“You can't force your ideology on the cat,” the veterinarian told the Herald Sun, a newspaper in Australia. “Carnivores will seek out meat...”

This advice was given after a kitten nearly died when its owners fed it a strict vegan diet. The kitten was nursed back to health with 20 CCs of meat.

So much for kittens. What if you forced your ideology on human nature and society? Progressives think they can do just that. The truth is, progressives are wrong about this.

We can see how wrong progressives are when we look around at what is happening to our nation, today. In short their progressive ideology sometimes called a “fundamental transformation” has become a menace.

One of the tenets of progressivism is that there is no such thing as human nature -- it is just an illusion. As Marx put it, “It’s not the consciousness of men that determines their social being, but their social being that determines their consciousness.” Human beings are simply a product of their environment, especially the economic conditions that happen to prevail in a given society.

Contemporary progressives in the United States have not gone far beyond this dogmatic statement by Marx. Even if some do not know the roots of their progressive tree in Marx and Rousseau, they have managed to branch out into many of our institutions, especially public education, marriage, abortion, and foreign policy.

The French sociologist Émile Durkheim argued that the purpose of public education is to create the desired type needed to perpetuate a given society. It was the job of the French system of education to make good French citizens, not good Englishmen.

It should be the nature of public education to be conservative. Young minds need consistency before they can embrace relativism. Public education in the United States ought to be socialization into the adult life of a constitutional republic, not an introduction to the ways of life outlined in the Koran.

Multiculturalism in public education confuses young minds and works against the natural feelings of nationalism needed to keep a society in existence. “Chicago’s public schools count over 100 foreign languages spoken by their students, with Spanish leading the pack by a wide margin.” There is no attempt to follow Durkheim’s teaching in Chicago. With so many languages encouraged, public schools are more like Milton’s Pandemonium then they are like Durkheim’s France.

Most ordinary Americans find it difficult to understand the notion of same-sex marriage. One reason for this inability to understand is that ordinary Americans hold to the centuries-old idea that marriage is grounded in human nature -- men and women in love join together and have children.

Same-sex marriage is for many a legal fiction that turns the world upside down. In that upside down world, the symbolism of same-sex marriage, anal intercourse or sex toy play, will never lead to children in the natural order of things.

Just as Robespierre’s claim that, “Terror is nothing other than justice, prompt, severe, inflexible; it is therefore an emanation of virtue,” makes many scratch their head in disbelief, so does same-sex marriage equated as a civil right cause a similar head itch.

Many biologists will tell you what they know from their study of nature. Human life begins at conception. Nevertheless, progressives must impose on this truth their ideology of women’s rights and are forced to call the human life in the womb something other than what it is. Recently, Sarah Silverman said, contrary to nature, that the human fetus is simply, “goo.” If that’s the case, then it’s OK to abort the goo.

By seeing only fluffy kittens fed on corn, progressives often demonstrate a degree of audacity that goes beyond even the audacity of hope. They forget that nature places limits on mankind. These limits are bracketed by birth and death.

It’s one thing to impose a progressive ideology on a kitten, and it is another thing to impose a progressive ideology on a nation. Yet, either way, the end result of a progressive ideology is not life but death.

Robert Klein Engler lives in Omaha, Nebraska. He is a graduate of the University of Chicago Divinity School. His book, A WINTER OF WORDS, about the turmoil at Daley College, is available from amazon.com.