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In his inaugural address, President Biden called on Americans to bridge our divides, lower the temperature on our national debates, and work together to defeat the pandemic. Hes repeatedly said that one of his priorities is getting Americas kids back to school. All good and heartening notes.

Moments into his tenure, Biden then waded into the culture wars by issuing executive orders that dismantled the 1776 Commission and declared that girls sports could no longer exclude biologically male athletes. His administration has signaled that more than $100 billion in new federal aid is necessary for most schools to open sometime this spring, even as some union leaders have hinted that schools may not be fully open even in the fall. And, on Bidens second day in office, the first lady publicly welcomed the heads of the nations two major teacher unions to the White House, while lamenting how tough things are on teachers this year.

So, which will it be? Will Bidens education agenda be one of common ground, lowered temperatures, and getting kids back to schoolor will it be one of culture clashes, resurgent union power, and blue state schools that stay shuttered into fall 2021 (or even beyond)?

The most obvious tea leaf to read is Miguel Cardona, Bidens nominee for secretary of education and a safe bet to be rapidly confirmed. Unfortunately, Cardona is very much a blank slate. Having spent most of his career out of the public eyefirst as a classroom teacher, principal, and assistant superintendent in a smallish district in Connecticut, and the past 18 months as head of Connecticuts education agencyCardona has no clear public stance on charter schooling, testing, teacher unions, tenure, reform, higher education, and the rest.

This ambiguity has allowed Biden to sidestep intramural Democratic educational debates, which threatened to boil over in December, for instance, when it appeared Biden would nominate former National Education Association chief Lily Eskelsen Garcia. Biden had boxed himself in, having repeatedly promised on the campaign trail that hed name a public educator to run the Department of Education. All of which made Cardona, a veteran teacher and principal who didnt even qualify as a dark horse candidate 10 weeks ago, an appealing stealth nominee.

Cardona is a likable figure who touches key bases for Democrats. He has a heartwarming personal story. Cardona, whose parents moved to the mainland from Puerto Rico, grew up in a housing project, learned English as a second language, attended public colleges, returned to his hometown in Connecticut to teach elementary school, and went on to become Connecticuts youngest principal at the age of 28. He says its vital to get kids back to school, speaks passionately about supporting vulnerable students, and waxes enthusiastically about public education.

The teacher unions (which were going to have to approve any Biden education secretary) have welcomed his appointment. So have charter school advocates, relieved that Biden didnt name someone openly hostile to school choice. And the media has shed their DeVos-era playbook with amusing haste, rediscovering the ability to fawn. The Washington Posts editorial board termed Cardona an inspired choice to lead the nations schools and the New York Times authoritative profile lacked even a single skeptical quote.

While Cardona may be a blank slate, the appointees who will serve with him suggest that the Biden education agenda may well be driven by the White House and make it pretty clear that the reform Democrats have been routed in the internal staffing wars.

First, theres a history of the Department of Education sometimes being run rather aggressively from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. This was certainly the case during George W. Bushs first term, when domestic policy chief Margaret Spellings and her team took the lead in negotiating No Child Left Behind and supervising state compliance. The department sometimes got wholly cut out of decisions, finding deals had been struck only after the fact.

Not only is Cardona a relative novice with no national experience and only a short stint as head of Connecticuts education bureaucracy, but his deputy will be Cindy Marten, the superintendent of San Diego Unified School District, a longtime educator who has never worked at the state or federal level. Meanwhile, its been announced that the White House team will include two seasoned D.C. education hands and Obama education veterans: Carmel Martin, who oversaw department policy after a long career on Capitol Hill, and Catherine Lhamon, an unapologetic culture warrior who headed up the departments Office of Civil Rights as it pursued controversial policies on Title IX, school discipline, and more.

The department looks like itll be on a short leash, with the shots called by the policy pros in the White House while the educators serve as its public face. (Strengthening that impression is thatSheila Nix, who previously served as chief of staff to Jill Biden and a senior adviser to Kamala Harris, has been named as Cardonas chief of staff.) Just what a strong White House role might mean isnt yet clear, though Lhamons role as deputy director of the Domestic Policy Council for Racial Justice and Equity suggests that the woke agenda may loom large.

Second, the department appointees announced thus far suggest that the unions and the progressive wing steamrolled the centrists when it came to staffing. None of the transition team members or Obama veterans championed by reform Democrats have been named thus far. While Cardona is a Rorschach test on charter schooling, his deputy-to-be Marten has been hostile. Indeed, she may be best known for San Diegos controversial embrace of anti-racist dogma and her vocal doubts about school reopening.

The National Education Association supplied senior adviser for policy and planning Donna Harris-Aikens as well as principal deputy general counsel Emma Leheny. Suzanne Goldberg, founding director of Columbia Law Schools sexuality and gender law clinic, was named to a senior position at the Office of Civil Rights. Other early appointments come from the Elizabeth Warren campaign and state-based left-wing advocacy organizations. In short, this is not a staffing chart that portends a determined centrism.

Is the administration going to focus relentlessly on reopening schools and hold superintendents and union leaders to the euphonious promises that theyre eager to get kids back in school, or will it offer excuses as reopening efforts lag? Is it going to abide by Bidens aspirational commitment to build bridges and lower the national temperature, or will it follow up his Day 1 dismantling of the 1776 Commission by attacking school discipline, homework, and charter schooling as racist conceits, in accord with the expressed sentiments of key Department and White House deputies?

Back in September, in this space, I observed, When it comes to domestic policy, the question is which President Biden would emerge: the affable Obamaphile centrist or the AOC sock puppet?Five months on, when it comes to education, the answer remains elusivebut the Democrats AOC wing has to be feeling pretty good about the shape of things.

Frederick M. Hess is director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute.

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How Biden Is Appeasing Progressives With His Education Department Picks - The Dispatch

Could the next coronavirus stimulus check be just the start of the payments you receive?

President Joe Biden has made coronavirus relief one of his first priorities as he enters office. Even before being sworn in, the incoming president announced a $1.9 billion COVID-19 stimulus plan. His proposal included, among other things, $1,400 checks.

The $1,400 that Biden wants to deposit into Americans' bank accounts is part of the Democrat's plan to fulfill a promise for $2,000 checks. See, a $900 billion stimulus package passed at the end of December provided $600 checks to eligible Americans. But Democrats wanted to increase that amount, so Biden's plan would authorize another $1,400. Combined with the existing $600, people would receive $2,000 in total.

Some progressives, however, believe this is not enough. In fact, a number of key figures on the left -- including Vice President Kamala Harris -- have previously suggested Americans should receive payments of $2,000 per month for the duration of the pandemic.

Last May, then-Senator Kamala Harris introduced a bill along with two other progressive senators: Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Ed Markey of Massachusetts.

The bill would've provided payments of $2,000 per person per month for the duration of the pandemic. Anyone earning less than $120,000 a year would have been eligible for some additional monthly income. And the $2,000 would've been available for eligible adults as well as up to three child dependents.

The bill did not pass and, in fact, was dead on arrival in a Republican-controlled Senate. However, in a recent statement, Senator Markey urged Congress to take up his proposal to provide this money to those who need it.

Markey spoke out after Biden announced his relief bill, suggesting the incoming president's plan was a good start but needed to go further. "The $1,400 in direct cash assistance is a down payment that will help families make rent, put food on the table, and pay the utility bills after Senate Republicans blocked that additional funding back in December," Markey said. "But we must still pass my legislation with Senator Bernie Sanders to provide $2,000 monthly payments to working people through the duration of the pandemic."

If passed, Markey's plan would make the $2,000 monthly payments retroactive to March of 2020 when the coronavirus pandemic first necessitated lockdowns in the United States. The money would also continue for three months after the crisis has ended to give people time to get back on their feet.

Markey is urging a revival of his bill as Democrats take control of Congress and the Executive branch. "I have been fighting for $2,000 monthly checks since the beginning of the pandemic and I'm not about to stop in the new Congress," he said in said a Jan. 15 tweet, with similar sentiments echoed throughout the month.

Democrats have much more leverage to pass their agenda than they did under Donald Trump and a Republican-controlled Senate. However, Markey's call for regular $2,000 checks is likely to be a hard sell. The legislation would need 60 votes to overcome a Senate filibuster and Democrats have just 50 of 100 seats. Vice President Harris can break ties, but it's unlikely any Republicans would vote for legislation that provided individuals with $2,000 per month on an ongoing basis.

And although there's a possibility Democrats will pass some version of Biden's coronavirus relief plan through a process called reconciliation, even this approach requires a bare majority of 51 votes. There are some conservative Democratic senators who have expressed concern over even one additional $2,000 payment, so they're very unlikely to sign on for ongoing large deposits.

Still, as coronavirus cases continue to spike nationwide and with the Democrats now in power, the public can expect some type of additional stimulus aid. Of course, a $1,400 payment may not provide the same financial relief as ongoing $2,000 payments. However, this money could still be a welcome relief to those who are struggling with COVID-19's continuing financial effects.

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Some Progressives Push for $2,000 Monthly Stimulus Checks for the Rest of the Pandemic - Motley Fool

With the Biden White House reportedly weighing the possibility of splitting its proposed coronavirus relief package into two parts in an effort to attract some Republican support, leaders of the Congressional Progressives Caucus are warning that anything less than the presidents $1.9 trillion opening offer would represent an unacceptable betrayal of economically desperate Americans.

In a letter (pdf) to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Wednesday, more than two dozen members of the CPC Executive Board wrote that if we aim too low, the financial consequences will be catastrophic, long-lasting, and borne by the American families who can least afford it.

The letter was signed by CPC chair Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), deputy chair Katie Porter (D-Calif.), caucus whip Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), and 21 other lawmakers.

We are concerned by the views of some in Congress who are advocating for a scaled-back, wait and see approach, the letter states, alluding to the bipartisan group of lawmakers that the White House economic team has sought out for input on coronavirus relief in recent days, despite warnings that outreach to austerity-obsessed Republicans is both futile and dangerous.

This goes against both the economic consensus and the voices of our constituents, who are crying out for additional relief to keep food on their tables and a roof over their heads, the letter continues. The families and small businesses that make up the economy do not have the luxury of waiting to see how this public health and economic crisis progresses they need relief now.

Pointing to the Obama administrations woefully inadequate response to the Great Recession as a cautionary tale, the progressive lawmakers cautioned that if we do not act now, a prolonged, sluggish economic recovery will surely result.

The letter goes on to reject an overemphasis on targeting aid such as the $1,400 direct relief payments Biden has proposed. As Common Dreams reported Wednesday, a growing chorus of right-wing lawmakers from both parties is pushing the president to further restrict eligibility for the checks in order to deny relief to those who supposedly dont need it.

Congress should err on the side of offering generous relief to a larger pool of people, rather than too little, the CPC letter argues. The cost of doing too little too slowly far outweighs the concerns about a relatively small share of households getting too much.'

The CPCs warning against a watered-down relief package came as fresh reporting from Politico indicated that the Biden administration is considering breaking its proposed coronavirus legislation into two parts in a bid to win GOP support for at least one.

According to Politico, a bipartisan deal would have skimpier funding for state and local relief (if any), and less money for vaccine distribution, unemployment insurance, and nutritional assistance, or SNAP. It would have far more targeted relief checks. We are told by administration sources that a bill of this sort might be in the $600-$800 billion range.

Under that approach, the Biden administration would take everything thats left out of the skinny relief package and add it to Bidens Build Back Better plan, Politico reported. The latter package would likely be passed through budget reconciliation, an expedited process that requires just a simple majority.

In a tweet Thursday morning, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki denied that the administration is looking to split a package in two.

The needs of the American people are urgent from putting food on the table, to getting vaccines out the door to reopening schools. Those arent partisan issues, said Psaki. We are engaging with a range of voices thats democracy in action.

Given the persistent spread of the deadly coronavirus and still-deteriorating economic conditions, progressives have warned Biden against wasting precious time reaching out to Republicans who are openly hostile to his agenda and averse to spending what experts say is necessary to bring the U.S. out of deep recession.

Under the leadership of incoming chairman Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the Senate Budget Committee has already begun work on a resolution that would jumpstart the process of moving a relief package through reconciliation, which would not require Republican support.

People can talk to whoever they want to talk to, but this country faces enormous crises, Sanders said Tuesday. Elections have consequences. Were in the majority, and weve got to act.

Read the CPC leaderships full letter:

Madam Speaker and Majority Leader Schumer:

The leadership of the Congressional Progressive Caucus is united in our belief that the current health and economic emergencies demand bold, swift action. With the economy in crisis, rock-bottom interest rates, and no sign of inflation, the economic consensus is clear: the best hope for the economy is a massive public investment to create jobs, raise wages, and keep people out of poverty. If we aim too low, the financial consequences will be catastrophic, long-lasting, and borne by the American families who can least afford it.

We are concerned by the views of some in Congress who are advocating for a scaled-back, wait and see approach. This goes against both the economic consensus and the voices of our constituents, who are crying out for additional relief to keep food on their tables and a roof over their heads. The families and small businesses that make up the economy do not have the luxury of waiting to see how this public health and economic crisis progresses they need relief now.

The economic experts are with us on the need for urgent and aggressive action. Just last month, leading economists estimated that we will need no less than $3 trillion in immediate relief to get our economy out of this hole. We cannot revive our economy in the short term and put our nation back on the path to growth in the long term without recommitting to the principle of fiscal responsibility, which directs us to pursue the appropriate level of spending to maintain a healthy rate of expansion. President Bidens rescue package, which comes in at $1.9 trillion, is a critical first step in meeting the economic need, but it is a minimum floor determined by the needs of the American people in this dire moment. If anything, it must be strengthened, not weakened.

The lessons of the Great Recession are informative on this point. As Treasury Secretary Yellen explained in her confirmation hearing before the Senate Finance Committee, the risks of doing too little during an economic downturn far outweigh the risks of doing too much. If we do not act now, a prolonged, sluggish economic recovery will surely result. The pain of a prolonged recession will be widespread but it will hit women and Black and brown people most. The American people cannot afford a repeat of the jobless recovery from the 2009 economic crisis and we must take bold action to prevent such an outcome.

Our economy is on the brink, with millions of people unable to afford the basics, states, cities, and tribal governments facing dire budget shortfalls, and the pandemic continuing to surge across the country. Experts agree that the economic benefits of investing in recovery, helping families and small businesses stay afloat, and protecting frontline workers will far outweigh the costs of any new federal borrowing. Deficit-financed investments, especially those targeted toward poor, working-class, and middle-class communities, will drive broad-based economic growth. Manufactured concerns about the debt will only get in the way of urgently needed action and delay relief for millions of families.

Finally, we want to address the concerns around targeting of additional relief, particularly as it relates to survival checks. President Biden promised $2,000 survival checks and we must now deliver on those checks. We caution against an overemphasis on targeting aid, when we know that it comes at the expense of delivering relief quickly and efficiently. In addition, at this moment of fiscal crisis, Congress should err on the side of offering generous relief to a larger pool of people, rather than too little. The cost of doing too little too slowly far outweighs the concerns about a relatively small share of households getting too much, particularly given that these survival payments, as proposed, are not currently retroactive and are based on incomes that have likely gone down substantially as peoples hours and earnings were cut back or eliminated completely.

Thank you for your strong leadership on behalf of the millions who are suffering as a result of this pandemic. This is truly our work to deliver For the People. We look forward to working with you in the coming weeks to pass a robust rescue package that meets the scale of the health and economic crises we face.

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Progressives Warn Against Scaling Back Relief Bill to Gain GOP... - Truthout

A few weeks back I was asked on a Zoom invite about the impact that new, progressive-minded legislators might have at the Hawaii Legislature.

I replied that what often happens is that new members tend to come in to the Capitol with plenty of vim and vigor but eventually become subsumed into the greater whole. Unless they can find their way into leadership posts, their influence may not be that great and their own ideas for policy may not get far.

In retrospect, my response may have been too cynical. I am also reconsidering my view in light of a new development: the launching of a brand new Progressive Legislative Caucus.

The caucus, a House of Representatives press release explained on Jan. 12, will focus on the key issues of equality and justice and will work to develop and empower public leaders who will improve the economic and social conditions in the state.

In that short time Caucus Chair Matt LoPresti says the hui has grown from 16 members to 18 all of them Democrats: Reps. LoPresti, Sonny Ganaden, Cedric Asuega Gates, Greggor Ilagan, Jeanne Kapela, Bertrand Kobayashi, Nicole Lowen, Lisa Marten, Takashi Ohno, Amy Perruso, Jackson Sayama, Adrian Tam, Tina Wildberger and Chris Todd; and Sens. Stanley Chang, Jarrett Keohokalole, Joy San Buenaventura and Laura Acasio.

While none of the progressives yet carry the clout of top leaders in the House and Senate the Saikis, Lukes, Kouchis, Dela Cruzes and their ilk it is an impressive number in the 76-member Legislature and suggests that the caucus might have some sway.

LoPresti, who is on his second stint in the House after a failed run for the Senate, describes the caucus as a resource for encouraging members to build up one another, have real policy discussions and debates, and find ways to empower progressive legislative voices and ideas that most Americans in general and Hawaii state residents in particular support.

We want to build a more just society, LoPresti told me.

For him, that means introducing legislation to raise the minimum wage from $10.10 to $17. Another issue is paid family leave. Both issues were considered in the 2020 session before the coronavirus invaded our state last spring and snuffed out all but the most essential legislation.

For San Buenaventura, who was elected to the Senate last year after serving in the House, the focus is on reforming asset forfeiture laws. That involves not only trying to change rules that allow law enforcement to seize and keep the possessions of people who have been charged but not necessarily convicted in criminal cases but also people trying to protect their savings and wages from creditors.

It goes back to what I saw as an attorney where I represented a lot of working-class people, she said. I saw a lot of people who had worked all their lives and all of a sudden, because of the impact of the 2008 recession, they basically lost everything.

San Buenaventura said the harsh impact of that recession continued for years. The COVID-19 pandemic has only made things worse, hence the need for enabling legislation on asset forfeiture.

Legislative caucuses can be made up of members from both chambers and even from both major parties.

There are today at least nine recognized caucuses at the Hawaii Legislature and they include the Filipino Caucus, the Legislative Native Hawaiian Affairs Caucus, Senate Native Hawaiian Caucus, the Womens Legislative Caucus, the House Small Business Caucus and caucuses focused on keiki and kupuna.

Usually the groups propose specific legislation. In the case of the Progressive Caucus, however, because it was formed only late last year it wont produce a package of bills until the 2022 session, said LoPresti.

Members will instead meet regularly to talk story about ideas and issues, and weigh in on proposed legislation.

LoPresti says he sees little daylight between the terms liberal and progressive, but he points out that the Progressive Caucus has a lot of freshmen and skews younger in age. Like LoPresti, San Buenaventura and Keohokalole were part of the freshmen class of 2014.

Rep. Matt LoPresti on the House floor in 2018. He chairs the new Progressive Legislative Caucus at the Capitol.

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

Historically, the progressive movement dates to the late 19th century and early 20th century and centered on a wide range of issues such as the right of women to vote, the end to harsh child labor standards, efforts to root out government corruption and to break up powerful business conglomerates.

Today the movement is perhaps best exemplified by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who have pushed ideas like Medicare for All and the Green New Deal.

There has been pushback from moderate Democrats and especially Republicans. Just last week the Biden administration terminated the Trump administrations 1776 Commission that was characterized by The New York Times as a sweeping attack on liberal thought and activism that calls for a patriotic education, defends Americas founding against charges that it was tainted by slavery and likens progressivism to fascism.

Hawaii has from time to time embarked on a progressive path, most significantly with the passage of the 1974 Prepaid Health Care Act that requires Hawaii employers to provide health care coverage for all eligible employees.

Rep. Joy San Buenaventura in 2018 at the Capitol. She is now serving in the Senate and is a member of the Progressive Caucus.

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

The power of ideologies ebb and flow, but the Legislature in recent years has approved progressive-leaning laws allowing for same-sex marriage, medical marijuana and decriminalization, and medical aid in dying, to name just a few. But progressives are always seeking more progress.

The main purpose of the Progressive Legislative Caucus is to at least start talking about ideas to make things better in our world.

I basically want to talk to like-minded legislators and see if, even if bills dont pass, whether we can at least have the conversation, said San Buenaventura. Its really easy to feel like your voice is drowned out when your bills are too progressive and dont seem to pass or get mileage.

The new caucus is also about mentoring.

There are opportunities for legislators like me to help with leadership training for younger legislators, said LoPresti. Its about trying to expose them to opportunities early and to help elevate progressive voices and policy proposals. We need to push the changes our society deserves.

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Chad Blair: New Progressive Caucus Hopes To Be A Force At The Legislature - Honolulu Civil Beat

If there is one thing that 2020 has taught me, it is that the real political and cultural divide in our country is not between Republicans and Democrats, or even conservatives and liberals, but between traditionalists and progressives.

At the core of progressivism is not the optimistic American belief that things are improving and that our children can live better lives than we did, but the belief that man is a perfectible product of evolutionary forces. Rather than being made in Gods image and then fallen, progressives believe we must throw off the shackles and prejudices of the past in order to move forward to build utopia.

The traditionalist is not against growth and change, but he recognizes, as Edmund Burke did in his Reflections on the Revolution in France, the danger of trying to remake society and man in the image of a new ideology that radically redefines such words as truth, justice, and equality. The progressive has no qualms about running roughshod over the established beliefs, institutions, and mores of a nation if he can only achieve his goals. At its most extreme, progressivism can justify to itself any present-day atrocity as long as it claims to be helping usher in a future brave new world of absolute egalitarianism.

The genealogy of progressivism runs from Jean-Jacques Rousseaus nave belief in the noble savage to the bloody social engineering of the French Revolution to the deterministic dialectical materialism of Karl Marx, out of which arose the horrors inflicted on their own people by Lenin and Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong and Pol Pot, Fidel Castro and Kim Jong-Il. According to all these progressive leaders, history was moving unstoppably toward their workers paradise, and anyone who sought to hinder its arrivalby deed, word, or thoughtwas backward, unenlightened, and, to use a cherished word of Marxist elites, atavistic.

Since the true face of progressivism revealed itself in the French Revolution, a number of brave critics have risen up to expose its destructive pretensions and its false view of man. A short list of these critics includes Burke, Alexis Tocqueville, the authors of the Federalist Papers, Cardinal John Henry Newman, G. K. Chesterton, T. S. Eliot, George Orwell, C. S. Lewis, and Pope John Paul II. The critic, however, who saw and understood the dangers most clearly, partly because he suffered greatly at the hands of progressivism run amok, was Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

Born one year after the Russian Revolution, Solzhenitsyn was raised as a loyal Soviet and even served as an officer in the armyuntil he was arrested in 1945 for saying something negative about Stalin. He spent eight years in the prison camps of the Gulag.

After being released, he lived in exile in Kazakhstan, where he taught physics. He later returned to Russia and published a novel, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962), which he based on his experiences in the Gulag. Although he was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 1970, when his literary expos, The Gulag Archipelago, appeared in the 1970s, he was forced to flee the country, eventually moving to the United States in 1976.

Hailed as a hero of democracy and freedom, Solzhenitsyn was invited to give the commencement address at Harvard University in 1978. After sincerely praising American freedom, Solzhenitsyn went on to criticize Western secularism, rationalism, and materialism. His address lost him the support of many in the media and academy, but it stands as a bold witness to the poisonous excesses of the progressivist spirit.

Similarly, when he was awarded the Templeton Prize in England in 1983, his speech, which drew a straight line from godlessness to the Gulag, caused him to be further labeled as old-fashioned, out of touch, reactionary, and, yes, atavistic. Solzhenitsyn, ostracized by the liberal thinkers who had once hailed him as a champion of freedom, lived the life of a recluse in Vermont until, remarkably, he was allowed to return to Russia in 1994, where he lived out the remainder of his long life in peace.

Like Ivan Denisovich, all of Solzhenitsyns major novels incorporate autobiographical elements. The three-volume The Gulag Archipelago critiques and exposes both Leninism-Stalinism and Western secular rationalism. Cancer Ward is a profound meditation on death by an author who almost died of cancer.

The First Circle is a conversation between inmates in a Soviet white-collar prison for educated scientists, with one of the characters based on the authors own younger self as he moved from rationalism to religion. The four-volume The Red Wheel is a re-imagining of the Russian Revolution that blends fiction and non-fiction, historical documents and Solzhenitsyns own incisive analysis of how the fated revolution could have been avoided by different choices on the part of free, volitional individuals.

Thankfully for those who are familiar with Ivan Denisovich and the Harvard Address but have yet to work up the energy to read his long, complex, circuitous novels, a collection of essays has appeared that illuminates the many facets of Solzhenitsyn the man, the writer, and the prophet.

Edited by David P. Deavel, co-director of the Terence J. Murphy Institute for Catholic Thought, Law, and Public Policy at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, and Jessica Hooten Wilson, Louise Cowan Scholar in Residence at the University of Dallas, Solzhenitsyn and American Culture: The Russian Soul in the West explores Solzhenitsyns links to Russian culture, Orthodoxy, politics, and other Soviet writers, as well as the influence that he and his fellow Russians have had on twentieth-century American writers. Although the collection is wide-ranging in its analysis, its especially valuable for illuminating what Solzhenitsyn can teach us about the dangers of progressivism today.

In the opening essay, The Universal Russian Soul, Nathan Nielson, a graduate of St. Johns College, quotes this passage from Solzhenitsyns 1993 speech The Relentless Cult of Novelty: And in one sweeping gesture of vexation, classical Russian literaturewhich never disdained reality and sought the truthis dismissed as next to worthless. Denigrating the past is deemed to be the key to progress. And so it has once again become fashionable in Russia to ridicule, debunk, and toss overboard the great Russian literature, steeped as it is in love and compassion toward all human beings, and especially toward those who suffer.

Needless to say, the fear Solzhenitsyn prophetically expresses here has been realized in increasingly shameless attempts by American universities to ridicule, debunk, and toss overboard our Western heritage as a prelude to building an egalitarian, multicultural society, despite the fact that the legacy they want to jettison has provided the sole foundation for liberal democracy and individual freedom. Solzhenitsyn knew that no stable future could be built on hatred of the past, since hatred of the past inevitably leads to hatred of the self, not to mention hatred of ones neighbor and ones society.

The two essays that follow, The New Middle Ages and The Age of Concentration, are not analyses of Solzhenitsyn, but reflections by a modern Russian novelist, Eugene Vodolazkin, who shares Solzhenitsyns spirit and his mistrust of all progressive attempts to build a perfect society.

It is wrong to think of utopias as harmless dreams, he warns. Combined with the idea of progress, utopian thought is a dream that motivates action. It establishes a goal so lofty that it cannot be reached. The more ideal it becomes, the greater the stubbornness with which it is pursued. There comes a time when blood is spilled. Oceans of blood. In one way or another, all of Solzhenitsyns novels work out just that terrifying cause and effect, ripping away the faade of humanitarianism or revolutionary consciousness or classless equality to reveal the beast within.

In that vein, David Walsh, professor of politics at Catholic University, locates in The Red Wheel a central struggle between those who seek to remake Russia in accordance with their own idea of it and those who seek to submit to the idea of Russia as itself the guiding principle of their action. It is the difference between ideology and truth. The protagonists of ideology are driven by the conviction of the superiority of their conception to all that has existed. The servants of truth subordinate themselves to what is required to bring what is already there more fully into existence.

What is at issue here is not only the destructive nature of ends-justifies-the-means thinking, but the anti-humanistic arrogance that invests Marxist ideology (dialectical materialism, economic determinism, identity politics) with a sacred imprimatur for radically remaking society.

In his analysis of The Gulag Archipelago, Gary Saul Morson, Lawrence B. Dumas Professor of the Arts and Humanities at Northwestern University, considers a question that Solzhenitsyn asks himself: Why do Shakespeares greatest villains kill only a few people while Lenin and Stalin killed millions?

The reason, Morson explains, is that Macbeth and Iago had no ideology. Real people do not resemble the evildoers of mass culture, who delight in cruelty and destruction. No, to do mass evil you have to believe it is good, and it is ideology that supplies this conviction. All of us are capable of small, independent evil acts, but progressivism, by allowing governments to submerge their moral qualms beneath a sea of ideology, unleashes that evil on all of society.

Joseph Pearce, who interviewed Solzhenitsyn in Russia in 1998 and wrote an excellent biography, teases out Solzhenitsyns anti-progressivism by contrasting him with Leo Tolstoy. Unlike Tolstoy, Pearce argues, Solzhenitsyn laments the modern belief in eternal, infinite progress which has practically become a religion, adding that such progressivism was a mistake of the eighteenth century, of the Enlightenment era. Technological progress in the service of philosophical materialism was not true progress at all but, on the contrary, was a threat to civilization. In his novels, Solzhenitsyn drives these points home, not by offering philosophical disquisitions, but by incarnating these ideas in the lives of flesh-and-blood characters.

James F. Pontuso, Patterson Professor of Political Science at Hampden-Sydney College, offers an example of this incarnation. In The First Circle, writes Pontuso, Solzhenitsyn captivatingly captures the allure of ideology in the character of Lev Rubin. Despite all evidence to the contrary, including his own undeserved arrest and imprisonment, Rubin is devoted totally and insensibly to the Communist cause. . . . Rubin fails to acknowledge what he experiences; instead he accepts what he chooses to believe. For him every crime committed in the present is justified by the glorious future of peace, prosperity, and universal brotherhood that Marxs principles purport to bring about.

Such is the power of Marxs progressive ideology that Rubin discounts his personal experience. If such self-deception in the name of ideology sounds unbelievable, just think of the American politicians and media people who, during the summer of 2020, watched businesses being looted and burned but could only see peaceful protests in the name of racial justice and economic equity. They are those who not only live and propagate the lie, but who come to believe it themselves.

Perhaps the best summation of what Solzhenitsyn can teach us about the dangers of progressivism is found in a reconsideration of The Gulag Archipelago by Solzhenitsyn scholar Daniel J. Mahoney. Central to Solzhenitsyns moral and political vision, he explains, is the nonnegotiable distinction between truth and falsehood. Solzhenitsyns target was precisely the ideological Lie that presented evildoing as a historically necessary stage in the fated progress of the human race. He always asserted that the ideological Lie was worse than violence and physical brutality, ultimately more destructive of the integrity of the human soul.

I can think of no better analysis of the true legacy of 2020: Not the Coronavirus itself, but the way it was used to justify the illegal power grabs of bureaucratic, progressivist elites; not the riots themselves, but the lie they were justified by (that America is riddled with systemic racism); not the attacks on Donald Trump per se, but the fact that his enemies in the government, media, and big corporations were willing to tell any lie to take him down.

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Alexander Solzhenitsyn Takes On The Progressives - The Federalist