Old Gadfly: Gentlemen, this past Sunday, while watching Meet the Press, there were two segments
that caught my attention. First, I
thought I heard Chuck Todd make a “Freudian slip.” Then, I checked the transcript,
and sure enough, while interviewing Senator Angus King (following the segment
with Senator James Lankford), Todd said:
“Very
quickly on this, Senator Lankford, he's leading to try to fix this Flores
Amendment.” I see a lot of implications
in this statement. The second segment
was the manner in which Todd paid tribute to the late Charles Krauthammer. Your thoughts?
IM: I watched the same program. Let me take on the Flores Amendment. First, progressives actually treat the
“Flores” settlement as a Constitutional Amendment. This was a Ninth District Court ruling based
on a class action law suit filed on behalf of illegal aliens: see Flores et al. v. Meese, also see this summary.
Yet, the very progressive California Court gave the plaintiffs (illegal
aliens) legal standing in the court ruling.
In essence, the Court overruled a federal agency’s policy that was
derived from Congressional legislation. The fact that Congress fails to challenge
these actions indicates to what extent Congress has abdicated its
Constitutional authority under Article I, essentially deferring to the Courts
as the ultimate legislators.
AM: Republicans have pushed proposals to solve
the immigration issue. Frankly, Democrats
are obstructing these proposals because a solution provides zero political
capital during a midterm election. They
present themselves as the moral arbiter in liberating the oppressed, which is
very Marxian. In a concerted effort by various
elements of the progressive left (politicians, academics, the media, and
Hollywood), the public narrative has been intentionally distorted to obfuscate
reality. They say President Trump
created this crisis with his “zero tolerance” policy, then reversed course with
an Executive Order. The reality is that
President Trump was responding to illegal entry into the United States by more
firmly enforcing existing policy created by previous Administrations. The President is charged under Article II of
the Constitution with faithfully executing the laws of our Nation. The complicit, yet very progressive “fake
news” uses optics to exacerbate the “apparent crisis,” with the majority of
images taken during previous Administrations.
The progressive left, which was hypocritically and deliberately silent during
the Obama regime, has manipulated this issue in such a way as to generate
political capital for election purposes.
So, who is being used as an instrument to secure political power? Children.
The irony is that this is consistent with their complete disregard for
the sanctity of life in collaborating with the eugenicists from Planned
Parenthood—again, for political power.
Old
Gadfly: This must be part of a more
sinister vision.
IM: Absolutely.
President Trump symbolizes the traditional idea of America—a
Constitutional Republic. Enough
Americans who also believe in this vision elected Donald Trump into
office. Yet, as we witnessed, it was the
Electoral College, a mechanism that was truly understood by our Framers that
made this happen. Trump’s opponent
supposedly won the majority vote. I say
supposedly because the jury is still out on the extent of fraudulent voting. Progressives believe in a democracy as
opposed to a republic. A republic is
based on a self-governing society and the rule of law where the law
governs. The American republic is
further grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition and the pursuit of cardinal
virtues of prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance. A democracy, on the other hand, is based on
the rule of government where the government governs. If you really think about it, we are
witnessing a race toward a direct democracy with two classes: the governed masses and the ruling
elite. Illegal immigration can accelerate
this process.
AM: I find it interesting, IM, that you mention
the cardinal virtues. Prudence involves
reason and a pursuit of truth, something to be discovered. Progressives promote visceral emotions for
persuasion and create the truth in the process.
Justice demands each individual be treated equally—each receiving what
(reward or punishment) is due to him or her based on their own actions. Progressives do not believe in justice
because their Marxist ideology says that the oppressed (real or imagined) must
be liberated through social justice.
This is why the border scenario is such a powerful propaganda tool for
appealing to visceral emotion.
Progressives pervert the truth to justify their tactics. Think about it. When a black person makes it known that he or
she is a conservative, they are pejoratively called by the progressive left an
Uncle Tom. Anyone who has actually read
Harriet Beecher Stowe’s wonderful novel, Uncle
Tom’s Cabin, will tell you that Uncle Tom (and the three brave black women
he protected) was a heroic figure—one who demonstrated the third cardinal
virtue of fortitude. The fact that Uncle
Tom has become an epithet contrary to its original meaning represents the same
unvirtuous and contemptuous behavior of those who use slurs such as racist,
homophobe, misogynist, xenophobe, Islamaphobe, and so forth against those who
hold different views on these topics.
Even the great Frederick Douglass spoke of prudence, justice, fortitude,
and temperance in his epoch speech, Self-Made Men. Temperance
involves self-discipline and command of one’s passions. This is contrary to the progressive’s victim
and entitlement mentality.
IM: To really understand the modern, progressive
Democrat is to understand the progressive vision of Herbert D. Croly. Here is an assessment (a white paper under
the Research & Analysis Tab, pp. 3-4) by the American
Constitution Foundation:
Reflecting the progressive
vision of Herbert Croly,[1] judicial activists believe
it is far more expedient and efficient for highly educated elite to softly
amend the Constitution through judicial rulings. The major manifestation of the progressive
vision in modern America is a living constitution[2] that reflects tradition
and legal precedent (similar to Great Britain’s approach, which has no written
constitution). The “progressive”
tradition is a created tradition based on ideas of a more perfect union, not
the inherited “traditional” tradition that is based on tried and tested
wisdom. This shift in thinking has now
been institutionalized in “the Constitution
of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation (popularly
known as the Constitution Annotated),
which contains legal analysis and interpretation of the United States
Constitution, based primarily on Supreme Court case law.”[3]
AM: This evolution in American political thinking
reflects the fruit of a progressive educational system. Unfortunately, for the past century, progressives
have dominated public education from K-12 through the university system. Today’s “educated” person arguably reflects a
programmed class of “instruments for social and political change,” similar to
the animated comedy, Antz. This is why many ”progressives” spontaneously
and emotionally react to skeptics of ideological dogma such as global warming,
life-style rights, a woman’s reproductive rights, and so forth.
Old
Gadfly: Are you exaggerating
reality, AM?
AM: No.
Contrary to mainstream media propaganda, there is compelling scholarship
to support what I said. See, for
example, Henry T. Edmondson III’s book, John
Dewey & the Decline of American Education:
How the Patron Saint of Schools Has Corrupted Teaching and Learning. Edmondson aggressively evaluated and
synthesized the literature on education within the context of Dewey’s
educational philosophy and its manifestation for the past century. For example, here is an illuminating
synthesis:
G. K. Chesterton
notes, “It ought to be the oldest things that are taught to the youngest
people.” Yet schools are failing to
transmit the American intellectual tradition and so are increasingly unable to
cope with the present or to anticipate wisely the future. Walter Lippman once observed that “what
enables men to know more than their ancestors is that they start with knowledge
of what their ancestors have already learned.”
“A society,” he added, “can be progressive only if it conserves its
tradition.” Chesterton explains that a
society carries “the responsibility of affirming the truth of our human
tradition and handing it on with a voice of authority, an unshakable
voice.” Yet he also notes, “From this
high audacious duty the moderns are fleeing on every side; and the only excuse
for them is (of course) that their modern philosophies are so half-baked and
hypocritical that they cannot convince themselves enough to convince even a new
born babe.” John Stuart Mill defines
education as “the culture which each generation purposely gives to those who
are to be its successors, in order to qualify them for at least keeping up, and
if possible for raising, the level of improvement which has been attained” (pp.
111-112).[4]
Edmundson
then follows with this conclusion:
Progressive education appears in many guises. Its animating principle is a rejection of
tradition; so that, ironically, progressive
education is anything but progressive.
Despite the rhetoric by which it is promoted, Deweyan-inspired education
is not progress toward something, it
is movement away from the best ideas
that the Western tradition and human experience have to offer (p. 112).
Old Gadfly: Education is critical in
shaping our culture. Have you noticed
the spike in suicide rates among our younger Americans? If progressive education was so superior to
traditional education, then why do we see so much despair and anger?
IM: In the late 50s, nearly 100% of the American
population was affiliated with a Christian or Jewish religion. Today that number is around 72%, according to
the Gallup Poll. Traditional
Judeo-Christian values are being replaced by secular human values and a progressive
patriotism to a Utopian future created by progressive ruling elite that
imprudently rejects the wisdom accumulated through our inherited tradition. Meanwhile, our younger generations will
suffer from the lack of a virtuous foundation to appreciate reality and to endure
the inevitable adversity of reality.
Old Gadfly: So, we’re talking about meaning and a sense
of moral purpose during our mortal lives.
This brings us to the second segment on Meet the Press that paid tribute to Charles Krauthammer.
AM: You are right that it was disingenuous. Todd failed to provide context—that
Krauthammer was a modern liberal, writing for the progressive magazine, The New Republic (created by Herbert
Croly), before he covered a story about President Reagan. In the process, he (a) learned things about
Reagan that were inconsistent with the progressive left’s portrayal of him and (b)
articulated the Reagan Doctrine. Krauthammer’s
courage and discernment to discover the truth that led to his conversion from
an idealistic world of “created truth and tradition” to a more conservative
view of a world filled with discovered truth, justice, beauty, and goodness. Krauthammer was a brilliant, athletic, and
handsome young man, whose life was irreversibly altered at the age of 22 from
an accident that left him a quadriplegic.
He never gave in to the temptation of despair. Todd only feigned a tribute to finish the
segment with a prediction Krauthammer made about a President Trump on November
8, 2016. In other words, Todd teed up
Krauthammer’s passing for a political jab at the current President. Progressives have an incurable disease of
using people (children, babies, immigrants, and a large set of various indentured
“identities”) for political gain. A
genuine tribute would have quoted Krauthammer’s last words: “I leave this life with no regrets. It was a wonderful life —
full and complete with the great loves and great endeavors that make it worth
living. I am sad to leave, but I leave with the knowledge that I lived the life
that I intended.”
Old Gadfly: Such empowering words. Krauthammer’s writing always seemed to be
grounded in a context of virtue. Our
Founders/Framers believed in the great American experiment of a Constitutional
Republic, grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition and the four cardinal
virtues it represents. Dealing with the current
and pressing “immigration issue” is needed and important. Hopefully, reasoned minds can approach the
issue within an undistorted context of virtue.
[1] For an excellent analysis of Herbert
Croly’s vision, advanced through his book, The
Promise of American Life, see Pearson, Sidney, (2013, March 14), Herbert D.
Croly: Apostle of progressivism, Political Process Report, The Heritage
Foundation. Retrieved on May 20, 2018
from https://www.heritage.org/political-process/report/herbert-d-croly-apostle-progressivism
[2] See, for example, Strauss, David A.,
(2010), The living constitution, (New
York, NY: Oxford University Press).
[3] The legal requirement for this
document was enacted by a Joint Resolution of Congress and as of today consists
of 2,880 pages. This document is
available at https://www.congress.gov/constitution-annotated/
[4] Here are the original sources for the
cited material: American Council of
Trustees and Alumni, To Reclaim a
Legacy: A Report on the Humanities in
Higher Education, located at www.higher-ed.org/resources/legacy.htm; William Kilpatrick, Why Johnny Can’t Tell Right from Wrong: And What We Can Do About It, (New York,
NY: Touchstone, 1992), p. 78; G. K.
Chesterton, What’s Wrong with the World,
vol. 4 in Collected Works (Ft Collins, CO:
Ignatius Press, 1986), p. 167; and John Stuart Mill, “Inaugural
Address,” in Essays on Equality, Law, and
Education, ed. John M. Robson and Stefan Collini, (Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 1984), p. 217.
