Linda Kimball
America's real source of evil: God-hating progressivism
By Linda Kimball
In his superbly researched text, "Illiberal Reformers: Race, Eugenics, & American Economics in the Progressive Era," Thomas C Leonard reveals how deeply in thrall early progressives were to some darkly disturbing ideas. These run the gamut from utopianism and sheer confidence in their own righteousness to eugenics, race science (evolutionary biology), and the pantheist divinization of nature, history, genes, matter, evolutionary energies, and the state. Economic progressives viewed the state as a divine instrument because a pantheist god-force worked through it thus was,
"...the greatest power for good that existed among men and women." (Dark Side of Progressivism Exposed: From Eugenics to 'Race Science,' Samuel Gregg, CNS News, Feb. 10, 2017)
Excluding and even eugenically exterminating unwanted classes of people is another dark idea. In his "Descent of Man" (1871), Charles Darwin even prophesied that the,
"... civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world." (ibid)
In 'America's Ruling Class' Angelo Codevilla details the rise of America's progressive movement. As far back as the 1820s J.C. Calhoun, an early progressive, was reading in the best London journals that,
"...different breeds of animals and plants produce inferior or superior results, slave owners were citing the Negroes' deficiencies to argue that they should remain slaves indefinitely. Lots of others were reading Ludwig Feuerbach's rendition of Hegelian philosophy, according to which biblical injunctions reflect the fantasies of alienated human beings or, in the young Karl Marx's formulation, that ethical thought is "superstructural" to material reality. By 1853, when Sen. John Pettit of Ohio called "all men are created equal" "a self-evident lie," much of America's educated class had already absorbed the "scientific" notion (which Darwin only popularized) that man is the product of chance mutation and natural selection of the fittest. Accordingly, by nature, superior men subdue inferior ones as they subdue lower beings or try to improve them as they please....As the 19th century ended, the educated class's religious fervor turned to social reform: they were sure that because man is a mere part of evolutionary nature, man could be improved, and that they, the most highly evolved of all, were the improvers." (America's Ruling Class – and the Perils of Revolution, Codevilla, July/Aug. 2010, The American Spectator)
As the years passed and their numbers grew their narcissism inflated together with,
"...their distaste for common Americans. Believing itself "scientific," this Progressive class sought to explain its differences from its neighbors in "scientific" terms. The most elaborate of these attempts was Theodor Adorno's widely acclaimed The Authoritarian Personality (1948). It invented a set of criteria by which to define personality traits, ranked these traits and their intensity in any given person on what it called the "F scale" (F for fascist), interviewed hundreds of Americans, and concluded that most who were not liberal Democrats were latent fascists. This way of thinking about non-Progressives filtered down to college curricula. In 1963-64 for example, I was assigned Herbert McCloskey's Conservatism and Personality (1958) at Rutgers's Eagleton Institute of Politics as a paradigm of methodological correctness. The author had defined conservatism in terms of answers to certain questions, had defined a number of personality disorders in terms of other questions, and run a survey that proved "scientifically" that conservatives were maladjusted ne'er-do-well ignoramuses. " (ibid)
Today's ruling class, from Boston to San Diego, is a God-hating confederacy formed by an educational system that exposes them to the same ideas and gives them remarkably uniform guidance, as well as tastes and habits:
" These amount to a social canon of judgments about good and evil, complete with secular sacred history, sins (against minorities and the environment), and saints. Using the right words and avoiding the wrong ones when referring to such matters – speaking the "in" language – serves as a badge of identity. Regardless of what business or profession they are in, their road up included government channels and government money because, as government has grown, its boundary with the rest of American life has become indistinct. Many began their careers in government and leveraged their way into the private sector. Some, e.g., Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner, never held a non-government job. Hence whether formally in government, out of it, or halfway, America's ruling class speaks the language and has the tastes, habits, and tools of bureaucrats. It rules uneasily over the majority of Americans not oriented to government."
The faith of America's Progressive Ruling Class rests on three pillars of sand. The two most important are evolutionary biology (race science) and Darwinism. The third, an arrogant assumption of god-like superiority, is enabled and empowered by the first two. Codevilla summarizes this attitude as "we" are the best and brightest while the rest of Americans are unevolved humanoids, hence,
"...retrograde, racist, and dysfunctional unless properly constrained."
Despite America's pervasive spiritual, moral, and intellectual pathology most Americans still retain faith in God (more or less) thus some sense of right and wrong, while the Ruling Class are characterized by depraved consciences and evil animalistic minds who imagine themselves as gods. So far from being the rational, scientifically enlightened, morally and intellectually superior beings they imagine themselves to be, America's Ruling Class are depraved monsters whose distaste for common Americans long ago devolved into hatred that now burns out of control because deplorable "hominids" dared to rebel against their betters and elect Donald Trump.
2017 @Linda Kimball
Related: Progressive leftism: the serpent's blood-soaked ideology of deception, malice, and madness
Linda writes on worldview and related subjects.
© Linda Kimball
April 7, 2017
In his superbly researched text, "Illiberal Reformers: Race, Eugenics, & American Economics in the Progressive Era," Thomas C Leonard reveals how deeply in thrall early progressives were to some darkly disturbing ideas. These run the gamut from utopianism and sheer confidence in their own righteousness to eugenics, race science (evolutionary biology), and the pantheist divinization of nature, history, genes, matter, evolutionary energies, and the state. Economic progressives viewed the state as a divine instrument because a pantheist god-force worked through it thus was,
"...the greatest power for good that existed among men and women." (Dark Side of Progressivism Exposed: From Eugenics to 'Race Science,' Samuel Gregg, CNS News, Feb. 10, 2017)
Excluding and even eugenically exterminating unwanted classes of people is another dark idea. In his "Descent of Man" (1871), Charles Darwin even prophesied that the,
"... civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world." (ibid)
In 'America's Ruling Class' Angelo Codevilla details the rise of America's progressive movement. As far back as the 1820s J.C. Calhoun, an early progressive, was reading in the best London journals that,
"...different breeds of animals and plants produce inferior or superior results, slave owners were citing the Negroes' deficiencies to argue that they should remain slaves indefinitely. Lots of others were reading Ludwig Feuerbach's rendition of Hegelian philosophy, according to which biblical injunctions reflect the fantasies of alienated human beings or, in the young Karl Marx's formulation, that ethical thought is "superstructural" to material reality. By 1853, when Sen. John Pettit of Ohio called "all men are created equal" "a self-evident lie," much of America's educated class had already absorbed the "scientific" notion (which Darwin only popularized) that man is the product of chance mutation and natural selection of the fittest. Accordingly, by nature, superior men subdue inferior ones as they subdue lower beings or try to improve them as they please....As the 19th century ended, the educated class's religious fervor turned to social reform: they were sure that because man is a mere part of evolutionary nature, man could be improved, and that they, the most highly evolved of all, were the improvers." (America's Ruling Class – and the Perils of Revolution, Codevilla, July/Aug. 2010, The American Spectator)
As the years passed and their numbers grew their narcissism inflated together with,
"...their distaste for common Americans. Believing itself "scientific," this Progressive class sought to explain its differences from its neighbors in "scientific" terms. The most elaborate of these attempts was Theodor Adorno's widely acclaimed The Authoritarian Personality (1948). It invented a set of criteria by which to define personality traits, ranked these traits and their intensity in any given person on what it called the "F scale" (F for fascist), interviewed hundreds of Americans, and concluded that most who were not liberal Democrats were latent fascists. This way of thinking about non-Progressives filtered down to college curricula. In 1963-64 for example, I was assigned Herbert McCloskey's Conservatism and Personality (1958) at Rutgers's Eagleton Institute of Politics as a paradigm of methodological correctness. The author had defined conservatism in terms of answers to certain questions, had defined a number of personality disorders in terms of other questions, and run a survey that proved "scientifically" that conservatives were maladjusted ne'er-do-well ignoramuses. " (ibid)
Today's ruling class, from Boston to San Diego, is a God-hating confederacy formed by an educational system that exposes them to the same ideas and gives them remarkably uniform guidance, as well as tastes and habits:
" These amount to a social canon of judgments about good and evil, complete with secular sacred history, sins (against minorities and the environment), and saints. Using the right words and avoiding the wrong ones when referring to such matters – speaking the "in" language – serves as a badge of identity. Regardless of what business or profession they are in, their road up included government channels and government money because, as government has grown, its boundary with the rest of American life has become indistinct. Many began their careers in government and leveraged their way into the private sector. Some, e.g., Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner, never held a non-government job. Hence whether formally in government, out of it, or halfway, America's ruling class speaks the language and has the tastes, habits, and tools of bureaucrats. It rules uneasily over the majority of Americans not oriented to government."
The faith of America's Progressive Ruling Class rests on three pillars of sand. The two most important are evolutionary biology (race science) and Darwinism. The third, an arrogant assumption of god-like superiority, is enabled and empowered by the first two. Codevilla summarizes this attitude as "we" are the best and brightest while the rest of Americans are unevolved humanoids, hence,
"...retrograde, racist, and dysfunctional unless properly constrained."
Despite America's pervasive spiritual, moral, and intellectual pathology most Americans still retain faith in God (more or less) thus some sense of right and wrong, while the Ruling Class are characterized by depraved consciences and evil animalistic minds who imagine themselves as gods. So far from being the rational, scientifically enlightened, morally and intellectually superior beings they imagine themselves to be, America's Ruling Class are depraved monsters whose distaste for common Americans long ago devolved into hatred that now burns out of control because deplorable "hominids" dared to rebel against their betters and elect Donald Trump.
2017 @Linda Kimball
Related: Progressive leftism: the serpent's blood-soaked ideology of deception, malice, and madness
Linda writes on worldview and related subjects.
© Linda Kimball
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