What is Progressivism? Pt. 1

Read the original post by Anders Ibsen and further comments on the Young People For Blog.

August 28, 2008

In their earlier posts, Patrick St. John and Jason Richberg began a conversation that I think is long overdue: what the heck is Progressivism?

Our first step in analyzing or creating any political ideology is identifying its core assumptions. These come down to two key questions:

1. What is human nature?

2. What is the role of government?

From these answers come all the different principles, value statements and policy positions that compose the movement's ideology. But before we delve into Progressivism, let's contrast what are about to articulate with what we already know about our rivals on the Right.

Scientists increasingly believe that there are cognitive differences between liberal and conservative brains that transcend environmental factors (race, class, gender, etc.). Conservatives are more likely to cling stubbornly to one course of action, even in the face of changing circumstances; liberals are much more likely to adapt their beliefs or actions when new information or circumstances come into play.

It has been empirically proven that conservatives are happier than liberals in the face of social inequality. The same situation (let's say, unequal pay for female workers) produces different emotional reactions: liberals become outraged at a system they hold to be discriminatory; conservatives become apathetic to the victim's suffering, defend the system as fair, and frequently display hostility towards the victim herself.

In short, the conservative individual is hard-wired on a biological level to be especially fearful and resistant to changing circumstances, and to rationalize away the suffering of others.

Fear and greed.

Conservatism as an ideology follows suit. Returning to the two questions, the Right's cardinal assumptions become apparent:

1. People are selfish individualists.

2. Every man for himself.

The economist John Kenneth Galbraith couldn't have said it better: "The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."

The earliest liberal thinkers, Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, saw people as isolated individualists, ready to screw their neighbors over at the first opportunity. To the godfathers of classical liberalism, all government was meant to do was keep the peace and protect private property from the savagery of our neighbors. This idea of the night-watchman state lasted well throughout American history into the Gilded Age, until the Great Depression proved it utterly wrong. Government must do something.

The legacy of the New Deal - and the idea that proactive government is a necessity for a just society - permanently altered all American ideologies. But it impacted Conservatism in the most ironic of ways: the universal acceptance of the welfare state forced Conservatism to become even more self-centered.

The painful truth for our right-of-center counterparts is that everyone wants government. Even conservatives. Very few people actually want to give away roads, public schools, Social Security or medical first-responders.

Conservatives really don't oppose government at all. They want the benefits of safety and order (not to mention the government intervention required to enforce their moral codes), just like everyone else. What they truly oppose is the concept of society itself.

The social compact of mutual obligation, responsibility and respect between equals is utterly lost to a conservative. Instead, the Right rebels against the principles of the liberal state while clinging desperately to it: conservatives want all the benefits of the system, but feel morally outraged at the idea that they are somehow responsible for it.

Conservatives consciously espouse a belief in limited government; but what they unconsciously believe is that government is a moral arbiter that should reward the worthy. Look no further than Too Big To Fail, the idea that it is paramount for government to bail out multi-billion dollar corporations when they sink. American Conservatism has tangled up social hierarchy and personal morality into a circle argument in which one becomes evidence of the other.

Conservative governance is neither conservative nor governance, but a system of redistribution and apologism - a redistribution of wealth and power to the wealthy and powerful, and an antisocial ideology of self-congratulation and scorn. Our power as the majority may be vast, but it is nothing, so long as the creed of righteous selfishness goes unchallenged.