MrRodgers
Posts: 10542
Joined: 7/30/2005
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quote:
ORIGINAL: bounty44
absolutely love this:
"Progressivism and the authoritarian impulse"
quote:
Fish’s [you'll have to go to the link for the background] single standard, distilled and properly understood, is that self-styled liberals are (they’ll claim) morally superior by virtue of their very belief in their own political identities — which identity is tied to an ideology that, manifested politically, privileges governmental theft, sanctioned inequality as a function of tribal identity, and a giant foundational question beg: namely, that moral superiority comes from being on the left, so therefore being on the left means you can really do no fundamental moral wrong...
Progressivism (that is, the leftist political home to philosphical anti-foundationalism), as Fish sees it, is the “non-formal” — that is, I suppose, situationally free-floating — antidote to restrictive “conservative” or classically liberal universalism*. That that restrictive conservative/classical liberal universalism is, as we know from the Declaration and Constitution, the foundation upon which this country was imagined and later framed, well, that’s irrelevant...
“Progressivism” is, as Fish evinces — and as I’ve spent years on protein wisdom demonstrating through my various discussions of identity politics and language — a belief system that, once its kernel assumptions are adopted, leads fundamentally and inexorably to tyranny...Tyranny and authoritarianism — when lorded over by the “liberal” — is, by virtue of the adopted morality of those running it, both moral and good...
And it is because of this — the progressives’ fidelity to a belief system that is fundamentally at odds with the idea of equality of the individual before the law — that I’ve said time and time again that modern progressivism / “liberalism” is nothing like the classical liberalism upon which this country was founded, and is in fact antithetical and hostile to the very notion of individual autonomy, and a foundational “fairness” that comes about as a result of a system of law that seeks to create an even playing field. That is, it is in a very real and strict sense un-American. [I have said in my life on more than one occasion, "they" are the enemy and wish they'd move to Sweden or cuba]...
Progressivism cares not about fairness or equality in the sense those words are used under a political paradigm that adheres to classical liberalism; instead, it seeks to redefine “fairness” and “equality” (and “tolerance”) as based on the outcomes it desires, a deconstructive procedure it then justifies by tying those outcomes to its own self-serving descriptions of what comes to count as moral. It is circular reasoning made perfect. Might makes right. The ends justify the means.
See more at: http://proteinwisdom.com/?p=38457#sthash.3zFeo4ik.dpuf
Tell you guys what, CreativeDom and bounty, I am reading this while doing something else but will post on how it is the right that assesses itself the basis of such an argument by defining or redefining liberalism/progressivism to suit [that] argument against it and...create the so-called 'enemy.'
That [it] renders the above such unmitigated bullshit and the modern conservatism's politically scientific strawman, as to inspire me to do a whole OP on the subject of progressivism/liberlaism/conservatism. But I am involved right now and because it will take a lot of words. See you guys on the morrow.
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You can be a murderous tyrant and the world will remember you fondly but fuck one horse and you will be a horse fucker for all eternity. Catherine the Great
Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite.
J K Galbraith
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RE: Intetesting Take From Obama - 
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