The Trouble with "Progressivism"

Nobody wants to find themselves opposed to progress. The problems usually start when people disagree about what progress means and how it should be realized. But there's a more sinister trouble that shows its head only occasionally, and that's when the ideal of progress is mistaken for the purpose of the governing body of a free people. The purpose of that government is to guarantee liberty (not grant it) and order.

This brings me to Thomas Friedman's column in the NY Times. Mr. Friedman begins his argument thus:

Watching both the health care and climate/energy debates in Congress, it is hard not to draw the following conclusion: There is only one thing worse than one-party autocracy, and that is one-party democracy, which is what we have in America today.
One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages. That one party can just impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st century. It is not an accident that China is committed to overtaking us in electric cars, solar power, energy efficiency, batteries, nuclear power and wind power. China’s leaders understand that in a world of exploding populations and rising emerging-market middle classes, demand for clean power and energy efficiency is going to soar. Beijing wants to make sure that it owns that industry and is ordering the policies to do that, including boosting gasoline prices, from the top down.

This is exactly the sort of nonsense that brought us both Nazism and Communism in the first place. A vision of progress (defined variously) takes precedence over everything and justifies anything, including the destruction of liberty ("That one party can just impose..."). Don't believe me? Read Eric Hoffer sometime. Hitler did it. Lenin did it. Mao did it. And now Thomas Friedman is praising it to the skies (except for the Hitler bit, of course).

America must have progress at any cost! Frankly, I don't believe that's true. The most fragile thing in all the world is not the world itself, but human civilization. France descended to the worst sort of barbarism after the Revolution went crazy. Hitler massacred millions. Lenin, then Stalin massacred millions more. What's really terrifying about these things is what they have in common. Every one elevated some ideal of progress to the highest value, surpassing political liberty and notably the value of an individual human life.

Progress is nice, but not when it becomes the end-all be-all of the world. That's where it goes bad.

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