Joel Kotkin wrote for the New Republic: Self-proclaimed progressives in California today are basically socialists in Democratic clothing, who favor using state government to redistribute wealth and power to deserving state workers, favored minority and sexual-preference groups, and various servants of statism, such as trial lawyers.
Why am I even speaking about this you ask? Lately I have noticed with more regularity the use of the term "progressive cause" when Liberals are speaking. I am concerned about the youth of this country, who do not have the institutional memory of the Soviet Union and Communism, who are taken in by this lofty phrase.
Progressive sounds new, and it is natural for young people to gravitate to anything that is different than what their parents espouse. But there is also danger in the phrase.
Leon Trotsky, when interviewed in 1937 about principles and tactics in war, used the word progressive nine times. Trotsky, you will remember, was a Russian revolutionary and Communist theorist who helped Lenin and built up the army; he was ousted from the Communist Party by Stalin for his opposition to the authoritarianism of Stalin and his emphasis on world revolution.
In the article Trotsky is quoted as saying: The proletariat of a capitalist country which finds itself in alliance with the USSR must retain fully and completely its irreconcilable hostility to the imperialist government of its own country. (my emphasis)
Sound familiar?
Whether or not the anti-war crowd has knowingly embraced the teachings of Trotsky, a communist, and others that are clearly communist remains to be seen, but the facts are striking.
