Question: Why do progressives in the U.S. move to implement most of their social programs at the federal level? Why not leave the decisions surrounding the implementation of such programs to the states (and their voters)?

 Because the federal level is where all the power is. If you can get Congress to create new federal law, it becomes enforceable over all 50 states. If you move one state at a time it takes much longer, and there will always be states who are opposed to specific social programs and cannot be won over.

There was a movement by Progressives in the 1990s to operate more at the local level. This effort came about because the Supreme Court and Congress were becoming more reluctant to support expanding the welfare state. These local efforts were called “civil society” programs and they combined entrepreneurship, volunteerism, and civic mindedness to achieve their goals.

Remember the great historical tug of war between Progressives and Conservatives has been based on defining the government’s role with respect to group rights versus individual rights. Progressives look at society as a set of groups. Some of these groups are disadvantaged and need to be helped by government. Conservatives are more concerned with liberty, meaning the individual’s ability to live his life independently without the government controlling him.

Question: What were the limits of the progressive movement?

There were two factors that placed limits on the Progressive Movement. First, Conservatives resisted the efforts of the Progressives, based on their disruption of the status quo. Republican presidents supported small government and would not support welfare state building. The lone exception to this was Theodore Roosevelt who was a Progressive himself.

The second factor was the law of diminishing returns. When the Progressive Movement began in the late 19^th century, the people of the United States were being crushed by political corruption and corporate exploitation. Because these problems were so wide-spread, there was a tremendous force of will for change expressed by the American people. Once the government regulation of business was put in place and the political corruption cleaned up, momentum for change was weakened.

The Great Recession of the 1930s greatly expanded Progressive action as government expanded to try and bring the American economy back to normal. During that time, Social Security and other programs became part of the American entitlement fabric.

After World War II, the Progressives broke with the Democratic Party over foreign policy because they could not accept a cold war strategy. They tried to succeed on their own, but became marginalized by a growing Liberal establishment. It wasn’t until the advent of the New Left in the 1960s that the Progressives were able to reestablish themselves as a movement.

One characteristic of the Progressive ideology is utopianism. Progressives seek equality for all, in individual rights and economic standing. They dislike capitalism as exploitative and unfair.

Progressives would have been happy to see socialism or communism succeed because those models represented their view of how society should operate. But, both failed in practice because they are incompatible with individual rights and enormously inefficient. As an alternative, Progressives have put their efforts toward building a welfare state within the Capitalist Democracy.

Question: What is something about Republicans that is commonly misunderstood by liberals?

I’d say the number one factor is the Liberal belief that Republicans are selfish, uncaring capitalists who don’t mind seeing people starve. Republicans tend to ignore that accusation and don't typically demonstrate compassion or caring.

Republicans differ from Liberals because their moral point of view is different. Not better or worse, just different. Liberals look at welfare as essential to protect disadvantaged groups, and don’t worry about the cost to deliver the services they need. Republicans worry about value and effort. They are willing to support the disadvantaged if the programs designed to help them are efficient and don't waste money.

Question: Liberals seem to prefer being called progressives. Why? Are they ashamed of being democrats deep down?

The answer to this question is partly semantics so we have to clear up the definitions first. Progressive thinking is associated with the Progressive Movement which operated from 1870–1940. Those Progressives agitated to reverse worker exploitation and corrupt politics. They were successful in that endeavor.

American Liberalism did not appear until after World War II. President Truman made opposition to communism a key component of his administration. That decision isolated the Progressives because they had been traditionally against foreign intervention. The actually ran Henry Wallace as a Progressive candidate against Truman in 1948. When Truman won, Liberals took control of the party and the Progressives became marginalized until the 1960s.

I say American Liberalism because, as at least one other person pointed out, it was very different that the European version we call “Classic” Liberalism.

American Liberalism prospered until the early seventies, when it got a bad name over the failure of the welfare system. That is what I think you mean by “ashamed”. Today’s Liberals do not want to be associated with big government programs that do not work and waste money.

As Liberalism waned, the Progressives rose again, starting during the George W. Bush administration.

Progressives sit to the left of Liberals in the Democratic Party. They are more aggressive about wanting change even to the point of changing the government. They are very sensitive to the poor and other disadvantaged groups and they hate capitalism as exploitative.

What is the Progressive Gene about?

When you read the title of my book, you might wonder what it means. Genetics? Morality? Progressives? 

Here is a basic synopsis.

The Progressive Gene fuses the idea of a universal, genetically determined personal and social morality with the expression of that morality in the individual’s political philosophy. Although this connection extends to and encompasses society as a whole, the book focuses on the far left of the political spectrum, where the Progressives reside.

Political Morality. What is it?

Human beings live with two moralities: personal and social. The personal morality functions within the family: how we treat our family members. The other one is external: how we act with other people. External morality developed because human beings are social creatures and had to learn how to function in a group. Group compatibility offered protection that extended safety beyond the family unit. Group morality is an aggregate of the individuals in the group based on a consensus between them. To remain part of the group an individual has to follow those rules. This social morality was simple and worked well when man lived in small groups.

When agriculture began, man gave up his nomadic ways to live in one place and human group size grew enormously. Villages, towns, and cities developed. These human social structures required governments and laws. Social morality was now very complicated and inflexible. We experience the collision between our personal and social morality every day. For example, we know that abortion has been legalized, so if we are against abortion, we have to accept the law even though we disagree. We can also try to change the law, or move to a place that doesn’t have that law.

Our political morality is the result of our personal morality being mapped against the morality of society. Our party affiliation reflects the direction we’d like government to take to bring society’s morality into better alignment with our own.

Media in the United States

I stopped watching the news because of the negativity and useless content. The problem is an old one, in the sense that the media reports what they believe will increase viewership, but in doing so creates an imbalance in the coverage. Many unimportant items get reported that shouldn’t be and many important things never get reported.

In the past few years, the situation has gotten significantly worse. There are two reasons for this: the twenty-four hour news and the Internet. A twenty-four hour news cycle requires twenty-four hours of content and there aren’t that many important items to report, so  the media outlets fill the rest of the time with gossip and unless information. Prying into people’s personal lives has become commonplace and there is no privacy anymore.

The Internet has degraded news reporting even further because it has no filter. Anyone can call themselves a journalist (no experience required). This new form of communication competes with traditional media for readership so the old guard lowers its standards to stay relevant.

Because politics in the United States is so polarized, we get a constant stream of news from the ends of the political spectrum and nothing from the middle. This over reporting from the edges makes people think the world is the way the media describes it. Hitler’s propaganda minister once said, “Tell a lie enough times and people will believe it to be the truth.”

Thomas Jefferson said, “The man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them, inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.

I get the news headlines on my phone these days. I use multiple sources to try and void bias, but at least I can decide what’s important without having the media decide for me.