Marching Backwards—Why Progressives are not Progressive

During last year’s primary campaign, Hillary Clinton confessed that she preferred to be considered a progressive rather than a liberal. In this, she is not alone. Many liberals feel the same way. They think of themselves as enlightened advocates of a new and more socially rewarding epoch that is just around the corner.
As the direct descendents of Karl Marx, most liberals are convinced that they are on the right side of history. They assume that their policies must inevitably prevail and that when they do we will all share in a more just, more satisfying, and more productive future. In their less guarded moments, they even conceive of this future in utopian terms, with total equality and universal love having become the norm.
There is only one thing wrong with this vision. It has nothing to do with reality. Liberals are not progressive; they are regressive. Liberalism is reactionary and seeks to return us to a romanticized past, not to cope with the actual challenges of the techno-commercial world we are destined to occupy.
Consider the evidence. President Obama tells us that he intends to relieve our current economic distress, but where does he find his inspiration? As most of us know, he finds it in Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s administration. For him, The Great Depression was a halcyon period when big-time spending and government control were the prescription for what ailed us. Of course, those days were the better part of a century ago.
Then there is the liberal Democrat mantra about how our worst problems were created by greedy capitalists. They, not over-reaching federal regulators, intentionally precipitated the present housing crisis. This attitude, however, harks back even farther in time. Marx would have been proud of the accusation. He too believed that greedy business people were at the base of almost every social problem. He too wished to see them overthrown
But the looking backwards is not finished. As the Middle Ages came to an end, monarchs across Europe sought to extend their control over the nations they ruled. This was the era of absolutism when Louis XIV of France famously proclaimed that he was the state. He, and his peers, thought of themselves parental figures who had the right—indeed the duty—to manage everything they possibly could. They knew best, and it was therefore up to the governed to obey.
Among other things, these absolutists distributed monopolies to their favorites. Only a friend of the king could import herring or acquire land in Virginia. Now Obama is the one distributing government favors. Despite claiming that he didn’t want to control the automobile industry, he is currently prompting his minions to turn over controlling interests in GM and Chrysler to his buddies in the UAW. He has similarly encouraged Timothy Geithner to extend his tentacles into every crevasse of the financial industry, whether invited or not.
Come to think of it, hasn’t Obama appointed Czars to control everything from the environment to drug enforcement? Imagine what he will be able to do if he gets his hands on the health care industry or the energy sector of the economy.
But there is still more of this liberal marching to the rear. How many people remember Obama’s acceptance speech at the Democratic nominating convention where he said, “we must…rise or fall as one nation; [our] fundamental belief [must be] that I am my brother’s keeper; I am my sister’s keeper.” In other words, Obama and his colleagues want to be our keepers. This, of course, brings us back to Biblical times. Perhaps he thinks of himself as the new Moses.
Actually, it takes us back even farther to hunter-gatherer times. Liberal leaders seem to think of themselves as village elders who are responsible for protecting us from ourselves. In their view, they have the expertise and the maturity, whereas the rest of us are like children who need to be led by our betters.
Liberals have told us many lies, but perhaps none is bigger than the canard that they are progressive. They are nothing of the sort. They do not have new ideas, but merely very old one’s that they have skillfully repackaging as innovative.
Melvyn L. Fein. Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology
Kennesaw State University