Wow. Go figure, eh? Someone raised as a Marxist, who, as Obama said in "Dreams from My Father" (pg. 100-101), picked his friends and professors as Marxists so as not to be seen as a 'sellout',"Many Communist and radical publications and entities throughout the 19th and 20th centuries had the name "Forward!" or its foreign cognates. Wikipedia has an entire section called "Forward (generic name of socialist publications)."
"The name Forward carries a special meaning in socialist political terminology. It has been frequently used as a name for socialist, communist and other left-wing newspapers and publications," the online encyclopedia explains.
The slogan "Forward!" reflected the conviction of European Marxists and radicals that their movements reflected the march of history, which would move forward past capitalism and into socialism and communism."
“To avoid being mistaken as a sellout, I chose my friends carefully: The more politically active black students; the foreign students; the Chicanos; the Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets…”(which, BTW Barack, that doesn't make you look 'alienated', it marks you as being not only a sell-out, but a poser sellout, but I digress), what a wonder His Arrogantness & his campaign staff, would choose such an Anti-American slogan as their Campaign theme... well, I'm certainly wearing my surprised face. And please, if you think the smartest man in the world, and the smartest administration ever, stocked full of proregressives, communists, and Maoists, weren't fully aware that the most popular far left theme of the last century was 'Forward!' (hello, 'Progressive!' ?), then there's not a whole lot of nice things you've left me to say about your own ability to think things through. President Obamao wants to lead us Forward! to silencing the speech of his opponents, Forward! to trampling upon the freedom of people to abide by their religious beliefs, Forward! to forcing people to comply with how the government tells them how to live, Forward! to taking or destroying the property of those the mob is stirred up against so as to spread their (remaining) wealth around. Sorry, but that's not Forward!, that is not Progress, that is, as Calvin Coolidge noted, nothing but Regress. All of which, IMHO, is so very appropriate and fitting with my pet term for his and their ideology, ProRegressives.
What's a Proregressive? The tongue in cheek of it is:
, but the harsh reality of it is that if you are a Proregressive (of the Left or Right), you believe in using Power to further the goals which you see as being worthwhile, those which you say will be for the greater good, as judged against the pragmatic needs of the moment. And Ladies & Gents, if that doesn't strike fear through to your bones, you haven't given it enough thought - Right and Wrong are not concerns of proregressives, only what it seems to them will work best for the moment is. Think of, for that special European flair, Gulags; or for the more mundane, run of the mill American version, think of Prohibition... or of forcibly sterilizing those 'who aren't fit to reproduce', that's the sort of thing that is easily justified when well meaning people look no further than 'what works for the moment' for the justification to do what they feel is best.
- If you preen yourself marching for Free Speech... while shouting down all who disagree with you... you might be a ProRegressive Leftist.
- If you demand an end to oppression of the 99%... while promoting the political system that enslaved and murdered 90+ million people... you might be a ProRegressive Leftist.
- If you pander to 'contraceptive rights'... while attacking the political foundation of ALL Individual Rights - Property Rights... you might be a ProRegressive Leftist.
- If you freely Tweet praises for the rape and murder of an opponent... while twisting anti-spamming rules to silence her husband for denouncing you... you just might be a ProRegressive Leftist.
In recent months they've also struck notes of Forward!ness in their solidarity with seeking injustice for Trayvon! Calling the War on Terror at an end, and so much more. Gibson Guitar anyone?
Or do you recall their move against Fox News early on in the first year of their administration?
Yep, definitely ProRegressives.
Proregressives don't lead forward into the future
I wish I could say that their proregressive paths had taken them into, and left them in, the past... but sadly, that's not the case, they are very much alive and kicking right here in the present day. Proregressives don't lead forward into the future, or the past, but instead they turn the future into the worst of the past, such as how they recently, in early 20th Century Brown Shirt fashion, sought out FreeMarketAmerica and Chris Loesch to be silenced for the crimes of disagreeing with them.
They targeted FreeMarketAmerica.org for publishing this video "If I wanted America to fail", which states the opinion that if you wanted to destroy America, you'd do exactly what the proregressives have and desire to do, and I completely agree with that.
They targeted Chris Loesch because he had the audacity to respond to some high minded leftists who were Twittering happily over the thought of his wife, Dana Loesch, being raped & murdered. ProRegressive's from the Right (Charles Johnson 'Little Green Footballs'), and from the Left, used a fun new tactic of going after those who disagree with them by - no, not by trying to come up with a better argument (as if!), no, rather than thinking, they organized an attack to accuse Twitter accounts of FreeMarketAmerica.org and Chris Loesch, by accusing them of being spammers, in order to get them deactivated silenced from Twitter.
Why? Well because, obviously if you identify yourselves as 'Liberals', a name respected by our Founders as being about defending Man's Right to live in Liberty ... then obviously what 'liberals' do, is to take people who are currently free to speak their minds, and gang up on them and shut them up, any way you can.
Just like the National Socialist Brown Shirts were wont to do.
Liberal? No, sorry, that's ProRegressive all the way.
Unfortunately for them, Chris isn't the shutting up quietly type, he began letting people know, even got me off my Twitter-duff, and gazillions of others, causing the #FreeChrisLoesch hashtag to trend worldwide several times (a big thing in the Twitter-verse). The Twitter people realized what had happened, that their automated spammer algorithims were being turned into Brown Shirts by the proregressives, and reinstated him... and had to do so several times to overcome their repeated attacks and get the issue resolved.
Funnilly enough, the Liztards & Progs tried to silence him and made him bigger & louder as a result (BTW, some guys put a 'Ghosts sit around campfires and tell Chuck Norris stories' type of ditty about it True Story Bro (The Chris Loesch Song)). As amusing as that incident turned out, the endarkened heart of the proregressive left is taking shape in the world again, all around us, in the streets, in the courts and in the media, and I hope that if you see a shade of it being cast in your corner of the world, you'll have the sense to speak up & out against it, because if you don't, rest assured that it will take over your corner, and much more.
These people, because they do not have truth, liberty, or even attractiveness (let alone Beauty) on their side, they are easy to defeat - but only if you try. But if you do, ahhh the joys of Conservativism, "To crush your enemies -- See them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women (or metrosexuals, as the case may be)!" Sorry, couldn't resist.
Forward! Regress... to where?
Where is all that Foward! ProRegress likely to take you? Where will it take us all, if we allow it? Back to the same places it has taken us in the past, each time people were foolish enough to mistake regress for progress. That very question was what financial advisor John Mauldin was recently concerned about, in his column:
I'm Worried
"I debated with myself about what to send as this week's Outside the Box. I have decided on a recent short but important post from my friend David Kotok, Chairman and Chief Investment Officer of Cumberland Advisors. He calls it "I'm Worried." There are some very thought-provoking ideas here, but what makes it particularly interesting is that I'm running into this sentiment more and more as I travel around the US; and when I'm abroad I also hear from people who are worried about the US. These are folks who rightly realize the world needs a strong US, both as an economic engine and as a leader ' a chairman of the board, if you will ' of a growing world. (Can the world grow and prosper without us? Of course, but not as easily, and the transition will not be pretty.)"The heart of his friend's comment was a quote from Will & Ariel Durrant's "Lessons of History"
""Rome had its socialist interlude under Diocletian. Faced with increasing poverty and restlessness among the masses, and with the imminent danger of barbarian invasion, he issued in A.D. 3 an edictum de pretiis, which denounced monopolists for keeping goods from the market to raise prices, and set maximum prices and wages for all important articles and services. Extensive public works were undertaken to put the unemployed to work, and food was distributed gratis, or at reduced prices, to the poor. The government - which already owned most mines, quarries, and salt deposits - brought nearly all major industries and guilds under detailed control. 'In every large town,' we are told, 'the state became a powerful employer, standing head and shoulders above the private industrialists, who were in any case crushed by taxation.' When businessmen predicted ruin, Diocletian explained that the barbarians were at the gate, and that individual liberty had to be shelved unti l collective liberty could be made secure. The socialism of Diocletian was a war economy, made possible by fear of foreign attack. Other factors equal, internal liberty varies inversely with external danger.He then says,
"The task of controlling men in economic detail proved too much for Diocletian's expanding, expensive, and corrupt bureaucracy. To support this officialdom - the army, the courts, public works, and the dole - taxation rose to such heights that people lost the incentive to work or earn, and an erosive contest began between lawyers finding devices to evade taxes and lawyers formulating laws to prevent evasion. Thousands of Romans, to escape the tax gatherer, fled over the frontiers to seek refuge among the barbarians. Seeking to check this elusive mobility and to facilitate regulation and taxation, the government issued decrees binding the peasant to his field and the worker to his shop until all their debts and taxes had been paid. In this and other ways medieval serfdom began.""
" It is about how the destruction of the Roman Empire through the taxation channel made people 'slaves,' in other words how serfdom emerged. This is my number one fear for Italy, but I guess France is making the same mistakes, just starting from a lower debt level. You can also find an online version of the book, thanks to Google."I'll take issue with his characterization of Taxes as being the issue, rather than regulation, but at this point it's a small point, for as those marvelous historians noted, "Rome had its socialist interlude under Diocletian...." and it brought the final end of Roman liberties and the beginning of the Middle Ages age of slavery & serfdom. But we do still have one thing the Romans didn't have - them to learn from - and the availability of those, and other, facts, lessons and histories to anyone and everyone with either access to a library or the Internet.
Will we learn (in time) rather than repeat?
Well, not to be Debbie Downer all day long, but look at these recent stories and judge for yourself where we're headed IF YOU DON'T SAY SOMETHING, such as this article regarding recent Labor Dept proposals, Will my child be allowed to learn the value of work?
"It has proposed new rules that would restrict children under the age of 16 from working on a farm or ranch. The list of tasks youth would not be allowed to do is astonishing. For example, milking cows would not be allowed, and neither would building a fence. No youth under the age of 16 would be allowed to use a tool that was powered by any source other than hand or foot power. Strictly interpreted, that would eliminate kids using flashlights or even battery-powered tools. When hearing this, my 10-year-old son asked me if that meant he no longer had to brush his teeth since his toothbrush was battery operated. Nice try!"Thankfully those were rolled back, but only because of public outcry, don't think for a second that those who wrote that proposal had their minds changed about it being right for them to impose them upon you. If you do think that, then this might help drive it from your mind, as SWAT teams are Raiding Private Farms to kill livestock,
"...the Michigan Department of Natural Resources has, in total violation of the Fourth Amendment, conducted two armed raids on pig farmers in that state, one in Kalkaska County at Fife Lake and another in Cheboygan County. Staging raids involving six vehicles and ten armed men, DNA conducted unconstitutional, illegal and arguably criminal armed raids on these two farms with the intent of shooting all the farmers' pigs under a bizarre new "Invasive Species Order" (ISO) that has suddenly declared traditional livestock to be an invasive species..."That one is still fully in effect.
Looking beyond the moment might teach you which way Forward lies
Alexis de Tocqueville, in his Democracy in America, had some similar Good News/Bad News for us, putting a little light on the workings of our nation in the midst of forgetting who we are,
"The common man in the United States has understood the influence that general prosperity exercises over his own happiness, an idea so simple and yet so little known by the people. He has, moreover, become accustomed to regarding this prosperity as his work. So, in public fortune, he sees his own, and he works for the good of the State, not only by duty or by pride, but I would almost dare to say by cupidity.But lest that seem too cheery, he also has a deeply cautionary note, as he usually does, which is amazingly relevant to our day today (as nearly all that he ever wrote usually is),
[He values his rights as a citizen as his rights as a proprietor, and he takes an interest in the State as in his cottage or in the field that his labors have made fruitful.]
It is not necessary to study the institutions and the history of the Americans to know the truth of the preceding; the mores alert you to it well enough. The American, taking part in all that is happening in this country, believes it is in his interest to defend all that you criticize there; for it is not only his country that you then attack, it is himself. Consequently, you see his national pride resort to all the artifices and descend to all the puerilities of individual vanity."
"But sometimes, in the life of peoples, a moment occurs when ancient customs are changed, mores destroyed, beliefs shaken, the prestige of memories has vanished, yet when enlightenment has remained incomplete and political rights poorly guaranteed or limited. Then men no longer see the country except in a weak and doubtful light; they no longer locate it either in the soil, which in their eyes has become an inanimate land, or in the customs of their ancestors, which they have been taught to regard as a burden; or in religion, which they doubt; or in the laws, which they do not make, or in the legislator, whom they fear and scorn. So they see it nowhere, not under its own features any more than under any other, and they withdraw into a narrow and unenlightened egoism. These men escape prejudices without recognizing the empire of reason; they have neither the instinctive patriotism of monarchy, nor the thoughtful patriotism of the republic; but they have stopped between the two, in the middle of confusion and misery."I've said this before, and I plan to say it again as often as it is necessary and possible to do so, Our Constitution and Bill of Rights didn't enshrine free speech, freedom of the press, freedom of association, sanctity of contract, takings clause, gun rights, etc, because they were the most important and valuable of our individual rights, but because those were the most politically important rights, which if kept secure, would prevent a tyrant from successfully taking power and extinguishing all of our rights. With bailouts, business takeovers, proposed net neutrality acts, defacto 'fairness doctrine' measures, and targeting of an unapproved press, attacking freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of contract... that is arguably the road being paved for us to walk down... will we go down it?
Whatcha gonna do? It's up to you to find the true way Forward!
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