Progressives are individuals who are ostensibly working within the
republic and its capitalist system, while their real goal is to
subvert it, weakening its foundation, the Constitution of the
United States of America, and amending it to reflect
the Marxist-Socialist philosophy described as Progressivism.
Progressives contend that Progressivism is rooted in three core
principles: "Fighting for economic justice and security
for all; Protecting and preserving civil rights and civil
liberties; and Promoting global peace and security."
That's what they say -- it sounds great -- but it's not what
they intend.
Everything you need to know about Progressives and Progressivism
can be learned from visiting the Progressive Democrats of
America's
Advisory Board page which features the bios of 25 of the
leftiest leftists in America.
In the United States House of Representatives, these people are
all Democrats and they all
belong to the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC), that was established in
the early 1990's. The 83 members of the Progressive
Caucus also belong to the
Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), a confederation of socialists formed in 1983 when
a splinter group of the Socialist Party (Michael Harrington's
Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee, DSOC) merged with the
Students for a Democratic Society's (SDS) splinter group, the
New American Movement (NAM).
The main aim of DSA was to convert the Democratic Party into
a social democratic organization. to that end, during the
early 1990's, the DSA hosted the Progressive Caucus' website,
which contained the names of its members. When the word
got out, all the information regarding the Progressive Caucus
vanished. These congress critters don't want you to know
their true colors (red).
The DSA has many celebrity members, including feminist Gloria
Steinem, actor Ed Asner, black activist Cornel West, and
libertarian socialist Noam Chomsky. It is also the chief
American member group of the
Socialist International, which
includes the British Labour Party and the French Parti
Socialiste.
Note: This list needs to be updated after the
2010 elections
The New Zeal blog has 19 links to articles it has produced about
Barack Obama's long term association with the Democratic Socialists of
America (DSA).
So what you say -- they're "democratic" aren't
they? They're only "socialists, not communists or militant
radicals?
Some facts:
Obama has close personal and
political ties to several DSA members including Quentin Young, Timuel
Black, the late Rabbi Arnold Jacob Wolf, the late Saul Mendelson, Lou
Pardo, Congressman Danny Davis and DSA honorees Jackie Grimshaw, Jackie
Kendall and Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky.
DSA's several thousand
strong membership has grown increasingly militant over the years until
the point its policies are almost indistinguishable from those of the
Communist Party USA. In an article in DSA's Democratic Left,
Spring 2007, DSA National Political Committee member David Green wrote;
Our goal as socialists is to abolish private
ownership of the means of production. Our immediate task is to
limit the capitalist class’s prerogatives in the workplace...
In the short run we must at least minimize the degree of
exploitation of workers by capitalists. We can accomplish this
by promoting full employment policies, passing local living wage
laws, but most of all by increasing the union movement’s power...
The DSA has some cross membership with the Communist Party and
considerable cross-membership with the the equally militant Committees
of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism.
DSA has close ties
to many Congressman, including John Conyers, Danny Davis, Jan Schakowsky
(all close Obama supporters) Jerrold Nadler and Bob Filner.
DSA has key personnel or
allies at the top of AFL-CIO, SEIU, United Auto Workers, United
Steelworkers of America and other major unions.
DSA has
considerable influence in ACORN, Working Families Party, Green Party,
Democratic Party, USAction, Jobs with Justice, Economic Policy
Institute, Campaign for America's Future, Demos (which Obama helped
found), Black Radical Congress and many other mass organizations,
including some churches.
DSA is affiliated to the Socialist
International which now includes several "former" communist
parties-Mongolia, Mozambique, Bulgaria, Latvia, Belarus, Ukraine,
Estonia, Angola, Hungary and Poland, as well as the Nicaraguan
Sandinistas and the still-existing Communist Parties of Laos, Cuba and
China ("observer" only).
Continue reading
here . . . this guy's got stuff . . .
America’s Future NOW!
It's amazing to me that we get
the news, that "America’s
Future NOW!" is underway right now at Washington D.C’s grand old Omni
Shoreham Hotel, from New Zealand!
The event is organized by
Campaign for America’s Future, itself a creation of I.PS. and D.S.A.
and is the latest incarnation of the
Take Back
America conferences that ran for several years up to 2008.
This is the heart of the "progressive movement" that put
Barack Obama
into power. Their next step is to consolidate that power, building
a movement that will keep the Obama administration tracking hard left.
Trevor Loudon says these are the people (videos)
Glenn Beck warned you about!
Obama Boasts Of Progressive Triumphs
Sam Youngman
says Obama told a Hollywood fundraiser Monday night that he and
congressional Democrats have passed the most progressive legislation in
decades.
"We have been able to deliver the most progressive
legislative agenda -- one that helps working families -- not just in one
generation, maybe two, maybe three," Obama said.
Obama was joined
by a number of lawmakers and celebrities at an event for the Democratic
Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) that raised $1 million.
Obama is hitting the campaign trail hard this week before he goes on
vacation to Martha's Vineyard, boasting of his administration's
accomplishments and accusing Republicans of trying to return to the
policies of President George W. Bush.
"This is exactly when you
want to be president," Obama said. "This is why I ran, because we
have the opportunity to shape history for the better."
With
polls showing Democrats in serious trouble during an anti-incumbent
election year, Obama said that helping Democrats get elected in November
is his "focus over the next several months."
"I hope you
understand why we're here tonight," Obama told the crowd at producer
John Wells's home. "It's not to take a picture with the president.
We're here to make sure those who took the tough votes are rewarded."
Judd Apatow and actor Taye Diggs joined DCCC Chairman Chris Van
Hollen (D-Md.), House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), and California
Reps. Howard Berman, Brad Sherman, Barbara Lee, Joe Baca, Laura
Richardson, Judy Chu and John Garamendi.
The Biggest Target Is Progressivism
J.R. Dunn says the 2010 election is not simply
a campaign against Obama. It needs to be a campaign against
liberalism as a whole.
Obama remains the major target, and he
deserves the honor. No president in my lifetime has been as
incompetent, as obtuse, or as polarizing. There's a particular
type of incompetence that involves applying serious energy and diligence
to doing the wrong thing. Obama is the master of this style of
governance. Sure, he passed his stimulus bill, his health care
plan, his financial regulatory act -- all of which are loathed by the
country at large and all of which, without exception, are guaranteed to
make the problems they're designed to address worse. The stimulus
stimulated nothing. Health care costs have risen 20% since O's
grand triumph. The regulatory bill addresses precisely none of the
problems that led to the recent slump.
Obama's obtuseness is
evident in the endless vacations, the bowing and scraping before
assorted potentates, his leaping into events (the Gates imbroglio, the
Ground Zero mosque, this latest sideshow act with the backwoods
wrestler...uhh, pastor) that are none of his business, and his continual
rhetorical fumbles. A week doesn't go by without a new addition to
the list, his whining that his critics "talk about me like a dog" being
only the latest. (Quick, hand me that newspaper...) A
president must be a center of calm and poise amid the whirlwind of
events. Obama is usually just another piece of flotsam.
The word "polarizing" is generally limited to Republican presidents,
though, in fact, it could be said to be part of the job description.
But Obama has taken this to new heights -- presidents such as Ronald
Reagan and George W. Bush certainly aroused opposition, occasionally
well-organized and well-funded. But they are nothing to compare
with Obama, who has ignited a vast political movement of a depth unseen
for well over a century. The Tea Parties are a unique phenomenon,
potentially as powerful and earthshaking as the abolitionist movement in
the 19th century. It's not often an individual acts as the trigger
for such a movement. That may well be Obama's major contribution.
So it's quite proper that this election should be a referendum on
Obama. But it can't be limited to that, because Obama is not the
threat. He's only this moment's representation of the threat.
Consider: if you were asked in 2005 who was the major threat among
liberal politicians, you would probably have mentioned Hillary Clinton.
A few other names might have come to mind as well -- Pelosi or Dean
above all. But would it have occurred to you to mention the junior
senator from Illinois?
The powers that make men presidents --
both real and metaphysical -- liked Barack Obama. They liked his
looks, his voice, the crease of his pants. So they wrote him a
book or two, cleaned up his résumé, and pointed him toward the top.
I imagine they were as surprised as anyone else at how quickly and
easily it went. I doubt they were expecting such results in 2008
-- maybe in 2016 or 2020.
The point is that the same can happen
to anyone. Obama, with all his manifest flaws, was transformed not
only into presidential material, but into a candidate for messiah.
Daniel Greenfield says liberals [progressives]
have never been too fond of democracy. Even when they win
elections, they prefer to treat those victories as "historic events"
that are almost supernatural in nature, to avoid dwelling on the fact
that what really happened was that the votes were counted, and they
racked up more than the other side. Instead they condescendingly
describe their victories as a sign that the country has reached a new
level of ethical and intellectual awareness. Like a kindergarten
teacher handing out gold stars, liberals pat the country on the head (at
least the right parts of it) for making the right decision.
As
liberals see it, their high level of moral and intellectual awareness,
and compassion for all creatures great and small, gives them a permanent
mandate for social change. Elections sometimes interfere with the
implementation of that mandate, but the mandate itself still goes on.
Liberals can’t possibly lose the mandate, since it derives not from the
"will of the people", but from the tenets of liberalism itself, a
perverted version of Natural Rights, in which the officially oppressed
peoples of the United States and the world are entitled to all the
wealth redistribution they can get. As long as they remain
faithful to the liberal agenda, then their mandate is irrevocable.
When liberals do lose elections, they don’t attribute it to the will
of the people, but rather to the racist white patriarchal majority
rising up to obstruct their reforms. The old Communist narrative
of revolution vs counterrevolution defines their worldview, not the
American narrative in which elected officials are employees, rather than
masters or owners, who can be fired or rather not hired back, by the
electorate at will during the designated review periods we call
elections.
So, American liberals live in perpetual fear of the
mob. Not the mob that controls some of their unions, or the mobs
that used to loot and burn cities under the influence of their
propaganda -- but the royalist definition of the mob, as the people of
the country who imagine that they have a right to have some say in its
laws and taxes.
Every time liberals lose an election, whether
there is or there isn’t a populist movement such as the Tea Party
associated with it, they blame the "mob." Obama’s infamous
"clinging to their guns and religion" line all too accurately sums up
how liberals envision that mob. Liberal pundits pen pieces on the
dangers of populism. Liberal cartoonists begin depicting the
American people as crazy and dangerous. All it takes is a lost
election, and suddenly liberals flash back some two centuries to sound
like the Royalists of the 1770s, worried that all these populist mobs
are going to make it impossible to run the country.
In only two
years, the liberal press has gone from patting the country on the head
for the wisdom and maturity of electing Obama, to hitting it on the nose
with a newspaper for kicking out his congress. It’s not that they
can’t make up their mind, it’s that, as in Soviet elections, they limit
the role of the people to ratifying the decisions of their leaders, and
grow very outraged when the people overstep their boundaries, and
actually begin throwing out the leaders instead. The people are
supposed to show up at designated events to cheer their leaders, not
storm the Bastille or tear down the Berlin Wall.
Liberal pundits
typically describe "the mob" as anti-intellectual. But that’s only
because they were actually stupid enough to believe that the likes of
JFK, Bill Clinton or Barack Obama were intellectuals. But "the
mob" isn’t anti-intellectual, it’s anti-organizational. And JFK,
WJC and BHO were organization men. They were not noted for their
deep and penetrating intelligence, but for their ability to recite
memorized speeches and summon up the vibe of a "New Age" in which
everyone would be happier and better taken care of than ever before.
And in which liberals would no longer have to feel ashamed of America.
Liberalism is not intellectual, it’s organizational. It
creates and expands organizations that are meant to help the public, but
end up taking power out of their hands. Liberalism’s
organizational strategy is essentially a slow paced coup against the
American electorate. And like most tyrants, liberals have to live
in fear of the mob showing up at their palace gates. The transfer
of power from the electorate to the bureaucracy, the unions and the
associated non-governmental organizations is supposed to prevent that
from happening, but it will take time to completely disempower "the
mob." Because the mills of the bureaucracy grind slowly and the
coup still isn’t complete.
While they may fancy themselves to be
intellectuals, the last time liberals had an original idea was around
1906. Everything else is just the clumsy implementation.
Like 21st century Fourierists, they keep fiddling with inherently
unworkable economic, political and social models -- while blaming all
their setbacks on the opposition. It’s never the ideologically
influenced model that fails, it’s always the skeptics and the rebels and
the greedy capitalists and counterrevolutionaries who get in the way.
The difference between an intellectual and an idiot, is that the former
can recognize when he’s wrong. That makes liberalism, the sad
ideology of idiots who are never wrong, they’re just not "messaging"
correctly.
So liberals can never ask for help, even when they
need it.
Paul Mirengoff
encourages his readers with a philosophical bent to take the time
this weekend (it will require about an hour) to read Peter Berkowitz's
excellent
essay "Obama and the State of Progressivism, 2011." Peter
links the political difficulties Obama has encountered to the "paradox
of American progressivism, old and new," a paradox "rooted in the gap
between its professed devotion to democracy...and its belief that
democracy consists in a set of policies independent of what the people
want."
The original progressives, exemplified by Herbert Croly,
acknowledged the paradox. Thus, Croly wrote that "any increase in
centralized power and responsibility...is injurious to certain aspects
of traditional American democracy." But "the fault," Croly stated,
"lies with the democratic tradition" and the fact that "the average
American individual is morally and intellectually inadequate to serious
and consistent conception of his responsibilities as a democrat."
Thus, the "erroneous and misleading" democratic tradition "must yield
before the march of a constructive national democracy."
The new
progressives, exemplified by Obama, refuse publicly to speak this way.
It seems clear, though, that Obama shares Croly's view, which he
expressed behind closed doors in his famous characterization of
working-class voters (to a wealthy San Francisco audience) as
"cling[ing] to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like
them...as a way to explain their frustrations."
Peter also
connects Obama's "determined effort to push dramatic transformation
under the cover of moderation, and pragmatism, and post-partisanship,
and his claim to speak on behalf of the people while aggressively
promoting programs at odds with majority wishes" to three schools of
academic thought. They are John Rawls' "deliberative democracy"
theory, Richard Rorty's perversion (as I see it) of pragmatism, and
"empathy." All were, or have become, intellectually dishonest
attempts to equate progressivism with justice and, as Peter explains, to
override, in the people's name, their expressed preferences.
The
academic concept of "empathy," which is so shallow that it's shocking to
think of it as a school of thought with any traction, featured
prominently in Obama's statement of why he nominated Sonia Sotomayor to
the Supreme Court. Although Sotomayor had famously touted the
virtues of the special empathy possessed by "the wise Latina," she
repudiated this line of thought during her confirmation hearing, as did
Elean Kagan later on.
There is no doubt, however, that
Sotomayor's brand of empathy lies at the heart of much progressive
thinking about the law. That Sotomayor and Kagan backed away from
such views when they were "on stage," and that Obama himself did not use
the word "empathy" in touting Kagan, is further evidence of the paradox
of progressivism.
You Don't Ever Want A Crisis To Go To Waste
In an assault on the 1st Amendment, Rep. Robert
Brady (D-PA)
will introduce legislation this week that will criminalize
inflammatory language. I wonder if Brady is referring to Obama's
inflammatory rhetoric (see Today's ObamaFact). I doubt it.
And in an attack on the 2nd Amendment, far left Rep. Carolyn McCarthy
(D-N.Y.), pounced on the shooting massacre in Tucson Sunday,
promising to introduce legislation as soon as Monday targeting the
high-capacity ammunition the gunman used. Gun control activists
cried it was time to reform weapons laws in the United States, almost
immediately after a gunman killed six and injured 14 more.
In Defense Of American Exceptionalism
Herman Cain
says there is no denying it: America is the greatest country in the
world. We are blessed with unparalleled freedoms and boundless
prosperity that for generations have inspired an innovative and
industrious people. America is exceptional.
American
Exceptionalism is the standard that our laws reflect the understanding
that we are afforded certain God-given rights that can never be taken
away. We know that God, not government, bestows upon us these
inalienable rights, and because of that, they must not be compromised by
the whims of man. This makes us a unique nation, a nation that
remains, as President Ronald Reagan once said, "a model and hope to the
world."
Unfortunately, some politicians have either forgotten or
chosen to ignore the glory of our founding. In April 2009, Barack
Obama told a reporter in Strasbourg, France: "I believe in American
exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British
exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism." In
saying this, Onama implied that American Exceptionalism is nothing
terribly special and instead simply chalked it up to the romanticism of
patriotism.
Americans know better. We see American
Exceptionalism not as an empty cry for nationalism, but instead, the
blessings of God that keep our nation strong, independent, and free.
We see the American story as one of tenacity and triumph, not as one
inherently flawed and in need of rewriting. We recognize the times
we have stumbled but are assured that it is not due to weakness of our
foundation, but instead, the imperfection of mankind.
Most
importantly, conservatives see America as exceptional because of our
shared belief in the dignity and creativity of the individual. We
know that it is innately human to work, to risk, and to dream. We
understand that these virtues, coupled with the conditions American
Exceptionalism provides, allow us to enjoy the economic and social
mobility that other countries envy. Liberals lament that such
success wasn't guaranteed.
At its very core, progressivism
rejects American Exceptionalism. Progressives view the
Constitution as a roadblock, as they seek an unlimited federal
government with more authority than the states and more power than the
people. Because they strive for a limitless federal government,
they are willing to sacrifice the rugged individualism that has made
this nation exceptional in exchange for the collective salvation they
believe a vast government provides. And the darling of the
progressive movement is, of course, Barack Obama.
Let me be
clear, Obama, America is the greatest nation on Earth. We are not
just any other nation, and we are certainly not analogous to our friends
in Europe and elsewhere. Our exceptionalism is forever ingrained
in our founding documents that spell out exactly the roles of the
federal government in relation to individual rights and states' rights.
Truth is eternal, and simply ignoring the truths of the Declaration
of Independence and the Constitution won't make them go away. And
frankly, there are enough Americans, including me, who love it and our
country far too much to allow our exceptionalism to be bartered for
further expansion of an already out-of-control federal government.
The Nation: The Fifty Most
Influential Progressives Of The Twentieth Century
The very, very left-wing rag,
The Nation, has selected their top 50 "Progressives."
This guy jumped out at me because Robeson is the person that sent Frank Marshall Davis to Hawaii on a mission to "communize" the dockworker's union in post-World War II Hawaii.
Davis moved to Honolulu from Chicago in 1948 with his second wife Helen Canfield, a white socialite, at the suggestion of his friend the actor Paul Robeson, who advised them that there would be more tolerance of a mixed race couple in Hawaii than on the American mainland. Robeson, of course, was the well-known black actor and singer who served as a member of the CPUSA and apologist for the old Soviet Union. Davis had known Robeson from his time in Chicago.
Davis, in his own writings, had said that Robeson and Harry Bridges, the head of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) and a secret member of the CPUSA, had suggested that he take a job as a columnist with the Honolulu Record "and see if I could do something for them." The ILWU was organizing workers there and Robeson’s contacts were "passed on" to Davis, Takara writes.
Takara says that Davis "espoused freedom, radicalism, solidarity, labor unions, due process, peace, affirmative action, civil rights, Negro History week, and true Democracy to fight imperialism, colonialism, and white supremacy. He urged coalition politics."
Poems from Davis are in the book "Black Moods" which was edited by John Tidwell, a University of Kansas professor and expert on Davis' writings. He confirmed to
Cliff Kincaid that Davis joined the Communist Party but that he publicly tried to deny his affiliations.
Asked why Takara thought Obama didn't identify Frank in his book by his full name, she replied, "Maybe, he didn't want people delving into it."
Stanley Dunham, Obama's grandfather, was friends with Davis, a bohemian libertine who drank heavily and loved jazz -- both had roots reaching back to Kansas and had families of mixed races -- and the black writer took an interest in Obama.
"Our grandfather ... thought (Frank) was a point of connection, a bridge if you will, to the larger African-American experience for my brother," Maya Soetoro-Ng, Obama's half-sister, said during a recent interview.
