The responsibilities of being a progressive

As the year 2009 draws to a close, and idealism appears to be suffocating under the combined weights of pragmatism and corporate greed, I find myself pondering what might have gone wrong and trying to figure out ways to reverse this sad and alarming situation. This, to me, is the heart and soul of Progressivism. To face an unfortunate (or inconvenient) truth, and try to change it for the better. Join me, and I promise you won't regret it.

First, I want to dispel a myth about Liberals and/or Progressives that has been manufactured by those who lack vision. We have been painted as weak because our collectivist beliefs trend towards allowing government to play a larger role in our lives, and a neat catch-all term of "Paternalism" has been attached, which has the added benefit of making us sound like little children dependent upon Daddy to provide sustenance and direction. Oh, and we're also self-centered, because our desire to help those in need is really just an ego boost. As amusing as these fallacies are to those on the right, they are merely constructs that help them deal with their own shortcomings.

Far from shirking or abdicating responsibility for the well-being of our society, we accept it wholeheartedly. Indeed, we even take up the slack of those who think only of themselves or their tight little group of like-minded narcissistic misanthropes, who could place their empathy in a thimble and still have room to store some other stuff. But I digress. I had intended to keep this missive free of anger and invective, but I also wanted to clear the air, because I'm going to ask you folks to do even more than you have been. Maybe more than you care to, but I'll take that chance.

Responsibility. I'm not merely referring to personal responsibility, wherein you focus upon "doing no harm", or even noblesse oblige, which may or may not have some guilt associations for those who have prospered in this life. No, I'm talking about the responsibility of discovering the truth and acting upon it. This is quite possibly the most challenging form of responsibility, because you just don't have anything to lean on while you're doing it. You must learn, and you must teach, with humility as a constant companion. This is the only road to true progress, and we need as many travelers down this road as we can get.

With such altruism in mind, let's talk some about politics, as distasteful as that subject may be right now. Many reading this have actually campaigned for office, and some of you were victorious, and are maybe even serving yet today. BlueNC has been deeply involved in election politics in the past, and will hopefully continue to be involved in the future. Some of you have sacrificed a great deal personally, in time, money and spirit on the altar of election politics, and you can be proud of that. You can also rest assured that you have made progress. But, like a tug-of-war in the sand, unexpected forces can sometimes reverse that progress, and pull us even closer to where we don't want to go.

And what about the growing ranks of Independents? For sure, a part of that migration away from the main two political parties is due to disenchantment from either specific positions or "business as usual" political backscratching, but I think there's more. I think a growing number of people feel intellectually limited or "deprived", if you will, within the framework of the parties themselves, and they desperately want more.

So what does all that have to do with being a (good) Progressive? If we want to bring about change in policy, then we have to change the way politicians think. Just helping to push them into office is not enough. Just seeking out the rare breed of electable Progressive is not enough. We have to learn, and we have to teach.

If we lived in a vacuum, or were raised in a creche where humanity was the educational focus, I have no doubt that the vast majority of us would be Progressive. But we don't live in a vacuum. We live in a world that is reality deprived. We live in a world shaped by advertisers and corporate propagandists. Truth is more elusive today than it was in the Dark Ages, where plagues were attributed to demons and good fortune was measured by how many spoons full of gruel had a chunk of meat in them.

We have a unique opportunity here, folks. The Age of Reason is not dead, and critical thinking skills have not been lost, they're waiting patiently for you to use them. We can change the way our politicians think, and we can even change the way society as a whole thinks. The intellectually deprived Independents I mentioned above may be the first to listen (or read, whatever). But we must learn, and we must teach. You don't think you're up to it? The hell with that. I'm not up to it, but I'm going to do it anyway. Join me.