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Posted: Jun 30, 2017 12:01 AM

Years ago Marxist-socialist leftists, embarrassed at being Marxist-socialist leftists, made up a shiny new name for themselves, progressives. Its a word that sounds like a garden of forward-thinking delights, but is simply code for the failed, human-spirit-destroying government-command-and control that birthed all the evil isms of the past. Thats why every time I hear a conservative commentator in print, radio, or on TV call lefty-socialists progressives my 200 billion brain cells swoon.

The Fourth of July brings to mind how far alleged progressivism deviates from this nations founding freedoms. The government command-and-control against which the American revolutionaries fought was King George III and British rule that denied the colonists basic human rights and the freedom to govern themselves. The Kings officials and soldiers bullied the colonists and tried to break their independent spirit with oppressive laws. The Declaration, Constitution and Bill of Rights gave citizens the electoral power to choose their own leaders, make their own laws, and the right to freely speak their minds without reprisal from the powerful.

But today, progressives are trying to destroy our God-given Constitutional rights by force and intimidation, the traditional tactics of despotism. Wearing black masks, they smash cars and stores, rioting at college campuses and violating the law and the First Amendment to shut down speakers they dont like. Prominent progressive voices in the media, celebrities, even some in Congress actually call for physically harming conservatives. Some actually gloated when Rep. Steve Scalise and other Republicans were attacked at a baseball practice by a leftist wacko whose heroine is leftist wacko Rachel Maddow.

Once content with telling us what light bulbs we could buy and how much soda we could drink, now progressives mimic ISIS terrorists by holding up a bloody fake beheaded Trump, or not too subtly suggest presidential assassination in a public play partly funded by taxpayers. Celebrities adored by millions of impressionable fans say they want to blow up the White House or ruminate about actors assassinating presidents.

These are the behaviors of tyrannical anarchists who are the very opposite of progressive which Webster defines as continuous improvement; the development of an individual or group in a direction considered more beneficial than and superior to the previous level. Theres nothing beneficial for us as citizens or our nation about lawlessness, property and First Amendment destruction, deadly threats, and calls for personal attacks and assassination. Yet as long as we let them get away with calling themselves progressive, we allow them to claim moral and intellectual superiority over the rest of us.

Its an insult to all Americans when so-called progressives try to claim they are the new revolutionaries, freedom fighters like the original colonist tea-dumpers. Theyre actually freedom-destroyers, bent on ripping apart the freedom of expression and the elective will of the voters, scorning the Constitution and torching the flag of liberty. Their goal is the death of liberty, not its advancement. Their heroes are murdering monsters Che Guevara and Fidel Castro, while they revile white-privileged Washington and Jefferson who pledged their lives for freedom.

The progressive credo is the same as the Cuban dictators and their mentors Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot: oppressive government control under the guise of leveling the playing field or equality and redistribution of wealth. But the people on the receiving end of the progressive promises of that eravariously known as socialism, Communism, or Marxismrather than thriving, have instead died in huge numbers thanks to the benevolent progressive policies imposed on them. The innocent victims of progressivism amount to 120 million or so expiring at the hands of their own governments, according to historians.

Now multi-billionaire progressives like Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and entrepreneur Elon Musk are calling for an exciting new way for government to ensure equality, today called social justice. While America was founded by brave settlers who built the new nation with their fierce spirit of independence, personal responsibility and achievement based on hard work, Zuckerberg (whose name means Sugar Mountain in German) wants to replace all that with the ultimate Sugar Daddy, a government that would provide everyone with a universal basic income.

Zuckerberg feels guilty that not everyone has the financial safety net to become entrepreneurial billionaires like he did with Facebook. But everyone should its only fair! Hopefully millions of people immediately sent him their addresses so he could start cutting their monthly checks.

Actually a universal basic income is already here for millions. The number of Americans receiving assistance from about 79 federal poverty programs is up 32 percent since 2008, the year Barack Obama was elected president. Now more than 100 million nearly one in three Americans get benefits from at least one of these programs, not including Social Security and Medicare payments.

This huge redistribution of taxpayer wealth toward welfare benefits is making Americas founding values of personal responsibility and self-reliance seem not only quaint, but unnecessary. Amazingly, in 35 states combined welfare benefits pay more than minimum-wage jobs, which means many have no reason to work. According to a Cato Institute study, a worker would need to make more than $60,000 in Hawaii, and more than $50,000 in Washington D.C. and Massachusetts, to earn more than collecting welfare would bring.

So its no mystery that U.S. labor participation is at an all-time low and that those numbers pretty much mirror the number of people collecting government benefits. Just before the 2016 elections fully 37.2 percent of our non-institutionalized, civilian population over 16 was not working or even looking for work. Of course, free money becomes an effective bribe to vote for the party that will keep the checks coming: the Democrats.

Given human nature, it only makes sense that for many, if you dont need to work to support yourself and your family, you wont. Those who continue to work will be ridiculed by those who feed at the government sugar dispenser.

But the satisfaction of work, almost any kind of work, is essential for a healthy sense of self-worth in humans. Even FDR, the Democrat president who created the New Deal to aid the jobless in the Great Depression, warned against the habit of welfare; relief as it was called then. The lessons of history show that continued dependence upon relief induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fiber, he said in 1935. To dole out relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit. The federal government must and shall quit this business of relief. But it has only increased.

Government is a fickle master as the victims of the isms discovered. Dependency breeds subservience and finally bondage after it destroys the aspirational nature fundamental to human happiness.

Since its been abundantly demonstrated for centuries that the progressive approach leads to more human suffering rather than an improvement in the human condition, the leftist/socialist/Marxistists are actually taking us backwards, not forward. Their plans would regress humanity to an earlier and utterly failed model thats left a trail of blood across human history. So lets call them what they are: regressives, not progressives. And lets celebrate Independence Day, not Dependence Day.

Joy Overbeck is a Colorado journalist and author who writes for Townhall.com, The Daily Caller, The Washington Times, American Thinker, BarbWire and elsewhere. More columns: https://www.facebook.com/JoyOverbeckColumnist Follow her on Twitter @JoyOverbeck1

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Stop Calling Them Progressives - Townhall

California Democrats have been some of the most vocal critics of the Trump administration to date and it's not just the lawmakers.

Ahead of next year's midterms, a growing number of grassroots organizers are throwing their support behind political outsiders.

In Southern California, one group of activists is hoping to flip the last Republican-held seat based primarily in L.A. County. They're called Indivisible 2.9, and they gathered on the deck of a private home in the Hollywood Hills earlier this month to discuss their next steps.

They're throwing their weight behind congressional hopeful Katie Hill, a 29-year-old political newcomer.

"She's young, she's smart, she's progressive, she's incredibly committed to her district in a way that I think is quite unusual," says Michele Mulroney, who is hosting the meeting. She's backing Hill as the one who can beat incumbent Republican Steve Knight. She thinks Hill's knowledge of the district and her work in the nonprofit sector more than make up for her lack of traditional political experience.

"Yeah, she's technically 29, but her wisdom goes way beyond her years, and I think it's time frankly to turn this country over to the young and passionate candidate," Mulroney says.

Indivisible is a political advocacy group started by a few Democratic congressional staffers after the 2016 election. Their mission: resist the Trump agenda.

To do this, they put together a playbook of best practices for organizing. They say they were inspired by another, more infamous grassroots organization: the conservative Tea Party, which rose in prominence in 2009 during the Obama presidency.

Now, Indivisible members crash town halls, knock on doors and raise money about $2 million since last year. Their website says there are 5,800 chapters of the group registered in the country, including many in California each in places where they hope to replace a Republican with a Democrat.

Hill and her supporters are after District 25 in Northern L.A. County, which includes cities like Santa Clarita, Simi Valley, Palmdale, and Lancaster.

Incumbent Steve Knight won re-election in November by about 16,000 votes but voters in his district chose Clinton over Trump. Results like these give Indivisible hope, but Hill faces some significant hurdles, such as campaign financing.

She'll need to raise about $200,000 by the end of this week in order to unlock funding from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee $3 million to flip the seat. And money is just part of it.

Democrats face long odds in Republican districts, in part, because the party itself is less than united: There's still a rift between progressives who supported Bernie Sanders and more traditional Democrats.

Another challenge: Progressives are also political outsiders. Theyre up against people who know how to play the game.

"The fact is [the] Democratic Party's been around a long time. It has rules and procedures and people who have really dedicated their lives to it blood, sweat and tears for a long time," says Matt Rodriguez, former western states director for the Obama campaign.

Rodriguez says enthusiasm is generally a good thing in politics, but it's not enough.

"Their issue set might not be enough for large swaths of voters. That means you have to work within that system. That's the system that exists. And that's gonna take time," he says.

Indivisible's organizers continue to work on plans to get their candidates elected, but it's not clear if they'll have enough support (and enough money) to put political newcomers like Hill into office.

Despite these clear challenges, the voters at Hill's event say they want change. And to them, change is only something an outsider can bring.

Press the blue play button above to hear the full report.

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SoCal progressives are growing in numbers but can they get a candidate elected? - 89.3 KPCC

Wall Street Journal (subscription)

Intolerant Progressives and Puritans of Old Compared Wall Street Journal (subscription) Regarding the headline Progressives Are the New Puritan Busybodies atop the June 24 letters: It would seem to be a clever analogy, and one that contains a certain historical truth. Many of the elite colleges at the forefront of progressivism were ...

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Intolerant Progressives and Puritans of Old Compared - Wall Street Journal (subscription)

The progressive strategy of investigating President Donald Trump nonstop for Russian collusion or obstruction of justice or witness tampering so far has produced no substantial evidence of wrongdoing.

The alternate strategy of derailing the new administration before it really gets started hasnt succeeded either, despite serial efforts to sue over election results, alter the Electoral College vote, boycott the inauguration, delay the confirmation of appointments, demand recusals, promise Trumps impeachment or removal through the 25th Amendment, and file suit under the Emoluments Clause.

Likewise, athird strategy of portraying Trump as a veritable monsterso far has failed in four special elections for House seats.

Apparently progressives have accepted the idea that Barack Obamas formula of twice winning the Electoral College is not yet transferrable to other progressive candidates such as Hillary Clinton. And they probably have concluded that Obamas progressive political agenda proved unpopular with voters by 2010 and had to be implemented by ad hoc executive orders presidential prerogatives now utilized by Donald Trump to overturn the ones Obama issued.

A fourth potential pathway to power would be a return to Bill Clintons pragmatic agendas of the 1990s. But apparently progressives find that centrist remedy worse than the malady of losing elections given that during the Obama tenure, more than 1,000 state and local offices were lost to Republicans, in addition to majorities in the House and Senate, and a majority of governorships and legislatures.

What next?

Trump acts as if he is a Nietzschean figure, assuming that anything that does not destroy him only makes him stronger. And now, slowly, his accusers are becoming the accused.

One nagging problem with the progressive case against Trump for purported Russian collusion and obstruction of justice was that members of the Obama administration had more exposure to those allegations than did the political newcomer Trump.

Last year, thenFBI director James Comey testified that not only did former attorney general Loretta Lynch improperly meet in secret with Bill Clinton during an investigation of Hillary Clinton, but also that Lynch had asked Comey to downplay the investigation into Hillarys use of a private e-mail server during her tenure as secretary of state. Comey confessed that he had reluctantly agreed to Lynchs request.

Earlier this month, in testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Comey admitted that he asked a friend to leak notes about Comeys earlier conversation with Trump in hopes of forcing the nomination of a special counsel to lead the Russia investigation perhaps a successful gambit, given that Comeys friend, former FBI director Robert Mueller, was soon appointed to that role.

Comey also wrongly dismissed Hillary Clintons e-mail problems because of a perceived lack of criminal intent a supposedly mitigating circumstance that legally should have had no bearing on things.

As far as alleged Russian collusion, there had long been conservative accusations that Bill and Hillary Clinton used Hillarys status as secretary of state to leverage honoraria for Bill and donations to the Clinton Foundation in exchange for concessions to Russian interests.

Moreover, Russian tampering efforts had been going on for months before the 2016 election, but without any retaliatory measures from the Obama administration, which knew about Russias meddling.

In an inadvertent hot-mic request in 2012, Obama asked outgoing Russian president Dmitry Medvedev to urge Russian president Vladimir Putin to give me space during Obamas reelection campaign, so that after his assumed success, Obama could reciprocate with more flexibility on Russian issues. In the present highly charged climate, would that be seen as a form of Russian collusion?

Meanwhile, the House Intelligence Committee is still investigating whether top Obama-administration officials wrongfully used the power of foreign-intelligence collection to conduct surveillance of Americans particularly members of the Trump campaign.

The point is not whether the Clintons, James Comey, Barack Obama, or members of the Obama administration can be proven to have engaged in illegal or unscrupulous behavior.

Rather, the lesson is that progressives should have offered alternative political visions that might have won back the American people rather than attempting to terminate the Trump presidency on charges to which the progressive side is far more vulnerable.

Now that Trump is emerging from successful House special elections and has fended off six months of media attacks, celebrity invective, and progressive efforts to abort his tenure, he seems to be going back on the offensive.

Currently, House and Senate investigations are doing to Democrats what has been done Trump. So far these probes seem to have better chances ofprovingwrongdoing.

What does all this political back-and-forth mean?

Democrats struck preemptively to take out Trump before he unwound the Obama legacy. That effort has probably been stalled.

The return volley is being launched at a time when an energized Trump is gaining momentum on health care and tax reform, and an improving economy.

In sum, to thwart a new presidents policies, it is probably wiser to offer alternative agendas instead of trying to destroy him before he has even entered office.

Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and the author, most recently, of The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won, to appear in October from Basic Books. You can reach him by e-mailing [emailprotected]. 2017 Tribune Media Services, Inc.

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Not only have progressives failed to take down the president, but they also haven't offered an alternative agenda. - National Review

Progressives have to devise a comprehensive alternative that responds to both the challenge of Russia and the failures of liberalism.

(Photo: Mike Maguire / Flickr)

Donald Trumps approval ratings remain dismal, yet the Democrats are 0 for 4 in congressional elections in 2017.

Not only do a majority of Americans believe that the president has tried to obstruct investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 elections but, by a 2 to 1 margin, Americans believe former FBI chief James Comeys account of his firing over Trumps version. And yet, 64 percent of Americans think that the RussiaGate investigations are hurting the country, and a majority wants Congress to focus on other issues, like the economy.

These polls tell you what you already know: The country is deeply divided, the Democrats havent been able to come up with a convincing way of bridging the divide, and the RussiaGate investigations are no substitute for a political platform.

Its a long way until the mid-term elections in November 2018 and the RussiaGate investigation is still in its infancy, but already the Democratic Party is in the midst of a second round of soul-searching about its strategy.

The first round took place after Donald Trump swept to a narrow Electoral College victory last November and largely hinged on whether the Sanders focus on economic inequality would have done better at the polls against Trump than Hillary Clintons more cautious centrism. This second round continues the debate on this question, but also throws in the wild cards of Russia and Trumps potential wrongdoing.

Shortly after Democrat Jon Ossoff lost a close race in Georgia this month, Democrats began to speak up about the electoral implications of RussiaGate. Reports The Hill:

In the wake of a string of special-election defeats, an increasing number of Democrats are calling for an adjustment in party messaging, one that swings the focus from Russia to the economy. The outcome of the 2018 elections, they say, hinges on how well the Democrats manage that shift.

We cant just talk about Russia because people back in Ohio arent really talking that much about Russia, about Putin, about Michael Flynn, Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) told MSNBCThursday. Theyre trying to figure out how theyre going to make the mortgage payment, how theyre going to pay for their kids to go to college, what their energy bill looks like.

At one level, this same debate recurs every election cycle do people care more about foreign policy questions or pocketbook issues? The answer is almost always: the economy. At another level, the debate is about whether Trumps unpopularity can be used against him. Its another enduring debate: take advantage of the incumbents negatives or field a positive alternative? As the 2004 and 2012 election results suggest, the opposition has to offer something intrinsically appealing or risk defeat.

The four recent by-elections dont provide much to go on in terms of any serious reevaluation of strategy. They all took place in Republican-friendly areas that have yet to feel any real impact from Trump administration policies. Ossoff, in particular, did much better than his districts partisan preferences should have dictated (6 percent better, according to the Cook Political Report). Nor did Ossoff spend a lot of time focused on Russia. He was no Sanderista, but he didnt make Donald Trump and his transgressions a central part of his campaign. Its hard to come to any definitive conclusions from this race or the other three.

Still, the by-elections have stimulated an important discussion. Where one comes down on the Russia vs. jobs question depends in large part on on how one assesses the reasons for Trumps victory and whether RussiaGate can or should function as a club to beat back the Republicans in future elections.

This debate is not just about electoral strategy. Its also about how the United States should address the current global crisis of liberalism.

Interpreting Trumps Victory

There are two ways of understanding how Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election: the triple backlash versus the triple hack.

According to the triple backlash argument, Trump benefited from a worldwide rejection of liberalism: economically, politically, and culturally. Large sections of the United States that didnt benefit from economic globalization watched the disappearance of well-paying jobs from the Rust Belt, rural areas and small towns, and certain big cities.

These residents of America B blamed politicians from both parties for pushing economic reforms that shifted wealth upward and out of their communities. And they also blamed a range of others for what was wrong with the country: immigrants, people of color, social liberals. This economic-political-cultural backlash prepared the ground for a political outsider with an anti-immigrant agenda and a promise to revive Americas sunset industries.

The triple hack argument is much more focused. Trump hacked the system in three important ways, exploiting vulnerabilities to gain his narrow win.

The first hack was of the Electoral College. Trump didnt care about the popular vote. He knew that he could write off large swathes of the American electorate and concentrate his forces in a few swing states. So, for instance, the campaign pulled resources out of Virginia, an otherwise important state for Republicans to win, to focus on the Midwest.

The second hack was the news media. The Trump campaign exploited the mainstream medias fascination with the outrageous by constantly feeding it new outrages. It also generated a spate of fake news about Hillary Clinton that it distributed on the margins, in places like Breitbart News and through social media like Facebook and Trumps own Twitter account. Here, Russian journalists and trolls played a role, though probably not a pivotal one.

Finally, the campaign hacked Facebook in two critical ways. It poured money into an advertising campaign tailored to the preferences of over 200 million Americans contained in three separate databases to which the campaign maintained access. And it created a dark posts campaign to dissuade three groups of potential Democratic voters Sanders supporters, young women, and African Americans in urban areas from going to the polls.

On top of the official voter suppression efforts run by the Republican Party reducing early voting, implementing onerous voter ID laws this keep out the vote campaign was remarkably effective. In Detroit, a Democratic stronghold, Clinton received 70,000 fewer votes than Obama got in his last outing. She lost the state of Michigan by fewer than 11,000 votes.

If you believe in the triple backlash argument, youre more inclined to push for a political program that focuses on economic inequality and job creation, particularly in depressed parts of the country. If you lean more toward the triple hack argument, youre more likely to focus on counter-hack tactics a better media strategy, a better way of getting out the vote, a better way of using oppositional research to undermine the opponent (even to the point of impeachment).

Because the debate over the triple backlash opens up rifts within the party, the Democrats will likely focus on technical fixes to recapture Congress in 2018 and regain the 80,000 votes that Clinton lost by in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania in order to win the presidency in 2020. Such an approach would be wise tactically. But it would be disastrous in the long term.

Responding to RussiaGate

The investigation into Russian meddling in the American election has inevitably acquired a partisan taint. The Democrats have used it to question the legitimacy of the election and of the Trump administration more generally. Trump and the Republicans have accused their detractors of conducting a witch-hunt.

It may come out in the investigation that the Trump campaign colluded with the Russian government. It may also come out that Trump, as president, obstructed justice by firing Comey and covering up elements of collaboration. RussiaGate might bring down Donald Trump and some of his advisers. Or it might turn out to be a series of murky, unprovable assertions.

Regardless of the Trump teams actual involvement in the scandal, Russia tampered with the U.S. political system. Russian hackers acquired information from both major parties but decided only to weaponize the material from the Democrats to compromise its chances in the election. Hackers tried to break into 21 state electoral systems, stole nearly 90,000 voter records, and even altered voter information in at least one case. And a Russian disinformation campaign spread rumors, fake stories, and outrageous claims through a variety of media.

There is no concrete evidence that any of this interference tipped the election in favor of Trump. But it is a strange irony that American interest in RussiaGate is declining just as Congress and the media are providing revelations on a weekly basis.

For those who still dont acknowledge Vladimir Putins fingerprints on this electoral intrusion, consider that the United States has not been the only country targeted in this fashion. The same pattern was evident in France, where Russian hackers and disinformation specialists attempted to discredit Emmanuel Macron in an effort to boost the chances of pro-Kremlin candidate Marine Le Pen. The Washington Post reports:

In Lithuania, 100 citizen cyber-sleuths dubbed elves link up digitally to identify and beat back the people employed on social media to spread Russian disinformation. They call the daily skirmishes Elves vs. Trolls.

In Brussels, the European Unions East Stratcom Task Force has 14 staffers and hundreds of volunteer academics, researchers and journalists who have researched and published 2,000 examples of false or twisted stories in 18 languages in a weekly digest that began two years ago.

There is a peculiar tendency by some on the left to dismiss Russian activities because some of the media coverage has been inaccurate or over-hyped or because of a supposed effort to demonize Vladimir Putin as part of a campaign to revive Cold War tensions between Washington and Moscow.

Sure, some coverage has relied unwisely on single sources, but theres plenty of evidence of Russian malfeasance that cant be so easily dismissed, from Ukraine to Europe to the United States.

Moreover, Russian interference in the political process in the West has nothing to do with old Cold War dynamics. Vladimir Putin wants to build an alliance of far-right forces from white power activists in the United States and the National Front in France to Viktor Orban in Hungary and Euroskeptics throughout the continent with the Kremlin as the beacon of a new post-Western right-wing nationalist order.

This is no secret plan. Putin has been very open about his worldview.

Russia poses a challenge that goes far beyond the U.S. electoral system. RussiaGate isnt just a threat to the Democratic Party. Its a threat to democratic politics everywhere. And it requires not just a bipartisan response. It requires a transatlantic response.

Responding to the Crisis of Liberalism

Donald Trump has an answer for the crisis of liberalism and the triple backlash that produced his electoral victory.

Hes challenged the existing global economy by pulling the United States out of the Trans Pacific Partnership and has promised to tear up or significantly renegotiate a number of other trade deals. Hes challenged the liberal administrative state by attempting to gut social welfare and the government regulatory apparatus across the board. Hes challenged liberal norms of inclusion with his travel ban, an anti-immigrant crusade, and other policies that will adversely affect women, people of color, and the LGBT community.

Vladimir Putin also has an answer for the crisis of liberalism that brought Russia to its knees in the aftermath of the Soviet Unions collapse. He believes at least instrumentally in the three Cs: Christianity, conservativism, and Caucasians. He wants to create a reactionary, religious, and racist axis that unifies the Global North. But this is not about international cooperation. Putin thinks only in terms of Russian interests, which actually boil down to the economic interests of the oligarchs aligned with his regime.

Employing elves to battle Russian trolls isnt enough. Creating commissions to track and neutralize cyberattacks is not enough. Piling revelation upon revelation about RussiaGate is not enough. These tactics are necessary but not sufficient.

Instead of talking back to the TV, we should change the channel. Progressives need to come up with our own answer to the crisis of liberalism. We can borrow from progressive economic ideas of the past (government work programs, for example, to create jobs). We can borrow from populist political tactics (which worked so well for Bernie Sanders, for example). We can even borrow from liberalism itself (the notion of an open, inclusive society). But we must also come up with bold new programs around renewable energy, the revival of community, and international cooperation.

Russia versus jobs is in some ways a false dichotomy. Progressives have to devise a comprehensive alternative that responds to both the challenge of Russia and the failures of liberalism. If we dont, well not only lose the mid-terms and the next presidential election in the United States. Well lose the planet.

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'RussiaGate' Alone Isn't Going to Put Progressives Back in Power - Foreign Policy In Focus