[RC] Progressivism

[David R. Block]

Title: If you don't read the newspaper you are uninformed, if you do read the newspaper you are misinformed

I'm really not that sure that I want a return to old fashioned American Progressivism, even that of TR. Why? Not much of what I call progress. A lot of what I would call regress. The following article about pseudo-intellectual sock-puppet blogger Glenn Greenwald, who has always termed himself a progressive, and even sometimes a libertarian (he's not), and who prefers to be listed, at times, with right-wing blogs (which does not describe him AT ALL, being slightly to the left of Hugo Chavez) shows that much of modern progressivism will not earn my support. http://newledger.com/2010/07/the-paper-greenwald/ If this is the "progressive" mindset, then I do not want it. I would much rather have a return to classical liberalism. For one, I am not at all interested in what most today call "social justice." It is stealing from the working class to give to the government dependent class. It's not even as glorified as "Robin Hood." It would be an insult to "Robin Hood." That class, in turn, votes for more government dependency. I am part of the 60 % who are not willing to pay more taxes to keep the entitlement state afloat. I am part of the 68 % who are not willing to pay more so that government workers can keep their salaries that now exceed the private sector, nor am I willing to fund their Platinum plated retirement plans. The old progressives at least moved to eliminate government corruption; today they ARE the government corruption. They have lost the trust busting anti-big corporation passion and substituted in its place "too big to fail." They support the goals of SEIU which wants to unionize government workers and set them against the rest of the tax payers at the bargaining table, except that they have already bought the politicians with campaign contributions. Who gets screwed: the taxpayers. Support of organized labor has always been a strand in American Progressivism, and it's the main reason that I cannot support it. Organized labor=thugs. It is also to the point that many big unions are now big business. Yet they are somehow purer than the real big businesses. If you can believe that pig-twaddle. (Most of this is distilled from Wikipedia.)  David -- If you don't read the newspaper you are uninformed, if you do read the newspaper you are misinformed.--Mark Twain    -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <RadicalCentrism@googlegroups.com> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org