Why should anyone remain progressive as they get toward the later chapters of their story? I thought about that this week, and I came up with three that seem compelling to me. I’m going to lay out my case here. See how much of it you share, and let me know what you think.
REASON 1: The Past
The Age of Enlightenment began around 1715 and centered around the idea that the greatest achievements could be accomplished by the utilization of reason and evidence provided by the senses. Following such a path as the primary source of knowledge would inevitably lead to higher ideals such as liberty, progress, toleration, a sense of brotherhood and eventually to constitutional government and even the separation by necessity of church and state. Such thinking would lead directly to revolution in both France and the British colonies in America, both seeking to incorporate these ideals into their reconfigured or newfound states. It was both treasonous and heretical to its core and required revolution for it to wrestle any legitimacy among the nations of the world. It was thoroughly predictable as a climax to the scientific revolution that had preceded it. New discoveries led to more of the same, and the clear wisdom of the advancements being made in science revealed the absurdity of the justification for monarchical governing schemes, revealing them for what they had always been: surgical ways to maintain power over the mass of the great unwashed.
The United States was born in the cauldron of Enlightenment thinking. It had been an attempt to create a governing process that would honor the best ideas, most artfully argued and deftly supported through reasoned argument among rivals, all for the benefit of the common good. Forged in the very heart of the Enlightenment period, the great experiment had lofty ideals.
The fact that the experiment stumbled badly right out of the gate is not the point of this homage to our beginnings. The point was it was an attempt to have government become truly representative of the very people it sought to govern, rather than a government entirely removed from the governed. Monarchies were not inclined to be influenced by the needs of an entrenched serf class, but this was new. Decisions were to be made on the basis of reasoned argument and policies would be intended to be in service to the greater good. Quickly our rich and powerful began to compromise the ideals we had formed under, but nonetheless these were the ideals under which we were formed. As the Three-Fifths Compromise had proven, wisdom and knowledge would not always win the debate and compromise for the short term gain would be a recurring theme in American governance, but it was never completely forgotten. The greatest achievements in the governing of people in the United States has always been led by progressives.
Republicans led the progressives into an all-or-nothing Civil War over the abolition of slavery, and following the winning of that war came a ferocious pendulum swing back to a new way of compromising the humanity of some of our citizens. It would last in some form or another for nearly a hundred years, but suffrage for black men, at least on paper based on the new 14th and 15th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, had been won.
Women would earn their suffrage in 1920, once again thanks to progressives who chose to recognize their humanity over their chattel value. Another Amendment, the 19th, would pass to protect their voting rights. Though they continue to fight to be seen as equals in a patriarchal landscape, they could now use their vote to fight for that equality, and it was opposed by conservatives all along the way.
Throughout the period from the beginning of the 20th century through the late 1920’s business interests thoroughly dominated economic policy and eventually ran an overheated and unregulated country over a cliff and into a deep depression. Over a 14 year span FDR guided the country through a sheer force of will and a national psyche weakened by desperation toward a new beginning. Innovative ideas like the minimum wage and Social Security and Medicare emerged and federal subsidization of the labor market began to right the ship before the ultimate cure came with the aftermath of WWII. Progressives continued to wield enormous influence after the war as major subsidies for returning soldiers and sailors helped them to achieve housing and education that had never before been within reach. Our manufacturing base exploded as the rest of the world struggled to rebuild after a decade of cataclysm, and a very progressive tax system made it far more lucrative for businesses to invest in their infrastructure and labor force than to pay the 80-90% tax rates they faced otherwise, and jobs were plentiful and paid well. The economic Golden Era of the United States was upon us, and the progressives were responsible. Again. It would take a concerted effort by conservatives to undermine the gains of this 30 year stretch. A story for another time.
Workers rights have been fought for throughout our history with workers demanding the recognition of their basic humanity starting in the 1600’s. Progressives have been the on the front lines in the creation of labor as a political force, and conservatives have been fighting them all along the way. Strikes and organization are the main tools that have been utilized to imagine that people dependent on employers for survival are not worthless sheep, disposable consumables. Do you work a 40 hour week, have paid vacations, holiday pay? Is your 8 year old not working a 60 hour a week manual labor job? Are there safety regulations at your workplace? Do you have a process to address grievances at your job? Thank a progressive. Conservatives have fought all of these things, and at times in our history they have done so with deadly force.
Suffrage for people of color in this country had largely been theoretical, and as Jim Crow had become the accepted law in half of the country, a new generation began to emerge after the war that found this no longer tolerable. The Civil Rights movement began in the 50’s and would rage for the better part of twenty years, leading to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and another the following year. Predictably they were guided by the progressive wing of the Democratic Party with the courageous self-awareness of the political consequences of standing for human justice, switching places with the Republican Party who made the cynical judgement to court the now ostracized bigots in the South. They have remained on that path to this day.
Civil rights, women’s rights, workers rights, gay rights, immigrants rights, prisoner’s rights. All progressive causes, all with great victories that can be pointed to. Not final victories. Conservatives have not conceded anything and are not likely to, but the great advancements in our country, both in human rights and economic advancement have come from the blood, sweat and tears of progressives. Conservatives stood against every one of these things. The past tells us that if you want to make America great again, be a progressive to your dying day.
REASON 2: The Present
Over the past 40 years conservatives have made huge political gains utilizing one of the most basic of political tools. Truth has been manipulated and often discarded to turn progressivism into a pejorative term, equating the ideals of collective action toward a more universal vision of justice to a treasonous form of anti-Americanism. With the death of the Fairness Doctrine in broadcasting, the ability to disseminate outright falsehoods became a golden opportunity to sell a conservative world view that flew in the face of facts and data. Reagan used it to fool the public about a trickle-down economic policy that would seed the very rich who would shower benefits on those below. It was known to be a cynical lie even at the time among serious economists, but the economy as a whole had never been the point. Justification for a money grab was the point, and it worked beautifully. The power of the new media had been established and the irresponsible encouragement of the growth of a radical right wing had begun.
As I write this we are seeing the results of this myopic power grab.
Because of the abandonment of any dedication to truth, we have seen an unapologetic devotion to lies. Kellyanne Conway famously defined this phenomenon when she made the concept of “alternative facts” one that had legitimacy to a huge percentage of the population. The term entered the national lexicon. Facts no longer garnered any respect in the formation of beliefs and thus policy. A complete rejection of facts as the tools for good decision making had become justified.
In today’s environment, the Enlightenment has come to an end. It’s concepts are quaint, the idea that the truth might just actually set us free has become antiquated, naive. Nearly half of our population have embraced the new reality, that facts are servants not masters.
With “news” organizations no longer tethered to truth, conspiracy theories have become a booming economy. No absurdity is too much and the resulting ability to manipulate the public has had tragic consequences for our country. Gunmen advance on the basements of buildings that have no basements to liberate enslaved children that don’t exist. When all of this is reported it has no effect on those that had believed this was a noble attempt to fight back against liberal excess. The facts are simply not relevant to a belief system. They are no longer related to each other.
The natural result of a constant flow of misinformation had a climax on January 6th, as the misinformed victims of an unscrupulous administration and supporting media propaganda arm stormed our Capital to overturn an election that the facts had validated as one of the most secure in our history. Anywhere the facts had been brought to institutions that could evaluate them without prejudice, they had supported the notion that systemic fraud had not occurred. Democratic judges, Republican judges, Trump appointed judges had all rejected the notion that voter fraud had any influence on the defeat of the 45th POTUS. None of that mattered. The Big Lie had been created by the administration, disseminated by the right wing media and absorbed and accepted by their indoctrinated victims.
The same anti-truth machine has served to camouflage the clear systemic racism that leaves people of color in the unenviable position of having to have survival strategies to go out into the American landscape. Strategies that are taught from one generation to the next. These critical life-coaching sessions simply do not occur over the kitchen tables of white people. They are unnecessary. Right wing media has turned black survival into an attack on law enforcement.
As the numbers of people that will willingly vote Republican begins to dwindle, the focus of the party is to eliminate those votes that don’t benefit them. That is the current battleground. The very voting franchise itself. For the current iteration of the Republican Party it is really their only issue. The conservatives are making the case that there are people that live in this country that don’t deserve the vote. As progressives have historically fought to expand the franchise to more and more people, creating a more representative government with each success, conservatives have fought just as hard to limit the right to those that will use it “correctly”. The Georgia Voting Rights law that passed recently has created a method for the reigning party to be able to reverse the results of a county or district that is “underperforming”. Not only are voters to be preemptively reduced, votes cast in a way that does not serve the power base now can be eliminated as well.
Progressives are fighting these trends in every way they can. They are worth fighting against regardless of your age.
REASON 3: The Future
Reason 2 points to a dystopian future for this country. The idea that absolute power corrupts absolutely is being turned on its head. It is the loss of power that is corrupting conservatism absolutely. It is the insistence that their power now has to be stolen from the people rather than reflect it should chill all of us to the bone. Power itself has become the goal, not power utilized to enact a greater idea. It is the devolution of a system back to a monarchical model, a top-down power structure that ignores the rights of the people. We are on the very brink of this becoming our future reality. It is the antithesis of what we had imagined we could be. It will be the end of the Great Experiment in self governance.
Our future also includes the coming inability for us to continue living on this planet. Climate change is not speculative, there is no reasonable alternative to the conclusions come to by the vast majority of scientists across the globe. All there is for a counter-narrative is a push back by a desperate petro-chemical industry to protect business. Business is the highest good to the conservative mind, and the propaganda machine has done everything it can to provide a cover of legitimacy for a lie that has been nearly unanimously disproven.
None of that matters to conservatives. The very nature of conservatism is to maintain the status quo, to reject change, to remain intransigent in the face of new information. The nature of progressivism is to react to new information that requires change. It has always been so.
When gunpowder led to the gun, the spear manufacturers objected. When the internal combustion engine made horseshoes less in demand, blacksmiths objected. In the end it would not matter as the advantages so outweighed the losses that the objections would be drowned out and finally eliminated. In both of those examples there have been unintended consequences, and progressives have reacted to that new information as well. Conservatives have insisted that those consequences should be ignored.
It has always been so. It will always be so.
Change happens. Change is unavoidable. How we react to change defines our success or failure in any given circumstance, from the most interpersonal example to examples of the policies of state. We ignore change at our own peril. It doesn’t go away because we choose to ignore or deny it. The change has consequences that fester and grow and in the case of climate change the indications are that will be catastrophic. The reduction in voting rights will be catastrophic to a representative republic.
If change is inevitable, then progressivism is right. It is also inevitable, and in fact it is necessary, because no amount of nostalgia for a mythical perfect era of our youth will make the reality of that era so, and no amount of rejection of the changing of circumstances will make those changes any less real.
If there is to be a future worth living in, progressives are not only important, they are literally imperative.
The past, present and future. Three great reasons to remain, or become, a progressive. Join us, won’t you?