THE RISE AND FALL
OF MODERN PROGRESSIVE LIBERALISM
A
Reflection on the Endgame
By
Jay B Gaskill, Attorney at Law
We are witnessing the inexorable collapse
of modern, progressive liberalism. It’s like watching a demolished
building collapse in slow motion. The Greek riots and that country’s likely
separation from the EU, coupled with the collapse of Greece’s vast system of
subsidies, early pensions and other entitlements are but one vivid example of the
trend. Because of internal
contradictions built into the structures of governance in Europe, other
examples are queued up to follow. As Europe was first into the progressive
orbit, the death throes are manifesting there first.[1]
This is not the end of the world. It is the end of an era. The progressive era began when communism
failed to take hold in Western Europe and the USA, and it became dominant when
democratic socialism began to work out a détente with capitalism. The trend
accelerated after WWII when Labour Party socialism flourished in England and
was widely copied. The American
“progressive” movement has roots in both political parties from the 1920’s.
Most of us, including conservatives, are liberals in
some sense of the term. But I have
chosen the term modern progressive
liberalism carefully. Classical
liberalism, the assertion of individual freedom against the state and other
repressive institutions, is embraced by modern conservatives. Populist
liberalism, which asserts the equal human
dignity of the so called “common” workers, artisans, truck drivers and so
on, overlaps with modern conservatism as well and with elements of the “old
fashioned” liberalism of the 1940’s and 1950’s.
Modern,
progressive liberalism is the form of liberalism that feeds
on attachment to an unattainable agenda, to wit: the erasure of human differences on idealistic egalitarian grounds.
It is the Grand Agenda of modernity, pushing “equality”- whether in
accomplishment, material well-being, social standing or cultural
distinctiveness. In its 20th
and 21st century settings, this Grand Agenda was to be accomplished by
violent revolution, or gradually over time as in the British Fabian socialist
model. In either case the Grand Agenda enlisted the power and resources of the nation
state. Never mind that the ultimate goal is inherently unobtainable, or that no
state can ever assemble and utilize sufficient resources and power to make equality
actually happen. And never mind that most people, most of the time do not support
the ultimate goal.
The term “progressive” is a tell. The goal of progressive liberalism is an ever
receding mirage, the pursuit of which is based on a faith stance
indistinguishable from that of religions.
Progressive liberals are animated by the faith-based
notion that human equality is an inevitable, inexorable measure of human
progress. Never mind that their goal always hovers tantalizingly out of reach, just
over the horizon. Most progressives are
comfortable with the idea that the very pursuit
of the goal is progress itself. Modern liberals rarely seriously entertain the
notion that there are ultimate limits to the progressive project.
The European welfare state model has exceeded its
resource limits, as any democratic or quasi-democratic system in the throes of the
progressive ameliorative equalization of the human condition inevitably does. The tax revenues needed for subsidies and
other remedial measures for the less-than-equal among us are finite. But the
perceived need for equalization is
infinite. The equality goal is a vast black hole of unmet needs and wants with
a truly unlimited capacity to absorb human energy and resources – it will
never, ever be satisfied.[2]
Enter the totalitarian state model, the proponents
of which attempt to advance the Final Stage in the agenda. This is a full-on
effort to remake human nature in the service of true equality, using any means necessary. I say attempt because such projects are almost
certainly doomed from the start, however bloody and protracted the struggle. Modern, progressive liberalism is faltering at
the moment because most intelligent people with a sense of history have already
learned of the horrors attendant the “remaking human nature” projects of
National Socialism and Communism in Germany, Russia and China. These members of the intelligentsia are
thankfully pulling back before taking that last, bloody step. Other progressive
liberals embedded in the Western intelligentsia persist in the human
engineering project because they believe that, through the manipulation of
information, psychotropic recreational drugs, and other “scientific” measures,
human nature can be gradually modified to accommodate the Grand Agenda.
Decadence is achievable by this latest progressive
project, but reconciliation to human equality is not. The progressive agenda will
fail…again. The two questions that remain are not trivial: How much long term damage? Will freedom survive?
We can identify several distinct stages in the
failure/collapse process. In the fiscal-crisis
stage, democratic and quasi-democratic populations become fractured, naturally dividing
into the high-achieving productive set being bled and the highly-dependent,
non-productive set being fed. Eventually
the former group declines to pay the bills for the latter, and the conflict precipitates
a governance crisis.
The outcomes of such crises will vary significantly. Sometimes a given society will lurch into the
authoritarian model; sometimes it will mutate into a freer social order, no
longer captive to the Grand Agenda. At
the moment, the progressives are trying to forestall the crisis by creating
divisions among the high-achieving productive set. But this game has its own
limits.
To stave off the moment of reckoning, American progressives
have used stealth, with the ongoing complicity of conservatives in both parties. Government regulatory power has been used as
a “cost free” measure to enforce the Great Agenda. It was popular in the USA
for several decades because the imposed monetary costs on the high-achieving
productive set were hidden. Early on, deficit spending was an unexamined magic
solution.
In 21st century America, progressives have
coordinated three strategies:
·
social and economic regulation (the
effects of which we can detect in the culture of “political correctness”);
·
concealing appropriation costs (i.e., avoiding
taxation via borrowing and offloading the costs via inflation);
·
promoting divisions and disputes among
the productive set (as in pitting labor against entrepreneurs, for example, and
exploiting divisive social issues).
These were temporary fixes. A reckoning will not be
avoided. The problem is structural, and a progressive win in the 2012
presidential election will simply present the progressive elites-in-charge with
the same vexing problems that will face the conservative elites, should the
current administration be defeated. …More
on that scenario in a moment.
The early stages of the Grand Agenda include a
period of early, relatively painless implementation that is followed by a time when
rising costs ignite a popular pushback. Eventually, a genuine or immanent
fiscal collapse looms. This becomes an
inflection point that can precipitate a full-on governance crisis. The resolution
of governance crises can be violent or non-violent, gradual or swift. The outcomes can be long, stagnant, dreary
periods of authoritarian rule or a renaissance of freedom.
There are no guarantees.
Modern
progressive liberalism is a creature of well-off and well-educated elites in
the West, a response (if we are to be brutally honest) of imputed colonial
guilt. For the moment, and pending
collapse of the Great Agenda, the modern progressive liberals are in
charge:
·
of the media;
·
of the cohort of popular celebrities;
·
of the educational establishment;
·
& of the political-bureaucratic
classes.
In spite of their cultural and institutional penetration,
modern progressive liberals do not constitute a majority of the general
population.
In today’s (September 10, 1012) San Francisco
Chronicle there was a color spread covering the Opera Gala. So many beautiful, rich people were having
such a good time that in an earlier era we might have been tempted to label the
pictures, “republicans at play.” But
with very few exceptions, these were democrats.
Nancy Pelosi and her very wealthy spouse (Nancy P. is one of the
wealthiest elected officials in the government) were clearly having a great
time as card carrying members of the glitterati.
And this is the dirty little secret: Modern
progressive liberals no longer believe in human equality as an attainable goal
– even a genuinely desirable one. What they really seek is sufficient political
control to impose the maximum measure of equality on others.
If the Obama economic team is returned to power in
this election cycle, it will because the progressives desperately need control
above all else. If there is to be a
fiscal reckoning, these elites do not trust anyone else to manage it. And they certainly do not want to lead us to
an outcome in which the Great Agenda can be discarded by others. This inevitably means the imposition of a
version of authoritarianism Lite, because the coming populist anger cannot be
allowed to dethrone the kings and queens of progressivism.
Moreover, the coastal progressive elites see this as
a test of the “reforming human nature project.” They are calculating that
sufficient progress has been made. They hope/believe that widely diffused
achievement-guilt and political correctness has softened American opinion just
enough for one more progressive victory. Some even hope that the progressives
can so solidify their grip on the ruling bureaucracies that even a few
electoral defeats along the way will not derail the inevitable march towards
progress. In this they are nearly
correct. The governing bureaucracies are
already issuing edicts that would never survive robust congressional debate.
An epic struggle awaits us. Its historical trigger lurks just out of
sight, and I can’t tell you when the moment will come. But do know that this
conflict of visions engages the very prospect of human survival or extinction.
State imposed equality, even in its “Lite” versions, is the mortal enemy of
human creativity. And without smart,
robust, life-affirming creative adaptation, humanity will not flourish, but
perish. We need our creative communities and they need protected freedom. Freedom, in the form of constitutionally
protected, ordered liberty, remains the most durable and effective friend that
the human creative spirit has ever enjoyed.[3]
For unique, historical reasons the USA became
exceptional in much the same sense that Athens was exceptional in the
golden Age of Greek civilization. But we are more than a beacon. The USA remains necessary to the
future of liberal civilization in much the same sense that we were essential
for the survival of liberal civilization between 1940 and 1990. The outcome of both WWII and the Cold War
would have been dreadfully different had we not been as engaged as we were. Imagine a world without a USA that is
committed to the preservation of freedom, and you are imagining a world without
realistic hope. We Americans, above all,
need to emerge from the collapse of modern progressive liberalism as a bulwark
against authoritarian excesses, and as the epicenter for the recovery of
robust, free creative civilizations everywhere.
I hope that you share with me the firm intention that,
when the progressive project comes to an end, an enduring renaissance of
freedom will take its place. Much depends on the fate and character of the
United States over the next two decades. And much depends on you, me those who
follow us. Even my non-religious patriotic friends will understand the force of
my sentiment when I say, God bless and
protect the United States of America.
JBG
FURTHER READING
I recommend Victor
Davis Hanson’s brilliant essay, The New Reactionaries, for an historical
perspective on liberalism, - < http://www.victorhanson.com/articles/hanson090712.html
>,
My
article, Creativity and Survival - < http://jaygaskill.com/CreativityAndSurvival.pdf or http://jaygaskill.com/CreativityAndSurvival.htm
>,
…And if you haven’t actually read the classic
book, The Road to Serfdom, by the Austrian economist-philosopher Friedrich von Hayek (1899-1992), a
liberal who addressed this masterpiece to “my fellow socialists”, you are in
for a treat. {The Road to Serfdom: Text
and Documents--The Definitive Edition, University of Chicago Press 2007,
1944.} Hayek’s main thesis, well and clearly argued, is that the very essence
of the progressive socialist project was the conceit that central, top down
planning can be accomplished without perverse, inhumane results. Its failures
are built into the very scheme.
Copyright © 2012 by Jay B Gaskill, Attorney at Law
For
permissions and comments, contact the author by email: law@jaygaskill.com
[1] The
Economist
has just published an intriguing survey of the welfare copycat nations
in Asia (hint: they are less generous than the West, but bent on “catching
up”). Here is a telling example -“…as latecomers to the welfare state, Asian
countries also have certain advantages. They can learn from the West’s mistakes,
and they can leapfrog some of its obsolete practices. The starkest lesson they
can learn is fiscal. Bambang Widianto, the head of Indonesia’s task-force
against poverty, confesses to being scared by the example of Greece. Unlike
Singapore, where citizens are required to contribute to a provident fund from
which their pensions will be drawn, the pensions Indonesia has promised to
offer to the nation in 2015 will be partly on a “defined benefit” basis, under
which a person’s pension may not necessarily match his contributions. The
government thus has crucial decisions to make about the size of the benefits
and the distribution of the burden. Unfortunately, Mr Widianto says, ‘no one is
doing those calculations right now.’” From The welfare state is flowering in Asia.
Will it free the continent from squalor? Or sink it in debt?, The Economist,
Sep 8th 2012.
[2] Over the
centuries, conservatism and liberalism have operated like cooperating
antagonists, one (liberalism) always challenging boundaries and the other (conservatism)
always defending boundaries. Yet each has traditionally acted as a check on the
other, restoring a condition of balance. The 6th century BC Greek philosopher,
Heraclitus (“The road up and down is one and the same”) advanced the insight
that opposites are unified at a higher level, symbolized in the Logos.
Conservatism and liberalism at their optimum are in an eternal dialogue, and as
a result arbitrary boundaries are transcended and essential boundaries are
strengthened. At the present moment in
history the liberal tendency – under the spell of progressive ideology – has
pushed us past reasonable boundaries into a dangerous imbalance. Recall the Greek legend of Narcissus and
Nemesis. Narcissus, who was impossibly vain, disdaining everyone else
(recognized no boundary or limiting principle to his beauty/virtue), drew the
attention of the goddess Nemesis, who was the agent of divine justice. She sat him down next to a reflecting pool
and, in love with his own image, he starved to death.
[3] No thinking
liberal lusts after true solidarity, though he or she might wish it inflicted
on someone else. No thinking
conservative wants the nasty, brutish and short life of the “free” savage. None
of us can survive for long without the blessings of civilization. Liberty
is a precious and intensely valuable condition that is enjoyed by the individual
or not at all. But it exists
only under modern conditions and only when a given civilization is committed
to its protection. When we speak
of ordered liberty we are describing
the result when liberty is held as a reciprocal
value, protected by law on condition that one may forfeit one’s claim to
liberty by trampling on the liberty of another.
In the most sophisticated, liberty-friendly civilizations, liberty is
protected vis-a-vis other citizens and
from the depredations of the government itself – accomplished through a robust
protective legal mechanism like the US constitution.