Progressives and progress
From commenter “Snow on Pine”:
…[The left adheres to] the idea that, as our knowledge and capabilities have grown, our human nature has also changed–evolved–and that over the last 250 or so years our basic human nature has undergone some kind of “fundamental transformation,” one which requires that we be governed by new principles and a vastly modified and expanded Constitution; one more suited to our new enlightened views, needs, and behaviors.
I, on the other hand, would argue that while the means to achieve our ends have changed, expanded, and grown—as have some of those ends—our basic needs, drives, and motives, what directs us, our basic human nature, has not changed, nor can it (absent some ill-considered and catastrophic “fundamental transformation” of the genetic basis of our nature as human beings), and that the Constitution that was crafted to govern us then, is the same Constitution that we need to govern us now, because our basic nature and fundamental needs, motives, and behaviors have not changed.
That made me think of this older post, featuring some quotes from Allan Bloom that I had written down after listening to a recording of a Bloom lecture from the mid-80s. I lost the link to the recording and couldn’t provide it then, and I can’t provide it now, either. But here’s the relevant portion of the post:
I had tried to transcribe [Bloom’s words] faithfully, complete with hesitations and idiosyncrasies and audience reaction. Bloom—whom I’ve written about before several times, mostly in the context of discussing his wonderful and highly-recommended book The Closing of the American Mind, was a professor of philosophy for most of his life. He was exceedingly familiar with the outlook of university students, primarily in America but also in Europe. Note that what he said back then describes trends that have only intensified since:
“You know, we’ve all read history. Everybody, you know, world history, and weren’t all past ages maaaad? There were slaves, there were kings—I don’t think there’s a single student who reads the history of England and doesn’t say that that was crazy. You know ‘that’s wonderful, you gotta know history, and be open to things and so on,’ but they’re not open to those things because they know that that was crazy. I mean, the latest transformation of history is as a history of the enslavement of women, which means to say that it was all crazy—up till now.
“Our historical knowledge is really a history which praises, ends up praising, ourselves—how much wiser [voice drips with sarcasm] we are, how we have seen through the errors of the past…Hegel already knew this danger of history, of the historical human being, when he said that every German gymnasium professor teaches that Alexander the Great conquered the world because he had a pathological love of power. And the proof that the teacher does not have a pathological love of power is that he has not conquered the world. [laughter] We have set up standards of normalcy while speaking of cultural relativism, but there is no question that we think we understand what cultures are, and what kind of mistakes they make.”
Bloom nailed it, about thirty-five years ago.
And meanwhile, progressives are blind to, or adamantly in favor of, the evil they themselves commit.
I choose
“adamantly in favor evil.”
for 100 please.
The Hell we’re moving towards is because of the Democrats’ “good intentions”, and the unintended results of those; plus the necessary broken eggs needed for this future great omelette they think they’re creating, based on their intentions.
Can’t vote for Left, liberals, or progressives – but almost half the voters will be voting for (evil) Democrats and the (evil) policies they support, for their own “good intention” reasons.
And ignorance of history and true historical facts.
and that the Constitution that was crafted to govern us then, is the same Constitution that we need to govern us now, because our basic nature and fundamental needs, motives, and behaviors have not changed.
1. We’ve had ample opportunity in the intervening 7 generations to observe electoral institutions at work abroad, and to learn from the experience of others.
2. The Constitution itself is not Hari Seldon’s Plan. It’s an organic law derived from the practices of extant colonial governments, antecedent to which were the municipal corporations of England. It’s not some meditation on human nature. It’s a set of political practices.
3. The division of labor between different strata of government and between public and private sector will properly change in response to changes in transportation costs and the growth of supralocal trade (among other factors).
I bought Bloom’s book years ago and never finished reading it. The reason is because in the introduction Professor Bloom states that college students believe that truth is relative and I concluded the book is about idiots. Here is why. Years ago I frequented a blog where a person was promoting the relativity of truth and presenting a good case for it. When he finished I asked him if it was absolutely true that truth was relative or just relatively true that truth is relative. I forgot his response. One of these days I will finish Bloom’s book.
Well, the High Potentate of California, Gavin Newsom (whom I affectionately dubbed Gruesome Newsom) said during a press conference related to Covid-19: “Absolutely, we see this as an opportunity to reshape the way we do business and how we govern,”
I think that is a pretty candid statement of Leftist intent. Some of us may revere the constitution as the greatest governing document in history; but, to them it is an impediment. Most of us see this pandemic as a tragedy; they see opportunity. They grabbed it, and we let them; although I don’t know what we little folk could have done. On the other hand, the pendulum may be reaching its limits and momentum is building for it to swing back.
Love Ray’s response to the moral relativist.
Well, now we know what the constitution is and is not. All this time hidden under a bushel. Just some words from some dead white guys. Nothin special. Move along.
Any thoughts on the Old and New Testament while you are at it?
I have some OT words for executives of all stripes who sniff their flatulence a little too much and think their word is law:
Ye have sown the wind. Ye shall reap the whirlwind.
How’s that for some OT fire and brimstone? I see that people in New Jersey and Virginia have gone to the “closed” beaches in force. I wouldn’t have expected that from those residents, but here we are.
I believe truth exists. I believe human nature is rooted in biology, that is, in the created order. Progressives believe they can overcome nature and build the new Soviet, or new American, man, to their specifications. The results of this are likely to be frightening.
President Calvin Coolidge’s remarks on the 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence may have some relevance to the question of modifying our Constitution:
“About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful. It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But that reasoning can not be applied to this great charter. If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.”
https://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/speech-on-the-occasion-of-the-one-hundred-and-fiftieth-anniversary-of-the-declaration-of-independence/
From Turgot to Condorcet to Lessing and Hegel and then disseminated so thoroughly as received wisdom that goes hardly examined. Lord Acton has this to say about Turgot in his lectures on the French Revolution, “[H]e taught mankind to expect that the future would be unlike the past, that it would be better, and that the experience of ages may instruct and warn, but cannot guide or control. He is eminently a benefactor to historical study; but he forged a weapon charged with power to abolish the product of history and the existing order. By the hypothesis of progress, the new is always gaining on the old; history is the embodiment of imperfection, and escape from history became the watchword of the coming day. Condorcet, the master’s pupil, thought that the world might be emancipated by burning its records.”
Lets do a fun little “thought experiment.”
Lets say that a general agreement—a consensus–is reached that the Constitution as it exists today has in many respects “failed,” and needs to be revised extensively, or even be completely re-written—some say to be more “fair” and to guarantee more “rights,” others because they think that its tripartite scheme of “checks and balances” has failed in its primary duty to prevent the kind of lawlessness, and the overwhelming executive, legislative, and judicial power–the lack of balance–and the resultant creeping losses of ”freedom” and individual “liberty” that we see the evidence of all around us.
So, with that as the background, imagine what sort of people, what specific, supposedly learned and wise individuals might be found–in this particular day and age–to come together, to debate, and to create this new Constitution.
Do you know of anyone today, some learned and, especially, some wise “expert” who is as familiar with the ancient history of Greece and Rome, their political systems, how they functioned, why they were designed the way they were, and the basic principles and aims behind them as were many of the Framers?
How about an expert with broad knowledge of European and even other History, of the English law in great and comprehensive detail, and how and why it evolved the way it did?
Do we have any such outstanding, learned and wise experts on these subjects around today who measure up?
How about a deep knowledge of Philosophy—the perennial questions philosophy attempts to answer and, as well, a deep knowledge of Judeo-Christian religion, and what these allied fields of knowledge have to say about morality, justice, and governing?
Knowledge of Economics, Business, Trade, and Agriculture gained from practical experience?
Knowledge of Foreign Affairs, War, and Peace gained through actual experience?
Then, people who are well versed in all of the debates, the individual arguments, the view of human nature, and the philosophical and (what we would term today) the psychological concepts that were embodied in the Constitution they are trying to replace.
Next, you’d need experts in our history since that Constitution was written, and how it and the law have evolved.
Would these wise and learned experts then be willing to put “their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor” on the line to create this new Constitution?
For that is what many of those who signed the Constitution did, and they paid for it, with many of those signers ending up hunted men, and destitute when they died.
Any takers today among our wise and learned experts for that level of commitment and risk?
Bottom line–Do any adequate to the task number of people truly and honestly come to mind, any great number of people today who you can honestly say have the knowledge and especially the practical experience, the wisdom, and the sheer guts and determination that the Framers—warts, failings, blind spots, and all included—all had, people who can fill the shoes of Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison, Franklin, and the other Framers?
Any member of this “dream team” of today who you’d really buy a used car from, or trust with bringing up your kids if you we no longer alive—because you knew that they were honest, wise, and had a very practical grasp of what’s what?
I doubt it.
And that’s one very good reason why we should stick with what we’ve got.
The first paragraph of Snow’s comment probably explains as well as anything, else one mystery concerning the incomprehensibility of the progressive’s moral schema, its apparently blatant self-refuting relativism, and the obliviousness of the average progressive to the logical incoherence of his moral evaluation framework.
Among those progressives who still do grasp for some principle beyond mere emotion or an act of raw will to justify their stances, it is the magic of Evolution as a standard, if mushy, ill defined, and conveniently self-referential concept that is the most often trotted out.
Now, in a world in which science minded, as opposed to science touting, types, are forced to concede that evolution is an undirected “process” going ultimately nowhere for no purpose, the futility of referring to evolution in order to add moral weight or justification, or respectability to any claim made on others, is, or should be, obvious.
But what other shiny thing supposedly beyond themselves and entitled to recognition, can they possibly refer to?
Within this framework, those who don’t share their sensibilities become Neanderthals, bitter clingers, cruel, retrograde, and less “evolved” types. The universe has according to the progressive view, slated such people for extinction. It is the task of the progressive to hurry this foreordained historical process along as quickly as possible.
This existential bifurcation of humanity does of course imply that even on the view of the liberal, there is not really any such thing as a common humanity, and a single human moral species.
This could be a very inconvenient observation for those who had been for generations habituated to the use of borrowed natural law and common humanity language with which to adorn their concession seeking rhetoric – back when they were weak and seeking to appeal to the dominant sensibility. But they no longer feel the need for this charade, nor for any attempt at all to reason closely with or explain themselves to moral inferiors.
Evolution, as represented by themselves, provides all the argument necessary.
Those who in conversing with such person’s, and who take the tack of granting the progressive’s premises, in order to encourage him to explore the implications and consequences of of an evolution based moral paradigm, are not likely to be rewarded by seeing a light of realization going off in the head of the progressive once redounding implications his system become plain to the progressive himself.
After all, the progressive already knows what he knows; and he knows that in a two tier moral world where some are Neanderthals and some are evolved members of the progressive religion of humanity, the authorization of Evolution to do guilt free unto morally apart others, as they can never do unto you, works in one direction only.
What does remain a mystery, is how people so gloriously evolved as that, can be stupid enough to believe it.
Do you know of anyone today, some learned and, especially, some wise “expert” who is as familiar with the ancient history of Greece and Rome, their political systems, how they functioned, why they were designed the way they were, and the basic principles and aims behind them as were many of the Framers?
How about someone familiar with various models of governance in use today?
Knowledge of Economics, Business, Trade, and Agriculture gained from practical experience?
They knew nothing of economics. The subject had hardly been formulated. And you’ll find an ample population of people today who know more of business and trade than the people who attended the Constitutional convention in 1787.
And that’s one very good reason why we should stick with what we’ve got.
You mean we should avoid an actual comparative analysis of our political order contra that of other countries because… our politicians can’t read Sallust in the original.
Been an education.
“They knew nothing of economics …” Amazing what wisdom lurks under the bushel of Art Deco. Always receiving an education but never seems to learn.
Progressives – and socialists and communists – have to believe that human nature has changed, or at least that it is malleable. If most of the things we take for granted are social constructs, if we are merely products of society, then by changing society, you can change human nature. And if you change human nature, you can make all your utopian dreams come true.
Progressives – and socialists and communists – have to believe that human nature has changed, or at least that it is malleable. If most of the things we take for granted are social constructs, if we are merely products of society, then by changing society, you can change human nature. And if you change human nature, you can make all your utopian dreams come true.
I do not think today’s progressives are thinking too deeply about the idea of progress or how it relates to their actions. It’s an old habit, maybe even cant at this point, to people born within the last seventy years.
Repeating myself from an earlier thread, the only organizing principle for today’s progressive is that all human capital exists solely within their ranks. As such, all coercive powers are of their prerogative and no one else, living or dead. What we are dealing with is an attitude about policing and not a general political philosophy– unless we really strain and accept their increasing mess of poses and affectations as some sort of coherent policy.
Getting mired in chatter about the constitution or hypocrisy or some progressive/conservative argument from a bygone era misses the point of what they claim. None of it matters to them, and they’ve not been reasoned into their thinking. Instead, they are starting from a premise that all human agency and cooperation is ultimately impossible, if and when not outright imaginary; and yet there remains a need to police the inevitable conflicts which arise out of these misunderstandings. And the only people capable of policing these matters are those who are educated enough to play pretend without succumbing to believing in any of it– circularly, we can be confident on who is educated because they have the right thoughts & dispositions and they possess these qualities because they have been educated into them.
To me, it seems like a great resignation and will not last forever; the future belongs to those who show up. Until then though, I do not see how we get through it without suffering great and unnecessary damages.
“Our historical knowledge is really a history which praises, ends up praising, ourselves” – Bloom.
“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.” – Obama.
https://www.conservativedailynews.com/2018/05/from-the-lips-of-barack-obama-we-are-the-ones-we-have-been-waiting-for/
“Each item listed above, and many more examples that I can’t recall at this moment, are examples of Obama’s promised “fundamental transformation of America” in which presidential candidates of the opposing party can be spied on by legal teams of the sitting administration with impunity; in which the FBI can accept wholly made up documents as justification to investigate an American citizen; in which FBI and DOJ employees can band together to undermine one presidential candidate and boost the candidacy of another based on the political attitude of the upper echelons of government and of the administration at the time. It appears that what Barack Obama was talking about with his “we are the ones we have been waiting for” is dictatorship, because that’s what the Democrat party has brought us to the verge of since the election of Barack Obama.”
Snow on Pine on May 18, 2020 at 5:41 pm said:
Lets do a fun little “thought experiment.”
* * *
I would nominate Victor Hanson for the historian, Thomas Sowell for the economist, and Clarence Thomas for the fun of it, to start, but under no circumstances should we allow anyone who hasn’t made a living at doing something outside academia or politics, even if they have been professors at some point; and no more than 10% can be lawyers.
Maybe I would add Jordan Peterson, to address the idea that we have somehow evolved into better people than in the past; Camille Paglia, because she doesn’t suffer fools gladly; and the first 100 people in the Ft. Worth phone book.
https://www.texastribune.org/2016/11/09/see-which-counties-texas-trump-and-clinton-won/
“Most of us see this pandemic as a tragedy; they see opportunity.”
Well, I don’t doubt that there is opportunity. We’ve had an unprecedented opportunity to test out remote learning and remote working on a mass scale. Some businesses have been unable to operate. Others have done very well.
Tragedy always presents opportunities – opportunities to step up and lead, opportunities to be generous and charitable, and opportunities to exploit the tragedy for evil. It’s not surprising that some leftists would exploit the tragedy of COVID-19 to curtail freedom; they are no strangers to attempting to exploit tragedies to plead for universal healthcare or gun control. Encouragingly, they often fail at these attempts.
Libertarianism is dynamic. Liberalism is divergent. Progressivism is monotonic. Conservativism is moderating. #PrinciplesMatter
Evolution is a chaotic process. Show me the fitness function!
“They knew nothing of economics …” Amazing what wisdom lurks under the bushel of Art Deco. Always receiving an education but never seems to learn.
There were physiocratic thinkers pondering problems in social life, but there was not yet a discipline. What am I supposed to learn from you? That Snow on Pine’s imagination rewrites intellectual history?
Running a farm or a business where if you failed you starved, well that may have contributed to an understanding of “economics” before it became an academic study. It was primitive, they didn’t have statistics, so sad for them. Something to learn? Your own limitations.
Meandering through Instapundit’s offerings today, a few links there illustrate the unprogressiveness of progressives.
https://www.michellesteelca.com/2020/05/steel-ab5-enforcement-dollars-could-be-used-for-recovery/
https://amgreatness.com/2020/05/17/the-left-is-what-it-once-loathed/
https://pjmedia.com/eddriscoll/2014/01/19/the-l-word-n258237
Yes. Evil. Thanks, Neo. For writing the truth. Not too long ago a lot of people were uncomfortable using that word to describe the evil that they do. But the evidence of recent evil isn’t really any different than the evidence we’ve had for decades.
Ted Kennedy left a woman to drown. Evil. For Democrats, no problem. NO problem. It wasn’t that it was insignificant. It simply didn’t matter.
All the crimes and traitorous actions of the Clintons didn’t matter. Not in the least. They took cash bribes from enemy intelligence agents in exchange for CIA top secret files. NO problem. The list just goes on and on and on. But democrats, including their voters, care not. All that matters is power.
Obama’s evil would take a multi-volume set of encyclopedias. Hey — No scandals. None.
Democrat politicians are evil because they’re voters (including all their media helpers) are evil. Knowingly accepting and embracing evil is, itself, evil. About time we called it by its real name.
Progress means that many Progressives now insist that school girls share bathrooms and locker rooms with males. Progress means that women in shelters who are fleeing domestic violence must share quarters with males. See, that is progress.
Well, this may look like progress if you’re a progressive.
https://hotair.com/archives/allahpundit/2020/05/18/feminist-susan-faludi-believe-women-right-wing-straw-man-liberals-dont-actually-embrace/
“I see. Could it be that we hallucinated all of those maximalist statements about alleged victims’ credibility?” – Allahpundit
I didn’t think so.
“meanwhile, progressives are blind to, or adamantly in favor of, the evil they themselves commit.” neo
“There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.” Proverbs 14:12 KJV
Back a couple of weeks, aNanyMouse linked a three-part series by JM Greer that were quite thought provoking.
Part three addressed Progressives especially, so I recommend it if you haven’t read them already.
https://www.thenewneo.com/2020/05/05/the-mask-of-objectivity-is-torn-off-and-the-naked-bias-revealed/#comment-2492949
aNanyMouse on May 6, 2020 at 2:49 pm said:
Yeah, SCOTT, this bunch has been playing with fire for at least a decade, see analysis from Archdruid J.M. Greer (who called DJT’s victory, in Jan. 2016!!).
On how DJT’s plain-speaking appeal forestalled the deplorables’ storming of the gates, see
https://www.Ecosophia.net/dancers-at-the-end-of-time-Part-Three-a-mortal-splendor/ .
On the current Left’s outright Quixotic modes of thinking, see
https://www.Ecosophia.net/dancers-at-the-end-of-time-Part-Two-Facts-are-the-Enemies-of-truth/ .
On how so many “prosperous, well-educated, well-informed people” have abandoned “certain very simple kinds of reasoning”, see
https://www.Ecosophia.net/dancers-at-the-end-of-time-Part-One-the-Flight-from-Reason/ .
There is a kind of blindness when it comes to evil, but it is not something the Left has monopolized.
Who has the guts to watch this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhjkqLhbgu8&t=1s
I specifically put Owens there because Candice O is familiar and less threatening to conservatives or anti Leftists.
Running a farm or a business where if you failed you starved, well that may have contributed to an understanding of “economics” before it became an academic study. I
No, it contributes to your understanding of business, which is something distinct from economics.
They didn’t have business schools either, not an MBA among them, those poor backward souls. Nothing to learn from them. Been an education, as ever. LOL
Our bodies are the same, exactly, as compared to the way they were 200-300,000 years ago. Our brains, the same shape and sizes. We were mostly hairless then too. Take off the dirt and the bad hair and put on a nice suit and some shoes and these ancestors of ours could sit in a board room.
We have had about 10,000 years to change. Cities and agriculture gave us the opening to a less harsh existence. A flicker. A little gracilis athleticism was added and some height from better nutrition and we are now fully modern.
Why do we think that what drove our behavior for 200,000 years is now gone? You know we had to be paranoid bad asses… to survive all that time. We had to kill animals and other people constantly, every day, because we were stuck with children for years who would die without constant input and attention and we were afraid of everything: from lightning to noises at night to the murmur of raiding tribes.
There was no democracy. The strongest, meanest, biggest male told us what to do; and he always tried to boost his authority by saying he was a god or priest. There was no fairness or equality. Why would we even think these ideas?
Do we have any basis for thinking that in all these years our instincts and behavior have evolved any faster than our bodies?
All this new kindness, liberty and freedom stuff beginning in Jesus and in England and then the US and France should be cherished like a brand new delightful present.
It’s a marvelous new invention and the slightest liberal urge to go back to “tribal” should ring shrill and atavistic and archaic. We don’t need grime and death and sore feet and killing any more. We tried all this.