The Ideology Without Legs: How Progressivism’s Major Flaw Kills Society

BY ALEX PAUL
In the past, I’ve talked about the plethora of fallacies concerning Hillary Clinton, the former figurehead of the Party that has gradually slithered into our homes and over our shoulders. I’ve also talked about the same Party that was just mentioned and how, ever since its rise to power with Andrew Jackson, it has been working to oppress some sort of American citizen; it was exclusively the blacks up until the 1960’s until the Democrat Party broadened its horizons to include everyone afterwards.

However, there’s one minor problem; I haven’t even touched upon their philosophical base yet. So, in order to understand the Democrats’ full train of thought, we need to ask: what is it? What do the Democrats consider their “philosophy” to be, even if it is terribly flawed?

The answer: Progressivism.

Major search engines simply describe the ideology as “support for or advocacy of social reform”. Believe it or not, this definition–at face value, at least–isn’t the worst thing ever created. Say there was a second coming of Joseph Stalin that ended up becoming President of the United States (I know that this wouldn’t happen–at least for right now–but this is just an example). He would undoubtedly toy with us citizens as if we were little Lego people, only able to move around on his command. We would inevitably demand for social and humanitarian reformation so we can get our basic freedoms back; inherently, this means we would be considered Progressives, even if we wouldn’t want to admit so ourselves.

However, this is far from reality.

Truthfully, Progressivism was used by the Democrats to try to not only win over the trust of the populace, but to slowly stray away from the teachings and values of the Constitution. In fact, the biggest and most famous piece of legislation created as a direct result of Progressive ideology was the New Deal. While the Left likes to tout that this New Deal brought America out of the Great Depression, that isn’t the truth. In fact, it is actually the Japanese that takes credit for (at least indirectly) leading the nation to prosperity once again; however, this is an article for another day.

Back to the topic at hand, the New Deal brought upon a list of regulations so lengthy that even a college thesis paper would be put to shame. Industries and sectors such as electricity, water, infrastructure, money, banking, and others were modified so that the federal government could have a much tighter grip on them. But this unprecedented amount of expansion on the federal government’s part did next to nothing to help the floundering Americans.

While at a Hillsdale College Liberty and Learning Youth Conference in 2016, I listened to instructors speak of the downfalls of the Progressive mindset, which includes the major overarching flaw I’ve been hinting at.

In short, Progressives argue that the government has two primary functions:

• Politics, which they refer to as “the unchecked will of the people” (notice the word unchecked)
• Administration (the application of many laws to increase efficiency)

Progressives also believe in “experts” who make decisions about issues for people, rather than democratically-elected politicians. However, their major, overarching belief is their worst fallacy concerning the longevity of society: they believe in a constantly changing government and populace that must adapt with the times.

Notice the issue here? It should be pretty apparent, considering that Federalist 49 of the Federalist Papers states that, “A tradition supporting nature is a tradition that should virtually never be changed.” Seeing as how the nature-supporting tradition can easily be identified as Conservatism, it can also be easily inferred that since Progressivism dissents from the beliefs of Conservatism, the former inherently doesn’t support nature.

That inference would be right on the money, as bowlers and cricket players would say. In fact, as was stated two paragraphs ago, their tenet of “changing with the times” is what makes the entire ideology–and eventually society as a whole–crumble (even though pretty much every other tenet would do the same). Why?

Well, every person of every society in the world needs some sort of justifiable reason or explanation of why they do what they do in order to advance society without being immoral (based on Christian principles). From refusing service to a person an employee wishes to not do business with, to declaring war with another country, everything and everyone needs a philosophical base to stand on. However, with Progressivism, this can never be achieved; because of the “changing with the times” mentality, followers of the ideology would be switching up their foundation left and right, which means they wouldn’t be able to justify any of their actions as moral or immoral.

On top of that, while Conservatism endorses a limited government, where the Feds are regulated beyond comprehension to ensure the freedom of its citizens, Progressivism endorses a tyrannical government, where the Feds are so powerful they can go as far as control public opinion (sound familiar?). Tyrannical government is thus innately immoral because it gives a human-created entity power to rule over its creators.

So, to put it bluntly: Progressivism endorses a government of tyranny which is inherently immoral; whatever philosophical base Progressives do come up with would then be considered immoral. Unfortunately, that mentality is what has been trying to take us over this entire time.

As I like to say, the federal government (and government in general) is nothing more than “humanity’s Frankenstein’s Monster with a god complex”.