Preposterous Progressive Proposals

The original Progressive Movement lasted about 20 years from 1896 to 1917. It was a period of widespread social activism and political reform across the United States whose goals were to eliminate political corruption and business monopolies while improving working and living conditions for average Americans.

Among the leading Progressives politicians were Theodore Roosevelt, Robert La Follette, Charles Evans Hughes, William Jennings Bryan, Al Smith, and Woodrow Wilson. Roosevelt went so far as to launch a third-party bid for the White House in 1912 on the Progressive (also known as the Bull Moose) ticket, promising to “bust more trusts” that were monopolizing industry and stifling small businesses. And in 1924, La Follette garnered almost 17% of the popular vote when he ran for president as the Progressive (and Socialist) Party candidate.

On the social front, Jane Addams founded Hull House in Chicago, caring for impoverished immigrant families, and advocating for women’s suffrage. Meanwhile, her Windy City counterpart, Upton Sinclair, drew attention to the unsanitary health standards of the meatpacking industry in his muckraking masterpiece, The Jungle.

As revolutionary as some of these men and women were, they would be astonished – and recoil in horror – at the modern-day Progressive Movement led by Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, and the rest of the Democratic Squad in Congress. Can you imagine Teddy Roosevelt, fresh from leading the Rough Riders up San Juan Hill, recognizing more than two genders? Or Jane Addams supporting a women’s “right” to abort her child up to and including birth?

Woodrow Wilson was a liberal icon and a lousy president, but even he would balk at drag queens reading storybooks to kindergartners or transgendered men (or is that women?) displaying their newly acquired breasts on the White House lawn. And I am quite sure that Robert La Follette would draw the line at biological men competing against… and trouncing… biological women, while sharing the same locker-room facilities.

William Jennings Bryan, a Progressive poster boy and Presbyterian elder, famously argued against the teaching of evolution in public schools in the Scopes Monkey Trial in 1925. Bryan also defended the right of parents to help choose school curriculum, argued that Darwinism was merely a "hypothesis,” and claimed that attorney Clarence Darrow and other intellectuals were trying to invalidate "every moral standard that the Bible gives us.”

Do you think for a minute that Bryan – who was the Democratic presidential candidate in 1896, 1900, and 1908 – would caucus with the Democrats in Congress were he alive today? Or stand a chance at earning their presidential nomination for a fourth time?

Today’s Progressives are so deluded that they actually believe that climate change is a greater threat to the United States than China and its more than 2-million-man military. For the record, sea levels have risen just 8-9 inches total since 1880 and global temperatures have only increased by 2-degrees Fahrenheit during that same time period. Meanwhile, China boasts 965,000 ground troops; a Navy with 260,000 sailors; and a 395,000-person Air Force… in addition to a strategic missile force of 120,000 and a paramilitary unit with 500,000 members.

In 1977, Richard Attenborough directed a movie about Operation Market Garden, a failed Allied operation in the Nazi-held Netherlands in World War II. Starring an all-star cast that included Dirk Bogarde, James Caan, Michael Caine, Sean Connery, Elliott Gould, Gene Hackman, Anthony Hopkins, Laurence Olivier, Ryan O’Neal, Robert Redford, Maximilian Schell, and Liv Ullmann, the film was nominated for Best Motion Picture.

Its title? A Bridge Too Far, which perfectly sums up the platform of today’s Democrat Party and the radical Progressives that call the shots on that side of the aisle. They have hijacked and destroyed the party of Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy and won’t be satisfied until they have fundamentally reimagined America.

Teddy Roosevelt and William Jennings Bryan unquestionably loved this country. Sadly, I can’t say the same about today’s Progressives, who despise everything America once stood for, especially the Judeo-Christian principles upon which our country was founded. On the contrary, they are embarrassed and ashamed of our history and are hell-bent on reinventing it to fit their anti-American agenda.

My friends, we cannot cede one more inch of policy or property to these repulsive and radical revolutionaries who idolize Fidel Castro and Che Guevara while demonizing George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. It's time to take a stand... and send the socialists packing.