Bill Greener: Progressive Thinking and the Death of Consistency

A Confounding Philosophy

Years ago, I had a friend who often would remark that he could not twist his brain enough to even attempt to make liberal thinking be remotely consistent, much less do it with such moral self-righteousness. A quick look at recent events convinces me it is even harder to so with progressive thinking.

Microaggressions and Moral Hypocrisy

Let’s start with microaggressions and triggering events. Calling someone by the wrong pronoun is to be treated as an act of violence and harshly punished. Yet to mock or celebrate the violent death of a conservative opponent is just fine and must be protected under the Constitutional guarantee of free speech. The idea that you are free to say something, but not the consequences from saying it is a foreign concept.

Lest anyone think this is an overstatement, it should not take much investigation to prove the point. Just this week, so far, we have a Chicago public school teacher putting her fingers to her neck, pretending to be a gun, making the assassination of Charlie Kirk into a joke.

A quick Google search will yield a dozen or more examples of this sort of behavior by educators. This is who we want teaching our kids? Nobody should be much surprised. The largest teachers’ union, the National Education Association (NEA), has partnered with an old lefty, Howard Zinn, to promote “lessons” on our history. The predictability of the country being hopelessly racist to the core is front and center, as are 50 other tenets of progressives that show what a rotten country we have been and are. So far, 765,000 such lessons have been downloaded.

Justice Without Equality

Not to be outdone, at least one law enforcement official has removed any pretense of equal under the law. Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner took matters into his own hands. Seeing a pro-Trump individual, our DA called the individual a fascist, urged him to read Mein Kampf, and grabbed his phone. This is a guy who told us DA stood for Democracy Advocate. WTF?

The Double Standard on Race

Moving along to the issue of race, apparently, while it is a sin against mankind to use the term “colored person,” what might appear unacceptable to you is not the case for progressives. Leave aside the mental gymnastics that encourage the use of “person of color.” At a football game this past weekend at James Madison University in Virginia, one person thought it okay to urge Republican candidate for Governor, Winsome Sears, to return to Hatti. Never mind that she is actually from Jamaica, much less that she honorably served the country as a Marine. This guy has been punished for his outburst, but why would he have ever thought it okay to do something such as this?

Politicizing Justice and Selective Outrage

Did you ask about politicizing justice in the United States? Once more, it requires what I can only call tortured logic. After leading an investigation against a President of the United States based on information he knew had been discredited, the former FBI Director decided to have a little fun. He literally implied it was fine and dandy to actually kill President Trump. No rationalizing with change the meaning of 86 (a term used to indicate the removal of people in a bar) or 47 (Trump’s second term). The chattering class was both amused and upset that some of us might find that to be offensive.

Recently, it has been revealed that following January 6, the government “monitored” the communications of multiple members of the House and Senate. Our progressive friends seem to think the fact these calls were not taped makes everything okay. What do you suppose would have been the response had Trump done something such as this during the Summer of Love protests? You remember these “mostly peaceful” demonstrations that resulted in looting, violence, and even loss of life.

A Test for Logic and Fairness

May I recommend a simple test to evaluate if someone is trying to be logical and fair, versus simply justifying their political position? For any of these items, simply reverse who said or did something and to whom it was done. For me, there is no moral high ground in rationalizing anything and everything in the name of the certainty that yours is the proper side to be on.

The Bottom Line

Let me try to help show how easy it is to do this. Recently, a group of Young Republicans engaged in some online exchanges involving racist and other offensive thoughts and ideas. That. Is. Unacceptable. See how easy that was?

Remember this: If all you are doing is justifying your political position, no matter the intellectual contortions required to do so, only raw power will allow you to prevail. In a Democratic Republic, that should not be enough. What do you think?