The Power-Mad Utopians

[Kathianne]

I'm off to work in a few, just skimmed this, sort of got his idea. I don't agree totally about GW, but it's an interesting read for sure:

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/power-mad-progressive-utopianism-must-be-stopped


The Power-Mad Utopians
America needs a broad popular front to stop the revolution from above that is transforming the country BY
MICHAEL LIND

What happens in politics when one major party, or a major faction in both parties, commits itself to doomed utopian projects of social and economic engineering and seeks to capture and use government to impose its vision from above? In such cases ordinary political consensus and compromise become irrelevant. What is needed, in such cases, is the broadest possible coalition to defeat the mad and impossible schemes of these utopians.


Twice in the last half century utopian politics has emerged in the U.S.—once with the Republican Party as its vehicle, and now with the Democratic Party as its base. Old-fashioned conservative “fusionism”—a synthesis of anti-communism, moderate free market economics, and the genteel traditionalism represented by Russell Kirk—was replaced in the wake of the Cold War by what might be called Fusionism 2.0 and its allies on the hawkish left. This post-Cold War coalition, which culminated in the disastrous presidency of George W. Bush, was a radical movement, not “conservative” in any sense. It was based on the simultaneous promotion of three utopian projects: spreading “the global democratic revolution” through “wars of choice” and “humanitarian interventions” in the Middle East and elsewhere; radical libertarianism in trade and immigration policy, combined with the repeal of the New Deal through the privatization of Social Security and Medicare; and the imposition of “family values” as defined by the evangelical Protestant minority that formed the base for the Christian Coalition and the Moral Majority.

...

Today, the threat of utopian politics comes from the radicalized center-left, not from the radicalized center-right. The term “progressivism” was revived in the 1980s and 1990s by Clintonite “Third Way” Democrats to distinguish their business-and-bank-friendly version of the center-left from the older New Deal farmer-labor version. But by the 2020s, “progressivism” came to mean something quite different—a commitment to utopian social engineering projects even more radical than those envisioned by the crackpot Bush-era neocons, libertarians, and religious right.


Three social engineering projects define progressivism in the 2020s: the Green Project, the Quota Project, and the Androgyny Project.

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[Gunny]

I'm off to work in a few, just skimmed this, sort of got his idea. I don't agree totally about GW, but it's an interesting read for sure:

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/power-mad-progressive-utopianism-must-be-stoppedAnd here I thought your post was "it" which I found confusing. Following the link I see that is where the "Paul Harvey" is :)

I am going to have to digest this. In general, I agree with the author. "Just people" need to put aside petty differences and come together and reject this faux-utopian BS being shoved down our throats. I use the term "faux" where the author does not because there is nothing utopian about current events.

The author obviously leans leftward. His view of history is a tad slanted in that direction. Be that as it may, I think his primary message is correct. My biggest criticism in that regard is he's surrounded his primary message with too much hubris, forcing the reader to search for said message.

That's my quick take, anyway :)

[Gunny]

While the author seems more right than left and apparently considers himself one of the enlightened ones, seems to me with his labeling, he's hard on the left, harder on GWB, but pretty-much gives Trump a pass as if he was doing the right thing. While I consider specifically that a debatable topic, I do not consider the man himself - Trump - any such thing. Flawed idealism or not, there's no question he is (flawed), and not the person to be attempting to implement such.

[Kathianne]

While the author seems more right than left and apparently considers himself one of the enlightened ones, seems to me with his labeling, he's hard on the left, harder on GWB, but pretty-much gives Trump a pass as if he was doing the right thing. While I consider specifically that a debatable topic, I do not consider the man himself - Trump - any such thing. Flawed idealism or not, there's no question he is (flawed), and not the person to be attempting to implement such.

Hmm, I read it more as an indictment about the leftists today-while seeing the 'utopians' of the right more in the past:


...

The Green Project or Green New Deal is not satisfied with decarbonizing energy sources. It invokes climate change as an excuse to radically restructure the society of the U.S. and other advanced industrial democracies, from the way that food is grown to where people live to how people behave. Under the banner of the Green New Deal or the Green Transition, various lesser ideological projects on the left—veganism, replacing cars and trucks with mass transit, urban densification, anti-natalism—have rallied, even though none of these is necessary for decarbonizing the energy supply.

The Quota Project, embodied in the rote bureaucratic phrase “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI), is another utopian project. Its goal is the radical restructuring of the U.S. and other Western societies on the basis of racial quotas, so that all racial and ethnic groups are represented in equal proportions in all occupations, classes, academic curriculums, and even literary and artistic canons. DEI is affirmative action on LSD.


For the Quota Project, anti-racism is the public justification. But quota-based tokenism is not a solution for specific cases of discrimination against individuals—which can and should be dealt with by race-neutral, anti-discrimination laws. Nor does the Quota Project have any real solutions to offer in the case of class or cultural differences which—even in the absence of racism, conscious or “structural”—would result in some groups doing better than others in various occupations. Like the Green Transition, the Quota Project is a radical utopian program of social reconstruction in search of an excuse that might justify it.


The third of the three utopian projects that define contemporary trans-Atlantic progressivism is the Androgyny Project. This goes far beyond civil rights and humane treatment for victims of gender dysphoria and has nothing to do with the hard-won rights of gay men and lesbians. The Androgyny Project holds that gender identity is independent of biological sex and purely subjective. If a middle-aged man claims that he is a woman, then progressives favor requiring local government to retroactively falsify his birth certificate to show that he was “really” born female and “misassigned at birth.”


Far more comprehensive than “trans rights,” which affect fewer than 1% of the population, the Androgyny Project seeks to redefine all male and female human beings as generic, androgynous humanoids whose sex is a matter of subjective self-definition rather than objective reality.


The bizarre theory that sex is entirely a social construction has led much of the trans-Atlantic establishment to attempt to impose speech codes on society. Instead of “mothers,” the androgynists insist that we say “birthing people.” A “woman” becomes a “person with a cervix.” It is easy to get confused by the weird jargon. During the 2020 presidential primaries, Democratic presidential candidate Julian Castro declared that every “trans female”—that is, a biological male incapable of pregnancy and childbirth—should have access to abortion, when he meant to say every “trans male” (that is, female).

...

[Gunny]

Hmm, I read it more as an indictment about the leftists today-while seeing the 'utopians' of the right more in the past:I got that as the "here and now" threat. I've stated before that the left, on its current course, cannot sustain itself.

He covers the right's "past" because that's all there is to cover. There has really been only fragments of a divided Republican Party since 2008. Started before that, but they at least pretended to follow GWB. The right would have to have a platform, supported by its constituency, before any of it could be labeled "utopian". At best, the GOP is struggling to survive with zero survival instincts.

The left/Dems & supporting cast are the current threat to the US, as exemplified by current Administration and whoever the Hell is running it.

I also consider that his solution has been tried the past two Presidential elections and midterms with disastrous results. I think the people he is speaking of are waiting for someone they can get behind/support. Until that happens, his desired outcome is just a dream.

My opinion, of course :)