Tagged: Progressivism

Two Observations On Progress Today

Reason as hatred.— If disapproving of someone’s behavior, or disagreeing with his reasoning, is to be understood as an expression of hatred for the person, and if all hatred in turn may be regarded as violence, in the moral and perhaps legal senses, then all rational discussion or moral argument is effectively criminalized, and anyone who dares to express disagreement or disapproval of...

Abortion Rights and Self-Determination: The Great Progressive Fear

Someone has leaked a draft of a U. S. Supreme Court decision, written by Samuel Alito, indicating that the court has voted to strike down Roe v. Wade, the notorious 1973 case that was decided in favor of making abortion a federally guaranteed right. Contrary to the political hay being made of this by the left in general, and the Democratic Party in...

Nietzsche, Materialism, and Progress

In his final sane treatise, The Anti-Christ, Nietzsche praises Descartes as the first philosopher with the audacity to describe animals as machines, i.e., as material mechanisms devoid of soul (ยง14). As the pioneer of this ingenious and ultra-modern idea, however, Descartes, so says Nietzsche, lacked the necessary critical distance from his religious-metaphysical inheritance to take the next step, namely to concede that man...

Friends and Enemies

He whose instinct is to wince when you hurt yourself, to warn you when he sees danger ahead, to shed a tear for your heartbreak, to remind you (whether gently or brusquely) of your reason when you become confused, and to offer a hand when you are frightened to face this moment alone, is…

Taking A Broom To A Delicate Web

I just read this headline from the Associated Press: “House moves toward OK of Dems’ sweeping social, climate bill.” So often these days, one reads of “sweeping bills,” “sweeping reforms,” “sweeping measures,” or “sweeping new mandates.” The metaphor is apt, if hackneyed, because it is very much of the essence of progressivism to view politics as a matter for brooms. In other words,...

Progressive Fudge: Rights and Judgment

According to progressive morality, which is really progressive politics, to disagree with or disrespect someone’s choices and attitudes — provided they are the correct choices and attitudes of the moment — is to violate his rights. This is tantamount to saying that rights are essentially protections against being judged. To judge a person’s preferences (in relativist lingo, his “lifestyle”) is thus inherently to...

Checkpoint Normal

Governments around the world are well along the path toward forcing all places of employment to monitor their employees or potential employees for vaccination status; forcing all private gathering places, such as restaurants or theatres, to restrict access to their businesses (i.e., their private property) to people with “their papers” in order; and forcing all individuals in and out of the “health care...

Notes On The Tribunal: Cancel Culture

Anything you have ever done or said, in any context, is grounds for moral condemnation today, if that word or action is deemed inconsistent in any possible way with current progressive attitudes. And the condemnation is absolute, disqualifying you from employment, public service, public discussion — in effect from anything that the Tribunal or its millions of ideological allies (or self-protective cowards) wish...

Battles and Wars

Reply to a dear friend.— The battle is lost, I’m afraid. But every war has lost battles, and it is narrowminded to succumb to despair over one loss, however severe it may seem to us in the moment. The war is much longer than we can conceive from our most immediate, self-interested perspectives — which is why we easily mistake a lost battle...

The Long-Range Outlook

If an elected government can sweep away a nation’s founding principles, pride, and moral essence in three months, then that nation’s principles were already reduced to sand, its pride no better than a dust ball, its moral essence just a bit of dead skin. Joe Biden and his communist puppeteers have achieved nothing, in fact, that was not effectively a fait accompli. That...