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Saturday, January 25, 2025

Will We Be Ruled by Progressive Myths or by Common Sense?

I'm reading a very interesting book called Excuse Me, Professor: Challenging the Myths of Progressivism. It's ten years old, but myths generally go on and on for decades, so it's a very timely book. We need to bring back common sense and stifle the urge of the powerful to rule us all with their tyrannical ideologies!

Speaking of ideologies, we've just lived through a tsunami of so-called progressivism that's done nothing to advance the progress of the United States. In fact, we've regressed in more areas than I can think of. What did the Biden/Harris administration accomplish? We're less safe, we're poorer, we're weaker on the international scene, etc. Average Americans, unlike the invaders at the Southern border, got nothing from the former administration except misery. Meanwhile, Big Pharma, Big Media, some Big Business, etc. raked in multi-millions along with the Biden crime family, Anthony Fauci, and select  cronies like Zelensky and his political allies. Sad to say, our Church leaders also picked the taxpayers' pockets.

Progressives, with mantra-like propaganda, spin the myths that undermine freedom and democracy. This morning, I read an essay in Excuse Me, Professor by Lawrence W. Reed, "The Economy Needs More Planning -- Central Planning, That Is." For the progressive, everything is about top down management, often tyrannical, which is exactly the opposite of the Catholic teaching of subsidiarity. The Acton Institute defines subsidiarity this way:

One of the key principles of Catholic social thought is known as the principle of subsidiarity. This tenet holds that nothing should be done by a larger and more complex organization which can be done as well by a smaller and simpler organization. In other words, any activity which can be performed by a more decentralized entity should be. This principle is a bulwark of limited government and personal freedom. It conflicts with the passion for centralization and bureaucracy characteristic of the Welfare State.

When I was a girl, I had a civics book which emphasized the family as the basic building block of society. Parents were the first government, managing the home and exercising control over its young and immature citizens. Today, we've moved from the family to the global village where parents are viewed as incompetent and government claims to be able to raise children better than they can, to the degree that there is an entire establishment focused on removing children and placing them in foster care. [See Out of Control: Who's Watching Our Child Protection Agencies? by Brenda Scott]

What struck me reading this morning's essay was the focus on thanksgiving. Reed began the article with a quote from one of my favorite authors, G.K. Chesterton:

Thanksgiving is just one day each year, but because we have so much to be thankful for, maybe it ought to be every day.

G.K. Chesterton once said, "I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder."

Think about that, especially Chesterton's use of the word "wonder." It means "awe" or "amazement." The least thankful people tend to be those who are rarely awed or amazed, in spite of the extraordinary beauty, gifts and achievements that envelop us.

Chesterton was (and is) an icon of creativity and common sense

Reed, an economist, goes on to describe all the wonders of the modern age brought about, not by government "central planners," but by the creativity, incentive, and hard work of individuals. Government controls, in fact, strangle creativity. He writes:

When we're children, parents are our central planners but the point of adulthood is that at some point, parents should leave us alone. We tend to go further when the environment allows each of us the freedom to plan for ourselves. Amazing things happen when we do.

The government should stop treating everyone like children and follow the Jeffersonian concept that the best government is the least government. Which leads us back to the beginning. When government leaves us alone, wonderful things happen. Trump emphasized that yesterday in the roundtable with representatives in California addressing the response to the wildfires. Let people get in and clean up their own property. Stop the government stranglehold requiring permits that take citizens months or even years to get. Reed's comments could easily be applied to California's situation:

The more one allows the world's wonders to witness to him, the less he'll want to play God with other people's lives or the economy that their trillions of individual decisions create.

One more point about "planning." The question is never whether there will be planning but rather, as wise observers of human society have pointed out, whether the plans of some individuals with little power are displaced by those who have more power. "The more the State 'plans,'" wrote [F.A.] Hayek [Nobel Peace prize winner in 1974], "the more difficult planning becomes for the individual"

Pray for our poor country that the next four years and beyond will see a rollback of government control and an increase in individual freedom. Let us pray that such freedom is guided by an increasing desire by all of us to rule our lives by God's will. If we begin every day thanking Him, we'll be off to a good start. 

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