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Stop Calling Them Progressives
Townhall.com ^ | July 9, 2015 | Joy Overbeck

Posted on 07/09/2015 7:29:13 AM PDT by Kaslin

Today’s “progressive” ideas are nothing but retreads of the notorious 19th and 20th century command-and-control tyrannies that killed about 120 million of their own citizens. Variously known as socialism, Communism, and Marxism, their chief practitioners were Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao and Pol Pot. That’s why hearing modern militant liberals called “progressives” induces brain bleed in this particular brain.

As long as we allow reality-denying liberals to call themselves “progressives” we are telling the world their tired, failed ideas are the smartest, most forward-thinking of mindsets. And we’re handing them a critical public relations victory. If they are progressives, by default we who oppose them must be hopelessly backward “regressives.” How do you sell a philosophy with that label?

Words define ideas; he who controls the language controls the argument. We need Scott Walker or Ted Cruz or Ben Carson or Jeb Bush, actually all of the Republican contenders, to loudly expose “progressives” as cheerleaders for the most destructive ideas of all time. Stop calling them progressives! Otherwise, the lib mind-myth of being on the “right side of history” could prevail in yet another election.

You’d think that the disastrous history of what really happens when governments put their citizens in ideological chains would be enough to turn voters against the modern day incarnation of “progressivism.” But luckily for libs, many today know nothing of history. In random street interviews people voice sorrow that FDR just died; they say Lincoln was the first president; that America declared independence from France, and that event happened in 1946. Or maybe 1973.

These victims of historical amnesia embrace Barack Obama’s diktat that government is their bff, entitled to regulate our lives because they are so benevolently concerned about our welfare. And so very much smarter than we are.

So smart they can control nature by turning back the “warming” of the planet and the rise of the seas; all we have to do is give up our spoiled-brat modern conveniences like electricity and gasoline. Similarly, Mao Zedong insisted he could control China’s agricultural output via collectives, forced labor, and shooting sparrows; all his people had to do was starve to death.

Modern-day “progressives” bred in the old mold have given us control-freak government that tells us what kind of healthcare we must have (the kind that triples our premiums and deductibles meanwhile denying us our preferred doctors and hospitals); what kind of gas we must use (ethanol, causing corn product prices to go sky-high and escalating world-wide hunger); what kind of light bulbs we must buy (bulbs eliminating American jobs because they’re now made in China, plus stuffed with lots of toxic mercury -- thanks Greenies); what kind of food we should eat (banning sugar and trans fats; what kind of car we must drive (whatever green vehicle the government will pay us to buy), and so on.

“Progressive thinking” derived from the old killer empires includes these wildly preposterous notions:

· Capitalism and free enterprise, which have lifted more people out of poverty than any other system in the world, is actually evil and oppressive

· Differences in class, wealth and race put humanity eternally at each others’ throats

· Humans are responsible for global warming because of our selfish use of planet-killing carbon-based energy, even though carbon dioxide is only a miniscule .038 % of greenhouse gases according to the U.S. Geological Survey

· Gas-powered cars are bad; electric cars good because they run on the fuel that lives in the walls of Millennials’’ garages (nothing to do with coal or other carbon energy)

· Giving millions of illegals green cards won’t steal jobs from citizens who work in landscaping, construction, maintenance, restaurants and hotels because these are jobs “Americans won’t do”

· The government is more responsible for your success than you are: “You didn’t build that!”

· ISIS is not in fact Islamic and is certainly not the Islamic State it proclaims to be, even as it conquers vast swathes of the Middle East and murders tens of thousands

If irrationality were progressive, we would all be progressives. It shouldn’t be that difficult for the Republican presidential candidates to dismantle this ridiculousness piece by piece. And the first piece would be to call the “progressives” who they are really are: the retro belligerents of a ruinous and obsolete ideology that aims to enslave the personal liberties uniquely enshrined in America’s Constitution.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial
KEYWORDS: liarberals; liberals; progressives
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To: boycott

Tis amazing the seductive Serpent lie that all can live on the labor of others... it used to be called slavery but is known now as “progressivism”.


21 posted on 07/09/2015 7:55:09 AM PDT by FiddlePig
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To: Kaslin
As I said a few times on television years ago, "a rat riding a piece of card board in the gutter back to a sewer illustrates progress." Progress without understanding direction is meaningless.

Those whom the writer identifies are at war with reality; at war with nature. Their "intellectual" movements were compulsive efforts to force uniformity on mankind. Calling their would be imitators today, "progressives." is indeed a mistake.

For an effort to understand the dynamics involved, Compassion or Compulsion.

22 posted on 07/09/2015 7:57:25 AM PDT by Ohioan
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To: Kaslin

In one important sense they are “progressive” ... as in cancer is a “progressive disease”.


23 posted on 07/09/2015 7:58:17 AM PDT by glennaro
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To: The_Media_never_lie

Totalitarians


24 posted on 07/09/2015 7:58:50 AM PDT by stanne
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To: ProgressingAmerica

Ping.


25 posted on 07/09/2015 8:02:12 AM PDT by DuncanWaring (The Lord uses the good ones; the bad ones use the Lord.)
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To: Kaslin

Bkmrk.


26 posted on 07/09/2015 8:02:34 AM PDT by RushIsMyTeddyBear (I'm fed up.)
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To: The_Media_never_lie

Bolshevicks!


27 posted on 07/09/2015 8:06:31 AM PDT by Flavious_Maximus
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To: Kaslin

They’re subversives.


28 posted on 07/09/2015 8:23:46 AM PDT by Ray76 (Obama says, "Unlike my mum, Ruth has all the documents needed to prove who Mark's father was.")
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To: boycott

Neocons are a real thing. Conservative isn’t it.


29 posted on 07/09/2015 8:29:49 AM PDT by Romulus
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To: Kaslin

I’ve been calling them “leftist-extremists” for a number of years.


30 posted on 07/09/2015 8:41:23 AM PDT by GingisK
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To: GingisK

And that is what they are


31 posted on 07/09/2015 8:42:56 AM PDT by Kaslin (He needed the ignorant to reelect him, and he got them. Now we all have to pay the consequenses)
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To: boycott

I always put quotation marks on “Progressives” that should explain that they are anything but


32 posted on 07/09/2015 8:52:19 AM PDT by Kaslin (He needed the ignorant to reelect him, and he got them. Now we all have to pay the consequenses)
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To: Kaslin

They’re Transnational Progressives


33 posted on 07/09/2015 8:57:55 AM PDT by Despot of the Delta
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To: Kaslin
We need Scott Walker or Ted Cruz or Ben Carson or Jeb Bush, actually all of the Republican contenders, to loudly expose “progressives” as cheerleaders for the most destructive ideas of all time.

Jeb? For reals?

34 posted on 07/09/2015 8:59:28 AM PDT by bassmaner (Hey commies: I am a' white male, and I am guilty of NOTHING! Sell your 'white guilt' elsewhere.)
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To: Kaslin

It is shocking just how many US presidents have been part of the “progressive movement”. Most in the 20th century were.


35 posted on 07/09/2015 8:59:50 AM PDT by CodeToad (If it weren't for physics and law enforcement I'd be unstoppable!)
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To: manc
Why our side just folds and uses words like gay and undocumented is beyond me , because all one is doing is helping their cause

Here are a few more:
Redistribution: As if wealth were "distributed" by some evil entity and therefore must be re-distributed. Alternate: greedy government grab
Global Warming/Climate Change...
Common sense gun control...
Green i.e. Green Energy: last I checked, green meant money or meant jealousy

FWIW

36 posted on 07/09/2015 9:02:03 AM PDT by VRW Conspirator (American Jobs for American Workers)
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To: manc

the correct term is queer
the correct term is illegal alien
the correct term is not amish but if you use the N word, posting privileges will be revoked


37 posted on 07/09/2015 9:04:49 AM PDT by bert ((K.E.; N.P.; GOPc.;+12, 73, ..... No peace? then no peace!)
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To: Kaslin
'Progressive' is the term Communists used to describer themselves. It is the perfect term for liberals.


38 posted on 07/09/2015 9:16:46 AM PDT by aimhigh
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To: Kaslin

I’ve been calling them “commies” for years. My friends used to try and talk me down, now some of them call them “commies” too.


39 posted on 07/09/2015 9:47:31 AM PDT by VTenigma (The Democratic party is the party of the mathematically challenged)
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To: The Toll
They are The Qumeer Rouge

I once knew a qumeer who used a little rouge on his cheeks...no, the other ones!

40 posted on 07/09/2015 10:48:55 AM PDT by JimRed (Excise the cancer before it kills us; feed & water the Tree of Liberty! TERM LIMITS NOW & FOREVER!)
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