Gad Saad on racism and progressivism

Most people are not rabid racists, haters, and miscreants.  Today's racists espouse critical race theory cloaked in the robe of "progressivism."  Don't buy into it.  Treat people as individuals.

~ Gad Saad, tweet, April 24, 2021

Robby Soave on anti-racism

Nonracism—the idea that skin color should be overlooked—has lost popularity among progressive activists, and anti-racism—the idea that skin color matters a great deal—is in vogue.

~ Robby Soave, "Why Dr. Seuss is Worth Defending," Reason.com, March 8, 2021

Kevin Duffy on how a progressive sees taxation

This is how a progressive sees taxation: 

1) Taxes are a benefit to the common good. 

2) Taxes are the price of freedom. 

3) The rich hire accountants to avoid paying their fair share. 

4) The rich have nearly all of the wealth (an unfair distribution). 

5) Those at the bottom pay all the taxes (even though the rich have all the money); very unfair. 

6) The government is constantly starved for "revenue" so those at the bottom suffer even more. 

Ok, admittedly, this is an exaggeration, but there is a lot of truth to this, don't you think?

~ Kevin Duffy, Facebook post, March 12, 2021

Tom Bernhardt on progressivism

The progressive movement has been a continual blight on mankind for way too long.  It's brought us Prohibition, eugenics, Federal Reserve, income taxation, WW I, and so many other horrors.  It stems from some theological-type notion of human plasticity and perfectibility to be molded by enlightened central planners.  It appeals to the hubris of the intellectual classes in academia, journalism, law, politics and now Big Tech.

~ Tom Bernhardt, Facebook post, February 18, 2021

George Orwell on progressivism

So much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot.

~ George Orwell

Dwight D. Murphey on progressivism and the civil rights movement from the early 1900s to 1930s

[Modern] liberals in the United States did not provide conspicuous leadership to a movement for racial and ethnic equality until the issue came to life during and after World War II.  Most Americans will be amazed to hear that it was the Progressives who were most instrumental in establishing the Jim Crow system in the South; they did so after the Populist movement created a fear of the potentially corrupting effects of a movement that would combine blacks and poor whites.  Theodore Roosevelt is reputed to have made an embarrassingly bigoted comment about Negroes at the time of the Brownsville Affair.  Woodrow Wilson originally wanted to include blacks in his administration, but backed off when this led to criticism from his Southern supporters.  Franklin Roosevelt did not make civil rights legislation for blacks a significant part of the New Deal. 

During all those years the many liberals connected with the liberal journals as editors and writers, while favorable to Negroes and horrified by lynchings, made no move to make "civil rights" a priority issue.  As we look back from the ethos of the 1980s and '90s, we tend to think, racial, ethnic and sexual equality have held a place in the pantheon of liberal philosophy from the beginning.  But that is just not so.

~ Dwight D. Murphey, Liberalism in Contemporary America, p. 19

Michael Malice on the difference between conservatives and progressives

Conservatism is progressivism driving the speed limit.

~ Michael Malice, tweet, January 22, 2019

Kevin Duffy on the battle of ideas

Ideas matter.  Progressivism, which began in the late 1800s, routed other ideologies in the 1900s. It's not even close. The Old Right died (including neutrality in foreign affairs).  Classical liberalism (aka limited government or more recently "libertarianism") was nearly snuffed out right after WWII, but a committed remnant remains and is making a comeback. 

We're on the losing side.  We're in the minority.  In a winner-take-all political system, we lose.  Our only weapon is our words.  Violence (as Wednesday's idiotic Capitol breach proved) will only backfire. 

The other side doesn't need to use reason. They have the numbers. And they know it. 

That's what we're up against.

~ Kevin Duffy, Facebook post, January 8, 2021

Capitol breach - January 6, 2021

Francis Menton on progressivism and reality

To be a woke progressive the first requirement is that you must refuse to acknowledge the real world as it exists.  You must pretend that the world is something else, something immediately transformable into a fantasy of perfection through coercive collective action.  You also must firmly close your eyes to any facts or evidence that might contradict such progressive fantasy, and indeed you must demand that any such facts or evidence be suppressed and never mentioned.

~ Francis Menton, The Essence Of Progressivism Is Refusal To Deal With Reality, Manhattan Contrarian, December 9, 2020

Kevin Duffy on how to identify a progressive

1. The state is the solution to all problems.  All that is needed is the right people and the will. 

2. The ends justify the means. 

3. The upward slope of human progress is relentless as long as the state is at the center.  The state is always changing and adapting.  Constitutions should be flexible and not constrain this adaptability.

4. History is irrelevant unless it can be changed to fit your narrative and advance your agenda.  (See #2.)

5. Simple narratives are irresistible; attention spans are short. 

6. People are automotons, putty in the hands of the master sculptor.  Free will can be problematic.

7. Divide and conquer.  Don't be afraid to dehumanize people, e.g. calling them racist, sexist, right-wing extremists, etc.  (See #2.)

8. There are no objective truths.  Pursuit of the truth is of little use. 

9. Economic laws do not apply.  Scarcity has been conquered.  Redistribution of wealth is the logical next step. 

10. Any failures of the state are the fault of the implementers, never the system.  (See #1 and #4.)

~ Kevin Duffy

David Gordon on elitism in America

Elite policy is at its worst in California, now under the near-total domination of the left wing of the Democratic Party...

Who are the ordinary Americans the elite disdains, and who are the elite?  The ordinary Americans are those whom Hillary Clinton called "deplorables," i.e., white males who value their family, their religion, and their property, including their guns...

The elite consists at its core of wealthy financiers and business interests allied with government.  It is buttressed by professionals who have attended top universities, especially those of the Ivy League.

~ David Gordon, "America at the Point of No Return," The Austrian, September-October 2020

Ron Pestritto on the German roots of progressivism

It helps us to see how the progressive movement became the means by which a lot of principles that had grown up in Europe took root in the United States, and in particular principles that were part of the German understanding of politics, and the German state, and the German understanding of history. And the influence of German thought, in German education, is evident not only from looking at the ideas of the progressives, but also just looking at the historical connections, at the pedigree of a lot of the most important progressive thinkers. Almost all of them were either educated in Germany or had as teachers those who had been educated in Germany, and this requires us to realize the real sea change that had taken place in higher education in the United States between say 1860 and 1900. This is at a time where most Americans who wanted a higher education, a graduate level education, went to Europe to get it and often went to Germany to get it. And thus by 1900, the faculties of American colleges and universities were populated with people who had been educated in Europe by and large in the German tradition. 

One example would be, take a place like Johns Hopkins University. This was actually founded in 1876 with the explicit purpose of bringing the German educational model to the United States. And Hopkins was a place, not coincidentally, where some of the most important American progressives educated: people like Woodrow Wilson, people like John Dewey, and Frederick Jackson Turner, just to name a few.

~ Ronald J. Pestritto, "The Progressive Rejection of the Founding," 25:55 mark, Hillsdale College

William Anderson on the laws of economics to Progressives

Like Franklin Roosevelt, who proclaimed that the laws of economics were nothing more than creations of human beings and could be changed by creating something akin to the "Socialist Man," Progressives really do believe that they can manipulate an economy by printing money or by borrowing or by raising taxes on wealthy people, and there will be no adverse economic effects. As Krugman likes to claim in his NYT columns and blog posts, massive borrowing is no problem because "we owe it to ourselves."

~ William Anderson, "Understanding the Progressive Mind," LewRockwell.com, December 27, 2012

William Anderson on the Progressive mind

Even when Progressives give lip service to markets, they always add the caveat that without government control, markets would run amok and that immediately scores of people would be thrown into poverty at the expense of a few people becoming wealthy. Because markets are self-sabotaging, according to Progressive thinking, massive transfer payments are necessary to keep an economy on its feet. 

One must absolutely comprehend this last point in order to understand Progressive thinking: transfer payments are not an economic burden; they are the key to prosperity and without them, the economy would sink into permanent depression. Therefore, to criticize transfers not only is to be "against the poor," but also to demonstrate economic ignorance. (Keep in mind that most Progressives view the economy as a big circle that is internally unstable, and government action keeps the circle moving.)

~ William Anderson, "Understanding the Progressive Mind," LewRockwell.com, December 27, 2012

Vasko Kohlmayer on the destructionism of today's social activists

Like their tyrannical predecessors, social justice warriors of today are not interested in constructively addressing the real problems in the society in which they live. Carried along by a destructive instinct, they want to bring down their society. Most of them have no clear conception of what should replace it. What they know, however, is that they want nothing to do with the principles of free speech, tolerance of dissent, respect for private property, etc., on which free and affluent societies are built. The main problem with this approach is that societies not based on these values are not good places to live. Just ask the people of Stalin’s Soviet Union, Hitler’s Nazi Germany, Kim’s North Korea, Castro’s Cuba or Pol Pot’s Cambodia.

~ Vasko Kohlmayer, "The Aim of Social Justice Movement is Subversion of Core Western Values," LewRockwell.com, August 31, 2020

Vasko Kohlmayer on progressives, tyrants and freedom of expression

Because they know well that their positions are indefensible by reason, open discussion is anathema to both the woke and the tyrants. Freedom of speech and expression are their scourge, because their worldview cannot withstand the light of truth. This is why they all seek to suppress it by instituting various forms of political correctness.

Every totalitarian without exception advocates political correctness. Political correctness is the favored instrument of totalitarians of all stripes with which they seek to silence their opponents. It prevents the articulation of facts that are plainly obvious but inconvenient to those who seek to seize or maintain political power by illicit and undemocratic means. In an environment ruled by political correctness truth must not be spoken. Instead one must either stay silent or say the opposite of the truth.

Political correctness takes different forms depending on how much power the totalitarians possess in a given society. In democratic societies it takes the form of institutional speech codes. In totalitarian societies it takes the form of outright state censorship.

~ Vasko Kohlmayer, "Ideological Kin: The Progressive Left Hold The Same Values As Tyrants and Oppressors," LewRockwell.com, September 5, 2020

Jeff Deist on presentism, progressivism and the "New Economics"

Presentism is at the core of the progressive worldview, which insists the past is alway retrograde, the present is always better but still deeply imperfect, and the future has an ultimately happy deterministic arc. It is one manifestation of the hubris which comes from imagining we live in a unique time, and a uniquely enlightened time.

Presentism is the hallmark of the imagined economics smart set: the Paul Krugmans, Christine Lagardes, Thomas Pikettys, Noah Smiths, and Benyamin Appelbaums of today. The economics they advocate—mostly in blogs, social media, financial news shows, or pop books, and never in treatises—is sui generis, unique to them. It’s their own economics, created out of whole cloth by them individually, supposedly scientific and brand new to suit today’s world. It’s a New Economics for 2020. And of course they all insist they’re merely following and interpreting the data, going where it takes them. After all, they’re scientists!

But exactly what theory or education or discipline do they apply to that data? Is it really economics?

Of course we know there is no New Economics, any more than there is new physics or new calculus. There are advances and discoveries in economic science, and there are new technologies which of course have an enormous effect on economies. But economics is, and always will be, about human action in the context of choice, scarcity, opportunity cost, and subjective measures of value.

~ Jeff Deist, "Mises and the 'New Economics'," talk at the Austrian Scholars Conference hosted by Grove City College, February 22, 2020

Ben Shapiro on the progressive worldview of wealth, inequality, virtue and evil

No one is a better person just because they're poor.  By the way, no one's a better person because they're rich.  All that wealth is is a measure of voluntary exchanges you engaged in in a free market.  That's all that wealth is.  But the idea for the Left is that all inequality is evil, therefore the people who are unequal at the top are evil and the people at the bottom are virtuous.  Which is why you'll hear people on the Left say things like they like small business, but they hate people who are big business like the Wal-Mart family, the Walton family.  They're terrible.  Well were they terrible when they were just a family living in the middle of nowhere?  When exactly did they transition over into evil?  When they became successful enough.  Because their success meant, by necessity, according to the leftist worldview, they were depriving others of their fair share.

~ Ben Shapiro, "Ben Shapiro EDUCATES College Professors in an Epic Q & A," YouTube, 18:38 mark, before 2016 presidential election (posted July 24, 2019)

Quora post on progressivism and rights

My rights don't end where your feelings begin.

~ Andrew T. Post, "What don't most liberals realize?," Quora, July 4, 2018

Milo Yiannopoulos on restrictive speech in America

As a Brit, I came to America thinking this was going to be the land of freedom - free expression.  It's the land of the 1st amendment after all.  And I discovered actually the social pressures on speech - what you can and cannot say in society, if you're in dating, in the workplace - are some of the most restrictive speech codes I've encountered anywhere in the world.  I don't have any particular love for the Republican party - I happen to be a conservative on most social issues - but it's very clear that the trajectory of speech codes and language policing and the oppression of different points of view is working very obviously in one direction.  And that is the progressive left, which has a stranglehold on the media, on the academy and on Hollywood, constantly characterizing conservative points of view as hateful and bigoted, sexist, racist and all the rest of it.  And constricting not just the language that conservatives can use, but the ideas they're allowed to express, and the subjects they're allowed to bring up...  It's a really weird set of affairs for America, of all places, to be a country where speech is so heavily restricted, and it's normally the speech of conservatives.

~ Milo Yiannopoulos, "'Dangerous' Milo Yiannopoulos tells all," (5:53-7:09 mark), YouTube, July 12, 2017