So Why Aren’t Progressives Called Regressives? by Jim Campbell

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Have we had enough of the politics of Hope and Change?  Has anybody bothered to explain to the less fortunate among us that the Democrat Party and it’s promises of woefully designed social programs ultimately hurts the voting block that they need to remain in office?

I will…

On the campaign trail, how many times did we hear candidate Barack Obama say the following? ”I can make a firm pledge,” he said in Dover, N.H., on Sept. 12. “Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes.” He repeatedly vowed “you will not see any of your taxes increase one single dime.”

Wow, that sounds great, particularly if your desire is to further divide, blame the rich and marginalize segments of our society.  Think the evil rich!  You know, those who don’t pay their fair share, another liberal lie. It seems those promises, like most campaign promises, went up in smoke.

The largest federal increase in tobacco taxes took effect despite President Obama’s promise not to raise taxes of any kind on families earning under $250,000 or individuals under $200,000. The poor tend to smoke, more so than the ‘rich’ thus, a regressive tax on the poor.  Once in office,  President Obama signed a law raising the federal tobacco tax on a pack of cigarettes to $1.01. Other tobacco products saw similarly steep increases.

The Darwinian Paradox of Progressivism

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Perhaps no phrase so succinctly, and so famously encapsulates Darwin’s theory as the phrase “survival of the fittest”. And yet, in that small phrase lies not only the birth of Progressivism in America, but also it’s greatest paradox. Progressivism grew out of the Darwinian model. It sought to replace the theocentric view espoused by most Americans.

This trend continues in full force with the so-called “new Progressives”, who many times pay lip-service to the idea of “God”, but are in the main Darwinian, Nietzschean atheists. Man, they would tell us, would have to fix his own ills and so it would take the best and the brightest (i.e. scientists, enlightened and brilliant political and entertainment figures) to right the ship. An oligarchy of  the intelligentsia if you will.

However, there is a problem with the very core of this theory. It conflicts wildly with the Marxist foundation upon which it rests. For if we are to truly believe Darwin, we are compelled to believe that it is through the unique individual that all evolution takes place. Transmutations in nature do not occur, according to Darwinian teaching, en masse, but rather with unique creatures who somehow mutate in ways that end up being beneficial, and result in genes that serve to self-perpetuate a superior creature capable of survival beyond the level of its predecessors.

So how does this create a paradox for Progressives? Simply put, Progressives wish to espouse Marxist or, at least quasi-Marxist, positions that require the superiority of the collective over the individual. Progressives, in Marxist fashion, are constantly promoting the concept of the collective good over the individual.

It then becomes completely inconsistent to claim you espouse “the scientific” approach as opposed to the “hocus pocus” of religion, while simultaneously promoting the collective above the individual. For if you believe the science you claim to believe, it is the individual that leads to the evolution of the species and not some communal arrangement.

So then I leave you with the Darwinian Paradox of Progressivism. Either you believe in science and exalt it above religion or you believe in any form of Progressive collectivism. You cannot, with any logical consistency, embrace both.