It escapes too many observers that the remedy for the highly visible deficit in social progress is not government.  Government deals with the facts of life and reality; it does not alter or reinvent them. The curative is not the heart, too easily played on by manipulators of emotion.  And it is not the mind, which is in place to adapt to reality, not replace it. If the “enlightenment” claimed by progressives has proved anything, it is that the misappropriation of reason and science by people playing god for more than two centuries has produced a mockery of social justice and wellbeing.

One must be blind, asleep, bribed, drugged, or possessed not to notice the absurdity of “men having babies,” boys becoming girls, girls becoming boys, babies killed for convenience before, during, and after birth, “mother” and “father” branded as obsolete concepts, and expressions of truth denounced as “hate speech” . . . to mention a few products of “progress” that expose a mental pathology that dismisses any profession of enlightenment and claim to authority.

Must it really be explained that being truly “progressive” should not mean imposing a worldview and way of life held by a circle of men who worship power, not justice and that justice depends on more than might? You can spend a lifetime reading about this in classics and best-sellers, or by going where you’re not wanted to see for yourself how might, whether subtle or obvious, does not make right. For the avowed progressives who occupy positions of power, the answer appears to be yes, it must be explained, judging from their cowardly reluctance to climb out of their ideological rabbit holes and confront the actual world.

Adapting to life would be a staggering problem were it not that its fundamentals have been known for thousands of years. The “enlightened” activists, charged with enough zeal and self-righteousness to ignite the next revolution in “social justice” should not be lecturing those of us who could teach them what they missed in their upbringing and education.. Their smarts allow them to spurn the greatness of a heritage that gave them their means to live well in an uncertain and dangerous world, thanks to the work, the voices, the sacrifices, even the martyrdom of the many who came before them. Instead of starting with the givens of life, which minds smarter than ours have begun with throughout history, so-called progressives continue to dump the wisdom of ages and draw on their diminishing source of knowledge, relying on an ever weakening grasp of reality, in a foolhardy assault on reality to spread a worldview infested with Marxist ideology.

Whether they know it or not, progressives suffer from a progressive dumbing that has been taking place over several generations of Americans, a process accelerating during the last century. The fact of dumbing must be kept in mind when trying to understand the present unhealthy state of America. Among the many dots to connect, two very important ones are: 1, the work of early “progressive educators” and 2, the assumption that public educators have the right to overrule parents in raising their children.

This assumed “absolute” of child rearing – that outsiders have authority over one’s children – exposes the hypocrisy of those who do not believe in absolutes (most are faux liberals),yet insist on imposing their absolutes! This is a not-too-subtle application of “might makes right.” Progressives” and false liberals must act with stealth and deception in order to advance a worldview inconsistent with the natural function and nature of parents in the rearing of their children.

How, it must be asked, is such virtual dictatorship possible in a democratic republic like America?  The acknowledged “father” of progressive education, John Dewey (1859-1952), answered that question this way: “The political and governmental phase of democracy is a means, the best means so far found, for realizing ends that lie in the wide domain of human relationships and the development of human personality” [“The Ethics of Democracy,” 1888]. What this jumble of words signifies is that democracy is a step in the evolution of human development – toward what end is not specified. This Marxist with credentials in behaviorism dismissed the fact that the Constitution of the United States, which underlies and informs our democratic government, a product of minds smarter and wiser than any in Dewey’s day or ours, was not designed to change people. The concept of democracy as consent of the governed is in fact not to be tampered with and made a tool for turning the governed into subjects of the state. And this clearly stated relationship between the state and the governed is not negotiable.

This fact does not keep progressives from pushing to transform America into what it is not by brainwashing the people into voting their own membership in an autocracy, Dewey’s hoped for outcome: democracy used as a path to dictatorial rule by the few. What part of “government of the people, by the people, for the people” does this undemocratic idea come from? What part of reason, what part of enlightenment justifies switching democracy into autocracy?

The historical move to groom American children for living in a global autocracy, under the guise of “progress,” started in the public schools in the late 1930s. Out to change the world and society into a global dictatorship, Marxists and fellow ideologues sanctioned – and today continue to sanction – death, destruction, and oppression if that is a consequence of realizing their “progressive” vision for the world. And so it is that the most outrageous means to put America on a track to dystopia continues to animate a core of faux progressives and liberals, whose actions betray their loathing of America while shamelessly pretending loyalty to it.

By any measure consistent with reason, the “progressive project” does not benefit anyone and puts the lie to so-called “enlightenment” and justification of authority. Political leaders who continue to ignore the results of the failed progressive experiment and continue to bank on science as a prop for justifying their obsession with a faux progress have only themselves to blame for the social disorder that takes them down too, along with the “victims” they claim to be saving.

It is important to note that humane leaders with a modicum of intelligence have throughout history heeded an enlightenment that transcends their own intelligence and that of their associates and advisors. They have in some degree understood that it is the very intelligence that gave them their bodies, their brains, and their aim in life. This moral principle in human life – tragically ignored in modern times – is in fact as essential as breathing.

Whether the rejection of a transcendent moral principle comes from an excess of faith in reason-plus-science or from hatred of God, a door is left open to every serious disorder and injustice possible against we, the people, whom progressives claim to be helping.

It is plain from the results of their efforts how unenlightened our activists of ”change” are, as they press forth to smash what is left of the country that gave them their freedom and abundance of opportunity to prosper, a country whose Constitution gives everyone the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness – a country they despise with pathologic vehemence and determination to destroy – proving that “tricks and treachery are the practice of fools, that don’t have brains enough to be honest” (Benjamin Franklin).

Caricature by Andre Koehne

Anthony J. DeBlasi is a veteran and lifelong defender of Western culture.