A real definition for progressivism

Moving backwards with the progressive liberal agenda

By Alisa Farenzena
From the September 2006 Print Edition

Ah, the start of a new school year — welcome back to the Bay Area, California’s hotbed of progressivism.

Sadly, we are not talking about the Progressive movement of Governor Hiram Johnson and other Republicans to clean up government and empower citizens. Today, the term ‘progressive’ refers to an ideology that is anything but progressive. It represents a variety of regressive proposals that would promote socialism, threaten the country’s very existence, and stoke the flames of racism.

You’re bound to encounter a plethora of student groups here that claim to be progressive. Heck, there’s even a Berkeley Facebook group devoted to progressivism — never mind that it has less than 40 members.

Campus progressives are often quite vocal in class discussions at Cal. They will be the ones insisting corporations and individuals should not be motivated by profit. They don’t seem to realize that their "progressive" goals require money. If they discourage people from making money and succeed in chasing businesses away, who will pay the taxes to fund these goals?

Progressives can do more real harm when they stray from the campus and run for local office. This is the case with fourth-year Cal student Jason Overman, a current member of Berkeley’s Rent Stabilization Board. The progressive student will probably appear on the ballot this November as a candidate for the Berkeley City Council, running against incumbent Councilman Gordon Wozniak, "a moderate liberal on a council split between moderates and progressives," according to a July 17 Daily Californian article. In Berkeley, simply being liberal is no longer good enough; one must be a "progressive."

The same situation appears throughout the Bay Area. In San Francisco, the Board of Supervisors is similarly split between moderate liberals and progressives — and by "moderate liberals," we are not talking moderate by normal standards. Note that the entire board, including its more moderate members, voted in favor of a socialized health plan this summer. Like the Berkeley City Council, progressive members of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors also placed on the November ballot an initiative advocating the impeachment of the president and vice president. San Francisco’s school board is also split between moderate liberals and progressives, with a couple of the progressives being registered with the Green Party.

In addition to the Democrats and Greens who are the progressive trendsetters, the movement also includes your garden-variety Berkeley anarchists. Their idea of progress is to overthrow a government that was founded to provide more rights than most places on earth. Oddly enough, they seem to think the best way to overthrow the U.S. government is to break store windows. Hate to break it to you guys, but Urban Outfitters and the Gap are not government entities. Thankfully, though, anarchists cannot do much lasting damage because many of them do not even believe in voting.

Another popular "progressive" staple is support for illegal immigration. Since 1985, San Francisco has forbidden "city employees from enforcing U.S. immigration law," according to a July 12 article in the San Francisco Chronicle. In addition to subverting the law, this goal of progressives also relates to the overall goal of eliminating the nation in another way: Progressives participating in the UC Berkeley instance of the widespread pro-illegal demonstrations last spring argued that the United States should — and will — cease to exist so the land can be incorporated into Mexico. With Mexico’s plethora of rights, safe communities, clean drinking water, and thriving economy, incorporating California into Mexico would obviously be a "progressive" step forward for Californians.

In addition to arguing that illegal immigration is perfectly acceptable, many of these same progressives go the extra mile to stoke the flames of racism. One of the most popular methods on campus is advocating affirmative action. These folks feel that it is progressive to give certain people unfair advantages, solely based on their ethnicity. They would like nothing more than to return our state to a time of de jure racial discrimination.

There is nothing progressive about the current trend of progressivism. The movement’s activists seek to bring about all sorts of racial, intra-nation, and class warfare. If the so-

called progressives had their way, they would take us back to the Watts race riots, the Civil War, or perhaps the Bolshevik Revolution. Real progressive, isn’t it?

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