Since the
first decade of the 20th century,
left-wing politicians, activists, and intellectuals
have arrogated to themselves the designation
“progressive.” But are they really? Even a brief
analysis will show that leftists oppose anything
that can even remotely be called progress – be it in
the technological, the social, or the moral sense.
When it
comes to technology, the Left has never quite gotten
over the Industrial Revolution – a period of
dramatic improvements in virtually
every ones
standard of living and an era falsely
caricatured by the Left as a time when the so-called
Robber Barons made fortunes off the sweat of the
working poor.
The early leftists – led by the
utopian socialists and by Marx and Engels – believed
that increasing industrialization would make workers
increasingly worse off unless the state took
control.
But by the 1960s, it
was clear that the leftists’ predictions had failed
to materialize. Relatively free countries in the
West experienced phenomenal rises in the wealth and
prosperity of even the poorest people, while
state-controlled economies ruled by Communists and
other totalitarians continued to experience chronic
shortages at best and mass starvation at worst.
It
was clearly untrue that government controls could
foster greater technological progress. But instead
of acknowledging the free-market system’s
superiority in this regard, the Left began to
repudiate the value of technological progress
itself. Thus was born the environmentalist movement
– which actively seeks to restrict the expansion of
human habitation, the construction of new factories
and power plants, the introduction of new
technologies, and the industrialization of much of
the Third World.
The environmentalists
claim that technological progress leads to increased
pollution, crowding, waste, and ecological chaos –
but the evidence speaks to the contrary. The average
person in the Western world leads a longer,
healthier, and cleaner life than his ancestors or
Third-World contemporaries. And if you compare the
effects of inhaling car exhaust processed by a
catalytic converter to the consequences of breathing
in smoke from dung fires – still the most common
energy source in many parts of the world – the
“environmental friendliness” of modern Western
lifestyles becomes glaringly obvious.
But the
leftist environmentalists do not care. Far too many
of them believe the words of John Shuttleworth,
founder of Mother Earth Magazine: “The only real
good technology is no technology at all. Technology
is taxation without representation, imposed by our
elitist species (man) upon the rest of the natural
world.”
So leftists are by and
large opponents of technological progress. But what
about so-called social progress? Do leftists
really
care about eradicating poverty and misery? They
certainly are not concerned about the suffering of
millions of Africans from malaria because
environmentalist groups have pressured international
organizations and African governments to either
severely limit or prohibit the use of the pesticide
DDT to eradicate this deadly disease. Only recently
has the World Health Organization reversed its
position on DDT and acknowledged the pesticide’s
beneficial uses – to the overwhelming protest of
environmentalist activists.
Wherever leftists have
meddled in Third-World affairs, it has virtually
always been with the intention of blocking Western
corporations from bringing the benefits of
industrialization and modern technology to hitherto
miserably impoverished people.
Even in the Western
world, however, the leftists are the principal
enemies of social progress. The laws and regulations
advocated by the Left are the most effective means
of inhibiting upward social and economic mobility.
Government regulation and subsidization of
healthcare and higher education render these two
services prohibitively expensive to many
hard-working individuals.
Government minimum wage
regulations effectively make it illegal for the
poorest and least-skilled individuals to engage in
productive work. Because of this effective price
floor, somebody who is insufficiently skilled to
earn the legal minimum simply cannot find a job that
pays him what his labor is worth without breaking
the law. Instead, such a low-skilled worker is
encouraged to go on the government dole and depend
on a welfare system that robs him of all incentives
to improve his material well-being.
The zoning regulations
and building codes that leftists advocate lead to an
artificial shortage of housing, thus putting real
estate beyond the financial reach of many ordinary
citizens. Through eminent domain regulations,
leftist politicians will often take away the
cherished homes of many hard-working Americans.
Furthermore, licensing laws and other occupational
regulations artificially restrict the entry of
otherwise qualified individuals into professions
where they could have made a living. Such licensing
laws – strongly advocated by the Left on the
spurious grounds of ensuring “quality” – make it
illegal for people to even work as hairdressers or
cosmetologists without obtaining official
permission.
In Chicago, because of leftist-advocated
labor regulations, a businessman cannot move his own
furniture into his own office without hiring a union
member. Talk about making people incur additional
expenses and inconvenience whenever possible! Talk
about restricting upward social mobility!
Nor do leftists
typically believe in moral progress – the idea that,
over time, it is possible for an increasingly
greater proportion of people to behave morally than
had done so in the past. Indeed, many leftists would
doubt that a genuine morality even exists; rather,
they would argue, morality is all a social construct
and an arbitrary one at that.
In order to recognize
the possibility of true moral progress, it is
necessary to also recognize the existence of
absolute and universal standards of moral behavior
toward which
people can progress.
Such progress has
occurred in the Western world over time – as
indicated by the abolition of slavery and the end of
mass ethnic slaughters in the West – but the
leftists offer active resistance to further moral
progress. They staunchly support the most gruesome
wave of mass killings in the West today – a practice
known as abortion – the fruit of irresponsibility
and of a refusal to bear its consequences.
Some of
them wish to once again tread upon the sanctity of
human life by making it legal to euthanize the old,
the sick, the disabled, the infirmed, and anyone who
asks for it.
Many of them seek to impose censorship
on the free exchange of ideas via speech codes,
norms for “political correctness,” and outright
bullying and shouting down of individuals with whom
they disagree.
Increasingly, leftists
have sought to collectivize the upbringing of
children and confine them to public education
facilities where group conformity, transient fads,
senseless risk-taking, rampant promiscuity, and
frequent indoctrination seriously damage the moral
integrity and self-discipline of young people.
In
practically every case, the leftists stand opposed
to the emergence of a society characterized by
civility, toleration, prudence, and virtue. One only
needs to hear the “gangsta rap” that many leftists
celebrate as “a unique cultural expression” to
recognize that moral progressives they are not.
So, no matter which
aspects of progress one examines, it is clear that
the leftists cannot justifiably claim to be
progressives. Indeed, they are true
reactionaries
against the material and moral
improvement that can only thrive in an advanced,
modern, and above all
free
society.
Leftists
are Reactionaries, Not Progressives