One Rule: I don't like it; it hits the bit bucket. After a week, don't bother.
Concerning "progressives:"
"Today the claims of the masses are becoming more and more sharply defined, and amount to nothing less than a determination to utterly destroy society as it now exists, with a view to making it hark back to that primitive communism which was the normal condition of all human groups before the dawn of civilisation. Limitations of the hours of labor, the nationalisation of mines, railways, factories and the soil, the equal distribution of all products, the elimination of all the upper classes for the benefit of the popular classes, etc., such are these claims. Little adapted to reasoning crowds are, on the contrary, quick to act. As the result of their present organisation their strength has become immense. The dogmas whose birth we are witnessing will soon have the force of the old dogmas; that is to say, the tyrannical and sovereign force of being above discussion."
-- Gustave Le Bon, The Crowd (Emphasis added by your Curmudgeon.)
Seeing as how the "Progressives" are the ones enamored of "Postmodernism," I'd enjoy seeing you twist 'em in this blatant contradiction. Postmodernists clamor for regress; ergo, the new progressive favors repression not liberty.
Progressives are also the ones who originally embraced eugenics, who think of humanity as a plague on the earth, who want to see human numbers diminish.
M
I think it significant that Malthusianism preceded Marxism and that both beliefs are heavily fostered by well-to-do, self-styled, "Progressives."
Perhaps this is an indictment of the human condition. The subsequent thoughts this inspires in me are very difficult to catch and write down. Human failings it suggests are of a compound nature, some of which egg on more failings: ingratitude for blessings one has. boundless pride in ones successes. belief in ones unfailingly accurate opinion in one area extends to other areas.
The worst of these sorta reflect the Dilbert Principle. Those who've inherited or gamed to great wealth and know nothing of the creation of that wealth. They simply are at the top and are incompetent to be there. And then they do so much to influence those who fetter the next generation of wealth creators. And that is considered good, especially by those who fear we will overpopulate the planet. They can believe that because they are disconnected from the human ingenuity that created their wealth. Such ingenuity has somehow always either risen to solve any crisis coming down the pyke, or we waited out that crisis and found we could survive it and then prevent its recurrence from what we've learned. There is more than one set of minds which wishes to erase history. I'm gonna try to write more on this, but I suffer from what's-the-use ism. And, like I implied above, many of the factors I saw when I started this response have escaped me as I wrote out the few. The world of problems forms a matrix with many key elements. As I linearize them, some key elements vanish as do images from a dream when one awakens. Sigh.
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