The Ideology of Progressivism

Michael Smith

When I think about how the ideology of progressivism ignores the restrictions it disagrees with and only seems interested in enforcing those that support its protection and expansion, I think of this exchange from the original Jurassic Park movie:

Dr. Ian Malcolm: "If I may... Um, I'll tell you the problem with the scientific power that you're using here, it didn't require any discipline to attain it. You read what others had done and you took the next step. You didn't earn the knowledge for yourselves, so you don't take any responsibility for it. You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could, and before you even knew what you had, you patented it, and packaged it, and slapped it on a plastic lunchbox, and now you're selling it, you wanna sell it. Well...

John Hammond: I don't think you're giving us our due credit. Our scientists have done things which nobody's ever done before...

Dr. Ian Malcolm: Yeah, yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think if they should."

Let me preface what follows with this caveat – I understand that there are differing philosophical definitions of socialism, Marxism and communism. Coincidentally, Marx also recognized the differences and noted that his philosophy of Marxsim was the bridge between socialism and communism – but for my purposes, I use the terms interchangeably because the annals of history record that all of them end in the same predictable way for the same predictable reasons – tyranny, oppression and totalitarianism.

Contemporary progressives, similar to the movie geneticists, never bother themselves with the question of “just because we can, should we?” This is why they hate our Constitution and seek to abrogate it in the same manner and the Jurassic Park scientists flaunted nature and natural law.

Let’s say for sake of argument that capitalism began in America with the founding on July 4, 1776 and the publication in the same year of Adam Smith’s seminal work, “The Wealth of Nations”. We all know it existed as a form of commerce for centuries before but let’s just stipulate that America was the first modern country to be founded with capitalism as the basic economic system. Communism, the economic-political philosophy was founded by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in the second half of the 19th century. Marx and Engels met in 1844, and discovered that they had similar principles. In 1848 they wrote and published "The Communist Manifesto."

If we accept publication of Smith’s “Wealth” and Marx’s “Manifesto” as start date for these concepts, capitalism predated communism by 72 years. The point being that communism is a critique of capitalism, it is not something developed independently and tested. It has been attained without discipline and rigor.

Contemporary communism (masquerading as “progressivism”) attaches itself, remora like, to the belly of capitalism. It is not symbiotic, the host gains nothing from it. Progressivism simply requires a parasitic environment for survival. I have long posited that modern progressives want just enough of your capitalism to pay for their adventures in socialism.

Progressivism insinuates its way into American life by exploiting the virtue and vice inherent in the human condition. It preys simultaneously upon human compassion and concern for the less fortunate (welfare) and then the envy and covetous human nature (tax the rich). It proposed that the end justifies the means, that bad deeds can yield good results. It promises to create freedom by restricting the actions of people and “fairness” through compulsion and coercion rather than choice. It proposed that freedom of religion means no religion, freedom of speech means outlawing “offensive” speech. Progressivism is based on the fallacy that a free individual is incapable of determining what is right for himself while a committee of individuals can. It proposes that the principles of natural law and natural rights are merely words to be interpreted in whatever way advances their goals. Progressivism proposes arbitrary and capricious application of laws is a feature, not a bug. Progressivism has destroyed the scientific process by attempting to politicize science and criminalize and punish those who question orthodoxy, possess contradictory data or hold dissenting opinions.

Progressivism is a directionless, rudderless, parasitic and evil ideology that has become the religion and theology of the left. If the theology is evil, it follows that the people who subscribe to it are similarly afflicted. This is not what America is. The founding principles of this country have been subjected to rigor and discipline for centuries – from the Magna Carta in 1215 and the Declaration of Aberoth in 1320 to the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and our Constitution in 1787 – the basic idea that a man has a right to determine his own future has been codified as his greatest desire short of ascension to Heaven.

Let us hope and pray this condition prevails.