Social progress is not automatic but
there is a positive trend in Western Culture. First let me say I am proud to have Western Culture as my antecedent cultures from which I draw my basic philosophy. When I was young I supposed I was creating a new philosophy from scratch, I really preferred original ideas, but even I found in the long run that one pulls from a sea of ideas which have been worked on for thousands if not millions of years.
Western Culture has some glorious achievements in it's main stream, but moreover it has its counterculture, which stretches back past the self-invention of bands of roving thugs into "Kings". This counter culture has denied such claims to authority from day one, and is still denying all authority from the dawn of time.
Western Culture was born on the Mediterranean with the ever present cross-pollination of Arabic, African and European cultures there, with continual hints even of the Far Eastern. This is at the heart of the strong deep current of the people of Western Civilization. While it has suffered from the symptoms of tension with respect to it's long heterogeneity it has always been heterogeneous and so it has a lot of experience with related challenges.
Final success against those challenges is near by. We will not only succeed at living together, but we will not lose our cultural differences as the price. Our diversity will be relied upon to make the system work. We will preserve our cultures and those of others.
* Securing the successful integration of multiculture should be considered one of the key goals of progressivism.
Progressive vs. Progressive
I often provide stares of doubt when I tell people that the word "progressive" in a political context has two meanings. What makes me sure I am correct is that the doubt is followed by a strong belief in either of the two understandings. One can try to categorize the reasons for these two terms, or make demographic explanations, but they do exist. One the one hand it means "more left than liberal", and on the other "compromise driven, pragmatic, incremental".
The first meaning is better known in classical politics, but the other also has a regular English meaning which supports it. For my purposes the dichotomy is perfectly placed. It is a wonderful stroke of luck. These two different meaning define an active span in which to apply political force.
Progress is the goal. We think the world needs to change still, there is room for improvement. In the history of Western Ideas, this perspective has been maligned as pessimistic, I hope you can see why. "To insist on change is to criticize" is an easy prejudice. From it's own progressive perspective in which improvement is the frame of reference this attitude is universally optimistic, forever believing things can get better.
Progress in the real world is incremental. We see big changes all at once on the timescale of our individual lives, but over centuries the change appears continuous. But to guide this change on the longer time scale one needs the ideals of progress.
What is progress about? What constitutes progress? Less oppression and more universal wealth. That is progress. To do this we remember the meaning of these words, and we also define them down. We should care that the entire world is wealthy enough to have clean running water. And we do.
The Coming Millennia
A multiculture will continue to arise in which all cultures are exposed to one another. They will be weeded according to their ability to adopt a doctrine of toleration, on whatever principles amenable to their faiths and ideals, but this will leave a great contingent of diversity just as one sees in any metropolis today. Instead of racism there will be a curiosity and familiarities. The bonds are social and commercial both. One language will be learned in addition to all others.
The affect of our political action will be to smooth the trauma of this cultural transformation. The collisions of cultures can be a bloody affair. Nature reacts by generating countervailing forces. Perpetual war create war resistance, that force can be dissipated many ways, of course, so the war can be prolonged, but the cause and effect is clear. This is true of all wars, all action, the trends are defined by the subtle slow moving forces.
Right Now, The Opportunity of 9/11
An historic turn could have been made after 9/11. "The whole world was American". Our status in the world was as high as possible. The pragmatics of a military role in the war on terror were to be satisfied with Afghanistan, this would have ensured a US physical presence in a vital part of the world, between the Middle East and the Indian region. Afghanistan is an excellent strategic location, although the strategy would have had to been adjusted from the Iraq Thought Experiments at PNAC, it is a good strategy. Because of international sentiment, our status there could have been such that we retained an influence there with the approval of the world.
Clearly this speaks not to the leftist, viewing all war as oppression on the working class, but to the pragmatists. But for the leftist too there was a more diplomatic roll in the world in which we encouraged local infrastructures using new international access. This would not lead to liberation of the world's people overnight, but would open a door to continual escalating progress in that regard.
This plan is not too late. The liberals of America need to step up with our alternative view which must assume the sympathies that were with us on 9/12. Those sympathies are still there, the world knows the division of the US. They have similar struggles in their own nations and it's a matter of world history such struggles. The shadow government of liberalism should take it's
They understand our goals, they know that there may be results to the struggles in America, that we are only narrowly divided from alternate paths. We must make clear our intentions regarding incremental progress in the world.
- Human Service Infrastructure
- Universal Wealth
- Freedom
