If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.- Sun Tzu
Meet Herbert Croly, or as his detractors called him "Crolier than thou." If you really want to know where modern day progressivism gets its roots, then look no further. In 1909, he published a book that was practically required reading in many colleges and universities during the 1960's titled The Promise of American Life. This book, as well as his 1915 book, Progressive Democracy, is to modern day liberal progressivism as the Constitution is to liberty of this country.
In Promise, Croly argues that America can achieve progressivism if it couples "Hamiltonian" means with "Jeffersonion" ends; Hamilton believed in a strong, central government and Jefferson believed in individual freedom. Once you think about that for a moment, you soon begin to realize that these two beliefs can't quite coexist once put into practice.
He stated that, "To achieve a better future, Americans had to be emancipated from their past." Essentially, this means to free ones self from the history of our country and of the blood and sacrifice of our Founding Fathers who created America, in other words to rewrite American history. His mantra was to refound this country and it's Judeo-Christian roots into a French type democracy, based on the Comtean philosophy of worshiping society through Rousseuauean means, which is the belief that those of enlightenment should rule.
I guess one could put the full blame on bad parenting that caused this man to have such perverse and despicable beliefs. Born to successful journalists, David and Jane Cunningham, each had strong beliefs on the nuclear family and society. David Croly was a sexual reformer who held the belief that sexual repression was the cause of social disorder and Jane, "Jennie June" Cunningham was a staunch critic of marriage and a feminist through and through.
Croly had nothing but contempt for English liberalism and preferred the German version. He felt that America's inequality in regards to the economy was caused by capitalist individualism, who's only concern was the bottom line and needed to be fixed by nothing short of state intervention.
Why his detractors referred to him as "Crolier than thou" was due to having a God like attitude that he could lead America into this Utopian society. By giving all manner of trust to the enlightened and educated class he stated, " Democracy must stand or fall on a platform of possible human perfectibility." These are the words of a Marxist radical.
Croly extolled the virtues of the educated and artisan class and was hostile to those Americans who didn't share his view. He also believed that the collective power should be laid at the feet of these enlightened and erudite people in order to reshape the country, because they were the only class of Americans that could do it; the common man was too stupid to lead themselves.
In his other book, Progressive Democracy, which was so intertwined with The Promise he said he should have wrote them collectively, he set his sights on the Constitution. In this book, he believed that the Constitution and those who lived by it, had spawned the "monarchy of the Word." Because of the way in which the Founding Fathers framed the Constitution, it limited government's role in American's day to day lives and was designed to set the conditions and environment to allow citizens to fail or succeed on their own merits.
And Herbert Croly argued that it stymied his version of Democracy, which he felt should be more positive to the industrial workers of the world or what is referred to as syndicalism, or better known as "Workers of the world unite..." Croly's vision of America was to dissolve the federal government and give authority to the individual states, then to organize them into classes from educated elite at the top to the lowly wage earner at the bottom. If you think about it for a moment, California could be one example of this idea when you look at their financial problems. Environmentalist zealots, racial interest groups, illegal aliens and unions have caused that states economic strife.
Liberal progressivism is a mental attitude that takes away individual freedoms and liberty and gives them to the elite class. Time and time again, history has proven that it doesn't work, yet these people continue to push this country in that direction.
Patrick Henry said, "Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined."
Although not a Founding Father, he knew all too well that the value placed on liberty should be cause enough to use force, if necessary, to preserve it and over two hundred years later another man knew it as well, when he said,
"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same."
References cited -
The Promise of American Life
Progressive Democracy
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