progressivism, individualism, and the public ... - Telmarc Group

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The Telmarc Group PROGRESSIVISM, INDIVIDUALISM, AND THE PUBLIC INTELLECTUAL Individualism makes no claims upon any individual in terms of their obligations to other individuals. Such claims may be made in a democratic manner, through personal and individual choice or as a result of some form of religious belief. Individualism does not consider the existence of any minorities and thus minority rights as compared to majority rights are non-existent. However Individualism believes in individual rights, and every individual having the same set of rights, thus the need for group, minority, protected class, gender, or any other such segmented rights are unnecessary and in fact are conflicting. Individualism believes that the costs of externalities between individuals based upon actions taken by one party resulting in a cost to a second party can be remedied via remediation via the Coasian method of inter-party litigation, and that it is the duty of the Government to enforce those resulting claims 1 . Individualism believes in individual responsibility and liability for harm caused by any individual upon others. It is the purpose of the Government to remedy these claims. Conservatives and Libertarians take these positions and modify, expand, or delimit them. Thus Individualism may find itself in the confines of many camps. Individualism as we define it herein is not the individualism that Hofstadter applies in his diatribe against Social Darwinism 2 . It is not a laissez faire view of a society. In fact it is just the opposite. It assumes equality amongst individuals and a preservation of those individual rights and a process of remediation for any diminution or infringement on those rights. The purpose of the Government in an society of Individualism is to ensure the rights of equality and to take any and all means as may be necessary to protect them on a pari passu basis. Thus the concerns of Hofstadter would be without merit in a true sense of Individualism. There is no theory of survival of the fittest, no principles of allowing the most aggressive to prevail, and in fact aggressive that in any way delimits individual rights would be dealt 1 See http://american.com/archive/2009/october/coase-vs-the-neo-progressives/ they state in this article the following summary of Coase: "Although considered heresy at the time, Coase’s article began a wholesale rethinking of the Progressive paradigm that had dominated political thought since the turn of the century. By the 1980s, Coase’s ideas had gone from radical to mainstream. Free market advocates, then in the ascendancy, embraced such Coasian principles as: (1) The existence of a market failure or externality does not in and of itself justify government intervention; indeed, government is often the underlying cause of the problem. (2) Government intervention is seldom either administratively efficient or politically neutral; to the contrary, it often results in what Coase called the “mal-allocation” of resources. (3) Government control of the economy is a threat to political liberty; for example, government control of the broadcast spectrum has consistently been used to limit free speech." 2 In Hofstadter SD he sets up the straw man of social Darwinism and Darwinian individualism as the example of individualism as he defines it to be the sine qua non of all individualist principles and then proceeds to tear it down. Page 16
The Telmarc Group PROGRESSIVISM, INDIVIDUALISM, AND THE PUBLIC INTELLECTUAL with by direct Government intervention. The Government is there to protect the rights of each individual, no interfere with them and not to allow others to do so. Individualism is not the strict equality of the theory of distributive justice. Individualism admits the differences amongst people but establishes the underpinning of the individual rights, rights that protect individuals from what could be termed unjust expropriation of their rights and property. 1.2 PROGRESSIVISM Progressivism can be viewed historically and a movement on the later 19th century driven by the excesses of business and the changes occurring in the middle class or as an ongoing movement wherein the role of Government and citizens as a society rather than individuals are what is essential to the people. As Weinstein states 3 : "Progressives are strongly attached to the government; they tend towards state intervention. Yet, they also believe in citizen participation and grassroots action. Perhaps more than any other political classification, progressives hold onto the ideal of direct democracy. They heartily embrace the tensions between what Isaiah Berlin called negative and positive freedoms, or freedom from and freedom to, respectively. For Berlin, the freedom from hindrance, or “negative” liberty, trumps the freedom to self-actualize, but progressives disagree. Today’s progressives might argue that, while liberty is important, it is incoherent without entitlements. The state must provide social, political, economic, and cultural assistance to those who are denied access to an equal playing field. Progressives claim that one cannot have liberty without cultivating capabilities." In many ways this is the most telling definition of Progressivism one may find. It lays out all of the elements in succinct detail. It is basically a big Government environment with entitlements. The fundamental flaw is that the entitlements take from those who may not agree with the Government and distribute them to chosen classes. The question is one which asks why denial means. Are you denied a PhD from Harvard because you are just plain stupid? What if you are poor and cannot afford to go. What if you were a terrorist? 3 http://www.und.edu/instruct/weinstei/jweinstein%20-%20meaning%20of%20the%20term%20progressive.pdf Page 17
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The Telmarc Group and the Progressi
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