And The Progressive Hits Just Keep On Comin'

Having attained the apparently necessary age and self-appointed title of Curmudgeon, one tends to look at things with a cynical eye and a jaded perspective. Most of the things that everyone talks about as being "the latest thing" appear to one in my position of simply being yet another example of "everything old is new again". 

Take for example the current Administration and Congress. While there appear to be some firsts seen with this current crop of politicians, much of what they say and do today is little more than ideological retreads. President Obama claims to be the first African-American president, but did after all have a Caucasian mother. Perhaps that instead makes him the first bi-racial president, though I suspect that other presidents in our history might have had some interesting pedigrees that they were unwilling to talk about. I guess a person can be who they decide they are however. 

President Obama is claimed by many of his sycophants to be the greatest uniter as a president since Abraham Lincoln, but Lincoln's election divided this country as it had never been divided before or since ... in Civil War. Obama and Lincoln do both come from Illinois however, and show a similarity views where the federal government is concerned; with both attempting to draw increasing power both to it and to the executive branch. (One could also point out that Lincoln was a great builder of railroads, and that the latest Congress appears to be a runaway train.) 

Beginning perhaps in the second term of the Bush years, it seems intent on legislating and spending in a way that has embarrassed drunken sailors. They have raised the debt ceiling (a rather curious term, isn't it?) more times than Visa has raised my credit limit in recent years, and to a worse purpose. Congress has likewise intruded in an ever increasing way in the personal freedoms of the citizens of this country. But we have seen this before in the "New Deal" of the FDR years and the "Great Society" of LBJ. It's not perhaps a change in philosophy that we are shown here, as much as an increase in the scope and scale of the governmental abuse. 

Money is hard to come by, and many say that it is the fault of this President and this Congress. Inflation also seems right around the corner, and the worth of a dollar may prove much less very quickly, but this too is not far out of our memory. Any of us old enough to have lived through the Carter Administration remember the gas lines, the double digit prime rates, and the fact that no one could afford to borrow money for anything. 

There is a lot of talk about organizations like the United Nations, the G20 and others will exert influence that will lead inevitably to a "World Currency" and a "World Government". We have seen this before as well, with Woodrow Wilson and the attempt to form the League of Nations. Many indeed were crying out over the ceding of our sovereignty then to an organization that we never actually ended up joining. 

In truth, there is a commonality to all of these abuses and the thinking that is behind them. Having done a good bit of reading on this recently (some of it horribly boring, let me tell you), I feel that I can state that all of these efforts show a recurring theme of Progressive thinking. This belief in larger and more onerous government control, in egalitarianism through wealth redistribution, and in a ruling elite of those best suited to leading runs through all of this like a recurring melody. Like the music of Neil Sedaka and Frankie Vali and the Four Seasons (whoops, really dated myself on that reference), Elton John and Billy Joel, or Fergie and Kelly Clarkson; there is a repeating theme to all of it. 

We began to see the shape of this music with the passage of the Stimulus Package, the the bailouts, and the most recent budget. We likewise began to see the shape of that which is to come with health care legislation, cap and trade, and the internet fairness doctrine. And though I find this particular form of music abhorrent (much as I feel about rap music), these are not tunes with which I am unfamiliar. The lyrics change subtly in these Progressive compositions from one generation to the next, and the beat speeds up or slows down as it suits those wishing to dance to the tune of the latest pied piper ... but the Progressive Hits Just Keep On Comin'.