Use the correct term: REGRESSIVES.
Every time you say this the next question will be what do you mean or why are you saying regressive. That’s the opening, run with it. Because they, democrat regressives wish to eliminate the first and second amendments, kill babies and kids in school, and return us to tyranny. You can go on and on.
If every single conservative commentator begin to exclusively use REGRESSIVE the debate would be over.
Question? Why are conservatives/republicans so damn stupid?
That’s a very good point. I’m going to see if Col. West will start the ball rolling. He uses progressive in many of his articles.
I like the term /fabianist/.
Outstanding post.
If you control the language, you control thought. We have allowed the regressives/stalinists/communists/socialists to control our language and thoughts for far too long. (That’s what the whole PC thing is all about, too. They make it taboo to say what we think, so eventually most people don’t even think it.)
“As long as conservatives ignore the power of language, they lose. In God’s name....QUIT CALLING THEM PROGRESSIVES!!!!”
Thank you. There’s nothing “progressive” about them. They’re Leftists.
And they hate us.
L
It’s as bad as calling them “liberals.” According to Safire’s New Political Dictionary) American socialists misappropriated that term in the 1920s.It’s easy to criticize our own people for accepting the socialists’ self-designations, but it is very difficult to get around the roadblock to rational thought which those self-designations represent. Given that socialists control both academia and big journalism, that control of language is pretty much inevitable.
I’ve been trying to get to the bottom of that mess for many decades, and I feel that I have peeled a layer or two off of the onion. The first thing to understand about “the media” is that the central problem is journalism. Granted that fictional movies tend to project socialist assumptions, as long as there is a First Amendment (please God, “forever”) nobody is going to outlaw storytelling any time soon.
Why is journalism such a problem? IMHO: because journalism is in the business of interesting the public as well as that of gaining influence. It is natural for people to want influence:
The natural disposition is always to believe. It is acquired wisdom and experience only that teach incredulity, and they very seldom teach it enough. The wisest and most cautious of us all frequently gives credit to stories which he himself is afterwards both ashamed and astonished that he could possibly think of believing.But the business of interesting the public implies following the rules for doing it - and “If it bleeds, it leads” is one of those rules for commercial success. Has nothing to do with “the public interest,” mind - only with the journalist’s gaining money and influence.The man whom we believe is necessarily, in the things concerning which we believe him, our leader and director, and we look up to him with a certain degree of esteem and respect. But as from admiring other people we come to wish to be admired ourselves; so from being led and directed by other people we learn to wish to become ourselves leaders and directors . . .
The desire of being believed, the desire of persuading, of leading and directing other people, seems to be one of the strongest of all our natural desires. - Adam Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)
Another rule for journalist to gain money and influence is to promote the idea that journalism is objective. You might expect that journalists would compete with each other for the respect of the audience by claiming to be more objective than the competition, but that is not what we observe. Instead,
People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty and justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies; much less to render them necessary. - Adam Smith, Wealth of Nationsseems to be the order of the day. Do journalists “meet together?” The Associated Press was founded in the 1840s, and the AP newswire is nothing other than a continuous virtual meeting of all major American journalists. If there is anything at all to Adam Smith’s prediction, then, we must expect that journalists in America should be tight as ticks. And they are. They never promote their own objectivity above that of any other journalist who is in good standing with wire service journalism as a whole. Let anyone outside the club (Sean Hannity, say) suggest that any such member of the club is anything other than pure as the wind-driven snow, and suddenly he “is not a journalist, not objective.”The major flaws in the assumption by journalists that journalists are objective include
Journalists are cynical about society, but since the rationale of government is precisely to constrain the failings of society, cynicism towards society inherently corresponds to faith in, even naiveté towards, government. And the combination of cynicism towards society and naiveté towards government is the defining quality of socialism. Via the medium of the AP wire, journalists conspire against society by promoting socialism.
- in their field - hyper topical nonfiction - there is always room for legitimate controversy due to the “fog” of conflicting early reports of any major event - the “fog of war” being merely the most excruciating example.
- given the above, any claim of actual objectivity - not a claim, laudable if true, to be trying to be objective - implies that the arrogant believer of such self-praise actually is not even trying to be objective, because such a person takes his own objectivity for granted.
- “If it bleeds, it leads,” makes journalism knowingly negative, and yet they claim that journalists are objective. This amounts to suggesting that negativity is objectivity - a conceit which can be considered the very definition of “cynicism.”
SOME writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness POSITIVELY by uniting our affections, the latter NEGATIVELY by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.So, IMHO, the correct line of attack against socialism, and against its pillars of support in journalism and academia, is to accuse them of cynicism. And point out such things asSociety in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil . . . were the impulses of conscience clear, uniform and irresistibly obeyed, man would need no [government] - Thomas Paine, Common Sense (1776)
- From Theodore Roosevelt's 1910 speech at the Sarbonne:
- There is no more unhealthy being, no man less worthy of respect, than he who either really holds, or feigns to hold, an attitude of sneering disbelief toward all that is great and lofty, whether in achievement or in that noble effort which, even if it fails, comes to second achievement. A cynical habit of thought and speech, a readiness to criticise work which the critic himself never tries to perform, an intellectual aloofness which will not accept contact with life's realities - all these are marks, not as the possessor would fain to think, of superiority but of weakness. They mark the men unfit to bear their part painfully in the stern strife of living, who seek, in the affection of contempt for the achievements of others, to hide from others and from themselves in their own weakness. The rôle is easy; there is none easier, save only the rôle of the man who sneers alike at both criticism and performance.
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.