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IPFS News Link • Philosophy: Liberalism

Progressives, Left and Right by Jeff Deist

• LewRockwell.Com - Jeff Deist

I recently was invited to speak at the annual convention of the Texas Libertarian Party and was struck by how libertarians cling to an outdated and counterproductive conception of the political landscape. In particular, many libertarians remain wedded to a misguided understanding of what the threat to liberty really is, where it comes from, and thus how we ought to fight against it.

That's why we're still saddled with clichéd 1980s phrases like "neither Left nor Right," "low-tax liberals," and even the cringeworthy "capitalist means, socialist ends"—all in evidence among the literature describing libertarianism on tables in the convention hall.

It is, of course, a virtue and a defining feature that liberty is neither left nor right. Libertarianism per se says nothing about outcomes, about whether a more libertarian society would be more culturally conservative or liberal, more traditional or secular, more egalitarian or stratified, or anything else. Libertarianism is anti-state and pro-private property. Nothing more, nothing less.

But we should not conflate the ideological problems with progressivism and conservatism with the actual threat posed by each. Progressivism has been the overwhelming force in western politics for the last 100 years. Political progressives—defined not by their party, but by their desire to remake man into a more obedient political animal, absolutely dominated the 20th century.

In every meaningful way, progressives control politics, government, business, and culture in America and the west. The 20th century was so irretrievably progressive that we've stopped paying attention to the baseline state all around us. Thanks to that progressive century—a century of war and socialism—government has become like the furniture or potted plants around us: we're so accustomed to it we no longer even see it.

Consider:

Progressives overwhelmingly control both major political parties in the US;

Progressives control the federal judiciary, along with all federal departments and agencies;

Progressives dominate academia, universities, and K-12 education, both government and private;

Progressives run the American Medical Association and the American Bar Association, and thus, the traditionally "conservative" professions of medicine and law are now steered leftward;

Major corporations, both global and domestic, are run by progressives. Their boards are progressives. Their corporate branding and messaging is progressive;

Wall Street is progressive;

Silicon Valley and the tech industry are dominated by progressives, from Google to Apple to Microsoft;

Progressives overwhelmingly control traditional media, including broadcast news and print publications (virtually all journalists self-identify as progressive);

Progressives overwhelmingly run important social media outlets like Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr;

Progressives run Hollywood: they hold sway over the film, TV, and video industries, including the growing market for streaming content from HBO, Netflix, Hulu, and others; and

All major religious institutions in the west, from the Vatican to mainline Protestant churches to virtually all synagogues, are now thoroughly progressive both politically and doctrinally.

Of course, progressivism virtually always means left progressivism. While there are right-wing progressives (neoconservatives) with grandiose ideas about government and human nature, most of them came from and will comfortably return to the Left when it suits them. And left-progressives largely have co-opted neoconservative foreign policy prescriptions for their own (hence, Trump running to Hillary's left on Middle east issues).

Let's be clear about supposed conservatives like George W. Bush, Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, & company: they're all progressives. Sheldon Adelson, Rupert Murdoch, and Fox News are progressive. They all want the government to do something rather than refrain from doing something. Their party label is irrelevant, as is their positioning of themselves slightly to the right of Obama regarding the rate at which the state grows in size and scope.

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