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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowI read with interest John Guy’s [viewpoint column] titled “Where are the progressives?” (April 11, 2011) and found his list of antis enlightening. Since rebutting each and every point would require that IBJ give me a column of my own, I’ll just hit my personal highlights.
“Progressives” are the flat-earthers of the 21st century. Any idea that is anathema to that which the “progressive” holds to be sacrosanct is rejected as extreme or in Guy’s more polite telling, “anti.”
Every “anti” from the “progressive” is distilled down to a ridiculous, narrow, self-congratulating dismissal of other points of view. Few people I know are anti-tax, anti-health care reform, anti-government, anti-right-to-choose or most of the other things that Guy alleges that we non-progressives believe.
We aren’t anti-tax, just anti-government waste. We aren’t anti-Islam. We are anti-extremist, whether Islamic, Christian or “progressive.” We aren’t anti-immigrant, we are anti-illegal immigration. We aren’t anti-teacher. We are concerned taxpayers who have no voice at the bargaining table. We aren’t anti-right to choose: we want to choose. We have a Constitution which says that only Congress can pass laws. We object to “progressive” legal doctrine which skirts the constitutional framework to encourage an activist judiciary to pass laws by fiat.
I agree with Guy and believe that America will return to its optimistic roots. It happened in 1980 after four disastrous years of a “progressive” administration, and I believe that the return to optimism began at the polls in November 2010. We hope that the return of optimism in America’s future will be fully realized in the elections to be held in November 2012, and that the concept of American exceptionalism and limited government will be fully embraced again.
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Craig Gigax
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