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Letter misconstrues what ‘progressive’ is

He throws a whole bunch of terms together and brands them the result of progressive thinking.
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Letter misconstrues what ‘progressive’ is

On a day that will live in infamy for Trump announcing that he wants the 2020 election delayed as his only hope to cling to power and avoid criminal prosecutions, I will temper my outrage at such a suggestion coming from Donnie, by diverting my attention to fact-checking the always misinformed S. Innis.

Mr. Innis knows no bounds in making false comparisons in his efforts to discredit progressive movements which have benefited the world. He throws a whole bunch of terms together like eugenics, the holocaust, race politics, even the temperance movement and brands them the result of progressive thinking. They are not.

Eugenics was the brainchild of the half-cousin of Charles Darwin who never agreed with his cousin. It was not a progressive idea and its founder believed that a person’s moral character and intelligence could be found in their thumbprints. I would call that loopy, not progressive.

Eugenics has been used by social conservatives including Hitler, who based his racial theories on the mythical concept of pure race. Genetics has buried that idea of any racial purity. Just because Mr. Innis tries to tar and feather the social progressives by linking them to eugenics is ludicrous.

The horrendous examples of atrocities he lists out and tries to attach to social progressive ideals are as repugnant to me as are his attempts to discredit social liberalism and progressives by putting the blame on them and not on social conservatism where it belongs.

Classic Liberalism was invented during a time when the tariff walls that countries erected around themselves were sky-high and stifled economic growth and commerce. But it has morphed into the destructive global free market and left people at the mercy of predatory capitalism.

Mr. Innis doesn’t seem to understand that social conservatism is only concerned about economic freedom. Social liberalism split off long ago from classical liberalism and its Libertarianism, which attacks the social safety net and decries any interference from government with its oversight designed to protect the health and welfare of the people.

Social liberalism is progressive and is what has brought us all the advances in human rights and equality, things that horrify devotees to classic liberalism. I may have problems at times when social liberalism is taken over by political correctness, but in rebuking those excesses I in no way would ever sign on to the outdated economic immorality of classic liberalism.

Classic liberalism is what has plunged the U.S. into becoming one step away from a failed state as it has weaponized social conservatism. Harper parroted Alan Greenspan that economic freedom is the only true freedom as he wanted to do to Canada what American corporate CEO’s and their enablers in government, with the result our country lost 10 years of progress.

Classic liberalism was a necessary step to jump start economies and reduce tariffs which restricted freer trade at the time that The Wealth of Nations was written, but it is now a reactionary force working against the best interests of people around the world. Modified capitalism, along with social liberalism, benefits the majority and puts modern, democratic freedoms ahead of the economic freedom of classic liberalism to plunder and exploit the world’s people and resources at will.

Robert T. Rock

Mission City