The perverse lure of the new Progressives

February 28, 2019

OPINION by T. KEITH GURNEE

What is the lure of the local new Progressive movement?

As a Democrat most of my adult life, it’s hard to comprehend what’s become of the party that once attracted and welcomed me. As a member of this County’s Democratic Central Committee in the 1970s, it was open to liberals, moderates, and conservative Democrats alike. The composition of the Committee reflected that. No longer. Now that Committee is populated by a monoculture of new Progressives.

The Republican Party certainly has its issues, having elected a president who was a Democrat most of his life who Democrats now despise with a vengeance. In reaction, the ideological lure of the new Progressive movement has allowed it to metastasize itself deep within the Democratic Party at the national, state, and local levels while leaving its’s moderate and centrist adherents in the dust.

Today’s Democratic Party has lurched so far to the left that it is all but unrecognizable from the party of John F. Kennedy.

Let’s reflect on the term “progressive.” It’s defined by Webster’s as an adjective meaning “moving forward.” Now who wouldn’t want to be identified with moving forward as opposed to standing still or moving backward? It would be great if today’s “Progressives” fit that definition, but they don’t. Their embrace of group-think, “alternative facts”, wanting everything for free, and their intolerance of different views has them moving the wrong way. If anything, the Progressives are actually regressive.

The new Progressives have found fertile ground amongst the overindulged, social media savvy members of the “Millennial” generation– those who are now in their 20s and 30s who see the Progressive movement as their catnip. The lure has sucked them in. They’re drinking the Kool-Ade.

But today’s movement doesn’t come close to the two truly Progressive eras of the early 1900s and the late 1960s/early 1970s. As one who was the age of today’s millennial’s during the heady antiwar days of the 1960s, that Progressive era inherently distrusted big government. We viewed it as part of the problem rather than part of the solution, just the opposite of today’s Progressives.

Has the Democratic Party lost its way? Unless it makes a significant midcourse correction in the direction it’s taking, it would appear so. With the Progressives dominating the party, what’s a fiscal, limited-government conservative and a social liberal like me to do? Join the party of the Progressives? Not!

Having been vilified by our local band of Progressives in the last mayoral election, I’ve felt their single-minded, rigid ideology up close and personal. So where would they take us?

Tribune columnist Tom Fulks was one of the architects of the new Progressive movement who helped lead its takeover of the local Democratic Central Committee in 2017. He’s also its chief propagandist and a very effective one. His messaging rivals even that of Joseph Goebbels during the rise of Adolf Hitler in pre-World War II Germany. Unfortunately, that lure worked all too well.

Fulks was right in claiming that 2018 represented a huge victory for Progressives in our local, state, and national elections. But his proselytizing of those victories, his taking credit for helping make it happen, and the over-the-top performances of new Progressives in office should give us all pause. Hopefully, 2018 was their high-water mark. If not, we’re in for a scary future– one that we all may have read about already.

in rereading George Orwell’s 1984, the comparisons between that novel’s dystopian vision and that of the new Progressives are deeply disturbing. The terms and phrases used in the novel such as “newspeak”, “doublethink”, “thought-crimes”, and “ignorance is knowledge” just hit too close to home.

Local Progressive leader Nick Andre could be “big brother” or Heidi Harmon could be “big sister,” and Tom Fulks could be Chief of the “Thought Police.”

The novel’s cult of personality, its rooting out of individualism, and its stifling of alternative points of view are indelible parts of this movement. Should it continue to thrive, could we be heading for an Orwellian existence?

1984 was written in 1948 and published in 1949 shortly after World War II and upon the rise of Stalinist Russia. While 1984 did not come true in 1984, could it come true 50 years later? If you haven’t read the book, read it. If you’ve read the book, reread it.

I’d be surprised if you didn’t conclude that we’re being lured into an Orwellian existence.