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

The Telmarc Group
PROGRESSIVISM, INDIVIDUALISM, AND THE PUBLIC
INTELLECTUAL
The denouncement of the Constitution is an arrogant expression that these "select" people
have been granted a vision of what is right and proper. The fundamental flow of the
Progressive mantra is that it is the Government which then controls individuals, and the
control is based upon some changing philosophy and as the Government changes so too
does the philosophy.
Progressivism has morphed into neo-Progressivism. It has kept the essential elements of
the Progressivism of a century ago; governmental control, society over individual, social
and distributive justice, common good versus individual benefit. Yet now the drivers for
this plan are not monopolies but the banks, not the slaughter houses but CO2, not the
wealth trust owners but the money hungry Wall Street bankers. It is not the new
immigrants in tenements but illegal aliens wandering US cities.
1.3 THE KEY QUESTION
As one looks at the two positions, extremes in many ways, one asks a key question; why
do people think so differently from one another? Why do we have groups who want
individualism, albeit with a limited Government, whereas others want an all controlling
central Government. This question may go well beyond the issue a century and a half ago
regarding stets rights versus the Federal Government. What makes people come up with
such drastically differing beliefs? In many ways, we try to explain these two belief sets,
place them in some historic context, but we fail to answer the driving question, why do
people think, believe; exist in such different belief sets?
After we review the original individualists and progressives and then their "neo" versions
we come back to this question using a framework based upon a world view as
deconstructed from the architecture of their proposed plans. Our approach is based upon
Kuhn and his understanding of how science works, how new ideas are promulgated. They
all begin with that new experiment, the result that simplifies and summarizes a belief set,
the paradigm. Thus for Progressives of a century ago it was the Trusts and Tenements,
those who got more than they deserved and those who were disenfranchised from society.
They believed a century ago that all had changed since the time of the Constitution and
that they, the Progressives, had a new way, a better idea.
To some degree it would be a push back to the Socialists, which for various reasons were
shunned, mostly because they reflected a foreign theory of Government and in addition
they were composed with a significant numbers of immigrants and Jews. The
Progressives were for the most part main line Protestants and the religion played a key
role in their ideas. They in many ways hated the Catholics, yet there was Father Ryan,
and they saw the immigrants as people to be managed, and with the Jews it was an on and
off again relationship. After all many of the Jews were bankers and the bankers were part
of the problem as well.
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