Pilgrim's Progress

Progressivism has been a proud, aggressive and often successful political movement since the time of President Teddy Roosevelt and Wisconsin's Senator Bob LaFollett. However, one of the flaws of progressivism is, at least in the arena of social justice, eventually the progress being made gets more and more rarefied. Yes, progressives have swept away many of the discriminatory laws and mores in the United States, but their follow-on targets represent smaller and smaller slices of our population (e.g., gender fluid rights) and, thus, the political payoffs get more problematic.

After all how many voters want to marry animals? But, this doesn't seem to slow progressives down. Soon it will be more bizarre rights being advocated ... man-boy love, human rights for simians and group marriages. Don't doubt me. To progressives, the social equality agenda seems never to run out.

Yet Progressives often keep their prejudices quite private while championing exactly the opposite in public. The Kennedys, the Clintons and many in the black movements (Jesse Jackson, Louis Farrakhan and Al Sharpton) come immediately to mind. Somehow, the general public chooses to ignore these inconsistencies.

Progressives are also often drawn into conundrums ... like embracing people who often violently oppose many of their other basic public tenets. For instance, many fundamental Muslims lethally oppose free love, homosexuality and religious tolerance ... yet are supported by progressives in a stunning display of hypocrisy. Even worse, progressives will not tolerate fundamental Christians with far less onerous strictures. I scratch my head over these inconsistent progressive notions.

Will progressives run out of paved road? Will they have fewer social equity causes to champion in the future? Or will the notion of more social justice ... or injustice ... as utilized by progressives begin to peter out? I hope so ... but I don't expect so.