Barack Obama and the Bad Ideas of Progressivism | FrontPage Magazine
By Bruce Thornton On October 17, 2013 @ 12:52 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 80 Comments
Barack Obama’s serial gross incompetence has elicited all sorts of explanatory theories. He’s a closet socialist, an Alinskyite radical, a secret Muslim, or an anti-American internationalist. Though some of Obama’s words and deeds give support to all these speculations, I prefer a simpler explanation. Obama is a Progressive––not a vague “progressive,” the elastic moniker liberals started using when the word “liberal” became politically toxic. I mean a Progressive of the sort that flourished between the 1890’s and 1920’s, and that laid down the principles and tactics that have animated modern Democrats for decades: faux populism laced with class warfare, disregard for the Constitution, and the desire for a mammoth federal government. These are just a few of the old Progressive ideals that comprise the political philosophy of Barack Obama and much of the Democratic Party.
Faux Populism and Class Warfare
Obama’s pose as a champion of populist democracy against elitist cabals of bankers, rich people, and corporations is consistent with Progressive rhetoric about the “people.” Theodore Roosevelt, for example, in 1910 touted “the triumph of a real democracy, the triumph of popular government, and in the long run, of an economic system under which each man shall be guaranteed the opportunity to show the best that there is in him.” But such anodyne phrases were in service to class warfare. A year later he railed against “those other men who distrust the people, and many of whom not merely distrust the people, but wish to keep them helpless so as to exploit them for their own benefit.” In contrast, the Progressives “propose to do away with whatever in our government tends to secure to privilege, and to the great sinister special interests, a rampart from behind which they can beat back the forces that strive for social and industrial justice, and frustrate the will of the people.” The Progressives’ aim is “adequately to guarantee the people against injustice by the mighty corporations.” Woodrow Wilson in his 1913 book The New Freedom agreed: “The government, which was designed for the people, has got into the hands of the bosses and their employers, the special interests. An invisible empire has been set up above the forms of democracy.”
No different are the many attacks by Obama on corporations and the rich. Remember in 2010 when he said, “I do think at a certain point, you’ve made enough money”? Or his constant harping on “millionaires and billionaires,” a category including those making $250,000 a year? Or his 2011 attack on oil companies, when he vowed that his Justice Department will “root out any cases of fraud or manipulation in the oil markets that might affect gas prices, and that includes the role of traders and speculators. We’re going to make sure that nobody’s taking advantage of American consumers for their own short-term gains”? Or his claim during last year’s presidential election that Romney “thinks that someone who makes $20 million a year, like him, should pay a lower [tax] rate than a cop or a teacher who makes $50,000”? Such exploitation of envy and resentment was rife during the Progressive period.
Disregard for the Constitution
Obama’s selective obeisance to the Constitution he has sworn to uphold––refusing, for example, to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed” (Article 2.3) when he delayed legal provisions of Obamacare ––has its precedence in the Progressive presidents and theorists. ...
Big Government
Progressives were impatient with the Constitution’s dispersal of power through structural checks and balances and federalism. ...
Faux Populism and Class Warfare
Obama’s pose as a champion of populist democracy against elitist cabals of bankers, rich people, and corporations is consistent with Progressive rhetoric about the “people.” Theodore Roosevelt, for example, in 1910 touted “the triumph of a real democracy, the triumph of popular government, and in the long run, of an economic system under which each man shall be guaranteed the opportunity to show the best that there is in him.” But such anodyne phrases were in service to class warfare. A year later he railed against “those other men who distrust the people, and many of whom not merely distrust the people, but wish to keep them helpless so as to exploit them for their own benefit.” In contrast, the Progressives “propose to do away with whatever in our government tends to secure to privilege, and to the great sinister special interests, a rampart from behind which they can beat back the forces that strive for social and industrial justice, and frustrate the will of the people.” The Progressives’ aim is “adequately to guarantee the people against injustice by the mighty corporations.” Woodrow Wilson in his 1913 book The New Freedom agreed: “The government, which was designed for the people, has got into the hands of the bosses and their employers, the special interests. An invisible empire has been set up above the forms of democracy.”
No different are the many attacks by Obama on corporations and the rich. Remember in 2010 when he said, “I do think at a certain point, you’ve made enough money”? Or his constant harping on “millionaires and billionaires,” a category including those making $250,000 a year? Or his 2011 attack on oil companies, when he vowed that his Justice Department will “root out any cases of fraud or manipulation in the oil markets that might affect gas prices, and that includes the role of traders and speculators. We’re going to make sure that nobody’s taking advantage of American consumers for their own short-term gains”? Or his claim during last year’s presidential election that Romney “thinks that someone who makes $20 million a year, like him, should pay a lower [tax] rate than a cop or a teacher who makes $50,000”? Such exploitation of envy and resentment was rife during the Progressive period.
Disregard for the Constitution
Obama’s selective obeisance to the Constitution he has sworn to uphold––refusing, for example, to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed” (Article 2.3) when he delayed legal provisions of Obamacare ––has its precedence in the Progressive presidents and theorists. ...
Big Government
Progressives were impatient with the Constitution’s dispersal of power through structural checks and balances and federalism. ...
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