The progressive push to redefine American ideals
The most pernicious aspect of the American Progressive project is the sly rewriting of the American tradition to the Progressive vision of society. The Marxist revisionist history of the 1619 Project and the intentional weakening and politicization of our military undermine our country too, but these attempts are overt.
The ahistorical claims of the 1619 Projects can be refuted, the left wing cultural movement ridiculed, and Marxism outright banned in the case of Critical Race Theory. These Progressive ideas are identifiable and open to debate.
The Progressives use a different method to rewrite American ideals. Language is manipulated, ideals are perverted, and this process happens, subtly, sandwiched between appeals to patriotism and platitudes like “Democracy is the soul of America”. Biden’s somnolent speech on Memorial Day is a classic example.
Biden delivered the quintessential Progressive line when he declared that,
“We were built on an idea, the idea of liberty. An opportunity for all. We’ve never fully realized that aspiration of our founding, but every generation has opened the door a little wider to be more inclusive”.
Biden deliberately conflates liberty with equity. Liberty is the freedom from government to practice our own pursuits. Liberty does not guarantee an opportunity for all. Nor did the founders believe that “opportunity for all” was a right.
The founders knew, as all adults do, that there will never be an equal opportunity for all. As much as we all wish there was. I wish I could have been an NBA superstar. Yet, even if I worked harder than Jordan there was never an opportunity for me to become one.
Progressives have redefined liberty to equity in order to suggest that America must be transformed into a society where there is equal opportunity for all. Not to mention equal outcomes for all.
Given that neither of these goals can be accomplished, it is imperative that the federal government expand in power and influence. Then the bureaucrats can fiddle with this or that and eventually everyone will be equal in their misery.
Biden finishes the quote with the notion that, “every generation has opened the door a little wider to be more inclusive”.
The idea is that we are on a steady march of progress towards an unknowable, but obviously attainable, future goal. This of course presupposes that society has a preset direction and an end goal that we are progressing towards.
This end goal is the loosely defined idea of inclusivity.
Inclusivity, in the modern political sense, is a fiction. Inclusivity requires exclusivity. In order to “include” trans ideology, Christian or just common sense thinking must be excluded.
Substantively, aiming for inclusivity is stupid. Felons and illegal immigrants should be excluded from our voting process. Men should be excluded from women’s sports.
Inclusivity is not a virtue. Nobody wants to be part of a club that endeavors to be completely inclusive. People want to be part of the exclusive club.
As Biden labored on, one breathy bromide at a time, he continued to wrap his progressive agenda in stars and stripes, “…It’s a mission handed down, generation to generation, the work of perfecting our union”.
Biden urges us to engage in a collective mission to create an inclusive utopia. He implores us to perfect this systematically flawed nation.
Clever. Such an expansive and urgent societal mission necessitates an all powerful leader or a cabal of leaders to guide the populace toward this abstract goal of perfection. These benevolent overlords are required to ensure that society is progressing in the proper direction. Any dissent towards this collective mission blocks progress and therefore can be disregarded or overridden.
Biden suggests that it is our duty to embark on this collective mission. He is trying to appeal to our American sense of duty, while reframing what our duty is.
We do have a duty to our country. The duty to respect the liberty of our fellow citizens and to pass on the benefits we inherited to future generations.
The progressives are reframing our duty as the duty to push forward towards a vague and shifting end goal which never materializes. Just ride the wave of progress and eventually everything will be perfect.
This notion of “perfecting our union” is dangerous. We live in an imperfect world. The idea that society can be perfected rationalized the slaughter of over a hundred million people during the twentieth century.
Furthermore, a perfect world to whom? The idea of the perfect world is subjective. I have a feeling that Biden’s definition of a perfect world is vastly different than mine.
Biden’s speech plodded on. He continued, with the verve of a much older man, to unknowingly pervert Edmund Burke’s “primeval contract” between the dead, the living, and the unborn.
Burke argued that we owe it to previous generations to preserve the good things they handed down to us. He contended that cultural institutions which have spanned generations are of the utmost importance. They have survived for a reason and these institutions benefit our current society and will help future generations succeed. Reform therefore ought to be judicious and slow.
Biden conversely asserts, well, meekly states, that “We owe the honored dead a debt we can never fully repay. We owe them our full best efforts to perfect the union for which they died…by sustaining the best of America while honestly confronting all that we must do to make our nation fuller, freer and more just.”
According to Biden our debt to the dead is to “perfect the union” rather than to conserve inherited traditions, customs, and institutions. He insists that rash and rapid change is needed to fundamentally alter society.
Biden at least acknowledges that we should sustain some of America’s past. Although the devil is in the details or lack thereof.
The “best of America” is defined only by vague terminology like “equality” or “opportunity” or “immigration”. The progressives can never specify a positive aspect of American culture or American tradition because they despise America.
And so we must do all that we can to “make our nation fuller, freer, and more just.”
His declarations are reminiscent of another elderly politician who declared that “the Republic will be reorganized into the first Galactic Empire for a safe and secure society”. Hey, at least the Emperor had charisma.
