Archive for the ‘Progressives’ Category

Why Progressives Need a Long-term Strategy, Built on Values | By … – Common Dreams


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Why Progressives Need a Long-term Strategy, Built on Values | By ...
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There's a fight on for control of the Democratic Party. Incredibly, the old-guard neoliberal establishment is doing all they can to hold onto the status quo that ...

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Why Progressives Need a Long-term Strategy, Built on Values | By ... - Common Dreams

Science & Identify Politics Conflict from inside the Progressive Left … – National Review

Progressives claim to love science, but what they truly love is power.To be a good progressive is to adhere simultaneously to two incompatible notions: one, that science provides the final word on any question about which scientists offer any opinion; two, that the scientific method is illegitimate, a tool of the sundry atavistic forces conspiring to keep down the female, the black, the brown, the poor, the gay, the disabled, the gender-fluid everybody except Mitt Romney.

If you were looking at the college campuses with the right kind of eyes in the Eighties and Nineties, you could have seen this coming.

The more philosophically self-aware progressives have long been ensorceled by the belief that science or, really, Science could be pressed into service bearing loads of social management too heavy for a mere bureaucracy. The Soviet Union invested a great deal of its scarce capital in something it called Soviet cybernetics, a sort of Stone Age attempt at using what wed now call Big Data to analyze and solve social problems, especially those related to the management of economic production. The old Marxists took their scientific socialism seriously.

In the English-speaking world, progressives, under the influence not only of political philosophers such as John Dewey but also of the engineer and management theorist Frederick Winslow Taylor, fell into something like a cult of expertise. Experts under the tutelage of Science could, would, and should decide . . . almost everything. How much steel should U.S. firms produce? How should they produce it? What should the line workers at the factory be paid? What about their supervisors? Taylors Principles of Scientific Management, published in 1911, provides a testament to the ambitions of the Progressive Era: He and his contemporaries believed that, using such new technological tools as stopwatches and motion-picture cameras, one could study industrial processes at the most granular level how a certain employee turns a certain screw and produce a single, best way of performing any task.

There is a great deal of ideology embedded in that belief, along with a great many political assumptions, but Taylor and the others denied that they were engaged in any sort of politics at all: Their business, as they saw it, was Science. There is a reasonably straight line from early-20th-century progressivism to contemporary, Barack Obamastyle pragmatism, which is dishonestly and glibly characterized as simply doing what works. In reality it means doing what I want done, in the most convenient way.

But managerial progressivism, with its implicit faith in hierarchy and its inescapable elitism (not everybody gets a Ph.D. from Harvard), was always set for conflict with the more populist and emotional tendencies on the left that came to prominence in the Sixties, political currents originating largely in issues of identity (from black power to Chicano power to what we used to call womens liberation). Such concerns exist uneasily alongside a managerial progressivism based on the wisdom of people who were and are overwhelmingly white, male, and highly educated, working in institutions built by (and, the identity Left would argue, for) people who were overwhelmingly white, male, and highly educated. For years, this played out as old-fashioned progressive elites exercising a kind of managerial veto over the wilder ambitions of the identity Left: Bernie Sanders proposes reorganizing the American economy around the cultivation of organic hemp, and somebody responsible tells him, No.

This gave the identity Left a very strong incentive to work to undermine the prestige of Science, a project that was undertaken with great enthusiasm back during the heyday of postmodernism. The academic world endures a lot of voguish nonsense about African science and feminist mathematics and queer physics (My early postulate is that queer physics speaks about knowledge-making in physics that takes the form of subverting the hegemony of a dominant and mainstream discourse). The extreme, Foucauldian version of that analysis was ridiculous and lame and easy to write off if you were not an academic. But the more moderate version of that view became quite mainstream: We may not hear very much about feminist physics, but we hear about womens ways of knowing, gay perspectives on this, black perspectives on that, etc., as if there were not as many black perspectives as there are black people. Michel Foucaults lurking malice was reinvented as the motive force in the rhetoric of intersectionality, the belief that the oppression of people with certain characteristics (black, gay, disabled, etc.) isnt a matrix of attitudes and discrete episodes but a complex nest of social relationships that can, conveniently, explain anything the phlogiston of identity politics.

The Indiana Jones heuristic the search for fact is science, the search for Truth is philosophy can go only so far in finessing the inherent conflict between science, which is organized around assumptions of objectivity, and the poisonous identity politics holding as its fundamental principle that everything is subjective. The scientific view is that true is true and false is false, irrespective of any particular demographic or political characteristics of the speaker. (Though these of course may provide grounds for skepticism: Who paid for your study? is not an entirely unreasonable question.)

At the same time, the identity Left has its uses for Science. For one thing, it was a convenient cudgel to use against conservative-leaning Christians distressed by certain implications of evolution or discombobulated by the possibility that homosexuality is a phenomenon with roots that are biological rather than diabolical. That sort of thing is usually the stuff of low-value conversation: A certain kind of eternal adolescent never stops getting a thrill out of scandalizing his retrograde Lutheran grandmother. But if you have a sufficient number of such interactions and we have no shortage of them they can become a part of the tribal identity that is the real basis of our politics, however much we might pretend that what we are really talking about is public policy. As the identity Left moved out of the communes and into the suburbs and progressivism became much more strongly associated with the interests and habits of affluent, educated, coastal elites, professing ones love of Science became an exercise in telegraphing status.

But if it were really about science, wed be hearing more from scientists and less from people who have batty, superstitious attitudes about modern agriculture and evidence-based medicine. You will not hear Democrats complaining about the fact that the Affordable Care Act clears the way for subsidizing such hokum as acupuncture and homeopathy. Seventh-day Adventists may make some claims about the world that sound ridiculous from the scientific point of view, but so do practitioners of yoga and sweat-lodge enthusiasts. The public adoration of Science isnt about science.

Which brings us to the recent March for Science and the popular poster boy for all things Science, Bill Nye. The March for Science was no such thing; in the main, it was a march for the one thing almost every faction of the Left can agree on: a larger public sector. Progressives are culturally at home in large institutions (universities, federal agencies, Fortune 500 HR departments), and they have learned how to game those systems pretty well. More funding for science means a lot of funding for things tangentially related to science and a lot of comfortable sinecures related to science in the vaguest way: A great many people with degrees in womens studies or Latino studies have jobs in science as community-outreach coordinators and program officers with responsibilities that might charitably be described as light. Its a safe bet that $100 spent on science gets you about $17.50 worth of astrophysics with the balance going to community development, paid political activism, and overhead. That is not an argument against spending on science it is an argument for better and more responsibly run programs.

And that would be a fine argument to have, if we could have an argument. Which we cant.

Charles Murray, who wrote one of the worlds most famous books bringing scientific research to bear on social questions, has in effect been forbidden to speak at college campuses. In one of the most shameful spectacles of contemporary academic malfeasance, Bert Johnson, the chairman of the political-science department at Middlebury, has apologized for the episode in which Murray was prevented from speaking on campus by rioters: Professor Johnson apologized to the rioters for having had the poor judgment to invite someone to campus whose views are at variance with their own. It could be that Murrays work represents poor science; some respected parties have made exactly that argument. But what does Science have to say about the disputation of claims?

The postmodernists were correct in one thing: There is some politics built into the scientific method, in that the scientific method assumes an environment in which people are at liberty to speak, debate, and publish a liberty with which the American Left, particularly on college campuses, is at war. They are not interested in debate or conversation. They are interested in silencing those who disagree with them, and they have high-profile allies: Democratic prosecutors around the country are working to criminalize the holding of nonconformist views about global warming (some prominent activists have openly called for jailing climate deniers), and Howard Dean has taken up the novel argument that the First Amendment does not actually protect political speech with which he disagrees. (It is, he insists, hate speech, a legally null term in the American context.) Dean has argued that the federal laws governing the conduct of political campaigns could and should be used to regulate all public speaking.

The partisans of Science believe themselves to be part of an eternal war between Galileo and the Inquisition, but they have in fact chosen the Inquisitions side. They have chosen the side of the Censor and the Index so long as they get to choose who serves as Censor and who manages the Index. That is how they have reconciled Science and its claims of objective fact with identity politics and its denial of the same: They are engaged in neither the pursuit of fact nor the pursuit of Truth only the pursuit of Power.

READ MORE: Science vs. Science! The Left Hijacks Science The Lefts New Cure-All: Science

Kevin D. Williamson is National Reviews roving correspondent. This story first appeared in the May 15, 2017, issue of National Review.

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Science & Identify Politics Conflict from inside the Progressive Left ... - National Review

Progressives aim to sway new City Council on SLO campaign funding – The San Luis Obispo Tribune


The San Luis Obispo Tribune
Progressives aim to sway new City Council on SLO campaign funding
The San Luis Obispo Tribune
After a second unsuccessful attempt lobbying the San Luis Obispo City Council to pursue a democracy voucher that would give voters city money to donate to candidates in local elections, a progressive group led by former congressional candidate Bill ...

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Progressives aim to sway new City Council on SLO campaign funding - The San Luis Obispo Tribune

What Trump Gets Rightand Progressives Get WrongAbout Andrew Jackson – The Atlantic

In an interview excerpt that ricocheted around the internet Monday morning, Trump implied that the Civil War didnt have to happen, and had Andrew Jackson been the president, it might not have happened because he would have talked some sense into the parties. Or something.

In this same interview, the president also sang the praises of the people of Tennessee who, he assured us, love Andrew Jackson. Let me fact-check this segment: We Tennesseans are indeed amazing, though Im not sure we all love Andrew Jackson. Going off demographics alone, the small number of Native Americans who remain in Tennessee despite the Trail of Tears certainly do not love Andrew Jackson. The roughly 17 percent of Tennesseans who are African Americans likely do not as well. And my fellow Chattanoogan, Jon Meacham, wrote a Pulitzer-winning political biography of the man that was fair but certainly critical.

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And then there are contemporary progressives, in Tennessee and elsewhere. Many who swooned over a young senators speech at Iowas 2007 Jefferson-Jackson dinner are appalled that the current president embraces Jackson and see racist dog whistles in his recent visit to Jacksons grave and estate outside Nashville.

But it says a lotand not all of it goodthat progressives have so completely sworn off the political legacy of Andrew Jackson. As Steve Inskeepwhose own book pulls no punches on how Jackson stole the American South away from its native peoplesargued in these pages, Jacksons greatest political achievement was the widening of democratic space. He brought new groups of voters into the political system.

Inskeep was making that argument to demonstrate a key difference between Jackson and Trump, who largely failed to widen the electorate in 2016. Jackson, Inskeep noted, brought new voters into the American democratic experiment and gave a political voice to those who had previously been voiceless. But if Trump failed to do the same, he seems to have understood lessons about Jacksons success that progressives, to their detriment, have largely forgotten.

As Meacham argued, the great political tragedy of Jackson was that a man dedicated to freedom failed to see liberty as a universal gift. He did not, in other words, see fit to extend political liberties to those other classes of peoplewomen, African Americans, native peopleswho were denied a voice in the early days of the Republic. But Meacham was also quick to remind his reader that Jacksons triumph was that he held together a country whose experiment in liberty ultimately extended its protections and promises to all.

This is why Trump is not wholly wrong, albeit in his rambling way, when he speaks of Jackson saving the Unionnot during the Civil War, of course, but three decades earlier. That was no small achievement. It was, indeed, the ultimate achievement of the founding fathers and the generation that followed them. Contemporary progressives, however, apparently see little to celebrate in such achievements. And if Jackson has fallen out of popular favor among the elites, well, the University of Virginia among others should be growing uneasy, because its only a matter of time before Jefferson, Madison, and many others also fall from grace.

At the same time Democrats have abandoned Jackson politically, they have embraced a new hero, Alexander Hamilton. Hamiltonwho kept his place on the $10 bill thanks in part to a hit musical bearing his namemay be the founding father contemporary progressives are most likely to admire. Hamilton, unlike Jackson, was on the right side of the key issuesmost notably abolitionfrom the start. Unlike his arch-nemesis, Jefferson, he also understood that a strong federal government might be the best guarantor of civil liberties in a country whose history goes on to teach us that state and local governments can be just as tyrannical as the federal government.

(And it is here, for the sake of a neat argument, that I will note but quickly skip past Hamiltons championing of the Alien and Sedition Acts. Or the fact that we would likely classify Hamiltonunlike that godless heathen, Jeffersonas an evangelical Christian were he alive today.)

I have two small children and cannot afford to drop hundreds of dollars on theater tickets these days, but I read the Ron Chernow biography on which the musical was loosely based, and toward the end of the book, Chernow offers this warning for any would-be imitators of the first Secretary of the Treasury:

The stress placed upon the Adams-Hamilton feud pointed up a deeper problem in the Federalist party, one that may explain its ultimate failure to survive: the elitist nature of its politics. James McHenry complained to Oliver Wolcott, Jr., of their adherents, They write private letters to each other, but do nothing to give a proper direction to the public mind. The Federalists issued appeals to the electorate but did not try to mobilize a broad-based popular movement. Hamilton wanted to lead the electorate and provide expert opinion instead of consulting popular opinion. He took tough, uncompromising stands and gloried in abstruse ideas in a political culture that pined for greater simplicity. Alexander Hamilton triumphed as a doer and thinker, not as a leader of the average voter.

A recent poll found that, for all its domination of the educated classes, two thirds (two thirds!) of respondents think the Democratic Party is out of touch with the concerns of Americans. Democratswho dominate the jokes on late-night television, have all the best podcasts, and had all the best policy papers in the 2016 president electioncurrently control not a single branch of the federal government and just 16 governorships. If you want to win arguments on principle, Hamilton is your guy. If you want to win elections, however well, maybe not so much.

Last weekend, I happened to be back in Jacksons Tennessee, and my wife and I used the opportunity to go to a church we have long admired. New City Fellowship in Chattanooga was founded by a young interracial couple who grew up in housing projects in Newark, New Jersey, and started a ministry focused on racial reconciliation in my hometown in the 1970s. Today, it is a vibrant cross-cultural ministry and was one of the few places I remember growing up (that wasnt a sporting event) where black and white Tennesseans would regularly gather together. I cannot imagine the courage it must have taken for a young white pastor and his black wife to have started that church just a few years after Martin Luther King Jr. was gunned down on the other end of the state.

Like most Protestant churches still thriving in the United States, New City follows a pretty orthodoxin this case, Presbyteriantheology. Most of the men and women with whom my wife and I were worshipping would also probably identify as evangelicals, that same group of people who have been Trumps most committed supporters.

Now, may the Lord have mercy on me for this, but perhaps because I have lived in Washington, D.C., for the past several years, as I worshipped last weekend, I also saw something else in the pews: voters. These peopleGod-fearing Christians committed to racial reconciliation and social justiceshould be among the voters for whom a multicultural Democratic Party is competing.

But one thing that shines through among many evangelical votersas well as other, non-evangelical Trump supporters with whom I have spoken back homeis how turned off they are by the smug self-righteousness of contemporary progressive discourse.

Dont support abortion rights? Well, obviously you hate women (even if you happen to yourself be a woman), and the late-night comedians are going to be merciless with what is left of your reputation.

Still believe marriage is a Biblical institution between a man and woman for the purposes of procreation? Be prepared to be mocked relentlessly on social media and shunned by peers and employers.

Last week, the Democratic Party debated whether it was even still possible to be pro-life and a Democrat before Nancy Pelosithat arch-pragmatist who, so unlike her GOP successors, put a string of wins on the board for her party while speaker of the Houseput an end to the debate by affirming that the answer remained yes.

These debates over doctrine and policy positions are exactly what the party should be doing in the aftermath of its 2016 debacle. But when paired with the self-righteous tone so characteristic of contemporary progressive discourse, it is potentially toxic to attempts to broaden the electorate for which the Democratic Party is competing. It replicates the mistakes of Alexander Hamiltons own political writings before his own party collapsed.

I remember once cheering on Jon Stewart as he skewered CNNs Crossfire for the corrosive effect it was having on political debates, but surely Stewart deserves some blame himself for the way he encouraged an entire generation of progressives to greet conservative values and policies less with well-reasoned policy evangelism than with self-assured mockery that preaches to the converted. No wonder Trumps voters feel condescended to: Theyre not in on the joke; theyre the butt of the joke.

And for some progressives, reaching out to voters who might otherwise share progressive values even as they cling to what might be perceived to be archaic religious doctrines or other traditions might be hard to stomach. Its easier to stay in bubbles of their own design, reassuring their friends. But building a bigger tent is better, I would argue, than losing elections and watching other progressive achievements rolled back.

Trump, it seems clear, strongly identifies with, but actually knows little about, Jackson. But what little he knows helped get him elected president of the United States of America. What the Democrats forgot about Jackson, meanwhile, is partly why theyre in the wilderness.

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What Trump Gets Rightand Progressives Get WrongAbout Andrew Jackson - The Atlantic

Progressives Stand with Teachers and Their Families – vtdigger.org

News Release Vermont Progressive Party May 4th, 2017

Contact: Josh Wronski Executive Director, Vermont Progressive Party 802-229-0800

Montpelier, VT Last night Progressive House Legislators stood unanimously opposed to a thinly veiled attempt to undermine workers rights in Vermont.

Governor Phil Scotts proposal to negotiate a statewide health insurance plan for teachers was rejected on Wednesday by a tie vote in the Vermont House. The plan would have stripped teachers and support staff of their right to negotiate health insurance with their local school boards. Gov. Scott claimed that the plan would save the state 26 million dollars. Progressives argue that the savings in the Governors plan are unproven, and that the amount and use of any savings should be negotiated between local employees and their communities. They say that the savings will happen through negotiations with educators and their school boards as school boards transition into less expensive health benefit plans in accordance with Affordable Care Act regulations.

Gov. Scotts plan to attack teachers health insurance and collective bargaining rights was supported by a coalition of Democrats, Republicans, and Independents. House Progressives stood unanimously opposed to the measure. Our caucus unanimously opposed this measure because it would have upended decades of labor practice with virtually no vetting, said Progressive Caucus Chair Robin Chesnut-Tangerman. We are confident that we can achieve savings without undermining the right of teachers to collectively bargain. Robin went on to say that a single payer healthcare system would avoid this issue completely and save money.

Progressive Party Director, Josh Wronski, stated that The Beck Amendment should have easily failed in a Democratic-controlled legislature. One must ask how dedicated Democrats are to organized labor with such a close outcome. Progressives respect educators right to bargain, especially over bread and butter issues like health insurance. Our Progressive caucus unanimously opposed this measure and proved again that we are the party of working people and their unions.

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Progressives Stand with Teachers and Their Families - vtdigger.org