Auguste Comte
It all began in earnest with Auguste Comte who lived from January 19,1798 to September 5, 1857. Comte was a philosopher who developed the idea of what he called 'positivism.' His positivism was a philosophy that evolved into a political movement which gained a considerable following in the second half of the nineteenth century which became known as the "Progressive Movement." Crudely stated, the positivist philosophy basically believes in man's ability to reason himself into a worldwide utopia if we all just cast aside our silly notions of God and country and work together for the greater good. Sound familiar? Problem, it has been tried and it just doesn't work!The Religion of Humanity
Comte believed in what he deemed "The Religion of Humanity" where man was at the center of all things and through man's knowledge and wisdom (read science here) a worldwide utopia could be achieved, i.e. a literal heaven on earth.
The System's subtitle is Treatise on Sociology Instituting the Religion of Humanity. While the different forms of deism preserve the idea of God and dissolve religion into a vague religiosity, Comte proposes exactly the contrary: a religion with neither God nor the supernatural. His project had little success; he even accomplished a tour de force by uniting both believers and non-believers against him. The many ridiculous details of Comte's religion made the task of his opponents even easier. But this aspect of Comte's thought deserves better than the discredit into which it has fallen (Wernick 2000; de Lubac 1945).
Comte defines religion as ‘the state of complete harmony peculiar to human life […] when all the parts of Life are ordered in their natural relations to each other’ (1851, v. 2, 8; E.,v. 2, 8). Comte also defines religion as a consensus, analogous to what health is for the body. Religion has two functions, according to the point of view from which one considers existence: in its moral function, religion should govern each individual; in its political function, it should unite all individuals. Religion also has three components, corresponding to the threefold division of the cerebral table: doctrine, worship, and moral rule (discipline). Comte's discussion is mainly about the first two. If one considers the first to be related to faith and the second to love, their relation takes two forms: ‘Love comes first and leads us to the faith, so long as the growth is spontaneous; but when it becomes systematic, then the belief is constructed in order to regulate the action of love’ (1852, v. 2, 152; E., v. 2, 83). At first, Comte had followed the traditional order and presented doctrine before worship, but he soon gave priority to worship, and saw this change as a considerable step forward.
In the positivist religion, worship, doctrine and moral rule all have the same object, namely Humanity, which must be loved, known, and served. Already the General Conclusions of the Course compared the concept of Humanity to that of God, affirming the moral superiority of the former. But only in 1847 does Comte make the substitution explicitly; sociological synthesis comes to replace theological synthesis. Membership of Humanity is sociological, not biological. In order to belong to what is defined as the continuous whole of convergent beings — Comte's term for (mainly human) beings who tend to agree — one has to be worthy of it. All ‘producers of dung’ are excluded; conversely, animals that have rendered important services can be included. Strictly speaking, it is to sociology that one should turn for knowledge of the laws of the human order but, as the final science recapitulates all others, it is the whole encyclopedic scale (échelle ; it is the result of the classification of sciences), that constitutes the doctrine of the new religion, which thereby becomes demonstrated and is no longer revealed or inspired. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/comte/#RelHum
Thus, according to Comte, if you do not "belong" to the collective "membership of society" as defined by him and his followers you are not human! You are simply a producer of dung! To be treated no better than an animal and disposed of accordingly. Message: Get with the program or suffer the consequences!
Charles William Eliot
Enter Charles William Eliot who lived from March 20, 1834 to August 22, 1926 was an American academic who was selected as Harvard's president in 1869 and served the longest tenure to date. It was during his tenure at Harvard that Harvard became what we now think of as Harvard. Under his tutelage sweeping reforms were implemented and a new philosophy began to emerge as the dominating ideal; Progressivism. Before long progressives were in every nook and cranny, then they became the norm, soon they were in control and cranking out more and more progressive minions with each graduating class. It continues today unabated.Herbert David Croly
Enter Herbert David Croly who lived from January 23, 1869 to May 17, 1930. Croly was a progressive-liberal writer and leader of the Progressive movement in early twentieth-century America. He is best known for co-founding the magazine The New Republic and for his extremely influential book The Promise of American Life. His political philosophy influenced many Progressives including Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt as well as his close friends Judge Learned Hand and Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter. He attended Harvard only to drop out, then reapply and drop out again. Though he never actually graduated from Harvard, he did receive an honorary degree later recognizing his contribution to the Progressive cause.Croly eventually joined calls for American involvement in World War I, but he became pessimistic and frustrated by the costs of war. In late 1917 and 1918, Croly began questioning his own beliefs about nationalism and democracy. The Treaty of Versailles resulting from the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 was a devastating dose of reality for Croly who declared it to be the "apocalypse of liberalism."
The vicious treatment of unions during the labor movements in the 1920s was difficult for Croly, who was a big union supporter. Then the issue of prohibition put Croly’s beliefs about the role of the national government to the test. But, for Croly, the reality of how prohibition was handled was the final straw in his losing faith in the progressive vision.
In 1920, Croly worked on another book called The Breach in Civilization. It was the result of a compilation of the ideals Croly once held but by then had come to believe were unrealistic positions. It is believed that in it he proclaimed legislation as a solution for social issues was unimportant, and abandoned his own core philosophy that central government could create human utopia. He condemned progressivism as a failure. As the book was on its way to the publisher, Felix Frankfurter persuaded Croly to withdraw the manuscript. It was never published, and only part of the text remains today.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Croly]
But it was too late for Croly to undo the damage that he had done. For by now Progressivism had taken root. With him, or without him Progressivism was here to stay.
Edward Mandell House
Enter Edward Mandell House who lived from July 26, 1858 to March 28, 1938. He was an American diplomat, politician, and presidential advisor. Commonly known by the purely honorific title of Colonel House, although he had no military experience, he did have enormous personal influence with U.S. President Woodrow Wilson as his foreign policy advisor and instrumental in drafting The Fourteen Points leading to the formation of the League of Nations and eventually the United Nations. He was generally considered the 'power behind the throne" in the Wilson administration until Wilson removed him in 1919 following unauthorized negotiations with foreign dignitaries during the Paris Peace Conference resulting in the disastrous Treaty of Versailles.Edward M. House was a true believer in the progressive doctrine and anonymously wrote a book published in 1912 called Philip Dru: Administrator. In his book the title character, Dru, leads the democratic western U.S. in a civil war against the plutocratic East, with Dru eventually becoming the dictator of America. As dictator Dru imposes a series of reforms which strikingly resemble the Bull Moose platform of 1912. At the end of his book, having implemented the sweeping changes needed for a 'humane' society, Dru surrenders his dictatorial powers and literally sails into the sunset. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_M._House]
With the work of Edward M. House progressive ideals had gone mainstream and were now firmly entrenched in American politics. Progressivism would go through periods of ascendancy and then decline, only to come back again, but it would never really go away. The Progressive Movement would change names from Progressive, to Liberal to Democratic, and back to Progressive but the core doctrine always stays the same: If you do not "belong" to the collective you are not really human. You are simply a producer of dung needing to be dealt with. Get with the program or suffer the consequences! (See Joe the Plummer, or Sarah Palin, or...)
History
History has shown us the results of this line of thought when followed to its logical conclusion. They litter the ash heap of history. Communism, Socialism and Fascism are all the descendants of Comte's progressive philosophy. They all can trace their basic forms of philosophy back to the notion that the "State knows best" and you had better get with the program or suffer the consequences. (Logo for The Progressive Labor Party)
The National Socialist German Labor Party
When Adolf Hitler found the German Labor Party it was a small organization seeking leadership for is fledgling ideals. Ideals originating in the "Labor" movement. A socialistic movement. A movement with a left leaning idealism. An idealism shared with progressives. To be sure the Nazis added Antisemitism to the mix, but they share the same father. Upon discovering his powers of oratory, Hitler soon became the party's leader, changed its name to the National Socialist German Labor Party, helping to shape its anti-Semitic, antidemocratic, authoritarian doctrine.In 1939 Time selected Adolf Hitler as their "Man of the Year" and wrote:
What Adolf Hitler & Co. did to Germany in less than six years was applauded wildly and ecstatically by most Germans. He lifted the nation from post-War defeatism. Under the swastika Germany was unified. His was no ordinary dictatorship, but rather one of great energy and magnificent planning. The "socialist" part of National Socialism might be scoffed at by hard-&-fast Marxists, but the Nazi movement nevertheless had a mass basis. The 1,500 miles of magnificent highways built, schemes for cheap cars and simple workers' benefits, grandiose plans for rebuilding German cities made Germans burst with pride. Germans might eat many substitute foods or wear ersatz clothes but they did eat. What Adolf Hitler & Co. did to the German people in that time left civilized men and women aghast. Civil rights and liberties have disappeared. Opposition to the Nazi regime has become tantamount to suicide or worse. Free speech and free assembly are anachronisms. The reputations of the once-vaunted German centers of learning have vanished. Education has been reduced to a National Socialist catechism.
Those who now hold the levers of power in America have a sweeping vision of "fundamental change" in America and disparage those news organizations who disagree. They seek to change rights and liberties threatening free speech and assembly. Education is reduced to a catechism with little regard for truth and historical fact. The parallels are disturbing.
Included in the article in Time is the following:
Most cruel joke of all, however, has been played by Hitler & Co. on those German capitalists and small businessmen who once backed National Socialism as a means of saving Germany's bourgeois economic structure from radicalism. The Nazi credo that the individual belongs to the state also applies to business. Some businesses have been confiscated outright, on others what amounts to a capital tax has been levied. Profits have been strictly controlled.
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,760539-6,00.html#ixzz0dGDP28Ic
Ripped From Today's Headlines
President Barack Obama proposed new limits on the size and activities of the nation's largest banks, pushing a more muscular approach toward regulation that yanked down bank stocks and raised the stakes in his campaign to show he's tough on Wall Street.
With former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker at his side, Mr. Obama said he wanted to toughen existing limits on the size of financial firms and force them to choose between the protection of the government's safety net and the often-lucrative business of trading for their own accounts or owning hedge funds or private-equity funds. Mr. Volcker has been an outspoken advocate of such rules; until recently Mr. Obama's top economic advisers, including Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Lawrence Summers, were less than enthusiastic.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703699204575016983630045768.html?mod=igoogle_wsj_gadgv1&
(Note: Paul Volcker and Lawrence Summers are both Harvard alumni as is Barrack Obama. Timothy Geithner's father, Peter Geithner oversaw the Ford Foundation's micro-finance programs in Indonesia being developed by Ann Dunham, President Barack Obama's mother, and they met in person at least once. Cozy little circle isn't it?)
Conclusion
Let us assume for the moment that you and I can agree that fascism and communism are not desirable forms of government. That fascism and communism have revealed themselves to be inefficient, heavy handed, cruel and completely ineffective as providing the greatest good for the greatest amount of people under such regimes. As an example we need only look to the greatest social experiments under such regimes; the old Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. We can only estimate how many millions were murdered and the billions that were brutalized under the old USSR, and the Nazis serve as the epitome of humanity's inhumanity to man.
It serves as a point of interest to note that the moniker USSR is an abbreviation for The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (Russian: Союз Советских Социалистических Республик, also known as the Soviet Union (Советский Союз), and was a constitutionally socialist state, ("soviet" in Russian: сове́т, meaning "council" and was derived from the "local workers' council" on collective farms, factories, etc.)
One final point of interest: The term Nazi derives from the first two syllables of Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Workers’ Party, NSDAP) Thus they were concerned about National issues from a Socialist perspective concerning themselves with the welfare of the German Workers. Additionally, the second volume of Mein Kampf is entitled The National Socialist Movement. Hitler did not tell the German people that he really wanted to come up with a "Final Solution" to the "Jewish Problem." As a matter of fact the Nazis tried as best they could to keep it a secret from the German people for as long as they could. The concentration camps were not, but the gassing and the ovens were kept secret. Everything the Nazis did was motivated by a sense of what was "good" and "right" in their eyes for the German people, no matter how twisted and depraved it may be seen from the perspective of history. Yet proving again, that Socialists, in their attempt to create a Utopia, create a living hell on earth for the rest of humanity.
Thus, in the ultimate sense the Nazis, the Soviets, and the Progressives are all socialists. The thing that differentiates them is how they go about TOTAL STATE DOMINATION! Which inevitably leads to total power in the hands of an elite few. Which in turns leads to resistance to that total control. Which in turns leads to a crack down on the resistance. Which in turn leads to more resistance. Which in turn leads to a spiraling of violence and oppression, until there is nothing left of freedom but a smoldering heap of ashes.
Say what you will about their differences, Communism, Socialism, Nazism and Progressivism all have this one thing in common; they deny God as the Supreme Being and in their denial of God's authority they assume it for themselves over the rest of humanity. They would usurp God from His throne and sit in His place dictating to the human race what they deem to be best, whether we like it or not thank you very much.
But just like Nimrod of old, Obama and his progressive friends are in for a rude awakening. For despite the best laid plans of men, "Unless the Lord builds the house, They labor in vain who build it; Unless the Lord guards the city, The watchman stays awake in vain." Psalm 127:1 But at what cost to America as the land of the free? What will it cost the world to learn the lessons of history yet one more time?
Question:
The last time we went through this we didn't have nuclear weapons thus I am compelled to ask, "Will there be anyone left to learn from our latest mistakes?"
