The Mal-lady of Progressivism: Elizabeth Warren
September 23, 2011 6 Comments
Here’s Progressive Elizabeth Warren on the debt crisis and fair taxation. To support her Massachusetts Senate Campaign,
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“We the people (47% % of us who don’t pay any taxes) made you wealthy. We the people (47% of us who don’t pay any taxes) made you safe and secure. We the people (47% of us who don’t pay any taxes) are the roads to your success.”
Feel good now? How about a social contract that makes everyone an investor in America?
Progressives like Elizabeth like to shame people into a response to her ‘humane’ cause. Don’t be shamed. Give to others out of a heart of love. Leave others to do the same.
If Elizabeth and her progressives buddies want to help others there are many ways to do so other than conscripting another’s personal property for their own ends.
It should be noted: Many people left socialist and communist eastern European countries (and Cuba) and came to America to be free from the tyranny of economic despotism created under the banner of “the common good”. Modern day examples of “common good” socialist systems beginning to fold: Greece, Spain & Portugal. “Don’t do these things!”
It also should be noted: Any country which increasingly embraces secularism will become progressive in its politic. A social-economic-moral vacuum is created thereby.
Cindy Wity 
i hope, in the spirit of your commentary, you stop using roads, education systems, fire and police services and arrange your own protection from foreign enemies. i’d hate to think you were being hypocritical…
much like i wouldn’t expect you to destroy all structures enacted by government simply out of spite for social responsibility, you should not expect the destruction of all personal wealth to arise from our spite for greedy individualism. perhaps your exaggeration is used to prove a weaker point?
your self righteous diatribe is more is made even less effective by your unsupported generalizations, and the strangely alien way which you use a “humane shame” argument (one which you subscribe to, just as long as god causes the shame, right?).
sigh…please don’t believe me to be anything but sympathietic to your cause, but your conclusions lead one to believe that you envision there to be no such thing as the common good, just collective individual goods, and this attitude is the main reason for tyranny throughout the world. without a common good, sacrifice for collective individuals does seem illogical, and in the shadow provided, oligarchy finds it’s most solid grip amongst the selfishness and ego of personal interest.
the research is out here, in the world, so don’t hide yourself away in ancient texts… the other humans have a lot more to teach you, if you’ll let ’em…
regards,
-jon
Huh?!
I pay taxes, a lot of taxes and I give.
God & shame? You own that.
…”my cause?“
…”no such thing as a common good?”
“…ancient texts?” You mean the Bible? Anything true is not new.
“…oligarchy finds it’s most solid grip amongst the selfishness and ego of personal interest.!?” (baloney ready for the grinder!)
Sadly, this projection jabberwocky keeps coming from the cyber-Machiavellian left.
I am a member of the country class. If YOU are worried about oligarchy then read this:
http://spectator.org/archives/2010/07/16/americas-ruling-class-and-the#
My cause, if anything, is to follow Christ even in this world of rabid Progressivism. I firmly believe in helping and giving to others. I do so. I also firmly believe that people should not be forced to give to others. Here’s a recent post:
https://sallyparadise.wordpress.com/2011/09/17/the-lord-hears-the-cry-of-the-poor-all-others-listen-up/
If progressives were as capacious with their giving as they are with their verbose rants using “unsupported generalizations” the world may just be a better place.
oh my, sally… “cyber-machiavellian left”.. i love it! i also love the way in which you claim intimate knowledge of the “capacious”ness of my giving, the object of my fear, and the intention of my response. i assure you, i make no such pretensions as to the limits of my own insight into your life.
i merely meant to suggest the disinterest or distain with which you treat the passionate pleas of someone you may not agree with, give the impression that you consider yourself insulated from concerns of others, and that you must somehow reach through the insulation to help those ‘less fortunate’ then yourself. i am sure it is great comfort, as it must allow you to justify the blind eye you turn to all but your chosen few, but it denies the intricate interdependancy that permeates all human existence.
i’m pretty sure jesus got it, from what i’ve read…
though, now, in writing it down, i can see several parallels to the views you take and the typical judeo-christian mythology and dogma… chosen few, individual-oriented divine prosperity, a fatalistic view of the future…
and most of all, a distrust of all humanity as a general rule, until such humanity can filter through the religious strainer you erect around you. (not happy with the metaphor, but it’ll have to do). this distinction, i believe, allows you the freedom to consider yourself separate from humanities teeming masses, and thus not liable for their downfall.
is such a view is contrary to the teaching of jesus? i will leave that question to an ardent supporter of him, but i think you’ll find it is not what his words and actions would suggest…
brings me back to my private christian academy days,..and the curt words of teachers looking to end the argument without having to win it.
i await your response with baited breath, please include more truly memorable descriptions of me! …
regards
-jon
Jonnydropout is the only description you need..
If you read my blog you would know that I am anything but insulated from the world. I haven’t “dropped out” of anything and nor do I desire sainthood. In fact, I am a Hobbit living dead square in middle earth, relating to others daily and now trying to destroy the One Ring (that seeks to rule them all.)
Jesus knew the heart of man. Recorded by the eyewitness Mark, Jesus said,
“For from within, out of a person’s heart, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, wickedness, deceit, lustful desires, envy, slander, pride, and foolishness.”
Beyond this, I agree with playwright David Mamet on the tragic view of life:
“My revelation came upon reading Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom. It was that there is a cost to everything, that nothing is without cost, and that energy spent on A cannot be spent on B, and that this is the meaning of cost–it represents the renunciation of other employments of the money….[M]oney spent on more crossing guards cannot be spent on books. Both are necessary, a choice must be made, and…this is the Tragic view of life.”
And, I agree with his statement:
“My question, then, was, that as we cannot live without Government, how must we deal with those who will be inclined to abuse it–the politicians and their manipulators? The answer to that question, I realized, was attempted in the U.S. Constitution–a document based not upon the philosophic assumption that people are basically good, but on the tragic confession of the opposite view.”
And, also, this one:
“The great wickedness of Liberalism, I saw, was that those who devise the ever new State Utopias, whether crooks or fools, set out to bankrupt and restrict not themselves, but others.”
…Hence the post above. God’s Peace.
sally,
quotes may silence your nagging doubts, but please understand, i have no interest in the opinions of dead people… i commented on your blog, because i was interested in your thoughts, although i realize now that i may have been asking for blood from a stone…
it is not that the wisdom of the ages is invalid, just that i could (and do) read it on my own, so your scattered interpretations of incomplete and misapplied bullshit from uncredited or unconnected sources rings sort of hollow…
perhaps one day you will find a voice of your own… until then, i will refrain from entertaining the fantasy that you might offer some sort of intellectual challenge to myself…
you may continue to self-flagelate amongst the rightwing homophobes…
regards,
-jon
Thanks for commenting.
“Truly, you have a dizzying intellect.”
I’ll leave you to your mental masturbation & your ad hominems.
BTW: Hayek IS dead but playwright Mamet is very much alive. He wrote this book in 2011: The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of the American Culture. It sounds like you have the Secret Knowledge.
http://www.amazon.com/Secret-Knowledge-Dismantling-American-Culture/dp/1595230769