Posted by
Buster Foghorn on Monday, February 01, 2010 9:48:14 PM
America has been blessed with citizens willing to step forward during times of testing and days of danger: “LISTEN, my children, and you shall hear….” Even before the founding of America, men stepped forward to sound a “cry of alarm” and to shine a light on danger. One such man was Paul Revere and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow memorialized his early contribution to our freedom and “the fate of a nation” in Paul Revere's Ride (1860).
President Obama—“I don’t give up”— campaigned on a promise to transform America, and so he slogs forward in his full-court press towards progressivism. And Mr. Obama frequently speaks—not to Democrats, but to his Progressive friends—about his work for transformational change. Is the President’s goal for fundamental change, if realized, a result that would usher in more or less individual freedom; a larger or smaller central government; more or less fiscal responsibility in Washington; a larger or smaller federal bureaucracy? Would we enjoy more or less local control? What is progressivism and how would it fundamentally change America? If the President is right, how could the founders have been so wrong about the best form of government? Before completing abandoning our heritage from the founders, as many around the President and working alongside him desire, there are others who today are stepping forward to sound an alarm. Their warning message is: The Progressives are coming! The Progressives are coming!
I must confess that I didn’t invest enough time in trying to understand what the President’s progressive plan to change America would look like until I heard a man speak out, a man that I think may be our own modern day version of Paul Revere.
While many are shining a light on progressivism [see footnote], there is one man who stands out from the others, a man with a very large bullhorn, his voice reverberating daily from two national platforms with his radio and television programs. And that man is Glenn Beck. And during the last two Fridays in January, 2010, he has delivered his message of warning, “his cry of alarm.” First in a documentary now available on YouTube (Glenn Beck Documentary: "The Revolutionary Holocaust: Live Free...Or Die" - 01/22/10), and second in a program on the following Friday, January 30th, when he shifted his focus to the roots of modern day progressives in the U.S. In fact Hillary Clinton, in the third Democrat debate, said that she would rather be called: a "modern day progressive" than a liberal, or to borrow Mr. Beck’s formulation of a progressive—someone more in favor of evolution than revolution. And so the second program[Glenn Beck- January 29, 2010- "Egghead Hour" (Part 1/5) at YouTube], which Beck called his ‘Egghead Hour, featured three historians who responded to questions about the meaning of progressivism in America, explaining that it is the antithesis of the founder’s governing plan, setting out how the progressive agenda is a dream of a larger central government, an evolving set of laws and rules as deemed necessary by the elites who once having acquired the power will then decide how to use that power. And so you ask, what is wrong with that? We will be governed by the smartest people from the elite schools; won’t they act to optimize my opportunity for happiness, to advance what Charles Murray calls the happiness of the people?
Beck’s two programs in January provide the answers. His documentary traces how the revolutionary plan in Europe and Russia has lead to abuse, less freedom, and a loss of opportunity for happiness. And in the U.S. what would an evolutionary progressive plan look like? How would power be used if it is untethered from the Constitution? If there is no written set of rules governing those in authority then they can make it up: blue pills for everyone over 70! By way of example, evidence that greater power in a central government can lead to abuse should be clear from just two comments by close advisers and confidantes of the President. Ron Bloom, the Manufacturing Czar, said “We kind of agree with Mao that political power comes largely from the barrel of a gun.” [Video and transcript] And Andy Stern, SEIU head, and perhaps the most frequent visitor to the White House who said "We're trying to use the power of persuasion and if that doesn't work, we're gonna use the persuasion of power because there are governments and there are opportunities to change laws that affect these companies.” (Video and transcript)
And so there are many dangers ahead: progressivism shifts power to a central government and results in a randomness of action. The founder’s did not want top down government. They did not want a central authority controlling every aspect of how they lived their lives. But perhaps, you might say, we can have a transformational change with a benevolent despot. The founders didn’t want to gamble and take such a chance; they put their faith in anchoring our rights in the Creator and in a written Constitution. For the founders history was clear; such gambles never paid off. Do you want to take the chance or are you going to “waken and listen to hear” the call of our modern day Paul Revere?
Footnote:
Thomas Sowell (A conflict of visions : ideological origins of political struggles); Jonah Goldberg (Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Change ); and Hillsdale College, as evidenced by their on line Constitution Town Hall aired on Saturday, January 30th [web archives permit registration; it is simple and fast and anyone can now listen to the lectures, read the outline and view the documents relied upon at the Constitution Reader, and access the extensive course materials that are linked to each of the topics set forth in the Table of Contents: I. Natural Rights and the American Revolution; II. The Founders on Religion; III. Government under the Articles of Confederation; IV. Rethinking the Nature of Union and the Structure of Government; V. The Three Branches of Government; VI. The Founders on Slavery and the Rise of the Positive Good School, and the Roots of the Secession Crisis; VII. Crisis of Constitutional Government; VIII. Secession and Civil War; IX. The Progressive Rejection of the Founding; X. Institutionalizing Progressivism: The New Deal and the Great Society.]