Are You Unconvinced Democrats Are Growing More Authoritarian?
Cover to the first edition of George Orwell’s Animal Farm. In a People’s Republic, some animals are more equal than others!
Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Today I engaged a young gentleman in the same kind of conversation I advocated in the post Conversations after he left a comment on the post Comparing the Economies of All Countries on Earth. In that post I compared countries’ per capita GDP and their GINI index (a measure of inequality of income distribution) versus their Economic Freedom Index. This measure of a country’s economic freedom, invented jointly by the Wall Street Journal and the Heritage Foundation, is an average of ten different factors in four categories: 1) Rule of Law, 2) Limited Government, 3) Regulatory Efficiency, and 4) Open Markets. An index of 0 denotes no economic freedom from the government whatsoever, while a score of 100 indicates a perfectly free laissez-faire economy. Also the GINI index is zero if income is distributed perfectly evenly and 100 if it is distributed to just one person with no one else receiving anything. The evidence provided by data from the World Bank indicated as countries’ economic freedom increased, on average their per capita GDP increased exponentially and their GINI index decreased linearly. That is, increasing economic freedom provides exponentially higher per capita GDP, and a GDP that is also shared more evenly.     Â
The Conversation
After reading the post  Comparing the Economies of All Countries on Earth, my interlocutor Chease wrote about his following concerns:
One thing that you don’t talk about is that several of the highest ranking “economic freedom” countries are places where progressives have had freer rein to experiment with social democracy, or perhaps even democratic socialism, such as Canada, Estonia, Denmark, and the UK. I don’t see why you frame the discussion as progressive bad vs. conservative good when there are countries with “progressive” economics that rank as highly in economic freedom as the US.
The bulk of his concerns, that I was not taking notice “that several of the highest ranking ‘economic freedom’ countries are places where progressives have had freer rein to experiment with social democracy, or perhaps even democratic socialism, such as Canada, Estonia, Denmark, and the UK”, I will address in a future post. For my purposes now, I want to explain why I “frame the discussion as progressive bad vs. conservative good.” Chease’s assertion that economies of some “progressive” nations rank at least as highly as the United States is also something I will address in that future post.
In response to Chease’s comment, a part of my response was the following:
The reasons I view American progressives as “bad” and American conservatives as “good” have been created by their particular historical trajectories. Not knowing a great deal about progressivism as it has evolved in other countries I will reserve judgement.
In the United States progressivism arose in the late 19th century from the collision of liberalism with the industrial revolution. In that era progressives could justly call themselves “liberals” because they were primarily concerned with the liberty and freedom of the common man from the power of the so-called “robber barons”. What we call “crony capitalism” was their foremost concern and target. However, as time ground on, they became increasingly authoritarian as they tried to centralize more and more economic power in the federal government. This evolution began in earnest with the Presidency of Woodrow Wilson. Every little bit of economic power they were able to appropriate for the state decreased individuals’ power over their own lives. We can see this today with the way small business is languishing under government regulation, particularly lately under the Dodd-Frank Act. It has progressed to the point I believe present-day progressives have forfeited any claim to being liberals. Meanwhile, American conservatives have picked up many of the characteristics of classical liberals, particularly with their desire for limited government, the constitutional separation of powers, and a laissez-faire capitalist economy. I have discussed this in somewhat greater detail in the post Progressives Are NOT Liberals.
Any who have read my essays with any degree of regularity will not be surprised I view progressives as becoming progressively more authoritarian. (Double entendre intended.) I have laid out the evidence I see for progressives’ growing autocratic tendencies in the posts Is Democracy the Best Government? Is It in Danger?, Bernie Sanders and the Road to Serfdom, Do Progressives Want a Police State?, Progressives’ Basic Assumptions, The Proper Functions of Government, Corruption of the Democratic Party, Progressives’ Disrespect for the US Constitution, The Limits to Free Speech, The Anti-Freedom Bias of Progressives, and Progressives Are NOT Liberals.
Recent Evidence of Progressive Authoritarianism
Some of the more recent evidences in the last eight years, are shown below along with links to posts that support the allegations.
- IRS targeting of conservative groups to silence them during elections: See the posts
- IRS audit found political bias against conservatives; groups gave up after application delay,
- Judge orders IRS to release list of targeted conservative non-profit groups
- Why Did the IRS Target Conservative Groups
- IRS Says Official’s Emails Were Lost in Computer Crash
- IRS canceled e-mail back-up service – weeks after Lerner hard drive crash
- IRS Claims Six More Computer Crashes Led to Lost Emails
- George Will On IRS Computer Crash: ‘Religions Have Been Founded On Less’
- Attempts by Wisconsin Democratic district attorneys to shut down conservative groups from supporting the state’s Republican governor, Scott Walker.
- Violation of the U.S. Constitution through Presidential edicts
- Obama immigration executive order: A violation of the Constitution?
- The Use and Abuse of Executive Orders and Other Presidential Directives
- Rand Paul says Obama’s immigration move violates parts of the Constitution, like Articles I and II
- Krauthammer’s Take: Obama Admitted Violating Article I of Constitution
- States Sue Obama Administration Over Executive Order on Immigration
- Federal judge in Pittsburgh declares Obama’s immigration action unconstitutional
- Federal judge called Obama immigration action ‘unconstitutional’ David Jolly says
- The Benghazi scandal
- US consulate attack in Benghazi: a challenge to official version of events
- Benghazi: Obama’s Actions Amount to a Shameful Dereliction Of Duty
- ‘Serial liar’: Families of Benghazi victims blast Clinton on Benghazi
- Hillary Clinton Was Warned Not To Blame Benghazi on YouTube Video
- Hillary Clinton’s big Benghazi lie
- The attempt to prosecute Fox News reporter James Rosen as a criminal
- Justice Department’s scrutiny of Fox News reporter James Rosen in leak case draws fire
- Obama DOJ formally accuses jounalist in leak case of committing crimes
- DOJ invoked Espionage Act in calling Fox News reporter criminal ‘co-conspirator’
- DOJ Calls Fox News Reporter James Rosen ‘Co-conspirator’ in Leak Case; Journalists Outraged
- The specious arrest of Nakoula Bassely Nakoula
- Shielding of Black Panthers from charges of voter intimidation
Even more recent progressive attacks on freedom of thought and freedom of speech are attempts by the junior Democratic senator from Rhode Island, Sheldon Whitehouse, assisted by AG Loretta Lynch, to prosecute serious scientists who disagree with the Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) model under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). Democrats are beginning to act like the medieval Roman Catholic Church when it prosecuted Galileo for heresy!
Just this very day we learned of secret attempts by Democrats on the Federal Elections Commission to target Fox News for the way in which it held primary debates of Republican presidential candidates. It seems it did not matter to the Democratic commissioners that there is an explicit free press exemption in the law from FEC authority for news organizations. Consider Fox News’ take on what happened in the video below. Although the $7,500 fine being considered was initially small, it could conceivably have ballooned to hundreds of thousands of dollars when the value of the production costs and the free air time were taken into account.
Luckily the three votes by the Democratic commissioners were cancelled by the three votes of the Republicans, and the motion failed.
If all this evidence of progressive authoritarian tendencies is not sufficient to label the current progressive movement as “bad”, what would be sufficient?
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