I — The Enemy Within
We want our country back. A nefarious ideological movement called “progressivism” has seized control of American culture, rejected American morality, deconstructed American language, and debased American law. What we’re fighting is neither a political battle nor a culture war. It’s a moral struggle with cultural and political dimensions.The chasm dividing America from progressivism is stark:
Those are just selected headlines. And yes, We’re fully aware making such claims hardly demonstrates that they’re all true. That’s why this essay is merely the introduction to a series. More will follow. By the time we’re done, we’ll have pulled the curtain back to reveal progressivism for what it is. We’ll show how it’s redefined words to cloak its true intent. Perhaps most importantly, we’ll show that it’s embraced a moral code far outside the Judeo-Christian — and thus the American — tradition.
But first, a word about politics and why it looms so large in the battle for our great nation’s soul. Electoral politics is America’s last stand. We’ve already lost everywhere else. Progressivism writes the rules for preschool playgrounds and the curricula for K-12 education. Progressivism controls our universities, dominates our media, and owns our social media. Progressivism reigns supreme in Hollywood and in Silicon Valley. Progressivism runs Wall Street, the legal profession, the civil service, federal, state, and municipal agencies, and the judiciary. Progressivism bullies small businesses and major corporations into compliance. Progressivism terrifies people into self-censoring and hiding their true beliefs. If there’s an avenue for writing a rule, teaching a lesson, or communicating a message, Progressivism owns it, controls it, or dominates it.
Every now and then, progressivism loses an election. The 2016 election gave us a bit of breathing room. Have we been using it wisely? The President is doing his part, but are we doing ours? Or are we pinning all our hopes on one man and in electoral politics?
That would be a mistake. Because whatever you may think of Donald Trump, Presidents don’t win moral struggles. All they can do is create space in which a moral culture can develop, evolve, and stand strong. What’s more, who knows how much longer we’ll have a shot at electoral politics. Progressives consider it deeply unfair that they can lose elections. They’re working hard to foreclose that last bit of daylight through which it’s still possible to see America. They might very well succeed even with Trump in the White House. After all, progressives control pretty much everything but the Presidency. That’s a pretty powerful platform.
Progressivism is a perversion of everything for which America has ever stood. It draws upon a history of home-grown rejectionist movements and a collection of anti-Western philosophies developed and nurtured among the radical Western intelligentsia of the past few centuries. It’s an American-born anti-American ideology out to eviscerate our great nation. In the twenty-first century, it has become the dominant American intellectual and cultural movement. Progressivism is truly America’s enemy within.
But — and this point is critical — that’s not the same as saying that “the Democrats,” or even all the people who call themselves “progressives” are our enemies. Like all ideological movements, progressivism operates in concentric circles. At the center, a deeply committed ideological core seeks ways to undermine America and the Judeo-Christian ideals it embodies. Those ideological progressives are indeed anti-American enemies. Moving outward from that core, however, are plenty of people who’ve simply been misled. They may be aiding our enemies at the moment, but they’re capable of better — and they want to be better. We need to win them back.
We are thus launching this essay series with three goals in mind. The first is to steel America’s resolve to stand strong for our excellent, deeply rooted moral code. The second is to reveal ideological progressivism for the evil it is — and to show how it works its destructive magic. The third is to awaken the sleeping masses who have slipped into progressivism.
It is easy to sympathize with their error. Progressivism is deeply seductive. It promises personal and professional benefits, along with a deep sense of smug self-satisfaction. Millions of proud Americans have been seduced by this twisted ideology into supporting what they wish to oppose and opposing what they think they support. Millions of minority and immigrant Americans have swallowed enough of the progressive horror stories to become terrified of America; they cower behind their progressive abusers wondering why the American dream seems out of reach. Millions more across the country have simply accepted progressive claims without paying much attention to what they mean or how they fit together. Many progressive stories sound plausible until you begin to question them. That’s why so many progressives become apoplectic at the sound of a follow-up question.
So what is progressivism? Simple. Progressivism is an elitist ideology whose goal is to preserve and amplify the position of today’s powerful elite — and to make those self-serving elitists feel self-righteous and virtuous while doing it!
Of course, that’s not how progressives like to depict themselves. They claim to be fighting for social justice, championing the needs of historically oppressed people, clamoring for a more equitable distribution of income and wealth, and saving the planet from selfish corporate despoilers. They spend their time deriding the “one-percent,” a mythical group of “millionaires and billionaires” who control the world.
Maybe that’s even how you see them. Maybe you think of progressives as people acting with the best of intentions, even if they get a bit overzealous at times. If that’s what you believe, you’ve fallen into the trap. You stand on the brink of seduction.
Before you fall into that abyss, we implore you to ask yourself one question: Could a movement that commands the overwhelming majority of America’s educated, professional classes, and that rules public opinion only in America’s most expensive, most exclusive enclaves, be anything other than an elitist movement? Really?
To ask the question is to answer it. In fact, because they control the elite, progressives work overtime ensuring that no one notices their elitism. Ideological progressives may be many things, but they’re neither dumb nor lazy. As the vanguard of an ideology popular almost exclusively among Western elites, they know that they can’t do very much without allies and coalitions — at least not as long as the systems within they operate retain elements of democracy — and no part of the masses wants to serve the interests of the elite. The elite ideologs have thus done yeoman’s work building coalitions big enough to be deadly.
The millions of Americans — and other Westerners — they’ve seduced through their campaigns of lies are the useful idiots of progressivism. These “social progressives” would reject almost every aspect of ideological progressivism if they knew what it was. They consider themselves progressives because — using the linguistic deconstruction at the heart of progressivism — the ideologs have convinced them that “progressive” is a synonym for “decent.” Few social progressives even try to explain what progressivism is. They know, however, that being a progressive is good for their personal and professional lives, that it lets them feel good about themselves, and that it gives them the right to look down on their less-progressive neighbors.
Millions of minority Americans form the blind, angry, peasant army of progressivism. Ideological progressives have convinced these minorities that America, rather than progressivism, threatens their well-being, their social and economic mobility, and their glorious advances of recent generations. Progressives have found leaders from within each community far more interested in stoking resentment, expressing rage, maintaining hatred, and fighting history than in improving the welfare of their own communities. Progressivism welcomes these “community leaders” into the elite, and showers them with money, privilege, prestige, and power. They, in turn, keep their communities down, angry, and supportive of progressive agendas that most oppose at a personal level, and that are deadly at a community level.
Globally, the most important ally of ideological progressivism is ideological Islamism. The Muslim world — roughly twenty percent of the world’s population — is having a hard time digesting the vast changes of the past few centuries. Important, mainstream movements within Islam differ greatly about which elements of Islamic tradition to emphasize, which elements of modernity to embrace, and how to synthesize the two. The tension among these Islamic movements is so significant that it generates frequent violence and bloodshed. The most violent of these movements also turn their rage outward, threatening to unleash terrorism across the planet. “Islamism” is one important branch of mainstream Islam. It’s an umbrella term covering all Muslim movements that draw upon Islam’s earliest conquests as a model for contemporary politics, and elevate this belief above all others. Islamists are intolerant, brutal, violent, and fiercely committed to their faith-driven, warlike, imperial view of the world.
Because no one can stand idle while a fifth of the globe is engaged in such internal warfare, everyone outside the Muslim world must find allies within it. In the twenty-first century, it’s practically impossible to be “pro-Muslim” or “anti-Muslim,” because there are Muslims on nearly all sides of nearly all issues. The question for those of us who are not Muslim is thus where within Islam we find our allies. Progressivism has chosen to ally itself exclusively with Islamism and Islamist organizations, most prominently the (Sunni) Muslim Brotherhood, the (Shia) Islamic Republic of Iran, and their Western apologists. America has plenty of its own Muslim allies, but because they’re more focused on their own personal and national development than on imperial conquest and genocide, progressives tend to deride them as “less authentic” than their enraged, brutal Islamist competitors.
Such “authenticity” is key. In progressivism, the only legitimate voices for any group deemed oppressed are the voices of entitlement and rage. Voices coming from within those communities preaching self-improvement, mobility, cultural change, hard work, personal responsibility, and integration are shunned. Perhaps the radical progressive Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley put it best: “We don’t need any more brown faces that don’t want to be a brown voice. We don’t need black faces that don’t want to be a black voice. We don’t need Muslims that don’t want to be a Muslim voice. We don’t need queers that don’t want to be a queer voice.”
Those concentric circles form the main elements of the progressive coalition. The hard-core ideological progressives may be a relatively small part of the coalition, but they’re firmly in control. They set the agenda and the tone. Most importantly, they define the morality. Enlightened elite opinion is the sine qua non of progressive morality. The moment elite opinion shifts, so too does progressive morality. Which explains one of the elements of progressivism that causes the greatest confusion outside the ideological core. Just because something was moral in yesterday’s slightly less enlightened world doesn’t mean that it’s still moral now that the elite has transcended to today’s enlightenment level. That’s precisely what Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton meant when they explained that their views about gay marriage had “evolved” in office.
With enlightened elite opinion defining progressive morality, the combined might of core ideological progressives, seduced social progressives, terrified minorities, and Islamists is large and potent. It has taken over much of Europe and the Democratic Party in the United States. It is a deadly threat to the future of America, the future of the West, and the future of freedom.
What can we do about it?
We have only two choices: We can let go of America or we can defeat progressivism.
American Restorationism is a movement committed to the fight. We at the American Restoration Institute are committed to promoting that restorationist movement.
We’re hardly the first fighters. In fact, we’ve got a breather because Donald Trump not only joined the fight, but showed us how to fight. It strikes many as odd. Donald Trump, the man, meets no one’s concept of “a conservative.” A colorful figure with a huge personality, the pre-political Trump was a fixture at casinos, professional wrestling matches, reality TV, and beauty pageants. He sired five children with three wives, each more glamorous than her predecessor. He innovated bold styles, built an enormously successful personal brand, and took significant calculated risks. He led a far-flung business empire, turning himself and his family into billionaires. He courted controversy and basked in the limelight of celebrity.
And yet, this brash, boisterous man from Queens morphed into America’s greatest conservative hero in a generation. He embraced several key conservative causes, aligned his judicial appointments with the philosophy of the conservative Federalist Society, and remade the Republican Party. In doing so, he alienated many lifelong Republicans, including large parts of the conservative intelligentsia and more than a few sitting Republican legislators. He’s faced greater rebellion from within the ranks of his own party than did any recent predecessor. His ascendance gave rise to a group of “NeverTrump” Republicans who would be happier handing progressives permanent control of the country to grumbling through Trump’s leadership of the GOP.
Meanwhile, Evangelical Christians, Orthodox Jews, devout Catholics, and blue collar workers adore him. Black and Latino voters seem more open to him than they have to any Republican leader of the past fifty years. The military, veterans, and police flock to show their support. He can pack a stadium nearly anywhere in the country, on almost no notice. It’s truly remarkable, when you think about it. What does it all mean?
It means that God does indeed shed His grace upon America. He does it by handing us the leaders we need at precisely the moment we need them. Our first seven Presidents, though very different men, were all remarkable leaders. Fifty years of solid leadership got us started on the right foot. A few decades of weak leaders, and we slipped into Civil War. Then came the great Abraham Lincoln — the right man at the right time. Eighty years later, FDR may have been the only man capable of uniting the country behind the goal of saving Europe from the nightmare of Nazism — and he held on just long enough to hand the Presidency to Harry Truman rather than to Henry Wallace. Truman, in turn, architected the greatest advances in the history of global freedom. Ronald Reagan finished Truman’s work after his milquetoast predecessors had let it languish. Under normal circumstances, Donald Trump would have been a very odd, and a very high-risk, choice for President. In 2016, following President Obama’s progressive transformation, Trump was precisely the leader we needed at the moment we got him. Thank God.
As American restorationists, we take our cue from above. It’s time to fight for America. Problem is, we here at the American Restoration Institute are not natural fighters. We’re analytic intellectuals whose natural tendency is to listen to both sides of an argument and devise win-win solutions. But we know that conciliation is not always possible. Progressivism has reached the point that its ideologs are beyond reason. They’ve undermined the shared morality necessary for meaningful compromise. They’ve engaged America in a battle to the death — a battle that they intend to win. If we don’t want to die, we’d better be just as committed to victory as they are. And not only don’t we want to die, we don’t want America to die.
Of course, that’s not to say that there are no specific policy arenas in which compromise is possible. Just because progressives and restorationists operate in distinct moral universes, see the world differently, and have radically divergent priorities, doesn’t mean that we can never land around the same place. When that happens, Congress passes legislation with sizable bipartisan majorities, and everyone heralds the new spirit of cooperation. But that spirit is illusory. When it comes to reconciling America and progressivism — forget it. Restorationists and progressives operate under conflicting moral codes. We disagree about the meaning of “good” and “bad.” In fact, we disagree about the meanings of most words.
That’s why folks like us have no choice but to fight. For this type of battle, we happen to have ideal combat training: We like words. We know how progressivism has weaponized language, and how America can defend itself. We know why we’ve been losing, and what it will take for us to win. We know that we must retake our language first and our culture second. Only then will we see a restoration of America. Make no mistake, American restorationism is a counterrevolutionary movement. This essay is the first in a series designed to broaden it from the narrow confines of politics and policy throughout the broad culture and the morality that underpins it.
The essays in this series will map out a battle plan for American restorationism. They will drive toward one or more of the four points critical to restoring America — or, to coopt a memorable phrase, to Make America Great Again!
That’s it. That’s the grand strategy. The details will follow. That’s a promise.
Deploy it, and we win. We reclaim our great American nation. We restore our shining city on a hill.
Continue as we’ve been going, and all bets are off.
We’re Americans. We want to win.
