{"id":15838,"date":"2015-12-30T19:27:11","date_gmt":"2015-12-31T00:27:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=15838"},"modified":"2015-12-30T19:27:11","modified_gmt":"2015-12-31T00:27:11","slug":"the-formlessness-of-progressivism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=15838","title":{"rendered":"The Formlessness of Progressivism"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 class=\"page-title\"><a href=\"https:\/\/mises.org\/library\/formlessness-progressivism\" target=\"_blank\">The Formlessness of Progressivism<\/a><\/h3>\n<h3 class=\"page-title\"><img decoding=\"async\" title=\"The Formlessness of Progressivism \" draggable=\"false\" src=\"https:\/\/mises.org\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/slideshow\/public\/static-page\/img\/bloud2.jpg?itok=frVZes7A\" alt=\"The Formlessness of Progressivism \" \/><\/h3>\n<section class=\"group-date-author\"><\/section>\n<div class=\"body-content\">\n<p>Progressives are often good people with good intentions. However, modern Progressivism has evolved into something so shapeless and amorphous as to amount to little more than a belief in \u201cthings that sound nice.\u201d Mainstream Progressives have done an abysmal job of outlining precisely, in their view, the proper role of government and what (if any) limiting principle(s) apply to the state as a whole.<\/p>\n<h4>Everything Is Now a Taxpayer-Funded \u201cRight\u201d<\/h4>\n<p>Problems with today\u2019s leftism begin with the ideology\u2019s conception of \u201crights.\u201d In the common\u00a0<em>laissez-fair<\/em>e view,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/mises.org\/library\/introduction-natural-law\">rights are universal<\/a>\u00a0because they do not impose a duty on others to act positively on our behalf. Simply put, the proper view of\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/mises.org\/library\/human-rights-property-rights\">human rights<\/a>\u00a0is that they prohibit us from initiating coercion against others.<\/p>\n<p>Moreover, not only are the rights universal, but they are inherent to being human. To argue that the state confers these rights suggests that\u00a0<em>the state<\/em>, through whatever \u201clegitimate\u201d institutions it may possess, can also take them away. This is an unacceptable possibility in a society of free people.<\/p>\n<p>Modern Progressivism, however, has so warped the entire nature of rights as to turn almost\u00a0<em>any desired good or service<\/em>\u00a0into a right.<\/p>\n<p>In this view, private employers refusing to\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/mises.org\/blog\/hobby-lobby-decision-creates-small-island-freedom-ocean-statism\">subsidize birth control purchases<\/a>\u00a0by employees are violating a woman\u2019s \u201cright\u201d to birth control. Business owners with religious convictions about homosexuality are denying \u201crights\u201d by\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/mises.org\/blog\/court-bakery-owners-you-have-no-property-rights\">refusing to bake cakes<\/a>\u00a0for homosexual couples. Offering someone\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/mises.org\/library\/yes-minimum-wages-still-increase-unemployment\">a job that pays wages below<\/a>some arbitrary federal or state mandated minimum is now an act in violation of a \u201clabor right.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A service once voluntarily offered to the public is now a duty enforced by the violent arm of the state.<\/p>\n<p>The list of our newfound rights is almost endless, but ten conversations with ten different Progressives will yield ten different sets of absolute rights.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Formlessness of Progressivism Progressives are often good people with good intentions. However, modern Progressivism has evolved into something so shapeless and amorphous as to amount to little more than a belief in \u201cthings that sound nice.\u201d Mainstream Progressives have done an abysmal job of outlining precisely, in their view, the proper role of government [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1795,2127,5409,7617,7644,11356,3744,1309,1770,783,4642,11355],"class_list":["post-15838","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-human-rights","tag-interventionism","tag-laissez-faire","tag-mises-institute","tag-political-theory","tag-progressivism","tag-rights","tag-state","tag-state-power","tag-taxes","tag-taxpayers","tag-u-s-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15838","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15838"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15838\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15839,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15838\/revisions\/15839"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}