The Mental Disorder

by Sam Huntington

The cooperative model of social theory suggests that society improves when everyone cooperates. We call the opposing argument the conflict model, suggesting that society improves when conflict demands compromise. I find it interesting that most progressives favor the former with only slight modification: society improves when everyone cooperates, and anyone who doesn't cooperate is a racist homophobe.

The term “progressive” used in context with political or social theory is a contradiction. The progressive agenda is actually regressive and punitive, particularly among ethnic minorities and economically disadvantaged. Rather than improve the condition of these people, it actually causes more suffering. If this isn’t true, then why is there no end to the number of impoverished Americans? After all our spending, where is Mr. Johnson’s “Great Society?” The answer is that Mr. Johnson’s great society are all standing in the welfare line, using government issued needles, or killing one another inside the ghettoes.

In a similar manner, it is impossible to make an effective argument for progressive education models when American students are among the least educated in the entire industrialized world. Of course, we do recognize there is an insidious nature to progressive education. Rather than teaching students how to think, public education today tells students what to think. Progressive educationalists lie to our children so that they end up thinking America isn’t so exceptional after all, that all of our founding fathers owned slaves, and that a gay lifestyles enhance mental and physical health.

Progressive programs provide socialists with much needed self-fulfilling prophesies. There must always be more suffering, for otherwise progressivism is unsustainable. More suffering demands increased spending —preferably with other people’s money. Naturally, it is necessary to sprinkle in a little class warfare and racial division from time to time, just to keep things interesting.

So armed, progressives goose step toward center stage, and reassure us of their intellectual superiority; it is how astute politicians are elected as democrats —and reelected. But whether it is a progressive politician seeking government expenditures to support an increase in subsidized slum areas, which have a substantial impact on local economies, or a progressive egghead suggesting cooperative education teaches students anything beyond laziness and dishonesty, we have gotten used to American progressives. But now we should begin thinking about what to do with them once they’ve solved all of our social problems. I’ve been thinking that perhaps we should place them in state mental hospitals.