The Death of Liberalism & the Rise of Progressivism
How the progressive cannibalization of liberalism is rapidly transforming America
In the film adaptation of Orwell’s dystopian classic, 1984, O’Brien asks Winston, “What are your true feelings towards Big Brother?” Winston replies, “I hate him”, to which O’Brien replies, “You must love him. It’s not enough to obey him. You must love him.” The allegiance demanded of Winston paints a grim picture of a society that has completely lost all individual autonomy and has succumbed to tyrannical central rule. This piece will examine how modern progressivism seeks similar homogenous devotion in its current conception in American society, as well as the world at large.
The 20th Century: The End of American Idealism?
Throughout the 20th century, the great American ideal remained preserved despite the national challenges we faced. The postwar idealistic optimism of the 1950s fueled a new sense of national pride and economic prosperity. The Cold War brought Americans together as “the last best hope of man on earth” in the words of Ronald Reagan, as we together steadfastly faced an enemy that threatened us with nuclear annihilation. As America fumbled its way through the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights era, and the economic turmoil of the 1970s, stodgy conservatives clashed with liberal counter-culturalists on the direction of America and what our collective focus should be. Conservative patriarch William F. Buckley and the razor-witted liberal intellectual Gore Vidal would famously debate the issues on television in 1968. America was growing, changing, and finding its way into the modern era. One thing remained steadfast however - the basic desires of both sides of the political spectrum were fundamentally the same. A strong America, a brighter tomorrow, a prosperous homeland, limited government intrusion into citizens’ lives, and a brighter future for our children were common wishes on both sides. Even across party lines, Americans were united in the common cause of preserving the foundations of liberty and individual freedom that the United States was founded upon.
A Modern History of Progressivism: Then & Now
Progressivism is not a new concept, but rather one that takes on different forms in various epochs. Around the turn of the 20th century, in the wake of the excesses of the Gilded Age, in which extremely wealthy captains of industry enjoyed monopolistic control over commodity markets; lack of business regulation offered few barriers to production and enterprise, and a new progressive movement was born. These progressives sought to address the inequalities, waste, and corruption that was inherent with early modernization, and serve as a balancing force against it. The new progressive movement crossed party lines, and notable progressives hailed from various corners of the political spectrum. They included Republican President Theodore Roosevelt, Democrat William Jennings Bryan, as well as some socialists and populists. Their primary focus was on improving labor conditions, antitrust laws, securing elections, fighting government and corporate corruption, environmental concerns, and improving the democratic process. One of the major issues championed by the progressives was the passage of the 18th Amendment in 1919, which ushered in the Prohibition by outlawing alcohol in the US - until its repeal by Congress in 1933. Typically, the progressive movement was marked by elements of pragmatic conservatism, and sought to implement morally sound reforms that resulted in a more empowered citizen. While some of the platform could be called into question (looking at you, progressive eugenicists of the 1920s), on a broad scale these were positive changes in a rapidly evolving socioeconomic landscape.
However, progressivism today has taken on a much more virulent form. The term enjoyed a resurgence in the wake of Barack Obama’s presidential victory in 2008 as a way for leftists to self-identify as outside, or beyond the Democrat party establishment. In practical terms, these were people who viewed themselves as further left than the party, while eschewing its establishment ties. A similar - albeit politically opposite - transformation took place amidst the Republican party, in the form of the Tea Party around 2010 or so. By the time Donald Trump’s presidential victory in 2016 rolled around, political factions were deeply divided, and the days of polite sociopolitical discourse had already been long over.
Classical Liberalism
So what happened to the classic liberal? That pro-individualist ever reverent of the Bill of Rights protecting personal autonomy, and ever wary of government overreach? It is precisely these post-enlightenment ideals built on the foundation of liberty that separated western society from the more dogmatically rigid eastern philosophies that didn’t recognize the individual any more than a faceless cog in the collective machinery of social order. In this strict environment, no value is placed on individual liberty, and the state reigns supreme over the affairs of its subjects. To dare speak out against the system or its organizers and oligarchs is to be consigned to death or imprisonment without recourse.
The classic liberal would eschew any litmus test determining the legitimacy of one’s speech - and instead be completely concerned with defending and protecting his right to say it in the first place, even if the liberal would personally reject the ideas put forth. It is in this climate where disfavored opinions are freely advanced, but often drowned out and replaced with more tolerable ones in the free market of ideas. This is foundational to western thought, versus certain concepts that threaten the central power structure being deemed “evil” and subjectively filtered out and abolished by state-appointed czars of truth. In modern parlance, these ideas are branded as misinformation or disinformation. And frequently, their accuracy isn’t even in dispute, since they are levied within the realm of conjecture; but rather they are branded “dangerous” due to their dislike by those in power.
Examples of such “wrongthink” may include doubting that climate change is manmade; that abortion ends the life of a human being; that January 6th was an unarmed political demonstration, not an insurrection; or that funding virtually all of Ukraine’s defense budget out of the fruits of the pockets of American taxpayers is immoral and not in America’s best interest. These opinions, and many others, are frequently not permitted the same attention or audience as those ideas more in step with those expressed and promulgated by the bastions of culture. To police thought in this manner is an authoritarian and deeply illiberal practice. Yet the same political party that was once populated by the free thinking liberals of yesterday has succumbed to the dogmatically driven progressives of today.
Progressivism Versus Classical Liberalism
It is here that a semantical distinction is in order. The terms “liberal” and “progressive” are often used interchangeably, and one could proffer useful arguments both for and against this amalgamation. For an understanding of the terminology utilized here, a concise definition for “progressive” could be that of “hyper-liberal”. In his book Why Liberalism Failed, author Patrick J. Deneen describes the ancient concept of liberty as individual freedom counterbalanced with an understanding and respect for traditional morality, ethics, and accepted cultural norms. Liberalism is achieved when the individual is freed from all mental and psychological constraints, and the prior balances offered by traditionalism are jettisoned as devices for social order. The new opposing force which must be applied in order to throttle liberalism’s excesses is that of law and order, often referred to as the rule of law. Deneen makes the intriguing argument that liberalism is self-defeating in that encouraging more and more individual autonomy requires more law as an order-keeper, which necessarily results in the growth of the state, bureaucracy, and government power overall. The classical liberal is ever concerned with this paradox, and seeks to find the golden recipe that preserves the freedom of individual pursuit, and yet salvages only the necessary amount of state authority required to safeguard it.
The progressive, on the other hand, relishes state control of the individual. Since he does not possess the wisdom or aptitude required to fashion himself into a better individual, such bettering must be done either with or without his consent. Personal autonomy is a barrier to personal betterment in the mind of the progressive, and therefore force becomes a required and favored component of the progressive’s toolkit. However, solely relying on state-sponsored coercion is problematic because it too blatantly echoes the authoritarian trappings that spoiled communism’s promise of a classless utopia by force. The clever and conniving antidote to this challenge, is to therefore inject progressive propaganda into the veins of the cultural body politic. With this program in place, the unwitting citizenry will happily lap up the poison elixir, and then beg for seconds.
The Four Pillars of Culture
American culture is cultivated and supported by four primary pillars - media, entertainment, academia, and the Washington political class. These establishments have always tended toward the left, and have primarily defended liberal ideals historically. However, being ideologically similar, they tend to function in concert and be monolithic in their determinations. For example, when President Trump declared the mainstream media to be the “enemy of the people”, the pillars of culture circled the wagons and defended its ally intensely. This (among other things) forever branded Trump as an enemy of culture itself. Celebrities and other public figures would publicly announce their allegiance to the cultural zeitgeist by declaring their disgust and abhorrence of Trump and the MAGA movement in general. To be affiliated in any substantial way with any of the four pillars, and yet be a supporter of Trump, was a cultural death sentence. The formerly liberal cultural arenas had become illiberal and completely unwavering in their demand for ideological uniformity. This transformation had already taken place prior to the advent of MAGA populism, but it was the opposing force of the MAGA movement that shattered any remaining pretense of culture’s adherence to classical liberal values, exposing the face of secular progressivism hidden beneath.
When President Barack Obama declared his intention to “fundamentally transform America” in 2008, many took his promise with an optimistic grain of salt, figuring this to be nothing more than another politician’s catchphrase attempting to brand his campaign as forward-thinking and hopeful. In hindsight however, it is clear that Obama, unlike other politicians, made a campaign promise that he intended to carry out to the letter in every way imaginable. Obama’s inauguration as America’s first black president brought with it the hope of finally turning the page on much of the racial divide that still existed across the American landscape. Surely if a black man can achieve the highest office in the land, and secure the role of most powerful leader in the entire world, this would signal once and for all that black Americans can accomplish anything and everything that their white counterparts could, and we could all finally embrace each other as American brothers and sisters no longer mentally segregated by something so unimportant as race. Unfortunately, the opposite happened, as the flames of division of all kinds were fanned, and social unrest festered in communities all over the US. This sociopolitical upheaval resulted in unprecedented political polarization, which provided the ideal climate for modern secular progressivism to flourish.
The Illusion of Democracy
Contrary to what some believe, the opposing force against progressivism is not conservatism. Conservatism seeks to retain the constraints and values offered by morality and tradition, and is therefore the opposition to liberalism. The polarizing force against progressivism is populism. Populism seeks to retain liberalism’s original promise of individual autonomy, while being extremely opposed to unfettered government overreach and state control. A favorite refrain of progressives is that they are the arbiters and protectors of “democracy”, and that democracy’s arch enemies are proponents of populism. However, this is smoke and mirrors deception. It is indeed populism that seeks to inject more democratic control over state power by elevating and empowering the citizen to defend and protect his rights by active involvement in the democratic process. The progressive is primarily concerned with securing as much power and control for its elite managerial organizers as can be achieved. Democracy serves as a barrier to this goal, because populations surely wouldn’t choose for themselves a lesser voice in societal affairs, and more power to a faceless, unelected elite class of bureaucrats. So it becomes necessary for progressives to thinly veil their intentions under the noble guise of “defending democracy”; when what they truly intend to do is dismantle it.
Since progressives today have deceptively intimated that their combined efforts are in pursuit of the defense of democracy, anything that challenges their goals is a direct attack on democracy itself and must therefore be obliterated. In this chaotic climate, even those ideas that seek to purify the democratic process, such as requiring voter ID, or favoring in-person voting are branded threats to democracy itself.
In his incredibly insightful piece “Poland and the Demon in Democracy”, N.S. Lyons points out that when Donald Tusk secured victory as the far left prime minister of Poland, he declared that “democracy has won”. Among his initial acts as PM in pursuit of “democracy”, Tusk ordered the arrest of his political opposition in direct violation of the Polish constitution. Tusk was just getting warmed up. He continued arresting other political leaders, even those in which he had nothing more than personal disputes with. He then initiated a plan to exert his political influence over the courts - in the continued pursuit of “democracy” of course.
The courts themselves are Tusk’s top target. He campaigned on “restoring the rule of law” to Poland. By this he meant unlocking more than $100 billion in EU funds meant for Poland that the bloc has frozen on the grounds that PiS “politicized” the courts. These sanctions were imposed in response to PiS reforms to allow more judges to be appointed by elected officials – and therefore face at least some measure of democratic accountability, as in most Western countries – rather than be appointed by each other. This incestuous practice had led to Poland’s allegedly-former communist judges universally appointing new progressive allegedly-not-communists in an unbroken cycle of hegemonic left-wing institutional control. According to the EU, however, legally breaking this oligarchy was a form of “democratic backsliding.”
Lyons reports that, in the wake of Tusk’s victory, the EU began to unfreeze a portion of the $100 billion to signal a “job well done” to the people of Poland for electing him. Tusk’s faction then got to work removing and replacing judicial appointments and other legal officers that had been put in place with at least some form of democratic oversight, and replacing them with partisans who were installed as puppets of the Tusk administration sans the previous democratic controls in place. These acts, and others conducted by Tusk, were hailed by EU leadership in Brussels as being positive reforms in the name of “democracy”.
In a scathing rebuke of Tusk’s ruthless purging of all opposition forces in Poland, former Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said, “I was very much surprised with what the current government is doing. You can fight politically on many different fronts, but being so brutal and aggressive as putting Members of Parliament who are fighting with corruption, to jail is something unprecedented in Poland.”
Morawiecki also warned that Tusk is attempting to create a “monopoly of voices” in the Polish media that unquestionably support the Tusk regime.
Mr Tusk's government sacked the management of the national broadcasters and has in effect liquidated part of the media.
Mr Morawiecki said: "Right now, all diligent observers of what is happening on our media scene, would realise that there is a very similar voice coming from all the three major TV channels in Poland, this is not democracy.
"Democracy requires not only civil liberties but also freedom of speech and a free media and pluralistic media.
What’s becoming alarmingly clear in leftist politics today, is that the more impassioned the appeal to democracy, the more they’re willing to forego the actual features inherent in a functional democracy - until paradoxically, democracy itself is a grave threat to democracy.
Lyons expertly lays out the framework that connects liberalism to communism, and cites Ryszard Legutko’s account in his groundbreaking book, The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies, which states that communism and liberalism share many similarities.
It is possessed by the same progressive conception of history, the same belief that history moves rationally and inevitably in only one direction: forward toward, in the liberal case, greater and greater freedom and equality for all. Like communism, liberalism believes in constant social improvement and the unravelling of historic injustices and inequities. And at the end of this arc of history lies the same utopian ideal of a perfected world. Just as the communists believed the utopia of a classless society and universal social justice was possible to achieve through worldly struggle, liberals believe that a completely equal, just, and peaceful world can ultimately be constructed by human managerial technique.
What Lyons refers to as liberalism, this author calls progressivism - but this is only a semantical difference. Their insidious traits describe the same faction. When the term classic liberalism or classical liberal is employed, one is referring to what is most closely aligned with today as libertarianism. This distinction may seem insignificant - but the difference in their functional meaning is colossal. This is critical because Lyons’ liberal in effect is a devoutly and ironically illiberal creature.
Another key component shared by liberals/progressives and communists, is their mutual disgust for organized religion. Any connection to tradition or past enlightenment ideals is frowned upon, because struggle and forward progress forge the path ahead toward utopia according to the leftists. Faith and traditional mores are anchors that need to be emancipated either freely or by force to loosen society from its traditional bonds in order to pursue the goal of a perfected civilization. Furthermore, religion and faith offer a superior and more idealized vision of the future, as well as offer man a far greater power than the state with which to serve and worship - and therefore must be destroyed by the progressives. This exercise hearkens back to Mao’s cultural revolution which sought to free China from such institutions, resulting in the murder of tens of millions in the pursuit of the Maoist “Great Leap Forward” agenda.
Whereas the statist organizers of the progressive society promise a freedom untethered where ideas are openly expressed and pursued, nothing could be further from the truth in practice. Progressivism (liberalism to Lyons) sets up an us or them dichotomy. If you are not actively in favor of, and do not exhibit enthusiastic fervor for the progressive reforms, then you are by definition the enemy, and must be neutralized.
Lyons explains:
Liberalism is in reality an ideology of friend and enemy. Either one is for the utopian liberal project, or against it. No other categories can be seriously considered or permitted. And as the liberal project continually fails – as it must – to produce utopia, liberalism finds itself more and more desperately hunting for the shadowy ranks of non-liberal saboteurs that must be undermining the progress of the revolution. Legutko reflects on how both communists and liberals have displayed the same peculiar tendency: to somehow hold simultaneously to the idea that their ideals are invincible and will inevitably triumph at the end of history, and that they are a small, vulnerable, victimized, and desperately embattled minority.
This idea is played out over and over again as “more and more spheres of life are relentlessly politicized by liberalism’s partisan passions”, as stated by Lyons. One needn’t look far nor wide to see the progressive influence exerted over even the most trivial cultural minutiae. As previously described, the four pillars of culture are universal and monolithic in their pursuit of the progressive agenda, and will aggressively pursue virtually any end to instill progressive dogma in all of its paraphernalia in preparation for mass public consumption. Accepting and promoting these expressions is hailed as noble and virtuous; and oftentimes even considered brave and heroic despite being the absolute safest position imaginable, and simultaneously as the prevailing view of the central organizers behind the media, entertainment, academic, and political establishments.
Progressivism’s Grand Scheme
The unspoken, yet thinly veiled truth of the grand progressive project’s overarching theme is the relentless pursuit of power and control over society and its denizens on a global scale. It is in the recognition of this reality that we endeavor to discover the answer to the initial question concerning how progressivism cannibalized liberalism. Liberalism offered the fertile ground for progressive ideas to be incubated, and within liberalism’s unconstrained arena, progressivism flourished. Progressivism was a creature born from and nurtured by liberalism, which grew strong and with a ravenous appetite, eventually turning on liberalism and consuming it entirely.
Communism was damaged goods. The blood-soaked fields littered with the corpses of millions of unfortunate souls that unwittingly prevented communism’s promise of achieving paradise through their inconvenient existence; and therefore necessarily had to be eliminated - stood as a grotesque monument to its ultimate failure. Progressivism’s shiny exterior inspired change, was forward-thinking, optimistic, and of course engendered progress itself. This was the new machine by which the elite managerial class would finally exact their plans to organize society effectively and drive us toward the path to global nirvana; a Phoenix arising out of communism’s ashes.
It is within this rigid progressive orthodoxy that even liberalism itself is considered out of fashion and passé. Liberalism doesn’t possess the teeth with which to defend itself from annihilation, because it necessarily defends the free exercise of ideas - even those that call for its destruction. The new flavor of leftism is indeed secular progressivism, and to be considered a leftist in good standing according to the cultural behemoths that prescribe it, one must adhere to its dogma. The Democrat party has gleefully agreed to be its political vehicle, and they are carrying out its precepts to the letter. Their methods unironically echo that of Tusk in Poland as they execute their agenda always in the name of “defending democracy”. Using lawfare tactics against Donald Trump by attempting to keep him defending himself in every courtroom in America so he cannot mount a solid campaign against Joe Biden’s reelection bid is of course an effort waged to protect “democracy”. Labeling his speech on January 6, 2021 that called for nonviolence an act of insurrection, and then citing the 14th amendment state by state to force him off of the ballot thereby denying the people their right to choose their leaders, is of course a noble act of “democracy”. Imprisoning people who were simply at the Capitol on January 6, yet broke no laws (some weren’t even on Capitol grounds) for political crimes, is exercising sacred “democracy”. And most recently, the Biden administration allowing unchecked illegal immigration for three years, and then demanding the Republican House pass a Ukraine slush fund bill that mentions the border in passing, by gaslighting them as not being serious about border security if they reject it, is a virtuous act of “democracy”.
Progressivism’s ultimate goal is domination on a global scale. It has powerful allies positioned as both its diplomats and its central planners from wealthy globalists such as Bill Gates, George Soros, and several others; to ubiquitous non-governmental organizations (NGOs) such as the World Economic Forum (WEF). These entities all claim to be merchants of democracy, while simultaneously working tirelessly funding and manipulating its very destruction through acquiring central global control in world financial markets, healthcare sectors, and government bodies. However, populist movements across the globe have gained steam in recent years as a stalwart resistance to a growing progressive globalist architecture. Across Europe, South America, Oceania, and the US a natural populist immunity against the progressive plague has begin to sprout up and take action to educate and inform the masses about the true endgame of progressive initiatives. However, friendly cultural allies have proven to be powerful and persuasive accomplices in progressivism’s cause. And it is here that the demand for Party allegiance and uniformity described in Orwell’s 1984 becomes in reality more pertinent and less hyperbolic. And we would be well served to heed its warning and be ever mindful of the truth behind progressivism’s deception.