of loneliness is one that is telling as it points to his view that he would NOT be a civilized person without society to rule him and that society, in its turn, requires government to keep him in line.  To anyone of the older order of Liberal views, that of the Rights of Man as an Individual, this is a horrific concept as it puts the civilizing capability in the hands of society and government, not the individual and family.  It is also contrary to all knowledge as civilization could not form or be maintained without pre-existing society and government by that Progressive view, and yet that is what has happened time and again.  Mankind does not come together to grant rights to each other, but to have government protect society from the excesses of those that will not abide by civil law.  Social pressure only happens when the individual acknowledges worth in other individuals and recognizes that respect is reciprocated at all times and that one cannot be a savage at some times and be civilized at others as the savagery is deadly, lethal to yourself, if you make but one mistake in when to use civilization as a mask for your inherent adherence to barbarism.  Indeed society and all individuals are to protect to themselves against barbarians who will not put themselves under civil law and seek remedy outside such law as a law unto themselves.

Yet it is that belief that propriety only exists amongst our fellow man and is directed and forced by government that comes to bear as an underlying theme of Progressivism, although not to uphold standards but to 'progress' standards as discussed in the series of interviews.  Beyond that, however, is a mindset that goes with this idea of control of the individual by society and government that is a long-running one in Western culture on the nature of man dating at least as far back as Divine Right Monarchy and the Roman Catholic Church anointing some as 'protectors of the Faith' fit to rule while those that are the subjects of such a ruler are to follow him in his religion.  This would again appear in the French Revolution and its activities to wipe out the old regime and go so far as to rename the seasons, the months, the days and then attempt to enforce a new morality upon society from government. Those are what the United States was founded to go against, and to ensure that human liberty has the greatest play in society so as to uplift all persons, while government is harshly restricted and circumscribed in what it can do as it is the protector of society by the investment of negative liberties in it. The traditional view from that is that man must seek to a better life and lead a better life through understanding of himself in his relationship to God and his fellow man.  By coming to terms with his long term place in life, that he is mortal and imperfect, in seeking greater union with God and his fellow man, the individual becomes 'more perfect' as Jefferson and Franklin put it and that  man does not become perfect save in death and in union with God, but can strive to be closer to God by helping his fellow man via the formation of society and a government by that society to protect society.  This is inward driven and builds society and produces government to restrict the abuses of man against his fellow man.  These abuses are ones that threaten life, liberty, property, and society as a whole, and are grievous enough to require pulling those who commit such acts out of society for the protection of all members of society.

When Woodrow Wilson gives voice to the inherent vice of man, that without society he is unrestrained, then the object of government is to ensure that man cannot be out of the sight of society or government.  Ever.  By putting such restrictions on man for his own benefit, the ability to do wrong is restrained more and more, and from that man is made better.  To do that the poor must be uplifted at the cost of all society, but not through charity, which is built on the understanding that it is our duty and good works to uplift our fellow man, but through government as a punishment to society for not immediately uplifting our fellow man.  That comes at a cost, however, which is not only the taxation required for the inefficient bureaucracy to attempt this endeavor, but it is in the loss of choice that is liberty that goes with this.  Instead of being allowed to use your liberty to do as you wish, which INCLUDES contributing to charity, you are required to contribute to government which takes on a charitable role and the individual then does not have to think nor worry about the plight of the poor.  That is an anti-cohesive force to society when it is built upon the premise of freedom and liberty where the main responsibility to ensure that the individuals of society are cared for are the concern of individuals and their voluntary social organs, and that government merely protects society from abuses so that society can achieve far deeper and meaningful work than JUST the activity that achieves certain ends.  For it is in the giving and acting out of charity that man is brought closer to God and all of society is made better by helping his fellow man: when government does it, it is by rote formula and not via active and deep concern by individuals.  And it must be noted that charities, save those that are corrupt or criminal endeavors or fronts for same, operate far more efficiently than any level of government ever can or will because individuals are willing to make a sacrifice DIRECTLY from their own time and life to ensure that the charity is well run at low cost and overhead at a personal cost to themselves as their liberty allows them to put that effort into such work voluntarily.  In attempting to make 'volunteerism' mandatory, the Liberal agenda strikes at the very heart of liberty and charity, and the role of the individual to uplift society as it is the social responsibility of individuals to help each other not because it is mandated but because it  is GOOD.

These two venues, the now Traditional view of man as an individual and that of Progressive government to guide society, come into steep, harsh and direct contact over the course of the 20th century and what is eroded is the backing of individuality and liberty as government takes on vast projects to 'help' the poor and 'help' the sick and elderly, and then sees the cost of doing those things rise beyond any previously known rates as government can never be flexible enough to account for the diversity of the members of society it is attempting to help.  Social Security would have a set age of retirement and then ignore all demographic trends that, save for the Spanish Influenza epidemic, showed a continual increase in average life expectancy.  While living to 62 would have been problematical in 1936, by 1996 it had become an expected norm with nearly an additional decade of life expected beyond that of their 1936 forebearers.  Yet the fixed concern of government was not changed as too many began to experience benefits of this 'good' that was provided at the expense of the rest of society because individuals were drawing far more than they ever contributed to Social Security.  That imbalance moved the system to an insolvency that was predicted, in the 1980's to be around 2050, then in the 1990's to be near 2030, and now, in 2009, has moved down to 2020 or even lower.  Not only has time marched towards the insolvency point, but the life expectancy and Baby Boomer cohort are now bringing the day when the special taxes for Social Security cannot even meet current payout closer on an almost 1:1 basis:  for every decade we go forward insolvency drops closer by a decade which doubles the overall rate of approach, thus making the turnover point to be 2014 -16 at best.

What was once a minor perk for those not expected to get it for very long has now become a real and visceral threat to bankrupt the Nation, and it is done with the outlook that if the burden of caring for yourself is lifted by government then you will be uplifted and made better.  Even if that were the case, the cost is to bankrupt the government and make it insolvent within the very near future which would then place a horrific burden upon everyone to give the very few a reward.  If any in the Baby Boom Generation had asked individuals from Gen-X or Gen-Y if they expect Social Security to survive to THEIR retirement, the brutal answer has been, for decades: no.  The Boomers, the generation that had the greatest economic boom ever bequeathed to any generation, felt privileged and has acted like it was privileged to special treatment and deference by its very presence (a form of divine right, that of placement to privilege) and has abdicated its responsibility as a generation to following generations by NOT reforming Social Security when it was Boomers that were in power in the government.  That is due to the Baby Boomers getting the most BENEFIT from that 'good' and knowing that it will not live to see the effects of putting following generations into poverty and handing insolvent government over to those generations.  That long trail of 'Progress', of stewardship of the Nation and caretaking of it by government and turning it into an activist concern, has come to the end point in the economic realm of where self-benefit drives expenditures and those getting the benefits are unwilling to do a damned thing to reform government because that would move the set 'good' point further ahead and require them to work longer.

Of dissolving Social Security and giving the funds back  either entirely or at a fixed rate annual return, nothing is ever said because the self-centered concept of Wilson has now moved to center stage:  government will reform you as directed by those in charge and if that is the lash of CAUSING poverty to generations so ONE generation can get some goodies, then so be it.  Progressivism reaches that end point in economics due to the lack of civil understanding of the role of government and why the cost of a 'good thing' from government is unacceptably high in liberty and then pure economics.  This extends to medical care, too, as the changes to subsidize this 'good' by government and then step in to 'help' the poor pay for it have driven costs up over time as ANY subsidy always DOES as it encourages inefficient use of subsidized goods and services.  That is trying to create an economy to run in ways that are not practical, wise, 'good' or even sane to achieve limited 'good' to the very few that were previously looked after by charity run by individuals, churches and other social venues that knit society together from the poorest level upwards.

That is one outcome of 'progress' when man is seen as being the object of government, not government the subject of man.

Even more telling, however, are the social ends of Progressivism and Liberalism over time, and these are, if anything, even more insidious and far worse than the economic ends, and will also incur a cost there as any of these 'New Freedoms' must be paid for by government, as they are artifacts of government provided to individuals at the cost of personal liberty and freedom.  In Part 3 Charles Kesler has a telling view on the 'New Freedom' and its course into the 1960's and then out of it:

"Instead of the virtues which went with the old style of freedom, the new kind of freedom is really liberation.  Its liberation from virtue, from the kind of character you needed to be free in the older understanding."

This is part of his explaining that government's 'New Freedom' is that which it GIVES you (which he had done in a previous part of the series): freedom from poverty, freedom from want.  In the discussion Peter Robinson calls this "the freedom of the kindergarten", a freedom from responsibilities.  This has been an ongoing part of the Liberal view post-Wilson, that people will find 'new ways to be free' that can only be provided for BY government.  This has a direct and corrosive effect upon society, in that man, freed of responsibilities and given good things, has no need to become virtuous.  Indeed, as 'progress' requires less accountability for actions taken, to 'free' you of responsibility, not being virtuous is rewarded and social intercourse becomes degraded as civility is put to the wayside as there is no punishment for being uncivil to other citizens that do not want to take this course.  In fact government is used to try and quell discourse by those basing stances on morals, not liberty, but those morals get defined as group behavior which is 'empowered' by Liberalism as the new way to account for the sub-units of society: the individual only matters to the extent to which he belongs to certain groups.  Thus by taking a stance against giving a 'freedom' to a group, you get branded as racist, sexist, and other anti-social terms which become ways to intimidate individuals so that they will shut up and accept the new social order of government that determines morality.  That is repression of speech that is defined as 'good' to achieve a social outcome and attempts to express the equality of man as the basis for a just society are then castigated as 'whining' by those who don't get 'freedoms' and the benefits of them but are still expected to pay for them for others who DO.

An object lesson of how this works out are the misnamed 'Human Rights Courts' in Canada, that punish people for merely speaking their mind and try to go so far as to not only censor current and future public speech, but to prohibit PRIVATE speech as well.  What is seen as irritating or degrading to one group is then used to punish an individual and put proscriptions on him for what he has said and thought.  This, too, is freedom from responsibility via directly contacting and discussing items with individuals and is an attempt to use government fiat to suppress thought via suppression of speech.  That manifests in the US via Political Correctness and the overly litigious society that has grown up due to the growing lack of virtue in individuals in society.  In attempting to restrict speech via politics, ideas and lives are degraded via an externally enforced set of ideas that are supposed to 'free' the individual of certain ways of thinking.  This starts in the education system which, as de Tocqueville, Dewey and others examined, would be utilized as the government focal point to wrest control of children from the family via a form of 'soft despotism' (from de Tocqueville).  That is how society shifts from being a great good that is built by individuals to a tool used to coerce individuals to conformity with whatever the freedom du jour is.

Beyond that instating laws to 'empower' classes of people via preferences of race, ethnicity and sex, so as to 'carve out' parts of the marketplace for those efforts, is promoted as a social 'good' to make up for past 'wrongs' which are often three, four or more generations into the distant past.  Previous abuses that were ended by previous generations left the slow righting of wrongs and knitting together of society up to individuals and their institutions to do, and depended on government to restrict abuses of overt racism and other forms of discrimination against citizens in the public venue.  This has 'progressed' to the private venue, via litigation against non-public groups and clubs to 'open up' to outsiders as defined by a voluntary and private organization.  Beyond that Equal Employment Opportunity laws become ways to 'game the system' so as to get those defined as 'minorities' by race, ethnicity or gender, special advances due to their proportion in society, not due to the merits of the individual to actually do their job.  Further costs to provide 'access' to workplaces then start on the path to empower large corporations, which can distribute the cost of such regulations over vast sales, and make the barrier to entry to becoming a large business high as a small business must not only get the cash to create those modes of access, but then must pass that along to a limited production base which impacts their end-unit cost far greater than a big business as the big business has economies of scale to help it.  Big business will also seek subsidies, restrictions on trade and other forms of anti-competitive practice to ensure their position in the marketplace, and by lobbying government for these benefits these corporations become seen as an arm OF government to enact 'good' things.

The fact that these practices of non-merit advancement to jobs so that they are not done to the highest standard and stifling of small business to regulation so as to protect big business are both supported by government seeking to make 'new freedoms' for individuals and large companies at the expense of less efficiency in the workplace, degrading of production standards through the advancement of those not winning by merit alone, and by ensuring that no matter how bad the business practices of corporations are they soon become 'too big to fail' as they are a necessary arm of government control... these things you dare not speak of because they are seen as 'racist', 'sexist' and against small and minority owned businesses, when just the opposite is true: healthy competition and evaluation of skills done at the workplace and marketplace without preference is a great boon to all citizens in driving down production costs, raising wages to keep skilled workers, and building self-esteem through real accomplishment in helping one's fellow man at the workplace and the marketplace to get high quality goods at a lower price.  This has worked so well that to be poor in America now has a tell-tale sign that has never, ever happened in any other society in history: obesity.  That, alone, should be a clue as to the nature of the power of marketplaces to achieve the end of hunger and starvation to the poor.  Instead it is held up as yet another venue for government regulation and control.

In examining the excesses of the 1960's Liberalism, the 'third wave' as per Kesler, the discussion in part 3 goes to how the movement in the area of the sexual revolution and its impact could possibly have grown out of the Progressivist agenda given the character of Woodrow Wilson, FDR and others, including JFK.  This from the discussion:

Kesler: "Well I would say this, you're right, the character of a Woodrow Wilson or FDR is better than their principles. And what happens is their..."

Robinson: "Remind me to keep you on my side..."

Kesler: "...their... insistence on these higher standards, these more traditional kinds of standards, corrodes over time against the idea there is progress... we assume there is progress.  The Progressive assumption is that the future will be better than the present, even as the present is better than the past.  So who are we, in the end, to say that human liberation will not take different, unusual forms?  Sexual liberation, the drug revolution, whatever, of the 1960's, perhaps this is a kind of... the kind of experiments that the growth of human personality requires.  And that's, really how the 60's, I think, comes about."

The discussion moves on to how the Kennedy family sees this change in microcosm, that Joseph Kennedy,JFK and RFK would be appalled as devout Catholics at the stance of Teddy Kennedy on abortion on demand and other social issues and the involvement of government in them at the federal level.  We are reminded that JFK did not start the 'Great Society', that was the work of LBJ who attempted to pin it to JFK after his assassination and to ram the legislation through Congress based on that.  None of those plans were ones in the works or signed off by JFK before his assassination.  While the Kennedy family has had its own share of marital infidelities, those were within marriage and within the understood bounds of it as a social institution, and Teddy Kennedy broken boundaries of religious morality and has paid no price either from his family or from society as a whole.

The conversation continues a bit further on after looking at how Joseph of John Kennedy would have been appalled at the youngest of the clan, Teddy Kennedy, becoming a champion of abortion on demand, and how this happens in barely a generation.  Again Mr. Kesler:

"And that example raises the question that I was skirting earlier which is the old rights and the new rights just don't peacefully coexist.  The new rights come at a huge cost in terms of the old rights because some of these old rights, like the right to life...um... under the aegis of the new rights looks less and less absolute or less and less permanent and compelling."

Mr. Kesler's view is, I believe, key in understanding the nature of Progressivism and the Liberal agenda, and it is disturbing in the extreme.

There are no boundaries in being liberated from responsibilities.

To 'liberate' individuals from responsibility, the troubling source of the problems of individuals must then fall upon society for all things and government must right all of those things with its intervention, no matter what the cost in money, effort or lives.  What started out in the academia as a movement to re-orient towards these 'new freedoms' moves into government and into the creation of law and the practice of law as those self-same lawyers become more drawn from the Boomer Generation which has this view given to them by the academic and social 'reformers'.  From that, the already Progressive stance taken by a number of Supreme Court appointees after Woodrow Wilson is then bolstered at the lower courts as Boomers move upwards due to age.  The effects of this self-centered, self-liberated generation with no responsibilities that it is willing to place upon anyone and ever ready to blame upon society has led to the lessening of criminal sanctions for what was once considered odious, and indeed destructive behavior.  Murder is sought to be excused by poverty or 'poor upbringing' and that no one from government took a 'pro-active' stance to step in and do something.  Thus society is to blame for the ills of the individual. 

Something truly heinous against the most defenseless members of society, children, had steep and harsh punishments against it by law, so that child abuse was a major crime.  Even the normal criminal population understood that this was out of bounds for behavior and those already incarcerated would often visit brutal justice upon convicted child abusers.  Now, with lenient judges and juries who give non-jail sentences to child abusers due to the abusers 'lack of control', 'poverty', 'poor upbringing', or any other excuse... or NO excuse...the only way justice CAN be visited upon these criminals is to get sentenced to any time in a major penitentiary for even a short span.  The criminal element in this twisted vision of 'justice' then becomes a bastion and reservoir of social understanding which STILL upholds the safety of children even against the most vicious of gangs that operate today, while our society 'liberates' the attackers and abusers of children who are the most precious members of society as they are NOT adults and is then unwilling to visit any prison time upon them.  And yet the things brought up are excuses for the inexcusable, and even criminals know that.

When criminals understand the worth of children better than the civilian population as a whole, there is a wide-scale problem in society.

This problem goes beyond just abortion, just child abuse, and is an endemic view of attempting to liberate individuals from all social and societal norms and expectations, and thusly kills the concept of virtue as that has a set of standards and norms that allow individuals to identify what virtue actually IS.  Once the punishment for going beyond social norms is removed, there is no compelling way to demonstrate virtue as there become no societal boundaries to transgress.  If this was an actual boon to society, letting those committing horrific acts go free to commit MORE OF THEM when they are GUILTY of them, then we would now have the most virtuous and upstanding society the planet has ever seen.  Yet that is not the case, and the culture has become destructive towards those that disagree with the power elite in politics and the media: attempt to uphold a social value that is one that is now a point of being 'liberation' and those professing to the norms are now seen as the villains.  In attempting to express the virtue of preserving life, of protecting children and of espousing thrift, one finds himself on a road to ready castigation for being anti-feminist, not willing to understand criminals and being unpatriotic to not want to pay MORE in taxes to fund feminism and the pains caused by killers walking free as they are the fault of society, not to be held accountable, as individuals, for their actions as they have been liberated from that responsibility by government.

As 'progress' from standards is defined as something 'good', that progress away from what we were to become a newer and 'more enlightened' society is inherently good, the older terminology (which is highly abused as Orwell pointed it out it would be) of despotism and tyranny return to new life.  This concept of binding society together by government, so that all the 'twigs' can be bound into a strong haft for an axe, say, is not new.  Progressivism deeply influenced the early Fascist movement in Europe, as Jonah Goldberg examines in exquisite detail in his work Liberal Fascism, thus the same ideological roots that would influence Fascism would also come to influence the Liberal establishment of the 20th century in the US.  Even more chillingly is that the abuses of government that could grow out of the problems of the federal system had been widely discussed during the ratification process in 1787-89, and many of the artifacts of the national government overstepping its bounds are clearly seen as problems that the new Constitution had within it.

I've looked at a number of these works over the past (most recently here, here, here, here, here) and the warnings of Congress becoming unrepresentative, the imposition of taxes on nearly everything along with regulation, how a President with a corrupt Senate or House can wield extraordinary powers and that the Supreme Court had venues far beyond judgment in law, only, were all cited as problems because they had been seen in previous republics and democracies.  Further the 'Anti-Federalists' would often cite successful republics (like that of the Swiss) and ask why is there not more 'federalism' in the Constitution.  Indeed these writers were not against federalism as a concept, they went further than the 'Federalists' in how to apply it so as to make the mechanisms such that National government, State government and the people all played roles at the State and National level to keep power grabs from any one segment in check.  While Hamilton's riposte that no design of government can ever stop this from happening as it is based upon people, the rejoinder that a weak system invited this to happen was never responded to by ANY of the 'Federalists' who, instead, relied upon the good will of the people and that such abuses would be 'obvious' to at least one citizen who would speak up and warn his fellow citizens.

And be labeled as a 'crank' or 'racist' or 'sexist' or simply a 'bigot'.

That is the problem with the Hamiltonian view of a robust government presence in the economy: it invites a slow twisting of the system to become one of concentrated power at the highest level and for enforcing that view upon society and individuals by law.  Hamiltonians who declaim themselves to be 'moderate' are the ones who signed up to the venture of big government as it fits neatly with the Hamiltonian view of a robust presence of government in the economy.  Jeffersonians have found their merely legal venues to have been co-opted, over the years, by socially progressive groups so that the ACLU no longer will step in for protecting those who are discriminated against by government and will not step in to protect speech they don't like.  Wilsonians are the CAUSE of this problem as the Progressive movement took sway of the Liberal portion of society and deeply infested BOTH political parties so that by the end of the 20th century it was nearly impossible to find anyone, from either party, who could understand that 'limited government' did not mean slowing the growth of government, but that government was overgrown, officious, promulgating regulations on all aspects of life, handing out 'good things' that were bankrupting the government and the Nation, promulgating bias and discrimination based on race, ethnicity, gender, etc., and was not limited by any scope of anyone's imagination outside of the two parties.

Jacksonians joined the NRA on the basic principle that the fight for your rights is vested in you, and that you must be able to actually fight when push comes to shove.

While the 'ratchet Republicans' those who just want to 'manage' larger government 'better' have no idea of how to say 'rollback of federal power', it is only Jacksonians who can point to the largest roll-back of federal power not due to war in Bank Veto Message of 10 JUL 1832.  Removing power and the halls of it from the federal government can be done, but requires that those venues actually come up for votes and that a President VETO such bills clearly and succinctly to say why such institutions not only have no place in the federal government, but that their power corrupts government that then becomes beholden to them.  This causes a seizure in the 'moderate Hamiltonians' as they do not want a roll-back of government power at the National level.  To Progressivists this is a direct threat against the Liberal agenda as they require the subversion of government to the will of an elite polity to craft the society they want.  Jeffersonian civil means have failed to stop the abuses of government and are now lap dogs to those abuses by being unwilling to stand for their basic premises of supporting equal rights to all citizens.

There is one venue in the modern era that has been wildly successful, and that is the erosion of support for 'gun control', which is the way the Liberals wish to disarm ordinary citizens so they cannot protect their liberty.  This from Gallup Poll of 08 APR 2009:

Pew Research also examined this phenomena on 30 APR 2009, and saw the steady, long-term decline in support for gun control and restrictions on gun ownership from 1993 onwards, and also examined how the position of the public on abortion has been changing in the recent past.

These are positions based on stands that are easy to explain and have a visceral impact on individuals when they are explained on those basic terms and that we are responsible for our own actions in them.  The idea that the 'old rights', those that are protected from government intervention, and the 'new rights', which are artifacts of government, can take over all aspects of life hits stumbling blocks with these topics.  Even when a Liberal Supreme Court with the help of a Liberal Congress and President cannot individually or cumulatively over time sway these subjects that slowly shift back to ones of our own responsibility for ourselves, children and society, the starkness of the Liberal agenda becomes clear by the words and obtuse linkages done by Liberals to link forcing you to do 'good things' with the overall idea that this is a 'good idea'.

That is a firewall being erected by a segment of society to protect all of society and those in the Liberal arena hate that as these people are successful in waging a countervailing influence to Progressive ideas that any change is 'progress' and therefore 'good'.  And while those on the Liberal side wield a multi-culti leveling tool questioning why it is right to put valuations on how some societies act towards their members, say how repressive Muslim societies repress women or kill gays and lesbians, one does come to wonder how those who affiliate with those things that are NOT talked about could have lost all human empathy with their fellow men and women in such conditions.  The lie of Progressive Liberalism is that it is in any way 'liberal' or 'progressive' and that those castigating the use of any measuring tool for other societies are, themselves, wielding a measuring tool to those they castigate and are unwilling to see that the tool, itself, that of multi-culturalism, is an outgrowth of their society and, because of that, biased by the ideology of the wielder.  ALL tools are biased by the wielder be it a hammer, saw, fork, knife, bicycle, or handgun, they all GAIN PURPOSE that is biased by being used to some end.  Disdaining 'traditional' views is putting its own set of measuring tools in place, but ones that are not made to ensure the safety of individuals or society, but are crafted to the end of making government powerful and subjugating society to government.  Those wielding that tool dare not speak of the repression other governments perform as they wish the exact, same power for themselves over their fellow citizens.  As Teddy Roosevelt pointed out so succinctly decades ago, that is the old order of 'freedom':  freedom of the strong over the weak, government over society, the powerful over the poor, and no check upon these things by civil action.

There is no end to the power that Liberals seek to remake society under their benevolent form of tyranny.  No tyranny stays benevolent, especially once it finds that it can examine 'new freedom' to repress others under the guise of this being 'good'.  And just as Wilson, FDR, and JFK would be horrified by the excesses of modern Liberalism, the bounds that are now pushed are those of basic and fundamental human liberty to have ANY freedom FROM government.  While Liberals love to say that conservatives are aghast that someone, somewhere, might be having fun, those watching Liberals see that they are aghast that someone, somewhere, might be outside of their absolute control and seeking to make a life for themselves free of government control.  That is why Big Brother is Everywhere.  You are to be enslaved by the State.

That is why Liberals who once disdained the power of the NSA to intercept overseas phone calls because it just might be one that would reveal information between two citizens, now yawn when an Administration they like wields that self-same power.  There is no stance that Liberals will not turn on, no moral they will uphold before they destroy it, and no sanctuary they will ever provide to allow you to live a free life.  Those in the Liberal elite, in the media and politics, cannot stand that ordinary citizens would ever speak out against government spending and taxation at Tea Parties.  They do not understand what Tea Parties actually are... the reassertion of civil venues of control to go after government at all levels.  The Liberal agenda only wants 'legitimate' organized protest, not real protest designed from the ground up.

Just as the excesses of culture in Rome led to people flocking to Christianity because it upheld virtues of chastity, kindness and your need to lead a good life outside of the mandates of government, we now see the exact, same cracks staring to appear in the Liberal Progressive edifice.  And as the weight and officiousness of government increases, the weaknesses along the cracks will be destabilizing.  Reorienting to Christianity came too late and was too large a leap for Roman culture in the West.  As Americans we have to worry that while our society just might recover, the collapse of this government edifice must come with the same view that Americans held at the time of the Founding:

The present state of America is truly alarming to every man who is capable of reflexion. Without law, without government, without any other mode of power than what is founded on, and granted by courtesy. Held together by an unexampled concurrence of sentiment, which, is nevertheless subject to change, and which, every secret enemy is endeavouring to dissolve. Our present condition, is, Legislation without law; wisdom without a plan; a constitution without a name; and, what is strangely astonishing, perfect Independance contending for dependance. The instance is without a precedent; the case never existed before; and who can tell what may be the event? The property of no man is secure in the present unbraced system of things. The mind of the multitude is left at random, and seeing no fixed object before them, they pursue such as fancy or opinion starts. Nothing is criminal; there is no such thing as treason; wherefore, every one thinks himself at liberty to act as he pleases. The Tories dared not have assembled offensively, had they known that their lives, by that act, were forfeited to the laws of the state. A line of distinction should be drawn, between, English soldiers taken in battle, and inhabitants of America taken in arms. The first are prisoners, but the latter traitors. The one forfeits his liberty, the other his head.

Notwithstanding our wisdom, there is a visible feebleness in some of our proceedings which gives encouragement to dissensions. The Continental Belt is too loosely buckled. And if something is not done in time, it will be too late to do any thing, and we shall fall into a state, in which, neither RECONCILIATION nor INDEPENDANCE will be practicable. The king and his worthless adherents are got at their old game of dividing the Continent, and there are not wanting among us, Printers, who will be busy in spreading specious falsehoods. The artful and hypocritical letter which appeared a few months ago in two of the New York papers, and likewise in two others, is an evidence that there are men who want either judgment or honesty.

It is easy getting into holes and corners and talking of reconciliation: But do such men seriously consider, how difficult the task is, and how dangerous it may prove, should the Continent divide thereon. Do they take within their view, all the various orders of men whose situation and circumstances, as well as their own, are to be considered therein. Do they put themselves in the place of the sufferer whose ALL is ALREADY gone, and of the soldier, who hath quitted ALL for the defence of his country. If their ill judged moderation be suited to their own private situations only, regardless of others, the event will convince them, that "they are reckoning without their Host."

Put us, says some, on the footing we were on in sixty-three: To which I answer, the request is not now in the power of Britain to comply with, neither will she propose it; but if it were, and even should be granted, I ask, as a reasonable question, By what means is such a corrupt and faithless court to be kept to its engagements? Another parliament, nay, even the present, may hereafter repeal the obligation, on the pretense, of its being violently obtained, or unwisely granted; and in that case, Where is our redress?—No going to law with nations; cannon are the barristers of Crowns; and the sword, not of justice, but of war, decides the suit. To be on the footing of sixty-three, it is not sufficient, that the laws only be put on the same state, but, that our circumstances, likewise, be put on the same state; Our burnt and destroyed towns repaired or built up, our private losses made good, our public debts (contracted for defence) discharged; otherwise, we shall be millions worse than we were at that enviable period. Such a request, had it been complied with a year ago, would have won the heart and soul of the Continent—but now it is too late, "The Rubicon is passed."

Besides, the taking up arms, merely to enforce the repeal of a pecuniary law, seems as unwarrantable by the divine law, and as repugnant to human feelings, as the taking up arms to enforce obedience thereto. The object, on either side, doth not justify the means; for the lives of men are too valuable to be cast away on such trifles. It is the violence which is done and threatened to our persons; the destruction of our property by an armed force; the invasion of our country by fire and sword, which conscientiously qualifies the use of arms: And the instant, in which such a mode of defence became necessary, all subjection to Britain ought to have ceased; and the independancy of America, should have been considered, as dating its aera from, and published by, THE FIRST MUSKET THAT WAS FIRED AGAINST HER. This line is a line of consistency; neither drawn by caprice, nor extended by ambition; but produced by a chain of events, of which the colonies were not the authors.

-Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776.

Rollback is possible.

And being moderate will only get you enslaved and killed.