I was at a party in Beverly Hills last night with a reality star turned movie producer, and as we debated the details of Brexit and the anti-Second Amendment sit-in executed by Democrats in D.C. this week, he said the words, "I trust my government."
I had to admit that in my conservative circles, I had never heard those words uttered, not even in reference to Reagan, or majorities in the House and Senate.
If "progressive" means moving forward, and "regressive" means moving backward, which party is which? We have progressed throughout history away from centralized power. The left wishes to regress back to an elite monarchy who decides what is best for the peasants. Their model for this is the EU that has been rejected by U.K. voters. There is nothing progressive about the left and the Democratic Party.
The Marxist Hegelian philosophy holds that laws of nature have societies in a steady progression to the workers' utopia. It is natural (they believe) that the workers, the huddled, oppressed masses, will unite and throw off the yoke of the capitalists who were born unjustly on top of the food chain. Modern progressives, from Vlad Lenin to Bernie Sanders, believe that progress is too slow and needs to be facilitated by benevolent oligarchs who will take "from each according to his ability" and give "to each according to his need." Got it.
The problem (lovers of liberty have always known) was encapsulated in this quote often attributed to Thomas Jefferson: "The Government that is big enough to give you everything you need is also big enough to take all you have." The 20th and 21st centuries have seen progressive redistributionist policies become embedded in most nations of the world. The beneficiaries are surprising.
California is supposed to be the crown jewel of progressivism. With a $.70 hidden cap and trade tax and the highest housing cost thanks to environmental and permitting costs (between $3,000 and $10,000 is usual housing permit cost across the country; in Cali every builder expects $70-80,000 just for permits, if they can build at all), California knows how to redistribute – but to whom? Cali boasts the highest sales taxes, the highest utility costs, and all combine to serve the wealthy in a new serfdom that is anything but utopian.
The wealthy can buy a $70,000 Tesla and get close to $20,000 in rebates, pay no gas tax, thus pay nothing for highways while using the High Occupancy Vehicle lanes. Middle income Californians subsidize the luxe cars for the wealthy and even the highways they use to drive them. High housing costs and limited stock drives up the value of those already owning homes, so the old wealthy hold their homes and values while their children have little hope of being able to afford to join them. How is that progressive?
California is owned by a super-majority of leftists, who are the most regressive of all. They have accomplished the highest gap between rich and poor. A flood of illegal immigrant/cheap labor leaves no chance for the black and Latino underclass, whose misfortune is a double-timed bad luck compared to all other groups.
Throughout history, anyone who came in poor was able to rise. Waves of huddled masses rose out of poverty. Indentured servants came from the U.K., Irish potato famine, Italians, Germans, Asians railroad workers, many more. But when FDR instituted the New Deal and America became the Land of Entitlements, that all changed. That is why blacks and Hispanics are those left behind. Blacks were freed and Hispanics entered during the entitlement era, and thus they have had a much more difficult time rising up than minority groups did prior to the entitlement era.
Entitlements require government to grow, as demand for entitlement money grows. The poetry of supply vs. demand in capitalism quickly becomes the poverty of supply of government vs. demand of serfdom. As a result, blacks were left behind as public education/government schools became the norm and leftists experimented with New Deal and Great Society soft bigotry of low expectations.
Brexit was an arguably unprecedented uprising of those who see oppression as what it is – regressive. Aren't those pulling their liberty back from a global government PROgressive, by definition?
The progressives have regressed. The conservatives have become the progressives, clutching to liberty at any cost, even that of safety.
Leftists scratch their heads, asking, how can it be that conservatives will choose someone as "risky" as Trump? That's easy for the conservative to answer: Trump may be a risk, but he is a risk worth taking to, indeed, make America great again, or for progress. America has slouched into mediocrity, and for patriots whose ancestors fought and died for that special liberty that is Western and in many ways, American, they will risk more to progress toward liberty.
Today, those on the left who might like to fancy themselves as somehow modern and progressing are those who are actually most regressive, as they cling like suckling pigs to the breast of government to supply their serfdom. They fear liberty. They fear their own frailties. They fear competition where they might lose.
Progressive conservatives today are precisely the opposite. Conservatives are willing to risk all for great reward. Conservatives understand human frailty, but believe in human triumph. Conservatives are willing to compete and lose, if they know they can do so without tyranny. Mostly, conservatives believe they can win.
Video: Will Trump get a Brexist bump?
It is particularly worth noting that the U.K. often precedes the acts of America. The British Tea Party was, after all, the inception of America. Thatcher preceded the Reagan Revolution. Could it be that Brexit is the precursor of a Trump win and the destruction of the establishment elite's tyrannical grip on the U.S. and the West?
As I said this week on Fox Business (watch above), a society can choose between safe, and great, but it is difficult or impossible to have both. This week Britain chose great.
In the eyes of liberty lovers in America, that was progress, plain and simple. America was inspired by the risk taken in Britain, and no doubt, a new liberty-loving, star-spangled dream was brought back to life that day! Progress, indeed.