An Insider’s View: The Sinister Rigidity of Upper-Middle-Class Progressivist America (Part 5)

Although some of them embrace various theologies, progressives are generally suspicious of religion. Those who do accept some manner of religious belief either tend toward institutions which place minimal intellectual commitments on participants (e.g., the Unitarian Universalist Church, or the leftist fringe of the Episcopal-Anglican communion), or they engage in some unique, self-generated, idiopathic spirituality.

Progressives distrust organized religion, and especially the organized religion of someone whose political views diverge from doctrinaire leftism.

The Judeo-Christian tradition, as it exists within Western Civilization, is a favorite target for progressives. It is assumed that such a religious belief system has a symbiotic relationship with racism, sexism, and bigotry of all sorts: in the mind of the progressive, racism causes religion, and religion causes racism.

This dogma is so deeply entrenched in the progressive mind that it is not shaken by allusions to, e.g., Martin Luther King’s founding of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in conjunction with the Montgomery bus boycott, or his collaboration with Billy Graham.

Likewise, the progressive’s belief that Christianity is evil is not shaken by the role of the Judeo-Christian tradition in the grand historical developments which led to the abolition of slavery and led to women’s suffrage.

When people diverge from the orthodox progressive view on any controversial social question, progressives routinely blame historical Christianity, despite the fact that large and significant numbers of Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and atheists also depart from the progressivist views on such social issues.

On religion and social issues, just as on economic matters, progressivists seem unable to see as reasonable any views except their own. The automatic attribution of racism and sexism to anyone who opposes the progressivist agenda reveals a lack of imagination.

Many progressivists also find it difficult to contemplate evidence which points to the failure of progressive policies - that programs designed to reduce poverty actually increase it, that programs designed to reduce crime really increase it, etc.

Progressivism is often characterized by the habit of dismissing both spirituality and liberty. It wrongly attributes all manner of evil to Western Civilization’s Judeo-Christian tradition, but denies the social good which this tradition accomplished. Likewise, it attributes both ill motives and ill effects to personal political liberty and to free markets, but refuses to acknowledge the opportunities which are thereby created.

An Insider’s View: The Sinister Rigidity of Upper-Middle-Class Progressivist America (Part 4)

To live and work in a community filled largely with people who identify themselves as ‘progressives’ is to gain a certain insight both into their world and into their worldview.

Many of them, on a personal level, are friendly and even kind.

Progressivism, however, manifests itself within them as a rigidity of thought. A significant number of them imagine that racism and a desire to inflict suffering on the lower classes are the only possible motives for endorsing lower tax rates.

They cannot entertain even as a remote possibility that a proposal to reduce taxes would be motivated by a sincere wish to ease the burdens on the middle and lower classes, and a desire to create economic opportunities which could lift workers out of the bottommost classes.

Likewise, many progressives cannot conceptualize that deregulation, e.g., the easing of zoning ordinances about which buildings might be constructed on which types of real estate, as a principle could provide opportunities for creative and self-empowered economic activity on the parts of individuals in a society.

Progressives often find it difficult to belief that regulation in the forms of various licenses or permits often constitutes an obstacle to creating opportunities - equal opportunities - for workers and entrepreneurs of any race. The opportunities created by deregulation are paths out of poverty.

It is probably worthwhile to attempt to make a distinction between hardcore progressives, on the one hand, and on the other hand, voters who vote in line with the progressive agenda because they’re surrounded almost exclusively by people and media which endorse it.

Many progressives are dismissive of “outside information that doesn’t support” their agendas and “their belief system,” in the words of an anonymous author on the “Alternet” website.

They cling tightly to the notion that anyone who opposes their candidates or legislative initiatives must be a racist. Anything introduced as evidence to the contrary will be dismissed a priori as false.

Progressives usually simply ignore the leadership and accomplishments of women and men like Condoleezza Rice, J.C. Watts, Herman Cain, Alan Keyes, and many others. On those rare occasions when the existence of such people is acknowledged, they are written off as bribed or brainwashed, or simply labeled Uncle Tom.

When deregulation and tax cuts create jobs for African-American workers and Hispanic workers, and create opportunities for Black entrepreneurs and Latino entrepreneurs, progressive media outlets simply ignore these events.

When private sector corporations, not government agencies, create a system to fund ‘entrepreneurs of color’ in downtown Detroit, and when that model is copied by business communities in other cities, progressives merely bemoan a lack of taxpayer funded initiatives to deal with a situation which the private sector is already in the process of fixing.

Certainly, it would not be fair to expect members of the progressivist movement to embrace the very views which they reject, and which their movement was designed to undermine. But in rational discourse, it would be sensible to expect that they should at least understand the internal logic of opposing views, if for no other reason than to better argue against them.

But progressives do not seem to truly understand the notion that a free market, as opposed to a crony or statist system, is the best source of equal opportunity for individuals of any race, religion, ethnicity, culture, gender, or other demographic variable.

Historically, deregulation has been the chief effective opponent of racism: eliminating ‘Jim Crow’ laws was a form of deregulation. Rosa Parks fought against government regulations about the riders of a government-owned transportation agency.

The fugitive slave laws were examples of positive legislation promoting racism. Getting rid of them was an example of deregulation. Segregation was legislated, and enforcing it was a government program.

An entrepreneur hopes to, and will be successful only as long as she or he does, manufacture the largest possible amount of high-quality product at low prices. A laissez-faire economy cannot and will not bother to look at the color of a person’s skin.

Progressives usually assume or believe that anyone who does not enthusiastically support their candidates or legislative initiatives is a racist or a misogynist.

There is nothing less racist than a free market. This is a concept with progressives cannot entertain or understand.