How We Got Here

Progressivism. That's how.

I really enjoy my walks/runs/drags with Murph, my 75-pound buddy dog, in the early mornings. Things are quiet and peaceful in the predawn hours, allowing for much synapse firing and dendrite growing. Weird thoughts this morning. I don’t do drugs, so no idea what brain chemistry was at work today but for some reason I was thinking about the Talking Heads - and in particular - these lyrics from their song “Once in a Lifetime”:

You may find yourself
Living in a shotgun shack
And you may find yourself
In another part of the world
And you may find yourself
Behind the wheel of a large automobile
And you may find yourself in a beautiful house
With a beautiful wife
And you may ask yourself
“Well ... how did I get here?”

I really started thinking about the question as it applies to our current times and wondered “Well, just how in the hell DID we get here?”

History indicates that America was on a path that more closely matched the founding intent of our nation and far more aligned with the constitutional principles and federalism up until the Civil War. It certainly wasn’t perfect but the philosophical gymnastics surrounding the westward expansion and the issue of whether any states should be “free” or “slave” states began to redefine what independence and individual liberty meant. A period of ideological experimentation began in the post-Civil War era as Reconstruction took a far harsher turn than the vision of reunification that died with Lincoln.

Those new “experiments” included Marxism (Marx published his Communist Manifesto in 1848 and his three-volume Das Kapital in 1867 - 1894) closely intertwined with the founding of the Fabian Society in 1884 in the UK (promoting “democratic socialism) and the rise of the progressive movement in the US in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s.

Some would claim it was the American Civil War (and slavery) that changed the America into what we have become today, some would point to WWI, the Great Depression, or WWII, but my reading of history is that it was the progressive movement and its evolution into an ideology and political party that formed a basis for governance that truly changed America.

I vaguely remembered nodding in agreement with what Michael Anton wrote at the very end of Chapter 2 of his 2020 book titled “The Stakes: America at the Point of No Return”. In it, Anton argues that progressivism, from its early 20th-century origins under figures like Woodrow Wilson to its evolution through the 1960s New Left and into contemporary “woke” ideology, fundamentally undermines the American order by rejecting the Constitution’s fixed limits and moral anchors. I relistened to it this morning and I’ll try to summarize his points:

Regarding the Constitution, progressives view the Founding document not as a timeless safeguard against tyranny but as an outdated obstacle to “expert” rule and social engineering. They dismiss the Founders idea of natural rights in favor of the idea that they arise out of historical and scientific progress, they believe that the present is far superior to the past, assuming that what we know today is greater than what we knew then – and as Woodrow Wilson said, societal reliance from the man of the people should transfer to the man of the school, implying that technocracy is the way to a better world. This has led to an “administrative state” - a “cancerous fourth branch” - where unelected bureaucrats and judges (what Anton calls “kritarchy” - rule by judges) impose policies without democratic accountability, circumventing the separation of powers.

Modern progressivism revives antebellum ideas like John C. Calhoun’s “concurrent majoritarianism” (or “group rights”), where minorities (now redefined as identity-based coalitions) cannot be outvoted by majorities. This inverts the Founders’ emphasis on equal individual liberty into a system of enforced equity, breeding division, censorship, and selective justice. Anton notes how “social justice” innovations (e.g., nationwide rulings on issues like gay marriage originating from progressive states) spread via judicial fiat, not consent.

Progressivism assaults the unifying “ethos” of citizenship - patriotic assimilation, family formation, and moral clarity - replacing it with relativism, identity politics, and contempt for the “deplorables” outside the elite class. This fosters a “managerial leftist-libertarianism” (a neoliberal oligarchy blending big tech, finance, and government) to enforce open borders, surveillance, and cultural homogenization, all while hollowing self-governance.

Without reversal, Anton warns, this ethos cements a one-party, extractive regime - exemplified by California’s descent into “anarcho-tyranny” (lenient on elite crimes, harsh on dissent) - that views traditional Americans as threats to be managed, not citizens to be represented. The stakes are existential: restoring the original ethos or facing a “point of no return” into unaccountable rule.

Anton, who is far smarter than Murph and me put together, confirms what I have been saying and writing for over two decades – the progressive-influenced elite’s “vindictive” predations have already transformed America from a regime of consent and unity into one of contempt and perpetual division, making any presidential election Republicans do not win a potential last stand for the Founders’ vision – the Biden-Harris term certainly confirmed that Democrats are merely progressives who hold open contempt for our founding ideals, our Constitution, and anyone not sufficiently progressive.

Their desperate fight with Trump after the 2016 election and his frontal assault after his win in 2024 proves the broader thesis that that only bold, unapologetic action can reclaim self-rule.