Modern Democratic Party Betrays Progress By Promoting Policies of the Past

Modern day Democrats talk often about 'progress'. If you listen to your Democratic Congressman or Senator or President talk, they'll mention how they want to move society forward, advance the ball, create or grow jobs through government spending, or in some way improve humanity by using the power of the state to hammer the backward among us into the future. Liberal blogs support Democrats by arguing and mocking conservatives and Republicans as 'backwards' and falling behind an advancing liberal society.

But the truth of the matter is that the modern day Democratic Party has betrayed the ideal of 'progress' by promoting policies of the past, policies that lock in jobs and classes and innovations and ideas of the past and act as a barrier to human progress.

President Obama demonstrated this lately when he lamented that the worsening economy isn’t his fault because of things like ATM machines and airport kiosks. He said:

There are some structural issues with our economy where a lot of businesses have learned to become much more efficient with a lot fewer workers. You see it when you go to a bank and you use an ATM, you don’t go to a bank teller, or you go to the airport and you’re using a kiosk instead of checking in at the gate.

The modern day Democratic Party does not support or favor any sort of structural changes in America- they don't want America to progress in any sort of way, and this statement says just that- Obama is upset that the vision that he has of the past when he was growing up, a vision of no ATM's and bank tellers patiently waiting in the bank and long lines at the airport waiting for agents to help customers, is no longer the reality of the present and will not be the reality of the future.

Rather than embracing this change, Obama and the modern day Democrats fight against it. They think that they see these changes leading to lost jobs (even though the evidence is that there are more bank tellers than there were in the past), but what they fail to see how this progress has made the People better. By by replacing expensive bank tellers and customer service agents with cheaper automated efficient ATMS and kiosks, banks can now charge lower fees and even have free checking, and airports can lower prices for airline tickets and continue to provide quality service. The People benefit, notably the poor, by these advances in technology and innovation. It is real change, the kind that we all hoped for when Obama was elected, the kind of change and progress that defined a nation that grew from rural settlements clinging to the east coast to a superpower.

But the modern day Democratic Party doesn't like this change- they want to lock in the classes, structures, jobs, technology, and modes of travel that they know and understand and think that they can control.

In my post Nuclear Power and Manned Space Flight: Victims of Democrat's Progress Backwards? I started to advance this meme when I wrote:

America instead is collapsing on the weight of promises made to generations past, ruled over by elitist politicians who seek only to control us, and everyday our nation moves farther away from living a prosperous life in the stars in freedom and liberty, however preposterous or unlikely that future may have been.

The current leadership of our nation speaks of 'progress,' but they are abandoning nuclear power and manned spaceflight in favor of providing healthcare insurance to people who are encouraged not to purchase it and spending money they don't have to support railroads and electric motor carriages and windmills. The future that Obama, Democrats, liberals, and Republicans that go along with them is not a future full of cheap safe energy and man roaming freely in the stars- it is a future with man going backward, remembering that once, long ago, before I was born and before my students were born, man built generators that were powered by the atom splitting and man walked on the moon.

Man once walked on the moon! Nuclear power plants were once built! Say it- and then realize that these are events of the past- that the new normal and likely new future of America and the world is a long, slow slide backwards into tyranny, injustice, and confiscation of property by elites.

The modern day Democratic Party, including my Congressman Gary Peters and my Senators Debbie Stabenow and Carl Levin and my President Barack Obama, push through legislation, appointments, and executive orders energy policies that attempt to lock in the 1970's. Excessive regulations and cancelling of the Yucca Mountain project ensure that our nation will have the same number of nuclear power plants as the 1970's. Through regulations and taxes and fees they have prevented or delayed or made more expensive the building new refineries, drilling for oil, or developing new natural resources.

Modern day Democrats talk about putting in place policies that push us to walk or travel by bus or train- methods of transportation that have long since been surpassed by automobiles and airplanes, although because automobiles travel on government-built roads and because air travel is increasingly regulated by the government, both of these modes of transportation are less dynamic and innovative and efficient than they could be if Americans were as free as they could be.

None of this should be a surprise to voters, and yet it seems to be. When Obama gave a major speech on energy when he was running for President in 2008, I wrote:

As I listened to Obama talk about his energy visions for the future, I imagined what it would be like to live in a world that is cured of it's oil addiction- a world where there is no power generated by fossil fuels, and instead water and wind power the world. Ahh, indeed- the change we need... windmill from ancient Rhodes, waterwheel from Roman Spain...

Democrats are about locking in the class system that we currently had and are all about fighting any change to it. That's why they bail out banks and automotive companies- it has little to do with saving jobs and everything to do with saving jobs from people who they are friends with and who donate money to them. Democrats are all about taxing the rich, because they know that the super rich will be able to hide their money in offshore accounts or deduct it through hidden tax code provisions, but yet the upper middle class won't be able to dodge these taxes and will be forced to pay them and will sink into the lower classes which are so dependent on government help. Democrats are all about regulations and licensing and provisions and rules, all of which by their costs and difficulty in implementing help existing firms and companies, especially those large ones that are able to lobby government for waivers, but yet hurt new firms and businesses, especially small ones, who are not able to get past the barriers that the government erects to challenge the existing businesses and by so doing change our nation for the better.

While Obama might talk about how ATMs and kiosks are costing jobs, what he really is lamenting is that his vision of the past is being destroyed by advances that he didn't see coming and doesn't fully understand how to control- he is upset that his vision of the past is no longer the present now that we have had real progress in spite of Democrats efforts.

Humanity is amazing, and can remake the world in amazing ways when unleashed and freed from the bonds of government and the state through limited government, rule of law, protection of property, low taxes, low regulation, and conservative principles.

But modern day Democrats have betrayed the ideas of 'progress' and instead are now only interested in putting place policies that lock in the past.