Article by William D. Howard in "The American Thinker":
They proudly call themselves "Progressives," but the fundamental beliefs and policies they espouse were once the status quo of ancient Egypt and Babylonia. The so- called "Progressives" of today are truly the most regressive political advocates since the command economies of national mercantilism. Their defective education and misunderstanding of the lessons of history truly imperil America's future.
They seem to have skipped class when Economics: 101 was being taught. Basics like supply and demand, economic competition, rational self-interest, and all the rest of Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations " — they seem oblivious of all that.
Instead of learning the truisms of classical economics, they languished in classes where they were taught "identity politics," "victimization," "racism," and "collective guilt." Following the curriculum of left-wing academia, they missed out on the futility of Luddites smashing steam engines, medieval guilds imposing wage and price controls, Mao's Great Leap Forward, and Stalin's Five-Year Plans.
Their modern prophets, Warren and Sanders, continue to advocate plans that have long since been discarded on the junk heap of bad economic theory — theories disproven in Russia, China, Cuba, North Korea, and many other failed states. Sanders hides his bad theory under the label of "Democratic Socialism," as though the term "democratic" can redeem the term "socialism." Bad plans are bad plans, whether they are forced on society or democratically chosen by gullible people who seek unearned, instantaneous benefits.
Like Marx and Lenin before them, they rail against the "corrupt and greedy" rich. They present themselves as the just, and wise, the only ones who know how to correctly dispose of other people's money. For if the rich are corrupt and greedy, it is only justice to rob them of their wealth and to share that wealth with others. Like the pharaohs and priest-kings of the ancient world, these modern oracles of truth have wonderful, glorious plans: Green New Deals, reparations, free college, free child care, free everything. Their plans are much improved over pagan Rome's, which promised only bread and circuses. Those who agree with their plans need feel no shame; they are, after all, taking from the "corrupt and greedy" and doing their virtuous part to reduce economic inequality.
Other regressive features in line with the ancient past are their promotion of class warfare and identity politics, both of which are a form of tribalism. Americans throughout most of our history have been proud of our individualism, our can-do pioneer spirit. We celebrated America as a whole, not spending much time holding up Europe or any other foreign land as a superior paradigm. Manifest Destiny and the City on a Hill were more descriptive of our American outlook.
The Democratic Party promotes what I call "spoiled child syndrome." The members of each sub-group are constantly told they are disadvantaged and discriminated against. It promotes a false sense of entitlement, anger, and suspicion, a lingering resentment against the success of others.
This cultivation of suspicion and hatred of others has produced countless separatist wars, genocides, and perpetual political instability in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America. Shiites and Sunnis, Tutsis and Hutus, and the bloody conflicts that divide them are extreme examples of the politics of regression.
The Democratic Party that says it speaks for the interests of black Americans would have them forever wallow in a stew of racial resentment, forever angry, forever in need of help, and forever voting for their "Regressive Party." For if the majority of black Americans can ever discern the Democratic Party's rhetorical sleight of hand, their cynical attempts at political manipulation, they will commit the ultimate taboo in the ancient pagan world, which was to reject groupthink for the beginnings of free thought.