Common "Progressive" Threads

Just a thought as I reflect on the massive celebration of progressive entitlement programs and big government philosophy in last night's DNC.

The Head Start program, designed to help preschool children, eats up billions of dollars per year, yet it has not shown to have a single long term benefit.  The welfare system that we put in place in the 1960's to help blacks had the unintended consequence of destroying inner city black families.  The housing program and inserting affirmative action in our lending and credit systems between 1994 and 2008 under the CRA has all but destroyed our economy.  All of these programs were major progressive initiatives, all have, by most metrics, failed catastrpophically, and yet all are still with us.

And Barack Obama, who has utterly failed to lead us out of the recession of 2008-09 is now asking for another four years.

The common threads running through all of these things are that, one, Progressivism never admits failure.  Two,  regardless of how ineffective or inefficient, regardless of the unintended consequences,  every progressive idea implemented in the real world just needs more time to work, or just one more new law or regulation to push it over the top into meeting its designated purpose.  Three, to question progressive ideas is to be evil - it is to conduct a war on [insert designated progressive victim class here], it is to be racist or sexist, etc.  And four, people should believe in the eventual triumph of failed progressive ideas out of simple faith in their moral superiority.

It is a toxic mix of fanaticism, fantasy and secular religion.  And anyone who pulls the lever for Obama this time around will be acting out of a faith misplaced indeed.    

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