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Progressivism: Individuals don't inherently have this thing called "liberty"
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Posted on 01/19/2013 6:32:52 AM PST by ProgressingAmerica

In "Liberalism and Social Action" (Excerpts only), John Dewey explains the following:

The idealistic philosophy taught that men are held together by the relations that proceed from and that manifest an ultimate cosmic mind. It followed that the basis of society and the state is shared intelligence and purpose, not force nor yet self-interest. The state is a moral organism, of which government is one organ. Only by participating in the common purpose as it works for the common good can individual human beings realize their true individualities and become truly free. The state is but one organ among many of the Spirit and Will that holds all things together and that makes human beings members of one another. It does not originate the moral claim of individuals to the full realization of their potentialities as vehicles of objective thought and purpose. Moreover, the motives it can directly appeal to are not of the highest kind. But it is the business of the state to protect all forms and to promote all modes of human association in which the moral claims of the members of society are embodied and which serve as the means of voluntary self-realization. Its business is negatively to remove the obstacles that stand in the way of individuals coming to consciousness of themselves for what they are, and positively to promote the cause of public education. Unless the state does this work it is no state. These philosophical liberals pointed out the restrictions, economic and political, which prevent many, probably majority, of individuals from the voluntary intelligent action by which they may become what they are capable of becoming. The teachings of this new liberal school affected the thoughts and actions of multitudes who did not trouble themselves to understand the philosophical doctrine that underlay it. They served to break down the idea that freedom is something that individuals have as a ready-made possession, and to instill the idea that it is something to be achieved, while the possibility of the achievement was shown to be conditioned by the institutional medium in which an individual lives. These new liberals fostered the idea that the state has the responsibility for creating institutions under which individuals can effectively realize the potentialities that are theirs.

This explains what I posted just the other day: "When progressives use the word "liberty", they mean setting the government free"

Yes, but why? I always ask myself that question. "When progressives use the word "liberty", they mean setting the government free", and here is why: "the basis of society and the state is shared intelligence and purpose" and "Only by participating in the common purpose as it works for the common good can individual human beings realize their true individualities and become truly free". He means working through the state. He says quite plainly, that the new liberal school served to break down the idea that freedom is something that individuals inherently have.

Which means that the "liberals" didn't like that idea. They didn't want individuals to believe they were inherently free. (I put liberals in quotes, because by the time Liberalism and Social Action was written, the progressives had re-made themselves and stopped calling themselves progressive)

And you can see this in the writings of my earlier posting, which I linked to. Wilson, Croly, and FDR all make it pretty clear that government must be set free from the original constraints. They don't approach it as philosophically as Dewey does, but they clearly agree. Individuals aren't free. So the state must be set free.

Now, I don't want to just rest my thoughts upon only one of Dewey's writings. From "Reconstruction in Philosophy", Dewey writes the following: (Page 193/194)

Consider the conception of the individual self. The individualistic school of England and France in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was empirical in intent. It based its individualism, philosophically speaking, upon the belief that individuals are alone real, that classes and organizations are secondary and derived. They are artificial, while individuals are natural. In what way then can individualism be said to come under the animadversions that have been passed? To say the defect was that this school overlooked those connections with other persons which are a part of the constitution of every individual is true as far as it goes ; but unfortunately it rarely goes beyond the point of just that wholesale justification of institutions which has been criticized.

The real difficulty is that the individual is regarded as something given, something already there. Consequently, he can only be something to be catered to, something whose pleasures are to be magnified and possessions multiplied. When the individual is taken as something given already, anything that can be done to him or for him it can only be by way of external impressions and belongings: sensations of pleasure and pain, comforts, securities.

Animadversion means 'strong criticism'.

So here we see that Dewey does fully and accurately grasp the "old conceptions" of individualism.(and thus by extension, individual liberty) And he is rejecting it. He sees that it's individuals that create institutions. And then he flips it on it's head: (still in pages 193/194)

Now it is true that social arrangements, laws, institutions are made for man, rather than that man is made for them; that they are means and agencies of human welfare and progress. But they are not means for obtaining something for individuals, not even happiness. They are means of creating individuals. Only in the physical sense of physical bodies that to the senses are separate is individuality an original datum. Individuality in a social and moral sense is something to be wrought out. It means initiative, inventiveness, varied resourcefulness, assumption of responsibility in choice of belief and conduct. These are not gifts, but achievements. As achievements, they are not absolute but relative to the use that is to be made of them. And this use varies with the environment.

Creating individuals. That's the true role of government. Without the state, you and I are nothing. Without the state, you and I are destined to make the wrong choices. Note where Dewey uses the phrase "possessions multiplied", that is his real point of contention. We as individuals spend our lives accumulating wealth, and progressives really have a problem with that. In "The Future of Liberalism", (Full text on Heritage.org) John Dewey explains the following:

In the first place, such liberalism knows that an individual is nothing fixed, given ready-made. It is something achieved, and achieved not in isolation but with the aid and support of conditions, cultural and physical: including in “cultural,” economic, legal and political institutions as well as science and art. Liberalism knows that social conditions may restrict, distort and almost prevent the development of individuality. It therefore takes an active interest in the working of social institutions that have a bearing, positive or negative, upon the growth of individuals who shall be rugged in fact and not merely in abstract theory. It is as much interested in the positive construction of favorable institutions, legal, political and economic as it is in removing abuses and overt oppressions.

And to end my post, I'll leave you with the words of Drs. Ronald J. Pestritto and Thomas G. West, who explain this last quote from Dewey exactly as I would:

Because individuals are not spontaneously free, the absence of social conditions providing "aid and support" for the development of spiritual potential will inevitably constrain and/or distort individual growth. For this reason, Dewey engaged in a wide-ranging survey of the character of the relations making up American society in order to determine whether they were conductive to spiritual growth. While concluding that many aspects of American life were in need of significant reform(or social reorganization), Dewey believed that no relation posed so great an impediment to spiritual growth as did the free market economic system arising from the protection of the natural right to acquire property.


TOPICS: History
KEYWORDS: collectivism; dewey; individualism; johndewey; progressingamerica

1 posted on 01/19/2013 6:33:00 AM PST by ProgressingAmerica
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To: Albertafriend; preacher; Anima Mundi; frithguild; ColoCdn; Old Sarge; LambSlave; SatinDoll; ...
If anybody wants on/off the revolutionary progressivism ping list, send me a message

Progressives do not want to discuss their own history. I want to discuss their history.

2 posted on 01/19/2013 6:36:16 AM PST by ProgressingAmerica (What's the best way to reach a YouTube generation? Put it on YouTube!)
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To: ProgressingAmerica

Well then, John Dewey can KMA.


3 posted on 01/19/2013 6:38:17 AM PST by ecomcon
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To: ProgressingAmerica

Liberty, and Freedom are not things you are born with or possess inherently. They were earned for you by previous generations with great expenditures of blood and treasure and if you want to keep it and leave it to your children, you need to ready to do the same.

It is almost time.


4 posted on 01/19/2013 6:39:41 AM PST by Little Ray (Waiting for the return of the Gods of the Copybook Headings.)
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To: call meVeronica

Bump for later


5 posted on 01/19/2013 6:39:41 AM PST by call meVeronica
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To: Little Ray

>> Liberty, and Freedom are not things you are born with or possess inherently.

No, we are *endowed* with liberty by our Creator. But we *possess* it only to the extent that we don’t surrender it to other mortals (i.e. “government”), and fight off other men’s attempts to rob it from us.


6 posted on 01/19/2013 7:33:01 AM PST by Nervous Tick (Without GOD, men get what they deserve.)
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To: ProgressingAmerica
But it is the business of the state to protect all forms and to promote all modes of human association in which the moral claims of the members of society are embodied and which serve as the means of voluntary self-realization.

Unless that form and mode of human association involves Liberty and Freedom. If one is coerced by the state, then association and self-realization are not voluntary, are they?

7 posted on 01/19/2013 7:38:01 AM PST by Sirius Lee (All that is required for evil to advance is for government to do "something")
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To: ProgressingAmerica
It followed that the basis of society and the state is shared intelligence and purpose, not force nor yet self-interest. The state is a moral organism, of which government is one organ. Only by participating in the common purpose as it works for the common good can individual human beings realize their true individualities and become truly free.

A sort of secularized perversion of Plotinus substituting the state for God..

8 posted on 01/19/2013 7:51:26 AM PST by SeeSharp
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To: ProgressingAmerica

Bump for later.


9 posted on 01/19/2013 7:53:53 AM PST by plsjr (<>< ... HIS will be done! (choose a "lesser evil"? NEVER AGAIN))
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To: ProgressingAmerica
It's a tough thing, bringing Dewey (John, not Thomas) to light. He's a conversation killer, even long after his 'foci of relationships' blurred. His wave function collapsed a long time ago, and though I would bet most certified teachers could not recall his name, they weren't certified without adopting his philosophy of education.

No other teaching is allowed in this nation. Anywhere. That's how influential this brilliant lunatic turned out to be!

Sure, all of us, if we thought about it, could imagine more than one philosophy of education, and probably variations within each method. Still, to become a certified teacher in America you are required to buy into one and one only.

In the range of variations, the colors of the spectrum, of Experimentalism we find Dewey's particular flavor known today as "progressive education," which must be bought, bag and baggage, if you expect to become a teacher.

The corrupt orthodoxy of our teaching colleges, the forgotten roots of the very methods of teaching which are not simply alien to America but alien to our language, is like a haunted mansion.

No one is old enough to remember how we adopted Dewey's flavor of "progressive education" or the Prussian model of grade schooling and regimentation, and I could go on and on, like Dewey, but I'll sink back now...

Except to marvel, once again, at the scope of this disaster. It should be bulldozed and buried.

10 posted on 01/19/2013 8:17:03 AM PST by Prospero
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To: ProgressingAmerica
In the first place, such liberalism knows that an individual is nothing fixed, given ready-made. It is something achieved, and achieved not in isolation but with the aid and support of conditions, cultural and physical: including in “cultural,” economic, legal and political institutions as well as science and art.

Pretty much Dewey's way of saying, "You didn't build that."

Excellent essay.

If an individual is "nothing fixed, given ready-made," then and individual is nothing. Life only has value as an instrument of utility, a means useful for achieving some other end. Of course the dirty little secret of politics built on Utilitarian, Progressivist principles, is that the choice of ends are made by those in power, who, succumbing to the eternal temptation of people who hold power, believe themselves capable of discerning and implementing what is "good' for the people.

As Pope John Paul II put it, "Utilitarianism is a civilization of production and of use, a civilization of things and not of persons, a civilization in which persons are used in the same way as things are used."

That more than adequately explains why individual human life is of little consequence in our culture. And it also explains why Obama's cynical use of children as props in presenting his gun control agenda is itself evidence that his agenda is NOT about protecting children, but empowering the State and the withering away of the individual (to turn Lenin's phrase on its head.).

11 posted on 01/19/2013 8:31:02 AM PST by newheart (The greatest trick the left ever pulled was convincing the world it was not a religion.)
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To: ProgressingAmerica

Now we know why John Dewey pushed the notion of ‘public education’ for the ‘masses’. He wanted to have a hold on the children of immigrants so they would be freed from their parents’ beliefs, specifically religious beliefs, because it is those that proclaimed humans are inherently free. This notion is in direct opposition to what Dewey and his fellow ‘progressives’ believed.


12 posted on 01/19/2013 8:45:46 AM PST by SuziQ
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