Posted on 02/08/2018 5:14:16 PM PST by ProgressingAmerica
The godfather of IRR was William Simon U'Ren, who said: (link)
I read Progress and Poverty in 1882, and I went just as crazy over the Single Tax idea as any one else ever did. I knew I wanted the Single Tax, and that was about all I did know. I thought I could get it by agitation, and was often disgusted with a world that refused to be agitated for what I wanted. In 1882 (sic) I learned what the Initiative and Referendum is, and then I saw the way to the Single Tax. SO I QUIT TALKING SINGLE TAX, not because I was any the less in favor of it but because I saw that the first job was to get the Initiative and Referendum, so that the people independently of the Legislature, may get what they want rather than take what the Legislature will let them have.
It's all about Henry George. The ends justify the means.
Ping
Saying George wasn’t bad is an error. He just wanted a DIFFERENT level of bad than the others. His ideas were simply less stinky shit compared to the rest.
He was against everything this country was meant to be. So were the early so-called progressives. The modern ones are over the top Frankfurt School bad by comparison (they actually stink worse than Marx).
Communism was the leader of progressivism....not the other way around
Thank you very much for posting this.
Marxist, Communist, Progressive, Nazi, Leftist, Georgist, Socialist, Gramscian, etc...Dozens and dozens of Marxist-oriented authors wrote endlessly their version of what the ideal collective social order should look like...
A poisonous snake is a poisonous snake...Big deal...They all need extermination for (in this case) the same two reasons: Individual freedom & liberty!
Actually, you could argue that the name is simply satan.
The desires of these folks go back to the commandments - don’t steal, don’t covet...
If the alleged distinction between progressivism and communism can’t be articulated in a single sentence, then there is no real distinction.
And I’m talking about distinction in ideological content, not names of people.
That's fine by me.
Keep in mind, if you fall for an attempt to create many groups out of one, you’re making it more difficult to target the one group.
In other words, to pretend there’s a difference between progressives and progressives is to serve their interest.
Unless I hear a good, simple explanation here, then it’s the same as we always thought:
Progressivism = Communism.
All you have to do is have a conversation with a “progressive” and then have one with a “communist.”
They talk, act and think exactly the same. And their mind is always a couple notches lower than the brightest non-progressivecommunist.
However, I can make it quite simple in the following regard:
America's first progressive president appeared in 1900. That is not the same year America's first communist president appeared.
Slip of the keyboard there. Meant to type 1901. The first progressive president did not serve two full terms.
To understand a concept is to be able to articulate it.
If you understand how progressivism is allegedly different from communism, you will be able to state it in one sentence.
This is a really good point and fits very well here.
What if you receive the wrong anti-venom after a bite? I don't believe that hurts you, but you don't cure the original malady. I generally prefer to compare progressivism to cancer, but this fits very well.
We were bit by a rattlesnake. We had better make sure we get rattlesnake anti-venom, and not coral snake anti-venom.(Insert whatever incompatible anti-venom here.)
A communist will just steal your property. A progressive prefers to regulate it.
Phase two is that the communist kills you if you resist his schemes of nationalization. That's government property, not yours. A progressive, on the contrary, will harass you more, regulate you more, increase your taxes, more fees, increase bureaucracy, audit you with the IRS, show up at your brother/uncle/sister's small business and conduct "compliance reviews", smear you using their journalist friends, etc. This is exactly what they've done over the last 100 years.
That's primarily only regarding property though. But, I have a feeling you will not accept that single sentence answer. And yes I can back this up, see Stuart Chase's 18 points, most notably #17:
Not much "taking over" of property or industries in the old socialistic sense.
Stuart Chase was only an adviser to Franklin Delano Roosevelt and he was the guy who actually coined the phrase "New Deal".
That's 13 words in my single sentence answer above, if we are counting. Ironically enough, Chase's was also 13 words. How short of a sentence were you looking for and in what context?
Actually, you did quite well. I think you’ve presented an actual distinction.
But I don’t think it’s enough to be an ultimate distinction. It might just be the difference between a bear and an angry bear. Here’s why.
The progressive doesn’t refrain from killing you out of moral restraint. He sees you as an object without intrinsic value in the same way a communist sees you that way.
The communist is simply more impatient, or angry.
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