This just occurred to me:
Conservatives are the face and the reflection of the Agrarian Age
Progressives are the face and the reflection of the Industrial Age.
Libertarians are the face and the reflection of the Information Age.
If this is so, the progressives are doomed to be rendered obsolete as their models and mindsets of centralization are being smashed by the quick moving immediacy and individualization of the InfoAge.
They will be supplanted by libertarians in the same way they supplanted conservatives during the last 100 years...pretty much exactly from the beginning of the Industrial Age...when huge numbers of people moved from their independent farms and massed together in centralized locations to create centralized governance and centralized centers of power and influence.
Conservatives have always given progressives lots of credit for infiltrating society in a relentless march toward taking it over. But I think that might be a mistaken view of history. It's not that the progressives had impossible patience and kept at it against all odds until they won through persistence and by slowly and cleverly breaking down the morals and traditions and virtues of the earlier age.
It's that industrialization and its attendant centralization appeared to be the "new thing", the "progressive" thing, and Progressives latched onto it as 'evolutionary' and necessary, and they adopted it as their vision. The future...human progression.
Industrialization and centralization was a steam engine speeding down the shiny new track and they jumped on board.
It was the industrialization of manufacturing and business, and the necessary centralization of the workforce and government to regulate, tax and control it...that became the "progressive" vision. It preceded the progressive ideology. I would say, in fact, that it gave birth to it.
So. Modern Liberalism or Progressivism is the ideology of the Industrial Age. Of dingy cities, of black smoke belching factory chimneys.
Progressivism is the ideology of moving people from the independence of land ownership and the farm, into cities. Into centralized, small, cramped quarters surrounded by strangers in stead of generations of family on the farm homestead.
And there was nothing conservatives could really do...it was the movement of people and labor and production and power. How could we fight that?
But now...the information age is tearing down the old centralized structures. The libertarian, the individual-focused age is upon us...where production and labor and talent and people are dispersed from the cities...even out of offices...working from home, or the road. In motion, alone-together-moving-meeting. Making it all happen without the need for centralization.
That is the wave of the future, and the hackneyed mindset, worldview, ideology of the dying industrial age will be swept away with the same inevitability of history as it swept away the one that preceded it.
TBC
Joebama American citizens 2024 print
9 months ago
Hmmm, I don't think so unless you redefine the terms conservative, progressive and libertarian to exclude governing principles.
ReplyDeleteUp until the Industrial Age, most of the world was based on an agrarian economy and governed by monarchs, warlords, emperors and mandarins, none of which I would call "conservative" based on today's definition. There were exceptions scattered throughout such as the early Roman Republic, Greek democracy and the ancient Jews under judges, all agrarian and more conservative than liberal by today's definition.
The Enlightenment had its greatest impact with the onset of the Industrial Age but this was also a regional phenomena. The power of the monarchs was weakened, a move toward conservatism and away from liberalism, again by today's definition. The crowning achievement of conservatism was the formation of the United States as a constitutional republic. Did Americans drift back toward elitist rule because of the Industrial Age? The cyclical nature of history seems to indicate the economic age of a society has little to do with the political system.
The Information Age does not adequately describe what we have now unless you fold in the Communication Age as well. The Communication Age enabled the Arab Spring mobocracy and subsequent theocracy. When you combine information and communication, does that not yield the Surveillance Age, a totalitarian's dream? Pigeon holing an age can be a dangerous exercise.
If their is anything libertarian about today's liberals it is the licentious behavior they grant as an opiate for conformity. If you behave yourself as a good little serf, we will allow you all kinds of trivial freedoms in the pursuit of pleasure. You know, sex, drugs and rock and roll. What these fools do not realize is they will be the first eliminated once the elite do not require their votes but do demand productivity for their benefit.
These various "ages" do not breakdown so cleanly to align with the dominant political forces of the day. Look at how many people in America voluntarily choose slavery in preference to liberty in the belief liberals offer more security and freedoms. It is not the first time in history people have done this and these choices do not neatly coincide with the various ages.
What if the great unwashed want to be members of the theocracy or sell themselves to the political elites? Doesn't a Libertarian viewpoint require that they be allowed to do so?
ReplyDeleteYou can't forget that most people don't want freedom. They want a comfortable position in the tribe. For most people, motivations and emotions are still operating at a neolithic level. The interesting part is how the dominant political forces utilize this fact.