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Doug Smith is a historian who proudly served our nation in the Navy aboard the submarine “USS Gato”. He is also Free State Patriot associate editor
August 23, 2018
Mark Caserta began a blog in 2013 as an adjunct to the regular conservative commentary he was contributing in newspapers. The idea was simple: to expose the Progressive Movement. This is more necessary than it sounds.
The history of the Progressive Movement is that it cannot win in the public arena of ideas, or in a straight up battle of candidates in an election. To put it more personally, progressives, the folks who adhere to that movement, cannot win with the truth. They never run up the middle toward their goal: it is always an end run or a back-alley deal. Why? Because their ideas and nutty, and anathema to most common-sense people. So, they lie, they deceive, the alter the meaning of words, the promise the moon, in order to get power, then they do whatever they wish.
Make no mistake, the Progressive Movement is ALL about gaining power, then enforcing their ideas on the unwilling, who, in their eyes, must be unenlightened if they have the temerity to disagree with them. They (so their thinking goes,) are the best and the brightest, and everyone will be better off if we are in charge. In the Progressive mind, the Founders were wrong to restrict the power of the Government to protect the People (the purpose of the Bill of Rights), instead, they insist, the role of Government is to make people be, and act, like they think they should, and govern based on what “ought to be, “rather than what is. They are not fans of individual liberty, and certainly not of this great experiment in, as President Lincoln noted, “Government of the people, for the people, and by the people. “
But people are cantankerously self-interested, and a lot of the old saws of wisdom remain true, despite the most voluble protests of the Progressives:
There really Aint no such thing as a free lunch
If you teach a man to fish, he will eat for a lifetime. If you give him a fish, he will eat today. And then come back tomorrow to get another fish.
And, in Progressiveland, vote Democrat.
Their ideas are unpopular, not simply because, as they would have it, no one is quite as bright, or virtuous, or will intentioned, as they, but because their ideas are nutty, wrongheaded, ignoring basic truths of human existence, and more importantly, always, always, result in misery and destruction.
Ronald Reagan quipped that the scariest words in the English language are “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.” Given that Progressives are firm believers that all things good and worthwhile come from government, he might well have said, I m a Progressive, and I’m here to help YOU.
Not convinced? In 1916, Woodrow Wilson ran for re Election on the campaign of “He Kept Us out of the War (WW1)”, and “Too Proud to Fight”. Indeed, in early 1917, the war was winding down, with both sides weary of fighting and nearing a settlement. Wilson won, and was Inaugurated in January, 1917. In April 1917, he went to Congress to request to go to war with Germany. So much for his promises. And the results of Wilson s “best and brightest” leading? Over 300,000 American casualties, Wilson largely responsible for the Treaty of Versailles, which set in motion a chain of events that led to WW2, and the deaths of 80 million people worldwide.
The Great Society of LBJ and his War on Poverty has spent 20 Trillion dollars, and done little to reduce poverty. Back to the fish analogy, if we feed a man a fish, and reward his ability to breath and show up every day for a fish, we pass out a lot of fish, but we don’t get many fishermen. Nothing is more costly, less efficient, or longer lasting than a temporary government program.
We believe, based on observation of our country and our world, that the greatest thing to raise people out of misery and poverty are the property rights and free market protected by our Founders. They understood that all rights have to do with property.
Every man beneath his vine and fig tree, and none shall make him afraid. None shall prune his vine or pick his figs, either, he must do so for himself and sell them or eat them. American, since its founding, has done more to raise the economic status and individual freedom of more people than any other nation in history. It is a nation, at its core, not of “immigrants”, as our Progressive friends would tell us, but of ideas. Our Founders formed this nation on the notion that any who came to embrace our ideas and build a strong country on that basis were welcome to roll up their sleeves and jump in.
Our founding principles are good and sound. That is why we extoll their strength and virtue, as well as exposing the moral bankruptcy of the Progressives.
Never before, or since, in history, has a nation fought a war to give rights to men who were enslaved. Never before has a nation gone to war to rescue and free other people from tyranny without keeping the land that they subdued.
Never before has any nation so totally been a draw to outsiders to come and live in it, or to turn to it for help in times of trouble. No nation in the world worries that taking money or food or medicine from the United States will cause it to be subjugated.
America is unique in history, unique among the nations of the world, unique in her peoples and her core ideals. This we believe.
So our purpose here at FSP is to educate about the strengths and sound ideas of America, to expose the deceit and bad, dangerous ideas of the Progressives and the Left, and by shining light on both, encourage people to choose the good, sound, tried and true principles and ideas that have built, not a “ Perfect Day” , not a Utopia, but “ A more perfect union,” that is devoted to “ securing the blessings of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to ourselves and our posterity.”
Free State Patriot 
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