Progressivism

Populism & Progressivism: Then & Now

With the Trump presidency now well underway, an inescapable historical irony deserves to be noted. If there was a time in our history—and there was—when progressivism bested populism, this is a moment when populism has returned the favor....

Christianity and Progress

Although Christians cannot be above the fray because we are part of it—called and commanded to love our neighbours, and even our enemies—we are nonetheless beyond the fray in the sense that we are called to something beyond it...

Progressive American Imperialism: A Malicious Addiction

Our heritage of foreign intervention is a new one, an innovation introduced by the progressives. To imagine a clean and humane progressivism is, simply, a fool’s errand. There is no such thing as a non-racist and non-imperialist progressivism...

What Is a Progressive?

For many ethical progressives, there is an absence of active malice. They are most likely to see their own condescension as a kind of empathy for the less fortunate. Their goal is to help the poor and working classes escape the forces that progressives see as oppressing...

The Once and Future Liberal: After Identity Politics

This “once and future liberal,” Mark Lilla, is actually a progressive in disguise. To be sure, he is also a progressive who doesn’t like some of what progressivism has wrought and some of what progressivism has become; hence, his hope that he has sufficiently camouflaged himself as...

C. S. Lewis: Critic of Progressivism

While most of us associate C.S. Lewis with theological literature, the renowned author sounded the siren against progressivism’s clear dangers not only to the political rights and liberties of man, but also to our very perception of the reality of mankind...

“The Habsburg Manifesto”: A Conversation in Four Acts

Is Time itself best understood by those things in life which are Time-less? Such is the main question posed in The Habsburg Manifesto. Habsburg is not a political play but a philosophical one, whose main theme is the inner nobility of the individual as that which withstands...

Irving Babbitt vs. Progressivism

Progressives lack imagination, and, in their desire to create a world made in their image, they can only mimic what they see with straight, sterile lines... When considering that Thomas Jefferson delivered his first inaugural address in...

The Left vs. Human Nature

Human nature exists, and we cannot deal with life in a sensible way without accepting that. So the question we face is how to overcome an outlook that categorically rejects the very concept and is deeply rooted in the way the people who dominate our political life...

The Tyranny of the Present Moment

The Founders saw their historical moment in terms that transcended the moment... Recently, Wyoming Catholic College hosted its first public lecture of the Annual Lecture Series, featuring Dr. R.J. Pestritto of Hillsdale College who spoke on “Progressivism, Political Philosophy,...

Ideas and American Politics

The fear and suspicion of ideas and intellect rest on historical foundations buried deep in the American consciousness. Many Americans, in fact, have long disparaged the life of the mind, and populist democracy has increasingly required an appeal to vulgarity and ignorance...

Why Do Progressives Hate the West So Much?

President Trump was right to defend the West, a civilization which goes back to the Homeric epic and the Hebrew prophets, and having been baptized by Christ, is “not the property of any particular race but the universal aspiration of humankind”...

Reflections of a Conservative Democrat

Democrats must return to that foundation which tempered all of their earlier radicalism and channeled it to relatively productive political conduct: Christianity... "All revolutions are amoral and sadistic—the French,...

Is America Hopelessly Divided?

No society can survive if its people cannot achieve general consensus on certain fundamental understandings regarding the nature of the person and of society itself... It may seem too much to say that our...