By Rob Janicki
"The word “liberal” comes from the Latin word meaning freedom, and in
the 19th century liberals in this country and abroad stood for free
speech, free exercise of religion, free markets, free trade -- for minimal state interference in people's lives." - Michael Barone
Today, American liberal progressivism means virtually the opposite of
the classical definition of liberalism. Today's liberal progressives
believe in free speech, but only for liberal progressives. They seek
to rewrite the 1st Amendment to silence their critics. They seek to
invade everyone's privacy of thoughts and private communications.
Witness the NSA practice of invading and recording a person's
electronic communication history of phone calls and emails.
Since the days of Franklin Roosevelt liberalism has meant the ever
increasing incursion of government into every aspect of human
endeavor, all the while increasing the size of government to
effectuate the expanding role of government in every social welfare
scheme unknown and unthinkable a hundred years ago. When liberal
progressives viewed the concept of "for the general welfare" in our
founding documents, they took it to mean social welfare programs. And
what better way to offer those programs than through big government
and a 'nanny state' to create a continuing dependency upon government
for one's basic necessities in life. Sort of like slavery but
leaning toward lifetime indentured servitude to government for one's
very existence.
As much as liberal progressives would like people to think they
believe in the free exercise of religion, that would be a mistake.
Religion for a liberal progressive is the secular religion of liberal
progressivism. Those liberal progressives that pretend to practice
either Christianity or Judaism, actually practice something more akin
to cafeteria style religion where they pick and choose what they will
actually believe, even if it runs contrary to the common practice of
the particular religion they espouse to believe in. Meanwhile, they
condemn anyone who actually adheres to and believes in their religion,
be it Christianity or Judaism. Witness the latest Supreme Court
decision in the Hobby Lobby case.
Free markets and free trade are anathema to liberals. Capitalism is
the creed of greed. The Haves and the Have Nots. Profits of
capitalism are at the expense of the labor of the working class which
does not share equally in the rewards for their labor. Capitalism is
fundamentally unjust because its outcomes are grossly unequal. Wealth
must be distribute equally among those who actually perform the work
rather among those who merely organize and manage the work to be done.
If it sounds like Marxist communism, you wouldn't be far off. And
that's where we are today with liberal progressives, although they
would deny it. But the facts speak for themselves. Government is an
ever enlarging bureaucracy filled with liberal progressives working to
administer and ever increase the size of government. More government
workers are Democrats and liberal progressives than Republicans. The
political right is out working in our free enterprise system producing
the goods and services necessary to sustain our economy and society.
Meanwhile, the liberal progressive government bureaucracy produces
nothing for consumers to elevate and advance their lives.
Capitalism may not survive the present onslaught by liberal
progressives, but ultimately liberal progressivism will implode upon
itself when producers no longer have any incentive to produce under
the ultimate and unrelenting authoritarian and confiscatory power of a
socialist government that no longer honors private property. When
producers can no longer sustain the cost of the welfare state and are
stripped of their means of production, collapse of liberal
progressives socialism is inevitable. Liberal progressives can't
quite seem to grasp that concept.
The concept of liberal progressivism is simply based on the old saying
of robbing Peter to pay Paul, since Paul will always go along with the
outcome.
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