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Progressives want to abandon Capitalism and replace it with Socialism. Why? Capitalism has raised hundreds of millions of people out of poverty and despair. At its best, Socialism has failed everywhere its been tried. At its worst, Socialism has led to the brutal deaths of a hundred million people in the last century alone.

Progressives no longer believe the content of ones character is more important than the color of their skin or the presence of a Y chromosome. Its all about identity politics. They dont acknowledge how far weve come as a society and nation. They would rather tear us apart and foster hate.

Rather than taking pride in the fact that the United States has on numerous occasions saved the world from despots, dictators, and disasters, Progressives laud the accomplishments and efficiency of the Communist Party in China. They condemn President Trump as a racist for enforcing our existing immigration laws while they ignore Chinese concentration camps where a million Muslims are currently being reeducated.

Its OK to riot and loot during a pandemic but not to meet for religious services or funerals. Progressives want to both defund the police and take away our 2nd Amendment right to defend ourselves. They want to give everyone free healthcare insurance and then dictate how big our soda can be or determine when we should die. Equal opportunity is not enough! Progressives want equal outcomes regardless of effort or talent.

The Progressive strategy is not new. They want to create chaos to gain power. Its that simple.

Robert Minninger,

Spring City

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Readers' Views: Misguided progressive policies are nothing new - The Phoenix

Supreme Court Justices John Roberts, Elena Kagan, and Neil Gorsuch in D.C. for the State of the Union address on Feb. 4.

Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images

Last week, the Supreme Court issued a surprising 63 decision barring hiring discrimination against LGBTQ people under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, with conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch making the textualist case for this landmark protection. The unexpected outcome in Bostock v. Clayton County should provoke introspection among progressives in the legal community who have long been skeptical of textualism, offering a chance for them to fix chronic blind spots and strategic gaffes that have damaged the progressive judicial project.

While its clear that this ruling was a major victory for progressives, less apparent is how, going forward, progressive advocates, judges, and politicians should think and talk about statutory interpretation. Although brow-furrowing, that question is hugely important. As the late high priest of conservative textualism, Justice Antonin Scalia, pointed out: By far the greatest part of what I and all federal judges do is interpret the meaning of federal statutes. Many of those gnarly statutory disputes involve landmark progressive laws, which, like Title VII, regulate businesses in the interests of consumers, workers, retirees, and other individuals.

The lesson is not that progressives should now tout textualism or any other ism. They should, however, focus on Gorsuchs straightforward argumenthow he chose to push back against fierce opposition from dissenters who claimed the true mantle of the textualism faith.Because of sex, Gorsuch explained, describing the key language in Title VII for the purposes of this case, necessarily includes because of sexual orientation and identity. He continued: If the employer fires [a] male employee [because] he is attracted to men, the employer discriminates [because of] traits it tolerates in female colleagues. The affected employees sex is a but-for cause of his discharge. That simple, accessible syllogism is why Gorsuchs 38-page opinion provoked 134 pages of fevered dissents from Justices Samuel Alito and Brett Kavanaugh. And its why his opinion ignited volcanic outbursts by the likes of Carrie Severinoand Ralph Reed.

This is the lesson that progressives should take to heart: Textualism has made steady headway as a jurisprudential credoand, equally or more importantly, as a political sloganbecause, at its core, it embraces a commonsense truth: that interpretation of what a law means must derive, in the first instance, from its textwhat are the relevant words, and what, credibly, could they mean? Inveighing against textualism comes off like one disputes that staple of the civics class canon about what courts and law are foras if progressives fear their preferred results cant be squared with the words legislators actually wrote.

Thats what, in large part, was wrong with the Bostock dissents attacks on Gorsuch. Alitos dissent overtly deploys a tactic conservatives long ago abandoned as a discredited, subjective, intentionalist brand of constitutional originalism. Alitos lodestar was what he believed the drafters had in mindmore precisely, what the societal status quo was when they wrote.

The definitive rejoinder to that approach was articulated in 2005 by then-nominee John G. Roberts in his Senate confirmation hearing. Roberts testified:

There are some who may think theyre being originalists who will tell you, Well, the problem they were getting at were the rights of the newly freed slaves, and so thats all that the equal protection clause applies to. But, in fact, they didnt write the equal protection clause in such narrow terms. They wrote more generally. That may have been a particular problem motivating them, but they chose to use broader terms, and we should take them at their word, so that it is perfectly appropriate to apply the equal protection clause to issues of gender and other types of discrimination beyond the racial discrimination that was obviously the driving force behind it.

In Bostock, Kavanaughs dissenting argument, distinguishing the ordinary meaning of words from literalism, is really just a more academically marketable way of making contemporaneous subjective expectations, or societal practice, trump actual enacted language.The expansion over time of sex in Title VII matches Roberts account of the expansion of equal protection of the laws to include gender and other types of discrimination.

Progressives have not been wrong to call out textualismand originalismas slogans to advance conservative political agendas.Conservatives have persistently contorted asserted textualist claims to serve patently ideological or political ends, or simply ignored statutory text when it couldnt credibly be bent.They can be counted on to repeat those gambits again in the future.

The smart response is to explain, effectively, why progressive positions faithfully respect relevant law, and how cynically conservatives flout their own professed affection for text. Progressives need to recycle such messaging over and over, in court battles, media, and academic and political arenas.

Typically, when progressives face purportedly textualist claims designed to defeat the purposes of progressive statutes, conservatives tactic is to isolate a single word or phrase, impose a gutting interpretation on that fragment, and subvert the law. When progressives counter that conservative interpretations flout purposes behind laws like Title VII, conservatives have dismissed such purposivism as a methodological excuse for making things up on the fly. This discrediting tactic has gained currency in political as well as legal circles.

The smart way to deflect that chestnut is to insist that, when applying a statute, text must mean text in the context of the whole statute, not just an isolated provision, standing alone.In 2015, that contextualapproach saved the Affordable Care Act from its second existential Supreme Court challenge. In King v. Burwell, Roberts, for a 63 majority, upheld the availability of premium tax credit subsidies nationwide against a blinkered claim that a four-word phrase, taken out of context, barred such subsidies for millions of subscribers in dozens of states. Albeit geeky, that text in context message garnered critical media support as the case worked its way up to the Supreme Court, where it won over Roberts and conservative Justice Anthony Kennedy, as well as the four progressive justices.

In Bostock, Gorsuch did not use Roberts approach from the 2015 ACA case, but he could have.Locating because of sex in the overall context of Title VII would have also underscored the textual anomalousness of denying workplace equality to LGBTQ employees.

With regards to textualism, what ultimately matters is which side can offer the clearest and, usually, the simplest explanation of how the text of the law dictates their preferred outcome.Just because Gorsuch bolstered his genuinely textualist bona fides in this case, doesnt mean he wont reverse himself again in the future, particularly on questions that implicate the interests of big business rather than merely those of social conservatives. Indeed, even Kavanaugh in dissent took pains to acknowledge [the] millions of gay and lesbian Americans [who] have battle[d] steep odds [and] can take pride in todays result.

Whether or not such victories will plausibly apply in future cases involving business interests, progressive advocates should test whether these glints presage Anthony Kennedylike openness on at least some culture war issues. More generally, progressives should plumb for other cracks in the conservative legal coalitionwhich, it seems clearer, is no more a monolith than is the progressive legal coalition.

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Have Progressives Finally Learned How to Speak the Language of Supreme Court Conservatives? - Slate

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Letter to the editor: Progressives and science - TribLIVE

What has followed the killing of George Floyd did not begin with the death of a man under the knee of a police officer. The rioting and the statue-toppling, the shunnings and the firings, the institutional genuflections and the gleeful marching through newly conquered territory are the fruits of ideas and impulses long in germination. Critics interpret these events as the work of either a political movement or a new religion, but it is more accurate to say that it is both. A secular millenarianism is trying to tear down the liberal order and erect in its place a new order that we might call coercive progressivism. It is an ideological project to enforce a progressive moral code through law, social convention and brute force, but the morality itself emerges from and satisfies a post-Christian search for meaning.

The historian Gertrude Himmelfarb died at the very end of last year but had she lived she may have been the quickest to understand our present tumult. Himmelfarb was a perceptive scholar of the Victorians and in particular their ideas about virtue, which rested, she contended, on a continuum of manners and morals. In the Victorian era, Himmelfarbobserved, manners were sanctified and moralized, so to speak, while morals were secularized and domesticated. Simply put, manners were the guardrails of morality: they could not make men paragons but they could keep them within the bounds of propriety. The Victorians thought it no small virtue to maintain the appearance, the manner, of good conduct even while violating some basic precept of morality, she explained. Their immediate intention was not saving souls but making men respectable, that more would be in with a chance of salvation.

Salvation could take many forms. When Margaret Thatcher urged a return to Victorian values, Himmelfarb reminded the Iron Lady that fierce moralism had also fired radical movements like the Chartists and the temperance campaigners. A decade later, she would announce the emergence of the new Victorians, those progressives eager to impose updated manners and morals on matters of race, sex and sexuality. This development did not surprise Himmelfarb, for she had already noted that when Christianity lost its ascendancy, the Victorians, having nursed the illusion that they could sustain morality in the absence of a religion, came to discover how tenuous, how problematic, their morality was.

The Victorians zeal for moral improvement did not die with them; it was succeeded by new evangelisms that put their faith in race, class, technology, psychoanalysis and identity. What they lacked, indeed what made the Victorian ethic so successful, was respect for the individual. According to Himmelfarb, the heart of Victorian morality was self-control, self-help, self-reliance, self-discipline. For the Victorians, a liberal society depended upon a moral citizenry. The stronger the voluntary exercise of morality on the part of each individual the more internalized that morality the weaker need be the external, coercive instruments of the state. Successor projects to that of the Victorians either neglected the individual or rationalized away his moral worth or free will. They displayed the reforming ardor but not the liberal ideals of Victorian England.

Coercive progressivism is the latest incarnation of this tendency. Those currently seizing power are trying to morally improve us by regulating speech, ideas and behavior so that we can stop replicating the sins of liberalism: racism, privilege and exploitation. They too recognize that manners can be a substitute for morality but for them lip service is not enough. They demand total compliance with their moral code. They are in the business of forced conversion.

The religious character of coercive progressivism is central to understanding its relentless, missionary vigor. Antonia Senior has observedhow identity politics functions as Christianity without redemption, and the faith espoused by the coercive progressives is just such a creed, as its response to George Floyds killing demonstrates. There arerituals,hymnsandalmsgiving. In place of justice, there ismartyrdom; baptisms are nowconductedat the site of Floyds death. There is original sin in the form ofwhite privilegeandheritable guilt. Iniquities areconfessedand, by way of penance,apologies given for the actions of others and patronizing genuflections made to shine the shoesof black people. Heretics areshunnedor browbeaten intorepentingand even the insufficiently pious aredamned. Graven images aresmashedby the faithful and the theology is suitably confusing, with some activists demanding white peoplespeak upand others that theyshut up. But where Christianity offers salvation, sin is eternal in this religion and the hope of deliverance absent. There is only the cross, no resurrection.

Joe Tedla participates in a baptism ceremony at the memorial site for George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota. (Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)

It is not always easy to separate a bad cause from the good examples it seizes upon. That many feel distress, disgust and anger at this moment is to be expected. The killing of George Floyd and the broader questions of racial injustice must be confronted and remedied. Liberalism offers just such remedies in the form of courts, elections, debate and policy changes. The pace of justice can be achingly slow, and the destination sometimes never reached, but in the reaching for it there is the hope for progress. True progress is organic; it is a negotiation, not an imposition. It cannot be achieved by rioting, censoring, bullying or destroying.

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Anyone interested in cultivating new manners and morals about race should learn from the Victorians example. By secularizing and domesticating morals, by making the spiritual mundane through the architecture of manners, they built social conventions practiced faithfully by many who did not share or were unaware of their philosophical underpinnings. This they achieved by elevating the individual as a moral being, not subjecting him to the caprices and cudgels of the mob. A liberal society with individual conscience and dignity at its heart is not a hindrance to virtue but an essential foundation. Coercive progressivism is the morality of a fanatic and the manner of a tyrant.

This article was originally published on The Spectators UK website.

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The rise of coercive progressivism - The Spectator USA

Jamaal Bowman on Election Night (Stephanie Keith/Getty Images)

Progressive candidates in New York, backed by millions in outside spending from emboldened progressive groups, appear likely to clinch several high-profile primary victories as mail-in ballots continue to be counted.

In four districts, progressive candidates have either won their primaries or are poised to as mail-in ballots continue to come in. Along with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortezs (D-N.Y.) decisive reelection victory in the 14th district, newcomers in the 15th, 16th and 17th also appear strongly positioned to win, which would all but secure their spots in Congress in the heavily Democratic districts come November.

And in the 12th district, progressive Suraj Patel is making his second attempt to challenge incumbent Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), who currently holds a narrow lead with thousands of ballots left to count. Maloney is one of two long-time incumbents to be potentially replaced by younger progressives, with former Bronx middle school principal Jamaal Bowman holding a substantial lead over 30-year incumbent Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.).

The races spanned some of the wealthiest and poorest districts in the country. Two of the four candidates found success despite being outraised by opponents, but all received backing from prominent progressive politicians and PACs. Two candidates, Mondaire Jones and Ritchie Torres, seem poised to become the first openly gay Black members of congress.

The apparent victories are part of a national trend of increased support for Black and progressive candidates in the wake of national protests against police violence and systemic racism following the killing of George Floyd, and a pandemic that has had an outsized toll on Black communities.

In the 16th district, former Bronx middle school principal Jamaal Bowman appears poised to unseat 30-year incumbent and chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.). Bowman managed to raise nearly $1 million against Engels $2 million, with most of the funding coming late in the race after Engel was caught on a hot mic saying If I didnt have a primary, I wouldnt care at an event addressing police violence in the Bronx.

The race became a symbolic battle between establishment lawmakers and progressive challengers. Bowman earned endorsements from Ocasio-Cortez, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). Justice Democrats, the progressive committee founded in 2017, also made its first ever independent expenditures in the race, spending $920,000. Engel had endorsements from Hillary Clinton, House Speaker Nancy Peloi (D-Calif.), as well as powerful New York politicians, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Gov. Andrew Cuomo. The incumbent was backed by outside spending from dark money groups Avacy Initiatives and Perise Practical. He is likely to leave the House after serving 16 terms.

The only progressive newcomer to outraise his competition was in New Yorks crowded 15th district primary. New York City Council member Ritchie Torres brought in nearly $1.4 million after progresive groups rallied behind him to try to stop the election of controversial City Council member Rubn Daz Sr. A Data for Progress poll from early June showed Daz leading the 12-person race with only 22 percent of the vote, alarming progressive groups who had flagged Dazs history of homophobic remarks and conservative-leaning votes. As of the most recent results, Daz is placed third.

Torres, who was elected to the New York City Council at the age of 25, grew up in a Bronx housing project and has a progressive voting record around issues of fair housing and criminal justice reform. Torres earned the endorsement of the New York Times earlier this month, as well as the End Citizens United and the Equality PAC, which supports openly gay candidates and others with strong support for LGBTQ rights.

In the 17th district, Mondaire Jones also made headway in a crowded race where a controversial candidate, New York state Sen. David Carlucci, held an early polling lead. Carlucci was a member of the Independent Democratic Caucus, which was accused by other Democrats in the New York State Senate of pushing a Republican agenda. Initially, incumbent Rep. Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.), chair of the House Appropriations Committee, was in the running, but announced her retirement early in the race last October.

Unlike Torres, Jones trailed two candidates, Adam Schleifer and Evelyn Farkas, in fundraising, but had a strong lead in early results. Where the 15th district is one of the poorest in the country, the 17th district, which covers Rockland County and parts of Westchester County, is one of the wealthiest. Jones also had the support of the Equality PAC as well as prominent congressional progressives like Ocasio-Cortez, Sanders, Warren, and Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.).

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Progressive candidates with PAC backing on the verge of victory in New York - Center for Responsive Politics