The Roots of Progressive Authoritarianism
By: George J. Marlin
Progressive ideology is a direct threat to and enemy of our Declaration of Independence and Constitution. They have since the late 1800’s questioned the founders, the founding, and those documents. That’s what separates progressives from classical liberals who were a part of our founding and from which today’s conservatives originated.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
If Democrats win the two Georgia U.S. Senate seats in January, in the words of Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., they will "change the world."
To impose their political will and to maintain control of the nation, Democrats will end the Senate filibuster, pack the federal courts, eliminate the Electoral College, and make the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, the 51st and 52nd states.
The guiding principles of the Progressive power brokers will be moral relativism and equality of results. In the name of autocratic efficiency, they will eliminate the idea of common man democracy.
Their belief that there are no absolute truths, no unconditional principles or laws, and that customs must be replaced with concepts that are efficient, politically correct, and materialistic, is not new.
In fact, it has been the foundation of the Progressive ideology for over a hundred years.
The first Progressive president, Woodrow Wilson (1913-1920) rejected the preamble to the Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."
"If you want to understand the real Declaration of Independence," Wilson said, "do not repeat the preface."
For Wilson, the historian, Ronald Pestritto, has pointed out, "the state must move beyond the narrow and outdated role assigned to it by the founding generation. . . . Wilson was not concerned with the liberty of the individual. . . . Liberty, he explained, is not found in freedom from state action but instead in one’s obedience to the laws of the state. . . . [O]beying the state is the fulfillment of true freedom."
Wilson was devoted to using the power of the administrative state to transmute American society and the U.S. economy to conform to leftist ideological whims.
Another hero of the early Progressive movement, was U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendel Holmes (1841-1935)
Holmes, an atheist and sceptic, held that nothing can be known with certainty.
Based on his epistemology, Holmes concluded that absolute truths and, consequently, all religions are illusions. If there is no God then there is no design and man cannot really possess objective values. Holmes held that "truth was a majority vote of the nation that could lick all others;" not absolute, but relative to time and place.
In Holmes’ Godless world, there can be no natural law, no first principle: "The jurist who believes in natural law seems to me to be in a naïve sense of mind." There is only legal positivism — authority based on force.
Without transcendent standards of morality, there are no "oughts," and, as a consequence, the dominant group in power has no limitations. Those with power implement whatever has economic, social, or political utility.
Public policy is whatever that dominant force wants, even if it is mob violence. Holmes said: "I am so skeptical as to our knowledge about the goodness or badness of laws that I have no practical criticism except what the crowd wants."
In this might-makes-right environment, the survival of political minorities depends on the sympathies of those in power. "All that can be expected from modern improvements," Holmes wrote, "is that legislation should easily and quickly, yet not too quickly, modify itself in accordance with the will of the de facto supreme power in the community, and that the spread of an educated sympathy should reduce the sacrifice of minorities to a minimum."
The Constitution, for Holmes, is only an experiment: "the claim of our especial code to respect [the Constitution] is simply that it exists, that it is the one to which we have become accustomed, and not that it represents an eternal principle."
Therefore, judicial decisions reflect nothing more than the workings of the moment. They have no ultimate or absolute value beyond "what is" at any moment in time.
There are no ultimate ends because that would infer an objective norm. Law is only descriptive, it describes what has happened, not what should happen.
This approach to the law did not die with Holmes. Ronald Dworkin suggests in "Law’s Empire" (1986), that the purpose of law "is to legitimate the community’s exercise of force."
Another Progressive, John Rawls, has argued — in "A Theory of Justice" (1971)—that rational decision makers must be "situated behind a veil of ignorance."
If the heirs of Wilson and Holmes gain complete control of the federal government in January, expect them to transform American laws and culture to reflect their ideological view of its best interests.
They will be unapologetic crypto-authoritarians who will deny the intrinsic value of individual Americans and will seek greater control over their lives.
To them, liberty will mean obedience to the uncertain will of Progressive elites.
George J. Marlin, a former executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, is the author of "The American Catholic Voter: Two Hundred Years of Political Impact," and "Christian Persecutions in the Middle East: A 21st Century Tragedy." He is chairman of Aid to the Church in Need-USA. Mr. Marlin also writes for TheCatholicThing.org and the Long Island Business News. Read George J. Marlin's Reports — More Here.
In Holmes’ Godless world, there can be no natural law, no first principle: "The jurist who believes in natural law seems to me to be in a naïve sense of mind." There is only legal positivism — authority based on force.
Without transcendent standards of morality, there are no "oughts," and, as a consequence, the dominant group in power has no limitations. Those with power implement whatever has economic, social, or political utility.
Public policy is whatever that dominant force wants, even if it is mob violence. Holmes said: "I am so skeptical as to our knowledge about the goodness or badness of laws that I have no practical criticism except what the crowd wants."
In this might-makes-right environment, the survival of political minorities depends on the sympathies of those in power. "All that can be expected from modern improvements," Holmes wrote, "is that legislation should easily and quickly, yet not too quickly, modify itself in accordance with the will of the de factosupreme power in the community, and that the spread of an educated sympathy should reduce the sacrifice of minorities to a minimum."
The Constitution, for Holmes, is only an experiment: "the claim of our especial code to respect [the Constitution] is simply that it exists, that it is the one to which we have become accustomed, and not that it represents an eternal principle."
Therefore, judicial decisions reflect nothing more than the workings of the moment. They have no ultimate or absolute value beyond "what is" at any moment in time.
There are no ultimate ends because that would infer an objective norm. Law is only descriptive, it describes what has happened, not what should happen.
This approach to the law did not die with Holmes. Ronald Dworkin suggests in "Law’s Empire" (1986), that the purpose of law "is to legitimate the community’s exercise of force."
Another Progressive, John Rawls, has argued — in "A Theory of Justice" (1971)—that rational decision makers must be "situated behind a veil of ignorance."
If the heirs of Wilson and Holmes gain complete control of the federal government in January, expect them to transform American laws and culture to reflect their ideological view of its best interests.
They will be unapologetic crypto-authoritarians who will deny the intrinsic value of individual Americans and will seek greater control over their lives.
To them, liberty will mean obedience to the uncertain will of Progressive elites.
https://thenewstalkers.com/vic-eldred/group_discuss/11370/the-roots-of-progressive-authoritarianism
I am a progressive libertarian.
And then you need to think about who has been in power for the last four years
And that up there
Once again, who is calling on people to rise up and lick his butt-hurt?
Wait, that sounds a lot like a democracy.
This is what Trump has been showing the world for the past four years. He is a lying, cheating sack of shit and tarnishes his supporters with his cobbled together histrionic stories.
MAGA, this article builds a strawman and then tears it down. Instead of asking a progressive what she thinks, it places words into progressive mouths and tries to extrapolate from there to some charicachured villain. It only works if the reader is gullible.
Wait, that sounds a lot like a democracy.”
We live in a constitutional Republic with a representative democracy at the local and state level and the US House at the federal level. The constitution was designed to be a check on power all around with balances so no one is too powerful. While it protects against having a king it also has checks and balances to limit direct Greek style democracy in favor of protections of individual and minority group rights against an overpowering majority. The founders distrusted the mob rule of undiluted direct democracy even more than they feared continuing with a monarchy.
“Instead of asking a progressive what she thinks, it places words into progressive mouths and tries to extrapolate from there to some charicachured villain.”
several progressives were quoted in the article, President Wilson, Justice Holmes, and others more contemporary.
Several progressives were mentioned, but I didn't see any quotes from present day, just cherry-picked half sentences from long ago with no context around them, only assertions from unknown actors.
If we could start with the Declaration of Independence , for instance. In an Independence Day speech he said this: ( Emphasis mine)
And from the same address:
So, he is not discounting and, in the words of the article you seeded rejecting the preamble, he sees the greater importance of the document from a historical point of view as a specific list of grievances.
The article is therefore flawed from its very first premise.
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS PROGRESSIVE AUTHORITARIANISM
That’s all it is to anyone who themselves is not a progressive. Authoritarian and progressivism are the same thing.
George J. Marlin clearly has shit for brains.
When one has nothing to say about the points made in an accurate and right on article or a counterpoint with which to debate what was written, one makes an insult or attack upon the author or the source or the seeder instead. In this case an assault on the intelligence of the articles author.
The author is right about everything he wrote.
When an article is so absurdly ridiculous, inaccurate and such complete and utter nonsense as this one is, it is perfectly logical and appropriate to conclude that the author of the article has shit for brains.
Another hero of the early Progressive movement, was U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendel Holmes (1841-1935)
Holmes, an atheist and sceptic, held that nothing can be known with certainty.
Based on his epistemology, Holmes concluded that absolute truths and, consequently, all religions are illusions. If there is no God then there is no design and man cannot really possess objective values. Holmes held that "truth was a majority vote of the nation that could lick all others;" not absolute, but relative to time and place.
In Holmes’ Godless world, there can be no natural law, no first principle: "The jurist who believes in natural law seems to me to be in a naïve sense of mind." There is only legal positivism — authority based on force.
Without transcendent standards of morality, there are no "oughts," and, as a consequence, the dominant group in power has no limitations. Those with power implement whatever has economic, social, or political utility.
Public policy is whatever that dominant force wants, even if it is mob violence. Holmes said: "I am so skeptical as to our knowledge about the goodness or badness of laws that I have no practical criticism except what the crowd wants."
In this might-makes-right environment, the survival of political minorities depends on the sympathies of those in power. "All that can be expected from modern improvements," Holmes wrote, "is that legislation should easily and quickly, yet not too quickly, modify itself in accordance with the will of the de facto supreme power in the community, and that the spread of an educated sympathy should reduce the sacrifice of minorities to a minimum."
The Constitution, for Holmes, is only an experiment: "the claim of our especial code to respect [the Constitution] is simply that it exists, that it is the one to which we have become accustomed, and not that it represents an eternal principle."
Therefore, judicial decisions reflect nothing more than the workings of the moment. They have no ultimate or absolute value beyond "what is" at any moment in time.
There are no ultimate ends because that would infer an objective norm. Law is only descriptive, it describes what has happened, not what should happen.
This approach to the law did not die with Holmes.
https://thenewstalkers.com/vic-eldred/group_discuss/11370/the-roots-of-progressive-authoritarianism?g=96#cm1471980
The roots of progressive authoritarianism????
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAH.
You wouldn't know authoritarianism if it hit you in the nose. You are watching it occur, not from progressives but from your very own president, and you point at someone else and have a hissy.
Congratulations. Welcome to Donlandia.
Classic.
The guiding principles of the Progressive power brokers will be moral relativism and equality of results. In the name of autocratic efficiency, they will eliminate the idea of common man democracy.
Their belief that there are no absolute truths, no unconditional principles or laws, and that customs must be replaced with concepts that are efficient, politically correct, and materialistic, is not new.
In fact, it has been the foundation of the Progressive ideology for over a hundred years.
The first Progressive president, Woodrow Wilson (1913-1920) rejected the preamble to the Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."
"If you want to understand the real Declaration of Independence," Wilson said, "do not repeat the preface."
For Wilson, the historian, Ronald Pestritto, has pointed out, "the state must move beyond the narrow and outdated role assigned to it by the founding generation. . . . Wilson was not concerned with the liberty of the individual. . . . Liberty, he explained, is not found in freedom from state action but instead in one’s obedience to the laws of the state. . . . [O]beying the state is the fulfillment of true freedom."
Wilson was devoted to using the power of the administrative state to transmute American society and the U.S. economy to conform to leftist ideological whims.
https://thenewstalkers.com/vic-eldred/group_discuss/11370/the-roots-of-progressive-authoritarianism?g=96#cm1472004
Does that mean he’s going to declare a national emergency and stay in office, throwing out the election unilaterally?
You tell me, he's your boss, not mine.
Trump has governed as a federalist which is the opposite of authoritarian.
That's not how he sees it.
“When somebody is the president of the United States, the authority is total and that’s the way it’s got to be. … It’s total. The governors know that. ” Donald J. Trump April 11, 2020
He has been as close to a dictator as any president and got reigned in only after he tried to do unlawful and unconstitutional things. I thought you realized that a president cannot rule by fiat. That is what the whole constitution is about. Three branches, not just one. Separation of powers and all that.
Have you ever wondered why he practically drools over the rulers of totalitarian or dictatorial countries? Xi Jinping he used to gush about, but blames him now for Coronavirus..... Erdogan he loves because he is president of a theoretically democratic state who got to put down his opposition by the thousands..... Can't you just see him, his toxic shock of hair bouncing as he gets off to some hot, Turkish authoritarian police action?? Because you know, Trump is the "Law and Order" president....
Don't fool yourself MAGA. Trump is for Trump and anything that stands in his way will be abused, pilloried, plundered of all potential for political gain and discarded.without a second thought. And then he will have breakfast
Trump 2024! MAGA Again!
If the Dems take control of the Senate, watch and learn....it's likely to get ugly.....and scary
We will become a 5150 nation in more ways than one...