Townhall.com
John P. Warren

One of Charles Krauthammers’ precepts is to speak bluntly about Things that Matter. As the 2018 election season begins, one that’s bedeviled the American voter for nearly a hundred years is the notion of Progressive Ethics.

Like the phrases, honest politician, genuine imitation, and perfect child—each of which is joined by words with mutually exclusive meanings—evidence suggests that Progressive Ethics has a place all its own in the Hall of Oxymorons.

Progressives may be devoid of ethical constructs because they are political amnesiacs. They promise one thing, then disavow their words when it becomes convenient to forget their inconvenient truths. Here are just a few examples:

1. In the early 1930s, Democrats made a play for Black voters, who until WWI and shortly thereafter, had usually voted Republican in memory of their putative savior, Abraham Lincoln. What happened next? FDR’s massive government projects denied work to Black laborers and mechanics because they were not members of craft unions as required by the Davis-Bacon Act. FDR’s rejection of anti-lynching legislation permitted ongoing, unspeakable brutalities toward Blacks for another three decades. FDR’s refusal to integrate the armed services kept Black men in mostly menial positions until Truman remembered his courage.

Blacks were forgotten until needed for the Great Society welfare experiments which dismantled millions of Black families and made them welfare dependent. Except for throwing billions more into the stewpot of bureaucratic incompetence, Progressives have walked away from it all.

2. In the 1970s, with Roe v. Wade, Progressives made their play for women voters under cover of a woman’s right to terminate another life on demand—forgetting their decades of opposition to abortion, given the religiosity of their ethnic constituents. Their true assertion of a woman’s place in the world occurred in the Clinton Administration when the president and his wife monstrously decried women who outed Bill’s ongoing predatory behavior. That Clinton has become the poster boy for #MeToo is no surprise.

3. Progressives’ amnesia continued when the LGBTQ community garnered enough support to push the Clinton’s into abandoning the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) right after President Obama did the same. They were all for it until they were against it.

4. In 2008, Obama promised to solve the immigration problem once in office. Except for record numbers of deportations during his eight years, he did no such thing. Instead, he promptly trashed his promises to Latinos, squandering his House-Senate, two-year majority to force The Affordable Care Act down the throats of all Americans (say, “Aahh!”). Not least, he forgot his promise to “keep your doctor.”

5. Didn’t Obama promise a new, high level of respect amongst nations, then gave us a feckless foreign policy in Russia, Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Israel, just to name a few—all anchored by the humiliation of Benghazi, a low point in modern American diplomacy?

6. Isn’t it now becoming clear that Obama broadly manipulated DOJ/FBI investigative actions to help assure a Clinton victory in 2016—forgetting the elegant words about his presidency being emblematic of integrity?

7. Progressives’ behavior toward CIA Director nominee Gina Haspel underscores their courage to forget. When Obama nominated John Brennan for that position in 2013, Democrats had no problem confirming him by a wide margin, despite a 2007 CBS interview in which he stated that waterboarding gleaned useful intelligence information and “saved lives.” With near total amnesia, only six Democrats could vote for Haspel’s confirmation in May 2018, despite her repeatedly declared disavowal of the use of torture.

8. We come full circle to 2018, a damning memory for Progressives, given their intransigence in solving the immigration issue once and for all, despite showings a strong majority of Americans are willing to support a DACA solution and a defined, non-amnesty path to citizenship for many illegals, in trade for strong border security and merit-based immigration. Their banal cruelty creeps into sunlight when decrying the separation of children from their families at the border while furthering the number of American family units torn asunder by poverty, drugs, and illiteracy with their policies of big government, welfare dependency, and free stuff.

For a group that has done much to further one-parent households all across America, to rob our culture of unifying behaviors (standing for the anthem?), to make religious freedom its own oxymoron, Progressive promises for our future are as empty as their memories. With them, we can count on one thing: They will run from one constituency to another, promising everything, all the while dividing us and stripping us of our rights.

With Progressives, it’s nothing new. In The Benedict Option (p89), author Rod Dreher reminds us of de Tocqueville’s belief that democracy in America “could not survive the loss” of its religious faith, that “self-government required shared convictions about moral truths,” or else, the nation, “falls prey to inordinate individualism, materialism, and democratic despotism,” all precursors “for servitude.” No thanks.

Americans should know what to do about Progressives. From now on, forget them.

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It gives me no pleasure at all to recognize that Progressives cannot simply be forgotten. The cannot be ignored either. Progressivism is a creeping glacier headed toward the precipice of destruction. Inch by excruciating inch taken by Progressivism moves a society away from the morals that tether it to a safe distance from the edge of desolation. The progress is mostly so slow and benign as to be unrecognizable for the threat that it is. Only time and distance can indicate the trend. Most disturbing is that the more it is forgotten and ignored, the faster Progressivism moves. Progressivism must simply be defeated.

Progressive ethics = oxymoron.

quote:

Originally posted by 220-9er:
Progressive ethics = oxymoron.

Perhaps one should read the article before posting? The author agrees with you, by the way.

quote:

Originally posted by 220-9er:
Progressive ethics = oxymoron.

Exactly! My first thought on reading the thread title was, “Isn’t that an oxymoron?”

quote:

Originally posted by slosig:

quote:

Originally posted by 220-9er:
Progressive ethics = oxymoron.

Exactly! My first thought on reading the thread title was, “Isn’t that an oxymoron?”

That's what John P. Warren says in the article posted above.

quote:

Originally posted by synthplayer:

quote:

Originally posted by slosig:

quote:

Originally posted by 220-9er:
Progressive ethics = oxymoron.

Exactly! My first thought on reading the thread title was, “Isn’t that an oxymoron?”

That's what John P. Warren says in the article posted above.

Took him about 600 more words though.

Succinct is good. But writers have whole columns to fill.

I think that it's time we dispense with the term "progressives" and call them what they are - communists.

I prefer "leftists". To me the modern leftist encompasses progressives, "democrats", socialists, communists, fascists...well basically they are all tyrants. Boiled down to the bone thats what they all have as their ultimate goal. Tyranny. I put democrats in quotes because I still believe there are some true democrats out there, not many, but they are there.

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Originally posted by Gustofer:
I think that it's time we dispense with the term "progressives" and call them what they are - communists.

Great point. One consistent characteristic of Leftists is they camouflage themselves with soft sounding labels. Liberal used to mean something completely different than what Leftists perverted it to be now. Socialism sounds like a system focused on the benefit of society.....except it's not. It's a system focused on captivating a society. Progressive sounds so forward thinking if one ignores the regressive nature of the Leftism that hides in it. Progressivism is less an ideology than a method. It is that one benign step at a time into the destruction of Leftism. Leftists use these labels to hide from the consequences of Leftism. They are all tyrants to a degree. Communist tyrants.

I prefer to call them maggots.