Discover what the Progressive agenda is really all about.
IT’S WORTH CONSIDERING
While both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders try their best to prove that they are the real “progressive” candidate, their blind followers remain in the dark as to what they’re really talking about. The greatest weapon of progressives is historical ignorance. It’s worked for Hillary for years as she’s boldly touted Planned Parenthood’s founder, Margaret Sanger, as the woman she admires most. A little research would expose Sanger as an avowed eugenicist who viewed blacks as a sub-human race. Yet, Hillary continues to gain the support of most blacks in every election. The same is true of her support for the progressive “cause.” Maybe it’s because the term “progressive” sounds so positive to those who know nothing about it. Who wouldn’t want to be progressive?
Roots of Progressive Movement
Let’s take a brief look at the roots of the Progressive Movement (1890 to 1920), focusing on one of its most influential proponents, President Woodrow Wilson. For starters, Wilson’s policies reflected his deep contempt for the founding principles of our nation. Progress, in his mind, meant taking the nation beyond the principles reflected in the Declaration of Independence because, to him, they were no longer of any consequence. He wanted the nation to “progress” beyond these archaic notions, including those in our Constitution. To summarize his own words, “All that progressives ask or desire is permission — in an era when ‘development,’ ‘evolution,’ is the scientific word — to interpret the Constitution according to the Darwinian principle; all they ask is recognition of the fact that a nation is a living thing and not a machine.”
A Living, Breathing Document?
It’s the same view of the Constitution Bill Clinton held, as, time after time, he described the Constitution as a living,
breathing document. Translation: You can’t be confined to what it says. You must reinterpret it in light of our more “enlightened” society. It is, therefore, open to the interpretation of whatever party is in power. And since the Democrats are the only truly enlightened party, anything that can be done to maintain power must be done. Once the basic concept of progressivism has become wedded to the political class, it gives birth to its natural offspring—political correctness. This is why the progressive crowd and the PC crowd are usually one and the same.
Let’s return to our study of President Woodrow Wilson by examining his openly racist views. He believed in white superiority and the inferiority of colored people. He was so enthralled with D.W. Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation” movie, which glorified the Ku Klux Klan, that he invited various dignitaries to the White House to view it with him. During one private screening, He exclaimed: “It’s like writing history with lightning. And my only regret is that it is all so terribly true.” Despite the protests of the NAACP and the National Independent Political League after Wilson introduced racial segregation to the civil service, he vigorously defended it, arguing that segregation was in the interest of Negroes. Booker T. Washington wrote during Wilson’s first term, “I have never seen the colored people so discouraged and bitter as they are at the present time.”
The Beginning
The Progressive “ideal” didn’t begin with Wilson. Earlier, Theodore Roosevelt was also captivated by the notions of racial inferiority. He opposed voting rights for negroes (despite the 15th Amendment’s guarantee of such rights) on the grounds that the black race was still in its adolescence. The Progressive era began even before Roosevelt became President. It was the impetus behind the “separate but equal” doctrine that resulted from the “Jim Crow” laws that mandated the segregation of public schools, public places, public transportation, and the segregation of restrooms, restaurants, and drinking fountains for whites and blacks. (The fictional name “Jim Crow” was drawn from a popular 19th-century minstrel song that stereotyped African Americans. “Jim Crow” came to personify the system of government-sanctioned racial oppression and segregation in the United States.)
The destructive ideas of the Progressives weren’t limited to racism. They also included a disdain for free-market economics and a desire for vast new authority for the Federal Government over the American people including government action utilizing, when necessary, police power. This was coupled with a weakening of traditional checks on government power, especially regarding private property rights, which progressives held in contempt.
AS I SEE IT
Bernie and Hillary may claim that today’s progressivism is a far cry from that of Wilson and Roosevelt, but clearly,
they both have the same constitutional contempt as their predecessors. In 2007, in a Cato Institute lecture, Judge Janice Rogers Brown of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit warned us: People who are eager to weaken protection of private property in order to enable government to redistribute wealth will also want to weaken constitutional protections of free speech in order to empower government to redistribute ideas.
Hillary and Bernie
Both Hillary and Bernie have promoted the very things included in Judge Brown’s warning—carryovers from Wilson and Roosevelt. Both Hillary and Bernie have voted to place limitations on the Bill of Rights. They both favor amending the First Amendment to permit government regulation of political campaign speech. Bernie, of course, has mixed in a heavy dose of socialism into his progressive mixture, resulting in 2016’s best political joke so far. “In the Bernie Sanders drinking game, every time he mentions a free government program, you drink someone else’s beer.”
Both would deny that they share their predecessors’ racial views, but I’m still waiting to hear one thing that either has done for the black community except for making it more dependent on the government. The progressives feel that the black community owes them for all the entitlements they continue to receive. Forget about jobs and bettering yourself. Just continue to vote for them and the handouts will keep coming.
The scary thing is that if the followers of Bernie and Hillary learned the truth, it probably wouldn’t change a thing. Such is the state of politics in America, but we must not stop trying to turn things around.
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ON THE LIGHTER SIDE
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