If you want to know what’s really going on in American and world politics, it is absolutely essential to comprehend the following sequence of events. Nothing else explains the stark insanity this country has been going through for the past couple of years. Nothing else can prepare us for what’s likeliest — and ugliest — to happen next. I claim no special expertise or knowledge — especially not the telepathic abilities that the political left so often claims to possess (“No I can’t point to anything concrete he ever said or did”, they tell us, “I just know he’s a racist!”) — I only claim an above-average understanding of history and human nature.
Vladimir Lenin, I’ll remind you, once famously said “The goal of socialism is communism”. Both are political and ethical “philosophies” based on taking stuff away from those who created it or earned it, and giving it to those who didn’t — who’ll vote for you. Collectivism, which is the generic term for both of these viewpoints and every other politic-economic scam like them, is nothing more than a pathetically transparent, sleazy attempt to make theft appear respectable. It’s always easier to take away or destroy than to create or build. Stealing from others became very popular in the first half of the 19th century (“Property is theft” — Pierre-Joseph Proudhon) when it was formalized as an ideology.
From that beginning, 170 years ago, socialists began to imagine a bright, glowing, prosperous Utopian future for themselves, based entirely on theft. With every decade that passed, their physically, logically impossible fantasies became more and more real to them. It’s like the old psychiatrist joke that the difference between neurotics and psychotics is that neurotics build castles in the air, whereas psychotics move in and live in them.
The “Progressive” movement began to really blossom in the latter half of the 19th century. They were establishing socialist colonies practically everywhere. American socialist newspaper editor Horace Greeley told his readers, “Go west, young man” and to establish socialist colonies. Looking Backward, a badly-written socialist screed by Edward Bellamy and more-talented others like H. G. Wells’ When the Sleeper Wakes and The Time Machine became immensely popular. The idea of an inevitable, unstoppable socialist “wave of the future” became popular and lasted at least until I was in college in the 1960s.
L. Neil Smith, “Why They Hate Donald Trump”, Libertarian Enterprise, 2018-12-30.
December 17, 2025
QotD: The origins of Progressivism
Filed under: Books, History, Politics, Quotations — Tags: Lenin, LNeilSmith, Progressives, Socialism — Nicholas @ 01:00
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