“Progress” Will Destroy Us … If We Let It

We live in dystopian times. At least intellectually and psychologically, if not (yet) materially. Not imposed by the government, as Orwell predicted in “1984”. More because of our own faulty thinking and assumptions — as Ayn Rand showed us in her books “The Fountainhead” and “Atlas Shrugged”.

Donald Trump is not the reason for it. He’s actually the antidote. He speaks in plain, objective terms that are usually correct. To do that today, you have to be crazy, at least if “crazy” means (as it does to most people) off the statistical norm.

President Trump SEEMS insane because what now passes for sanity has become so ludicrous.

It’s interesting that Democrats and leftists no longer call themselves “liberal”. Perhaps even they are too honest to suggest they’re anything like liberal? I doubt that’s it. But it’s still interesting. And revealing.

“Liberal” refers to being tolerant. To lifting restraints. To minimizing control, not maximizing it. To leaving others alone. To letting people keep the product of their efforts, staying off their private property, and refusing to judge them — at least in any political context, as opposed to a moral or intellectually evaluative one.

Nothing like that describes today’s leftists. They are ALL the things they claim Donald Trump is — dictatorial, judgmental, intolerant, even totalitarian. They are horrible, mean people, at least most of them.

They want to be known as “progressive”. They sneak in a false idea here: That “progress” is automatically and always right and good. If you’re against them, they imply, then you’re against progress; and progress is ALWAYS good, right?

But progress is not automatically always right and good. Cancer, left unchecked, is progressive. Other diseases progress too. Insanity progresses. Bad ideas and practices in business or personal life drive out good ones, in progressive fashion. Most of us consider that a BAD thing.

Given the level of mistrust most non-politicians have toward ALL career politicians, the prospect of any career politician promising “progress” should call to mind books like “1984” and “Atlas Shrugged”. Yet, for the most part — Donald Trump excepted — most of us keep voting them in. That’s why I say: The problem is us, or at least most of us. Not the imbeciles we give power. They would not be there without most of us.

In the United States, the “progressive” movement was born early in the 20th Century. It ushered in the Federal Reserve, which set the stage for our heavily government-run, boom-and-bust economy (read economists like Ludwig von Mises and the contemporary George Reisman). It also ushered in the income tax. It was the beginning of the mentality that today has led to calls for 90 percent tax rates; nationalization of medical care and many other industries; the literal end of civilization called the “Green New Deal”; and outright repeal of the Second Amendment. Oh, and forget about the First Amendment too — at least if you disagree with a “progressive”.

If we wish to survive, we must immediately stop — and reverse — all “progress”. At least as progress is presently defined.

 

 

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