I make my living by reading, interpreting, and writing words.  That’s probably why I’m more sensitive than most to labels people use to describe themselves.  For that reason, I’ve long been troubled by the use of the term “progressive” by left wing politicians.  They say they’re progressive, but exactly what does that mean?

Progressive has many definitions.  I used to wear progressive eyeglasses.  They had three sections for close, medium, and long range sight.  In other words, they changed under different circumstances.  But that’s not right, because progressive politicians never change.

Another definition is “moving forward,” but that can’t be right either.  If you’re moving forward, you’re making things better, and I see no evidence of betterment coming from so-called progressives.

In the political setting, progressive is defined as supporting new or modern ideas, social progress, and more government action.  Most people who consider themselves progressive would sign on to this definition, but it likewise cannot withstand scrutiny.

The ideas being pushed by progressives are neither new nor modern.  Socialism and Communism have been around a long time.  As for the goals of economic and social equality, progress and government control, these also aren’t new or modern, actually they’re ancient.  Aspirations for the creation of the perfect society go back more than 2,000 years.

Plato’s Republic envisioned a model society ruled by philosopher kings.  You’ve seen our politicians, and the U.S. variety are better than most.  They’re hardly philosophers, and progressives don’t like Kings.  Sir Thomas More also wrote of Utopia, as a far away island, with no private property, free education, and few laws to bind its moral residents.  Marx and Engels seized on More’s “no private property” theme to push their “Socialist Utopia,” where the workers ruled.  We all know how that turned out.

If you’re getting the impression that the perfect society doesn’t exist, you’re right.  There is no Utopia, as the name itself denotes.  Utopia comes from the Greek, ou topos, which literally means “nowhere.”  But we can dream, can’t we?

The problem with progressives, however, isn’t that their dreams don’t come true, but that most of them have come true, to ill effect.  Progressives advocate for more government control and more social programs, but they ignore reality.  We already spend trillions on social programs, and government regulation is choking off economic progress and personal liberty.

U.S. Governments spend more on education than anywhere in the world, with poor results.  Chicago doubled education spending over 12 years.  The result – reading scores went down 63% and math down 78%.  More government is not the answer.

Progressives act as though the New Deal never happened and the social safety net doesn’t exist.  They actually are dedicated to moving forward, but forward to where?  A hundred years ago, labor unions clamored for “More, and more, and now.”  That made sense when workers lived in poverty, at the mercy of company stores, and toiled long hours under unsafe conditions, for meager pay.  Government programs alleviated the worse abuses, but the message hasn’t changed.  It’s still, “more and more,” regardless of the circumstances.  The musician’s union put the New York City Opera out of business because there was no “more.”  The Metropolitan Opera may be next.

Progressives celebrated the enactment of $25 and $30 an hour minimum wage laws.  But their “victory” only put low income people out of work, either replaced by machines, or by the folding of small businesses.  That’s partly why fast food prices have more than doubled in recent years.  A McDonald’s quarter pounder meal that was $5.39 in 2014 is now $14.59.  That’s real progress.

The problem is that progressives can’t quit while they’re ahead.  Progress is “moving forward”, but they’re moving forward toward a cliff, and they show no signs of slowing down.  If anything, they’re moving faster toward destruction.  And since they tolerate no dissent, there is no one on the Democrat side of the aisle who can make a plea for common sense.

In the name of progressiveism, they don’t want to prosecute crimes.  They have prosecutors who have no regard for public safety, letting criminals run free.  If anything, progressives have more regard for illegal alien criminals than for home grown ones.  In truth, they have more regard for illegal alien criminals than for their U.S. citizen victims.

They don’t want aliens deported, prosecuted, or restricted in any way.  When they do get caught, States shield the criminal aliens from ICE enforcement, preferring to release dangerous predators back onto their streets, rather than see federal law enforced.  Last week, idiot Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota pardoned an illegal alien, who was convicted of raping a 10 year old girl over a period of two years.  Walz said the criminal just had a bad day.  When ICE arrested and deported the fiend, Walz doubted that his removal made anyone safer.  And they call that progress.

The government recently exposed serious breaches in our election systems, including foreign interference, and misfeasance or neglect that keeps hundreds of thousands of dead people, nonresidents, and non-citizens on the voter rolls.  The Governor of New Jersey said two contradictory things: Trump has no credibility on this issue; and Yes, we do have 6,600 non-citizens on the voter rolls.  She says it’s not a big problem though, as there’s no evidence of mass voter fraud – yet.

This is absurd.  It’s the equivalent of saying, we know the children are playing with matches, but they haven’t burned the house down yet, so why take action? Illegal voters on the rolls isn’t a glitch or a mistake by progressives, it’s a strategy and an opportunity.

Our government has uncovered billions of dollars of fraud, waste and abuse in social spending programs.  Recently, it was revealed that $100 million was being paid to dead people, and welfare program fraud is rampant, costing us billions.  Yet, as the nation sinks deeper under trillions of dollars of debt, progressives oppose investigating and ending fraud, probably because their utopian house of cards is built on, and relies on fraud.

Progressives have no regard for public safety, for public finances, or for voter integrity, yet they tell us they’re “saving our democracy.”  That’s either fantasy or a bald-faced lie, as only a madman could fail to realize they are leading us toward destruction.  The problem is, they don’t care about your life, or any life, for that matter.  They follow Stalin’s maxim that, “one death is a tragedy, a million deaths only a statistic.”

Today’s progressives have become a death cult, either killing its detractors, or at least wishing them dead.  The killings of Charlie Kirk and the Health care CEO in New York were hailed by progressives as victories for their perverted cause of progress.  Progressives have greeted the multiple attempts on President Trump’s life with regret that the assassins missed.  Online progressive posters have called for the murders of people like J.K.Rowling and Elon Musk.

We used to say, “don’t speak ill of the dead” but progressives can’t even manage that.  After Lyndsay Graham died, there were posts of “good riddance.”  Last week, conservative British politician Anne Widdecombe was murdered in her home.  A progressive “environmental activist” went on TV to say, “There are a lot of people who won’t be grieving.”

Wall Street Journal columnist Louise Perry writes that instances of reviling and desecrating the dead are more prevalent in unstable revolutionary societies, noting that such things happened during the French Revolution.  This makes sense, as progressives have proven themselves to be both unstable and revolutionary.  I’m torn between the contentment of watching the Democrats destroy themselves over their progressive mania, and the fear that they will do unspeakable damage to our Republic.  We live in perilous times.