The Progressives Three Card Monte Words Game.

[APACHERAT]

Excerpt:

>" Racial politics is the progressives’ bread and butter; their quest for power was born from racism. Over the years, their tactics have changed but their object hasn’t. They obtain power by dividing – by race, by gender, by anything they can. They create victims, exploit them by claiming to be their champion, get votes, advance their agenda and gain power. But they never solve problems; they only exploit them. Ask the black community how 50-plus years of near blind loyalty to progressives has worked out for them.

The only place the tools of division are irrelevant to progressives is in their leadership. If you’re about advancing the agenda, for “the cause,” that’s all that matters. Race hustlers such as Al Sharpton fit right in, and no one says a word about Michael Moore earning tens of millions of dollars decrying the accumulation of wealth by others.

Being a progressive is a get-out-of-hypocrisy free card for damn-near anything. It’s the red queen we are constantly searching for but never finding in this never ending game of three-card Monte we keep playing with progressives. If we don’t reclaim the language we will keep losing...."<

Keep on reading from the begaining.-> Progressives

 

[Paschendale]

Is it so strange to think that maybe, just maybe, progressives aren't all evil pathological liars and actually mean what they say? If you have to assume some kind of malicious conspiracy on the part of your opponents to make your point, then it's not much of a point.

 

[Fiddytree]

This essay does little to explain the problems of progressivism in recent times, nor does it do a particularly good job at explaining it in the past. On top of that, it connects the progressive era to the 21st century far too loosely. In other words, par for the course for a radio show host.

 

[APACHERAT]

Is it so strange to think that maybe, just maybe, progressives aren't all evil pathological liars and actually mean what they say? If you have to assume some kind of malicious conspiracy on the part of your opponents to make your point, then it's not much of a point.

I know there are some true progressives just like true libertarians to the max (extreme) who really believe and it's in their hearts. I know a few and they are close friends and we don't argue, we both listen to each other. The difference between these real believers they aren't playing word games and they aren't trying to force me or others to adopt to their ideology.

Personally I believe those who hide behind the progressive label today aren't true progressives but something else, something more sinister and that's why they chose the progressive label to hide behind.

How much in common do those who call themselves progressives today have with Theodore Roosevelt ?

If Teddy Roosevelt were have never been a progressive and ran on the Progressive's Bull Moose Party the left today would be calling Teddy just another nativist, racist, nationalist, moose killing, exnophobic Republican.

But the radical left needs that progressive label to hide behind to further their radical agenda so they will try to claim Teddy Roosevelt as one of their own.

BTW: What ever happened to all of the American reactionaries, where did they go ? I think they all died of old age.

 

[Paschendale]

No one is trying to force you to adopt anything. They're just not letting your grossly mistaken ideology dictate policy in this country. How you feel about that doesn't matter. And you're still relying on assuming lots of malice and deceit on the part of progressives. Real people don't act like that. If you have to pretend that your opponents are cartoon characters, then you have nothing valuable to say.

 

[APACHERAT]

This essay does little to explain the problems of progressivism in recent times, nor does it do a particularly good job at explaining it in the past. On top of that, it connects the progressive era to the 21st century far too loosely. In other words, par for the course for a radio show host.

Fiddytree, you seem to be more knowledgeable of the American Progressives and the progressive era in America than most. How much in common do the progressives of today (or would it be more accurate to call them neo-progressives) compared to the real progressives who started the movement ?

What do you think, should I post a link to the progressives Bull Party platform, the Dillingham Commission Report to Congress and Theodore Roosevelts "Hyphenated-American" speech ? The later having to do with word games being used for political agendas, to divide America which Roosevelt didn't go for.
Why not. The Dillingham Commission Report is a problem because it's 50 volumes and only small excerpts have been digitalized and is on the web. But it's what Americas immigration policies were based upon until 1965.

Progressive Party Platform, 1912 . TR, The Story of Theodore Roosevelt . WGBH American Experience | PBS

Reaganite: Teddy Roosevelt: "No Room in This Country for Hyphenated Americans"

Full speech.-> www.theodore-roosevelt.com/images/research/txtspeeches/672.pdf

UVM History Review vol. 6 Dec. 1994: Lund

Open Collections Program: Immigration to the US, Dillingham Commission (1907-1910)

 

[Fiddytree]

The first lesson is that taking progressives from the early 1900s and transplanting them on the current political spectrum would be much the same as taking explicit conservatives of the Guilded Age and asking them to get along with even most conservatives today. You'll run into severe generational, social, and political differences. It's the sort of thing you rarely want to bother with. For instance, conservatives of the Progressive Era thought protectionism as well as the independence of the Supreme Court (along with many other anti-democratic viewpoints) was a good thing. Try making that same point today. It won't work. Yet we call both groups of people living in different time periods, as being conservatives.

With regard to hyphenated Americans, you would have to consider that progressives actually represent a great many groups with different ideologies. Folks like Woodrow Wilson and Roosevelt are not going to have the same perspective that many Italian, Irish, eastern europeans would have had. Many immigrants wanted to mold into the American process, but many simply did not, and were also progressives. The motivations of many different progressives are quite varied. Historians have rarely able to gain consensus on this matter since Charles Beard. I think that should humble a lot of commentators trying to look back into the past to answer contemporary problems.