War or occupation can never be “progressive.” Progress is evolutionary forward movement taking from the best of ideas informing action, improving upon what is, what was, what ideals dream. Progressivism to me rises out of a sense of Society, a rational humanist equality, a cooperative, nonviolent consciousness transcending tribe and narrow individualism, a sense of domestic and global community.
Call for a new model of “liberalist” progressivism
By Carolyn Bennett
“Progressives” steeped in Nostalgia are baffling to me. They aren’t progressives at all. It would seem to me that the terms nostalgia and progressive are terms in conflict or contradiction: One looks forward, the other backward.
Euphemistically replacing a disgraced or disappointing “liberalism”— as in old liberal, new liberal, crazed neo-liberal capitalist— progressivism nevertheless falls under the spell of regress. Instead of taking the best of the past and pushing forward with new vision into a better future, too many political “progressives” (at least those with microphones and media mass marketing texts) have fixated nostalgically on dead men such as Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt and Kennedy and their times. They have conveniently ignored or, inadequately educated, are truly ignorant of the reality of those eras; and that whatever progress those men ushered in, willingly or unwillingly, was in no way the end of sorely needed continuous movement forward.
A pitiful example of this offensive “longing” occurred during debates that weren’t debates in a seemingly endless (and in every respect wasteful) 2008 U.S. presidential campaign. National Public Radio and its listeners that summer “academically” longed for and aired recitations from debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas. In this orgy of nostalgia and willful ignorance, they skirted Lincoln’s stated belief in his “racial superiority.” In omitting Lincoln’s shortcomings, they shored up his nineteenth century continuance of a precedent of bigotry, lent it credibility, and reinforced it in the twenty-first century. This is backwardness. Time and again in “intellectual”— sometimes called “liberal” or “progressive”— media there is this pathetic often subliminal regress swallowed whole by mass media subscribers.
Another sad example is radio talkers’ “taking back America.” I often wonder who are the take-backers and what specifically are they proposing to take back. From whom for whom; what piece, in what precise period in history are they proposing to take back? What America or Whose America? Since this history-transcending call from talkers Left, Right and Center fails the test of solidarity in that it fails to account for significant numbers of people or even accuracy in history, it is nothingness. The idea of “taking back” is a regressive notion, not a progressive one—and it often suggests violence.
“Progressive” to me is neither “past” nor carved in stone. It is solid and fluid forward movement. It is “constructive”: building instead of tearing down, benefitting the world’s masses, consisting in evolutionary change. War or occupation could never be “progressive.” Progress as evolutionary forward movement takes from the best of ideas informing action and improves upon what is, what was, what ideals dream. Progressive to me is rational and humanist in a collective, cooperative and societal sense.
With all due respect to Jefferson, Madison, Lincoln, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and others (including social activist Dr. Martin Luther King ); though they might be said to have risen in their day to some of the challenges, they were not the end-all and be-all of progress for human rights and society. Rights of people under the U.S. Constitution (and in International Law), for example, must be further extended and enforced; neither reduced nor limited to rights and guarantees enjoyed in the times of Madison, Lincoln or any other presidents or social or political leaders. International laws, the Declaration of Human Rights must be enforceable and consistently adhered to; holding all nations and people, all governments, heads of state, corporate entities and sectarian groups and regimes to these standards of law and human principles.
Violence is the antithesis of progress. Whether in the form of war or conflicts with or against people, the overthrow of governments or institutions, or war on poppy plants and coca leaves—violence is the main offender, the stop to progress. Violence among or within nations or families is not only repressive, it is regressive. If development for developing nations is the goal, violence is its antithesis. If eradication of poverty is the goal, violence is the creation and perpetuation of poverty. Violence opposes progress. Whether the death penalty or war, overthrow or disestablishment of institutions, failing states, violence denies human possibility at every level: intellectual, political, societal, structural or infrastructural. This violence has permeated Washington’s domestic and international policies. Violence is the way of America that causes and epitomizes BREAKDOWN. The heart of BREAKDOWN is violence.
Violence is the driving force of BREAKDOWN. It is violence without conscience, without consciousness of or caring for society. It begins in urban spaces and gated places (fear behind walls) and crisscrosses the globe. It is the violence of brain-breaking football, police tasering clubs, terrorist-hunting Gestapo on shoot-to-kill orders their guns leveled and discharged at point-blank range into the backs of travelers boarding trains. It is abduction and transport; holding without charge or trial. It is tyranny and torture.
It is a violence fixed (made permanent) in international policies of powerful nations (led, funded and endorsed by the USA) that lawlessly encamps, occupies, terrifies, rapes, robs, wounds, enslaves and slaughters millions of human beings. It is International violence using sanctions, arms trafficking, direct mercenaries and militaries and weaponry (cluster bombs and mines, drones and missiles) shutting down every possible route of escape by air, sea and land; and forcing nations and peoples into poverty, piracy and corruption. This is a colonizing violence in a post-colonial, post-Cold War era in which huge multitudes are wounded and dying (physically, intellectually, emotionally, psychologically) because powerfully concentrated corporate, State, sectarian (religious) and nonsectarian institutions are taking more than their share; and through protracted violence and conflicts, they are maintaining power over to continue taking more than their share of the planet’s human and material resources. This is violence void of conscience or consciousness of society.
As it kills children and puts down all claims to sovereignty, all protests and resistance by groups and heads of state and sects, this violence is cavalier and callous, offensive yet soaked in contrived pretext (mendacity) of “defensive,” “security-concerned” preemption. This is a violence that is justified in the name of other violence often depicted by a man-made image of a star or a wooden or jeweled cross on which hangs a martyr or villain depending on who created or recreated the iconic image. This is violence in obedience to, worship and praise of self: a man-made icon together with doctrinal dicta and stories attributed to the icon for the sole purpose of gaining and sustaining power over all that makes up the universe.
Nostalgia supports this regression as “wistful or excessively sentimental yearning to return to mythical “good old days.” While I understand that the work of Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy may have moved America, it is also indisputable that their work was flawed and incomplete (the same can be said of social activist Martin Luther King’s era and effort). Though these icons have been lauded in mass-marketed history books and among the masses, these men are, nevertheless, men, in the case of presidents, who perpetrated, failed to outlaw, and presided over violence and human rights abuses including (but not limited to) slavery and murder, displacement of indigenous people, unconstitutional internment, war, invasion and occupation; and, against millions of people, denial of justice and liberty in law.
Why do you think we are where we are today? Presidents and their allies have persisted in following regressive precedent.
The Constitution of the United States of America, as fine a document as it may be, was written and ratified by people who had enslaved other people and, emboldened by church, state and prevailing powers, continued to enslave these people based on a false notion enforced by raw power: that these “others” were somehow “less than human” (inherently inferior). Think of women’s rights, Native Americans, indigenous peoples of Haiti and southwest Asia. Regressive (not progressive) generations have attempted and often succeeded in overturning the best parts of an enlightened Constitution.
Insidiously regressive movements continue to enslave (human traffic, imprison) and demonize women, homosexuals, Muslims (Christians, Jews, Bahais, atheists) and other people whose appearance, choices or practices appear at any given time to be different or dissimilar to a variety of state, sectarian, nonsectarian, corporate agencies and individuals holding or abusing power. These notions and actions (e.g., international colonizing and plunder, human trafficking and domestic slavery, violence against and occupation of adherents to Islam) have persisted through the twentieth into the twenty-first century.
The true progressive must overcome and reject the mentally defective, sentimental state of regress.
Evolving for the better, the progressive harnesses and spearheads forward movement, pushes farther forward, and hands succeeding generations a new model of “liberalist” progressivism ─ an open-minded, partnered in equality, generously activist believing in progress and humankind’s essential goodness, an individual autonomy within ─ not apart from ─ society, a deep and abiding commitment to political and civil liberties progressivism.
Whatever the content of a new vision and catalyst for U-turn, it must surely emanate from a substantively, critically new progressivism. A healthy new vision must rise from a movement of heretofore-untried togetherness.
A new vision U-(you) turning from violence will be born of an innate human sensibility, a sense of oneness more deeply ingrained than racial or tribal otherness. A new U-turning will be powered by society insistent upon society in which freedom, liberty, human rights are neither taken in narrow legacies (inheritance) or dynasties nor awarded to the highest bidder (stage and airwaves not narrowed admitting only the few), but are shared equally by all. This Society will anchor itself in the rule of law without prejudice or tribal caprice.
Entrenchment will be uprooted and participatory democracy (in areas such as government office, political campaigns, protest and opposition parties and coalitions, electoral processes) actively encouraged, and opened to everyone.
In this Society of global dimensions, domestic and international relations will operate by a code of nonviolence (militaries reconceived) whereby negotiations dedicate to problem solving for the long term and words not war commit to conflict resolution. Vital to this society will be coalitions of thinkers and activists, laborers including writers meeting secondarily, not essentially, through virtual networks (Internet); conversing constructively and primarily in face-to-face intercultural conversation and activism.
Edited excerpt from BREAKDOWN: Violence in Search of U (you) -Turn Nature and Consequences of U.S. International and Domestic Affairs Geopolitics Occupation Human Rights Historical Contexts (Notes and Commentary) by Dr. Carolyn L. Bennett, published by Xlibris, 2009
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