Besides politics, there is another reason why, with the exception of the ACLU, there has been no significant opposition from the left to the Obama Administration’s blatant violations of our 4th Amendment rights currently occuring at airports around the country. There is absolutely nothing in the ideology of progressivism that provides a foundation for opposing such actions. In fact, I would argue that such actions by the government are a direct implication of progressivism.
Throughout the 20th Century progressive administrations have perpetrated similar offenses against the individual rights of American citizens, particularly when they have had war as a pretense for their actions. It is the progressive movement that gave us the ideology of eugenics and the racist policies that ended up marring the history of states like North Carolina. During WWI, it is the first “great” hero of progressives everywhere, President Woodrow Wilson that gave us the military draft and pursued a policy of censorship and oppression by instituting the Sedition Act of 1918. This act forbade, with punishment for violators, “disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language” about the United
States government, its flag, or its armed forces or that caused others
to view the American government or its institutions with contempt. The
act also allowed the the Postmaster General to refuse to deliver mail that met those same standards for punishable
speech or opinion.
During WWII, it is the second “great” progressivist president, Franklin Roosevelt, that went so far as to steal the property of Japanese, Italian, and German Americans and non-citizen immigrants and then forced them into internment camps.
Is there any surprise then, that our current president has been nothing short of a hero among progressives. Anyone who even casually studied the history of the progressive movement during the 20th Century could easily have predicted where we are today.
