Of the two most prominent social ideologies in the United States of America, one is on the rise and one is doomed. Conservatism, which as its name suggests seeks to conserve the Constitution and the traditions and ideals upon which our nation was founded, will soon die because the term will lack meaning. There will in some short time be so little of these aforementioned things left in place that conservation will be purposeless, as well as a meaningless ideal. Conservatism, you see, does not add or invent. It merely conserves what yet exists.
By contrast, progressivism (modern liberalism), just like its cousins socialism, Marxism, and communism, seeks to sweep away society’s foundations and replace them with their antitheses. Yet for obvious reasons, progressivism neither does nor professes to do so overtly. Few would stand for or allow the destruction of rights, liberty, justice, equality, and morality. Progressive activists, however, need not remove them as ideals, but instead can simply and progressively change the meaning of these words so that they serve progressivism’s destructive, collectivist purpose.
Changing the definitions of words changes the ideas and ideals they represent. So changing their definitions results in and/or necessitates changing the meaning of the laws that use them. Thus little by little—progressively, in fact—a society is transformed into its antithesis. This is exactly what is happening in the United States of America. The transition is one from the world’s most successful, moral, and exceptional example toward a clichéd, historically failed example.
Why? Power inevitably preys on laziness, depravity, and complacency, that’s why.
Redefinition
Throughout human history, the collectivists have sought and often succeeded in redefining critical words that define the critical ideals. In every case the result has been a society destroyed, because this redefinition requires that the singular capacity for human survival—rationality—must also be destroyed. This is what progressivism seeks and is achieving in the USA. It seeks it because like every other collectivist system, progressivism is the quest to remove power from individuals and place it entirely in the hands of an elite group: government.
The critical terms and ideals that have in the United States of America been under assault for more than 50 years include, primarily, those mentioned before: rights, liberty, justice, equality, and morality. According to The Constitution and our founding ideals, those words have specific, rational, and consistent meanings. Under the antithetical morality of progressivism they have entirely different ones. The result of more than 50 years of constant assault on rationality is that we now have a nation that stands upon and functions primarily according to two gravely important new virtues: theft and slavery. Here is how progressive redefinition of critical words works.
Rights
A right is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man’s freedom of action in a social context. An actual right is one that places no obligation or limitation on anyone else’s rights. Yet according to progressivism, rights are indiscriminate with regard to how they obligate individuals to groups of individuals. A right to “affordable healthcare,” for instance, obligates some to provide services and material according to arbitrary mandate rather than voluntary agreements. It also requires members of one segment of society to give up their sovereign property to members of another segment of society. In other words, the “right” to affordable healthcare requires that some people be slaves to other peoples’ needs or sense of entitlement.
It is important to note that while our nation was founded upon and our Constitution refers only to individual rights, progressive ideology immorally and irrationally recognizes group rights at the expense of individual rights. It is also worth noting that the reason our nation was founded upon individual rights is because groups may be afforded rights only with the destruction of individual rights. Therefore, the progressive redefinition of foundational words and concepts must embody the rise of groups and the decline of the individual. The result and the ideal is collectivism.
With the establishment of group rights, society becomes cannibalistic. You see it already. Since group rights require the destruction of other rights, some groups feel harmed by other groups…and they are harmed by the irrational rights bestowed upon other groups. Constant destruction of rights will be required to fuel the ensuing spiral of entitlement. It is happening almost every day here in the US.
Liberty
Liberty by the Constitutional American definition is individual; that of a man’s individual sovereignty (in his ideas, person, and property). According to progressivism, it means freedom from whatever responsibility enough people or certain elite people decide is untenable…without regard for how that decision imposes obligation on other people. In other words, the progressive definition of liberty means that some must be slaves so that others may enjoy their own definition of liberty.
Justice
Under the Constitution, the definition of justice has to do with equal justice (under the law). Progressive ideology ignores the idea of equal justice in favor of “social justice.” According to social justice, equal justice is only good so long as everyone “feels” they are equal. In the event that any group decides it is unfairly treated—or that its long-deceased members were wronged, in some distant past—equal justice is moot so that social justice may be achieved. Justice, in the progressive morality, is for groups and not individuals. Social justice is a mechanism primarily for achieving the progressive definition of equality.
Equality
Our Declaration of Independence observes that all men are created equal. According to this tenet we have crafted laws that ensure equality of opportunity, for this is the only equality that does not destroy individual liberty. This idea and these laws impose no tyranny upon individual sovereignty and, therefore, constitute actual rights. “Equal rights” according to progressive morality are concerned mainly with results. Our being created equal is not enough, it says, for progressivism demands that we all achieve equally as well. Therefore, progressivism requires that those who by their own efforts achieve more than others be obligated to share with those who by decision or circumstance achieve less. Indeed they must share; else their property will be seized and distributed according to the whim of those who rule. Thus, the idea of equality becomes nothing more than a weapon used by the politically powerful upon the successful, and theft becomes a societal virtue.
Theft and Slavery
Americans would never allow theft and slavery, according to their rational definitions, to become the fundamental pillars of our society. And yet the deed is almost accomplished. If not checked while we yet have a mildly functional Constitution, progress toward a wholly collectivist, progressive society will meet its conclusion. Once this happens, no degree of social outcry or civil action will be able to reverse it.
Social conflict over civil disagreements within a rational, moral society is appropriate and productive only when victory is defined by the preservation and perhaps affirmation (legal, etc.) of Constitutional, individual liberty and justice. In this way, ideological arguments must be resolved within the moral structure of society as defined by our founding principles and governing laws (which must be consistent with one another). With the redefinition of critical terms and the establishment of their antithetical ideals, however, this morally appropriate result is not possible.
Under progressivism, social groups vie and may even believe that a legal victory is theirs, but it never is. The nature of collectivism ensures that such victories only ever result in more power being ceded to the government. Mechanism will require that government invent or confiscate the power to bestow the new rights. Then, with all of society’s rights flowing from the government, citizens are left only with the power to ask—or beg—for whatever they desire or require. History is filled with examples of what this is like, if you care to look.
There will be consequences
For all the reasons cited here and many more besides, there should be no doubt in any rational man’s mind that an effort to reestablish our Constitution and reclaim our morality, rights, liberty, and justice in the United States of America would be impossible through civil means. All civil means presuppose actual morality, liberty, and justice as foundations.
With those foundations destroyed there will be only one way left for Americans to reclaim their nation from the progressives and their despotic government. And you know damn well what it is.
