Progressivism is so toxically stupid a philosophy of government it’s contagious. The progressive mind is 100% embodied in something called Taylorism, which all the true progressives, the Crolys, the Steffenses, the Woodrow Wilsons of this world thought to marvelous for words, ditto Eugenics. You should know what Eugenics is; but do you recall what Taylorism is? Look it up. It ain’t pretty. It subsumes every progressive pipe dream in its motivations and delectations from wage-and-proce controls to government-run medical care.

And that brings me to another irksome thing: the titanic hubris in deliberately styling oneself a “progressive” or labeling one’s party the “Progressive Party,” as if what “progress” is blandly uncontroversial and you know exactly what it is. I mean there may still be a hint of the old-time Andy Jackson–style political rowdyism in the Democratic Party; and the Republican Party, for good and sufficient reasons, does favor mob-free politics to the extent possible. Yet no member of either party with his head on straight thinks of himself or his party, I’d bet, when he reads, for example, that the founding ideal of the United States are “Democratic” or when the last paragraph of the Constitution declares that each State is guaranteed “a Republican form of government.”

Not so with your typical progressive dingbat. He believes that what his party espouses is progress and nothing but. Just one example, I have met dozens of liberals who seriously believe that a “progressive income tax” is called so because it is “progress” to tax the wealthy at a higher RATE than the less fortunate rather than describing a system of graduated rates. Why is altering the rate in that way progress? I dunno. And I seriously doubt that were a gun held to the heads of the average progressive’s children he could tell you either.

Perhaps it would be more helpful to recommend something like a spectrum from smallness to bigness, where on one side you have a Jeffersonian society with thriving small organic institutions, businesses and a limited role for Government, and then on the other extreme a Hobbesian Leviathan like governmental system, and somewhere in the middle would be a society like our own that has small instutions and organizations that are struggling, as the Biggies, ie Big Government, Big Business, etc. are in the ascendant.

Just one more observation. It seems to me that there is a kind of irreversibility to when a society moves up the bigness spectrum. The Leviathan extends itself into areas where once mediating communities played a role, those communities fade away, and with them the conditions for their sustainability, such that even if at some point in the future we suddenly realize their value, it will be too late.

By the way, read your first installment on Rooty Conservatism, and am looking forward to your continuing thoughts.

When RD speaks of it…it is a veiled critique of Krugman…who has actually argued many different ways that the U.S. cannot be Sweden…(agreeing on some level with RD?) What does RD think of the new geographic economics? (he doesn’t?)

But take the video game: Skyrim…one faction says “Nord is for the Nords”…It is a pretty popular video game (fairly fun to play).

I don’t know if this is the sort of “Liberal Facism” Jonah Goldberg was talking about… but a lot of “white supremacists” are also big on selling the Swedes as an example of a politics based on familly/race/tribe. I assume they all cheer for the Vikings or Greenbay live in Minnesota and Wisconsin, they probably brew mead, read Beowulf in high school english and involve themselves in constitutional controversies over the teaching of German…

Since Sweden means “one’s own”, referring to one’s own Germanic tribe… the party that wants us to be most like sweden is also in some sense the most racist party, albeit it is also mixed in with a false bravado-appreciation of colder weather and general contempt of mediteranian peoples weakened by the climes, pace Montesquieu. Florida is where you go when you are old and feeble…

It isn’t Wisconsin’s fault that it came into the union as a Free State and geography+climate largely discouraged black folks from moving there…but it might be instrumentally useful to hacks! (we aren’t racists! We only use racial pew data to rig house districts!…it is really the liberal fascists! yeah don’t look at Ohio…over in Wisconsin…where they play Skyrim and drink mead!)

While I think progressivism can refer to a theory of intellectual property given its name by the progress clause in the american constituition and synching up with potentially misguided “conservative” attacks upon the 9th Circuit…. Progressivism of the more “Sweedish” variety is basically a defunct political party in Wisconsin history, whose children were partially awaken by recent attempts to dramatically alter labor law in a state with a certain sort of progressive identity. Ironically this side will still fight for Hollywood and thus come under the tent of constitutional progressivism because it was defeated by witch hunt Joe McCarthy!

I think it quasi-plausible that certain states in the union are more progressive and “swedish” than others, and that chief among these is the state of Wisconsin.

Why do “conservatives” hate Wisconsin and California?

Why did Jonah Goldberg create a fictional work describing a hypothetical Liberal Facism, that due in part to racial/national heritage and climate was only viable in Wisconsin? Why the constant war against a pro-labor but quasi dead political party in Wisconsin history?

Republicans in Wisconsin unsatisfied with Republican aid and support for the middle class invented progressivism. Unhappy with the loss of power/cronyism another set of republicans hatched a plot. Loomis(the last progressive governor in Wisconsin) was potentially even poisoned before he could take office.(but the source is not credible), in any case the La Follete familly disbanded the progressive party and rejoined the fight for the soul of the republican party. Enter a world historical hack, by the name of Joe McCarthy, who had spent all his time poisoning and deconstructing the progressives, which would allow him to analogize them to the communists and go on an all out hunt against “leftism” in Hollywood and all of America…

So your founders vs. progressives is more easily progressives v. Joe McCarthy… or a branch that thinks folks in Wisconsin are liberal facist by virtue of looking like Swedes.

No one even tries to explain that there is nothing wrong with California or Wisconsin, let alone Sweden. So the thinking goes that one party is for being american in a Joe McCarty vein which would work to exclude swedish states like Wisconsin, and lefty commy hollywood and California! (question: where will you get your cheese(they just happen to be leading producers)? ed: Cheese is for the “French”!)

It should be noted Douthat’s use of Sweden was motivated by Krugman’s invoking of Sweden as an example for the US policy. Similar exchanges like that between Manzi and Chait are along the same lines.

Whether we like it or not, this is where the debate is happening and I think it makes perfect sense, as does it seems, to a lot of smarter conservatives than I.