When I hear prominent conservative media commentators and brainy columnists call America-haters bent on destroying our noble Constitutional Republic “progressives” I feel the top of my head may fly up and stick on the ceiling. They should know better. The sickening behavior of these tyrannical anarchists are the very opposite of progressive which Webster defines as “continuous improvement; the development of an individual or group in a direction considered more beneficial than and superior to the previous level.” There’s nothing beneficial for us as citizens or our nation about lawlessness, destruction of private property by black-masked Antifa terrorists, attacks on the First and Second Amendments, cancelling the voices of those who disagree with WOKE dogma, and shrill Maxine Waters-esque calls for personal attacks. Yet as long as we let them get away with calling themselves progressives, they can claim moral and intellectual superiority over the rest of us.
Call them radical leftists, fascists, socialists, Marxists…or Democrats. But anointing them progressives automatically makes those of us on the flip side “regressives” – backward-thinking, slack-jawed, snaggle-toothed, knuckle-dragging Neanderthals. Which gives know-nothings like Joe Biden carte blanche to label the governors of Texas and Mississippi lifting Covid mask mandates “Neanderthal thinking…” Of course, the governors were vindicated when disease cases and deaths in both states dropped dramatically after masks were gone.
For the radical left, deceptive language is a kind of performance art. They cynically use shiny, promising words to convince the uniformed to line up behind their latest fraud. For example, Obama’s “Affordable Care Act” was a lie from the jump, leading as it did to higher premiums and astronomical deductibles that left millions of suffering Americans paying more but ending up literally without any healthcare insurance at all. Similarly, the “For the People Act” (HB1) in reality allows the gorilla of the federal government to crush the peoples’ voice that the Constitution gives to individual state legislatures in creating election law.
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Rather than advancing progress, the “progressive” credo hearkens back to the bad old days of dictators Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot and the moldy stink of their failed ideas: oppressive government control and stealing from productive citizens under the guise of “leveling the playing field” and “equality.” How curious that the innocents on the receiving end of these marvelous systems, variously known as socialism, Communism, or Marxism, have died in the millions at the hands of their governments rather than enter the earthly utopia they were promised. According to historians, those gullible believers in progressivism amount to between 100 and 120 million lost souls.
And yet here it comes again, bolting upright from its pool of blood with new life like a horror film villain we thought was slain. This new form of class struggle isn’t the proletariat versus the bourgeoisie of traditional Marxist cant; now all white people are the oppressors and black and brown minorities are cast as the victims. Mix into this ugly lie the social stresses of the China virus which has allowed clueless bureaucrats to paralyze the producers of the richest economy in the world for over a year, plus anarchy and violence in our cities increasing as police presence fades, and we have an unsettled and bewildered people the like of which we have never seen in America.
What to do? First, fight back against the “progressive” racism that demonizes people for the color of their skin. Organize with other parents and citizens to forbid your local school board to impose “critical race theory” and “gender fluidity,” including the promotion of transgenderism, on children’s education curricula. Help Trump’s prosperous economy return by pressuring politicians to stop sending fat government checks that amount to more than a paycheck for many Americans.
Economists say people earning less than $32,000 can potentially make more from unemployment aid than from their previous jobs, and that stark fact is delaying the return of a normal healthy economy. Under Biden’s recently enacted $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, workers who lost their jobs to the pandemic shutdowns are now making more in unemployment benefits than they did in wages. And that is stopping people from returning to work — just when employers are trying to reopen across the nation. Combined federal and state unemployment benefits add up to an average of $638 per week, encouraging people accustomed to staying home for the last year to keep staying home. That’s why, with 7.4 million jobs available nationwide, the anemic 266,000 jobs added in April were a dismaying indicator of a real problem with the government’s misplaced generosity.
The year-plus of no work has robbed Americans of their sense of purpose and added to the malaise depressing so many of us. The satisfaction of work, almost any kind of work, is essential for a healthy sense of self-worth in humans. Even FDR, the Democrat president who created the New Deal to aid the jobless in the Great Depression, warned against the habit of welfare; “relief” as it was called then. “The lessons of history show that continued dependence upon relief induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fiber,” he said in 1935. “To dole out relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit. The federal government must and shall quit this business of relief.”
Yes it must – and it must now for us to reclaim our national character: industriousness, personal responsibility, and eagerness for future achievement that have made us the most dynamic and successful nation on earth.
Joy Overbeck is a Colorado-based journalist and author who has written for Townhall, American Thinker, The Washington Times, The Federalist, the Daily Caller, and others. Follow her on Facebook and Twitter @joyoverbeck1.
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