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Essay: Old progressives, new "right" (view source)
Revision as of 01:45, March 24, 2023
, 01:45, March 24, 2023Created page with "{{Essay By|LT}} One of the remarkable, or rather unremarkable political transformations within less than the past decade was the shift of mainstream "right-wing politics" away..."
{{Essay By|LT}}
One of the remarkable, or rather unremarkable political transformations within less than the past decade was the shift of mainstream "right-wing politics" away from classical liberalism, individualism, freedom, and towards hedonistic government activism. At one point caricatured as the stooge of big business unconcerned with the "common people," the right soon competed with the left for the image of populism against the elites, bringing about the destruction of its old, traditional, or shall we say ''conservative'' principles in whoring after the wondrous secular civil power.
It doesn't take watching more than several segments of the [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0m07O_zgd-M House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing against TikTok's CEO] to see what the Republican Party has become: a sack of cloaked progressives in silly hoods. The supposed "concerns" are abused to perpetrate a naked witch hunt and provide a basis for statist repression of individual freedom, insulting citizens as idiots who must heed the advice of enlightened politicians who purportedly look out after their best interest.
Perhaps some view the government battle against TikTok as akin to the anti-Communist crusades of McCarthyism. I would argue this as a false equivalence, as cultural problems are outside the concern of the federal government. Had the State Department or U.S. Army legitimately been infiltrated by Communists, federal action would be swiftly warranted. However, the problem of societal moral decay rests solely on the incompetence of parents to protect their own children. By transferring priority responsibilities of protection to the government, parents are mocked as ''incapable'' of shielding their own children.
The modern-day GOP under populism is paralleling the Progressive Movement a century ago. Read for yourself what [https://ohiohistorycentral.org/w/Progressive_Movement Ohio History Central says about old Progressives]:
{{cquote|While Progressives enacted numerous positive reforms, some of their goals were questionable. While they did seek to make the United States government more democratic and to protect U.S. workers, they also sought to force their social and political beliefs on others. Progressives opposed immigration and enacted several immigration restrictions during the 1920s. Progressives also tried to force immigrants to adopt Progressive moral beliefs. One way they tried to accomplish this was through settlement houses. Settlement houses existed in most major cities during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They were places where immigrants could go to receive free food, clothing, job training, and educational classes. While all of these items greatly helped immigrants, Progressives also used the settlement houses to convince immigrants to adopt Progressive beliefs, causing the foreigners to forsake their own culture. During the 1920s, many Progressives also joined the Ku Klux Klan, a self-proclaimed religious group that was to enforce morality, based on Progressive beliefs, on other people.}}
[https://www.uscis.gov/archive/buy-american-and-hire-american-putting-american-workers-first Protecting U.S. workers against foreign competition]... [https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/01/jeff-sessions-1924-immigration/512591/ immigration restriction]... sound familiar? It's all the same blather, whether it's the old Progressives or the insurgent "right-wing populists." Also noteworthy, as pointed out by [https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/08/huey-long-was-wrong/ National Review], was the heaping praise fringe "right-wing" populists gave for... [[Huey Long]], the leading left-wing rabble-rouser of the early 1930s. Anyone researching the dark rabbit hole of their media shouldn't find it hard to see their praise for [[Theodore Roosevelt]], a leading progressive of his time who quarreled with the semi-reactionary [https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1903/03/14/101980857.pdf Platt Machine] ran by conservative [[Stalwart Republicans|Stalwart Republican]] [[Thomas C. Platt]]. In fact, there's an entire "right-wing populist" organization calling itself the [https://archive.is/Ge4Zr Bull Moose Project]; how telling!
One of the remarkable, or rather unremarkable political transformations within less than the past decade was the shift of mainstream "right-wing politics" away from classical liberalism, individualism, freedom, and towards hedonistic government activism. At one point caricatured as the stooge of big business unconcerned with the "common people," the right soon competed with the left for the image of populism against the elites, bringing about the destruction of its old, traditional, or shall we say ''conservative'' principles in whoring after the wondrous secular civil power.
It doesn't take watching more than several segments of the [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0m07O_zgd-M House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing against TikTok's CEO] to see what the Republican Party has become: a sack of cloaked progressives in silly hoods. The supposed "concerns" are abused to perpetrate a naked witch hunt and provide a basis for statist repression of individual freedom, insulting citizens as idiots who must heed the advice of enlightened politicians who purportedly look out after their best interest.
Perhaps some view the government battle against TikTok as akin to the anti-Communist crusades of McCarthyism. I would argue this as a false equivalence, as cultural problems are outside the concern of the federal government. Had the State Department or U.S. Army legitimately been infiltrated by Communists, federal action would be swiftly warranted. However, the problem of societal moral decay rests solely on the incompetence of parents to protect their own children. By transferring priority responsibilities of protection to the government, parents are mocked as ''incapable'' of shielding their own children.
The modern-day GOP under populism is paralleling the Progressive Movement a century ago. Read for yourself what [https://ohiohistorycentral.org/w/Progressive_Movement Ohio History Central says about old Progressives]:
{{cquote|While Progressives enacted numerous positive reforms, some of their goals were questionable. While they did seek to make the United States government more democratic and to protect U.S. workers, they also sought to force their social and political beliefs on others. Progressives opposed immigration and enacted several immigration restrictions during the 1920s. Progressives also tried to force immigrants to adopt Progressive moral beliefs. One way they tried to accomplish this was through settlement houses. Settlement houses existed in most major cities during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They were places where immigrants could go to receive free food, clothing, job training, and educational classes. While all of these items greatly helped immigrants, Progressives also used the settlement houses to convince immigrants to adopt Progressive beliefs, causing the foreigners to forsake their own culture. During the 1920s, many Progressives also joined the Ku Klux Klan, a self-proclaimed religious group that was to enforce morality, based on Progressive beliefs, on other people.}}
[https://www.uscis.gov/archive/buy-american-and-hire-american-putting-american-workers-first Protecting U.S. workers against foreign competition]... [https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/01/jeff-sessions-1924-immigration/512591/ immigration restriction]... sound familiar? It's all the same blather, whether it's the old Progressives or the insurgent "right-wing populists." Also noteworthy, as pointed out by [https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/08/huey-long-was-wrong/ National Review], was the heaping praise fringe "right-wing" populists gave for... [[Huey Long]], the leading left-wing rabble-rouser of the early 1930s. Anyone researching the dark rabbit hole of their media shouldn't find it hard to see their praise for [[Theodore Roosevelt]], a leading progressive of his time who quarreled with the semi-reactionary [https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1903/03/14/101980857.pdf Platt Machine] ran by conservative [[Stalwart Republicans|Stalwart Republican]] [[Thomas C. Platt]]. In fact, there's an entire "right-wing populist" organization calling itself the [https://archive.is/Ge4Zr Bull Moose Project]; how telling!