{"id":3168,"date":"2012-10-13T04:55:18","date_gmt":"2012-10-13T11:55:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/2012\/10\/13\/one-way-street-of-progress\/"},"modified":"2012-10-18T10:42:54","modified_gmt":"2012-10-18T17:42:54","slug":"one-way-street-of-progress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/2012\/10\/one-way-street-of-progress\/","title":{"rendered":"one way street of progress"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jonah Goldberg, The Tyranny of Cliches<\/em>, 2012.<\/p>\n

From the Introduction:<\/em><\/p>\n

“One small example: During the recent debate over reforming Medicare, many liberals insisted that any backsliding amounted to a sacrilegious violation of a fundamental “covenant.” Writing in The New Republic<\/em>, Jonathan Cohn, a leading health care expert, quotes LBJ’s Medicare law signing statement:<\/p>\n

“No longer will older Americans be denied the healing miracle of modern medicine.” Johnson said at the signing ceremony. “No longer will illness crush and destroy the savings that they have so carefully put away over a lifetime so that they might enjoy dignity in their later years.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

“Read those quotes carefully,” Cohn advises us, “because they spell out the covenant that Johnson made with the American people on that day: A promise that the elderly and (certain groups) of the poor would get comprehensive medical insurance, no matter what.”\u00a0 Now I cannot and will not criticize Cohn for believing that the government should ensure that the truly needy and elderly receive medical care.\u00a0 That is an honorable, intellectually defensible position.\u00a0 Though I should at least mention that wanting the needy to receive health care does not necessarily require a vast expansion of the federal government.\u00a0 But my point isn’t to debate the means to a desirable end.<\/p>\n

No, the reason why I find Cohn’s argument so useful is that it illustrates the progressive mind-set so perfectly.\u00a0 Cohn argues that LBJ made a covenant with the American people–a covenant is a sacred contract–to ensure that the poor would henceforth and forever get comprehensive medical insurance.\u00a0 Here’s the problem: President’s cannot bind future presidents, never mind future Congresses.\u00a0 Any law can be revisited, any presidential decree may be rescinded.\u00a0 One would hope that Cohn would recognize this fact given that his magazine routinely argues that not even the Constitution itself should be considered permanently binding and restrictive<\/em> (which is to say it shouldn’t permanently bind or constrict progressives in ways they find inconvenient).\u00a0 What offends Cohn and his fellow progressives is the suggestion that any liberal victory once pocketed can ever be reversed.\u00a0 Laws and words have no binding power on future generations, but once Team Progressive puts points on the scoreboard, they can never come off.\u00a0 That is what is sacred, because their <\/em>conception of history only goes in one direction.<\/p>\n

This is the living, breathing heart of the progressive worldview.\u00a0 It is as ideological as any conviction can be.\u00a0 And that is fine.\u00a0 There is nothing wrong and a great deal that is right with having ideological convictions.\u00a0 What is offensive to logic, culturally pernicious, and, yes, infuriating to me is to claim that it is not an ideological tenet.\u00a0 Progressives lie to themselves and the world about this fact.\u00a0 They hide their ideological agenda within Trojan Horse cliches and smug assertions that they are a simply pragmatists, fact finders, and empiricists who are clearheaded slaves to “what works.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jonah Goldberg, The Tyranny of Cliches, 2012. From the Introduction: “One small example: During the recent debate over reforming Medicare, many liberals insisted that any backsliding amounted to a sacrilegious violation of a fundamental “covenant.” Writing in The New Republic, Jonathan Cohn, a leading health care expert, quotes LBJ’s Medicare law signing statement: “No longer […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-3168","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-progressivism","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3168"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3168\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}