New lefty dream: A “Progressive” majority
by John
There is nothing our good friends on the left do better than giving the same old ideas they’ve always had new and cooler-sounding names. Once upon a time, they were communists. The Soviets and the Chinese managed to give Communism a dodgy rep, so they became socialists. Then socialist ideas went out of fashion and became distinctly uncool, so they became social democrats. A few of them, finding a new cloak for themselves, became Greens or environmentalists, being as how the implementation of green thinking conveniently requires the adoption of ideas also beloved by socialists, communists, and social democrats. Now, they’ve got a new one.
Left wingers are no longer socialists, in favour of collective societal action, they have evolved to become Progressives, in favour of progress. I can only imagine the controversy they are inviting with that one.
Those of us who are Conservatives, on the other hand, like our brothers and sisters and natural allies in the Libertarian movement, have never had to change our name. We’ve done ok by just opposing the same old ideas time and time again, regardless of what name the left is cloaking them in on a particular day.
Because that’s what astounds me. The names keep changing, but the ideas never do. It’s always the same old approach – restrict business. Regulate the economy. Raise taxes. Spend as much money as possible. Declare “education” the solution to every controversial issue, and use lack of it as a crutch to explain why people don’t agree with you.
My newly minted progressive friends, like the socialists and social democrats and Marxists who preceded them, live in the constant fear that somewhere, somehow, somebody is insufficiently regulated. Their approach to every calamity and failure is to not to ask who is to blame, but to ask what society can do to absolve itself of the blame. The answer usually involves extra regulation. It has been that way since Marx and Engels picked up their quills, and it will be that way long into the future.
Ironically, they do so whilst genuinely believing that they are on the side of the individual. This is accomplished through the magic trick of turning equality and freedom into the same thing. Left Wingers, sorry, Progressives, never make the argument, for example, that Gay people should be allowed to marry because it causes no harm and they should be free to do so. They make the argument that Gay people should be allowed to marry, because, Gosh darn it, those straight folks can marry and it’s just not fair.
Everything about the left is class envy. It’s what motivates the instinct to regulate and the instinct to blame. Equality is always measured by the gap between rich and poor, not the gap between the poor and destitution. Minimising that gap is the goal, and if that means making the rich less rich instead of making the poor less poor, so be it.
Now what I’d like to hear from my progressive buddies is this: What’s new? You’ve begun the process of changing your name and identity, but what are the new ideas? Will the rhetoric of the never ending class war be abandoned? Has the role of the state in your ideal world changed? Are there areas of society that we can now say, without hesitation, that never need to be regulated?
What is it? What’s the new idea?
Because if there isn’t one, then changing what you call yourselves is little more than an act of fraud against a public that has consistently, time and time again, rejected your ideas.
Comments
This is an extraordinary post. More extraordinary by the fact that the post it slags off is one that calls for new ideas. Which makes it rather odd to slag it off for not containing those same ideas.
Also, your assumption that I am, for example, in favour of gay marriage, is wrong. As is the assertion that such a campaign is necessarily left-wing.
Neil,
I wasn’t slagging off the substance of your post (which, as a call for broad left-wing unity, makes a lot of sense). I was slagging off the cosmetics of it. And making a point that rarely gets made. Your names change faster than your ideas.
I didn’t mean to make any assumptions about your positions on Gay marriage, or indeed any issue whatsoever. I was, rather, using that issue as an example of what differentiates left and right. I favour Gay Marriage because I think it does society no harm and as such, people should be free to do what they want. Most of the left wing groups, however, call it “marriage equality”.
J
Thanks for coming back John, and for clarifying.
As you yourself posted on twitter, the term progressive has been in used since the late 19th Century, and indeed the US magazine ‘The Progressive’ was established in 1909, since which it has been espousing the broad range of views you define as left-wing, and which could also be defined as liberal, socialist, unionist or centrist, depending on the topic under discussion.
Which hardly makes this a recent cosmetic development, and certainly not one unique to my post.
I think the gay-marriage/marriage-equality debate is a seperate and less relevant concern in this context. It’s more akin to the pro-choice/pro-life/pro-abortion/anti-life linguistic debate, and rather typical of anachronistic politics, regardless of the matter under consideration.
antagonistic, obviously, not anachronistic
Some labels on the Right: Christian Democrats, fusionism, capitalism, traditionalists, anti-communists, libertarians, neoconservatives, fascists even.
You could do this with labels on the Left and Right for ever. It’s disingenuous to suggest name changing is the preserve of one side. And it assumes that labels, where they last, retain their original usage – Conservative, like Socialist, being an example of words that haven’t.
I realise I haven’t answered any of the questions you’ve posed in the post, but then your description of the beliefs and motivations of people of the left do not come close to describing mine (me being of the Left), so your questions don’t apply.