I believe you are correct in pointing out that the Butlers of the world are only interested in opposing the "American Empire" and that is why they support insane things. However I still think that thesis does not really save much face for them. They are still insane and, worse, morally bankrupt.
One of the reasons why they can live with that contradiction and still feel good about themselves is that they are insulated from the consequences. You can support Hamas as much as you want from the comfort of your prestigious Western tenured job. That is the morally bankrupt part.
But I would add that insanity is still important. Of course, it does make sense that if that guy really thinks he is Napoleon then he orders the invasion of Russia every week he gets excited, but that does not make him less insane. To believe in the "direction of history" to the point where you side with those who would behead you needs to be considered insane, no matter how much rationalization one includes to explain oneself away from the consequences.
Progressivism is just an outgrowth of liberalism reacting to how classical liberalism (of the late 18th century) was hijacked by capitalism in the 19th century. (Until recently, some conservatives could legitimately claim to be Classical Liberals, but now they call themselves "Libertarians".)
Liberalism has always been about countering, checking, controlling, or devolving concentrated power. The original Progressive Movement at the turn of the 20th century was mostly about countering and controlling (even breaking up) capitalist corporate power with Prohibition being, in part, an unforeseen result of women finally winning the vote. That's a major reason why their New Dealer heirs rejected the term Progressive and successfully monopolized the term "Liberal" which later allowed Reactionaries to make the term an epithet in the late 70s.
Liberals (including their Progressive wing) have roots Christian (and especially Protestant) reformism, another reason why it swayed into the Prohibitionist experiment. It is no great insight to see modern day progressivism's roots in New England Puritanism which, not totally unjustly, can be caricatured as "preachy" and "sanctimonious." Today's secular Progressives (and the reactions to it) are a direct outgrowth of the 60s with the realization that the US was not innocent of malign imperial atrocities in Vietnam and elsewhere along with a belief that democracy could be strengthened by including the voices of the young, women, minorities, the old, in fact the actual "people" of the United States in one context and the world in a another.
The corporate led reaction to 60s Progressivism is ongoing and relentless. So is the human spirit no matter how much we may depend on corporations for OUR jobs, OUR innovations, OUR wellbeing, and OUR government.
You know people in the upper-left quadrant, and they side with the underdog. Maybe the people you know limit your outlook.
I am in the upper left quadrant because this very common analysis has an inexorable logic:
- Two peoples call a rather small slice of land home
- Forcibly removing either people is a war crime to be avoided at great cost, as is one side controlling the land and denying the other legal and political rights.
- Therefore the two-state solution is the only path that is both feasible and humane. (I understand there are intelligent good faith advocates of a single state with equal rights for all, that is not widely seen as feasible given established hatred).
For decades now both the Israeli government and Hamas have done what they can to prevent two states. The Palestinian Authority deserves much criticism for corruption and poor governance, but they have not wavered in their support for a two-state solution since they accepted Israel as part of Oslo. So I end up, for now, in the upper left quadrant. All Israel need do is re-embrace the two-state solution, it is not about strong vs. weak.
I'm hardly alone. You can hardly get more mainstream than Biden, Blinken, and Thomas Friedman. Their great sympathy for Israel is vestigial, affection for an Israel that no longer exists. They share my fundamental analysis; only the two-state solution can bring a humane peace.
Noisy campus protesters screaming about settler colonialism and oppression by the powerful is analogous to Michel Foucault in 2001, significant but not the real story. Few people are strongly ideological but the few who are scream really loudly. A better understanding of opinion change among the young is Kevin Drum's
Similarly "progressive" came into wide use after Reagan and later Republicans made "liberal" a dirty word. "Progressive" evoked Teddy Roosevelt and other progressives after the gilded age. It was a self-description that for a time did not turn off voters. Discussion about the meaning of progressivism are like discussions of true conservatism, common usage differs from clean ideological descriptions.
I don't think tying people like Butler to progressivism will work. "Progressive" is now closely tied to Bernie Sanders and AOC and the Squad, all of whom are, in the political science sense, liberals.
I can generally support all of what you wrote, especially your first line.
Limiting "history" mostly to written history (last 4-5k years in the Eurasian core), or history close enough to writing to be somewhat captured (e.g. some capture of Aztec, Inca, Polynesian, and parts of African history in the early colonial period), I'm not sure history has an arc (cf MLK for example), but I suspect it has a vague direction - think Brownian motion with a drift velocity superimposed. If given half an opportunity I would throw in a great deal more math :) and physics/chemistry analogies.
My other, admittedly fairly trivial, observation in response to your subtle and excellent theses is that while binary thinking and ingroup/outgroup dynamics probably predate the Pleistocene, the deeply historicist worldview of progressivism *seems* to be mostly limited to cultures formed under Abrahamic religions**. n.b. being of post-Christian background myself, I don't see that as such a bad thing, although I do share the descriptive (vice normative) observation of a lot of the NRX/Dark Enlightenment types that 18th-21st C Euroamerican progressivism can reasonably be viewed as an evolution of Christianity (the NRX/DE types do, oft-times at least, view the putative egalitarian foundation(s) of progressivism as a Bad Thing).
** Counterexamples welcome - China, Taiwan, Singapore, and to lesser degrees (S) Korea and Japan would make fascinating studies in terms of how "Progressivism with metaConfucian characteristics" evolves, but I lack any substantive cultureal knowledge of any of those countries, not to mention the ability to read their literature, to say nothing of reading it in context.
I believe you are correct in pointing out that the Butlers of the world are only interested in opposing the "American Empire" and that is why they support insane things. However I still think that thesis does not really save much face for them. They are still insane and, worse, morally bankrupt.
One of the reasons why they can live with that contradiction and still feel good about themselves is that they are insulated from the consequences. You can support Hamas as much as you want from the comfort of your prestigious Western tenured job. That is the morally bankrupt part.
But I would add that insanity is still important. Of course, it does make sense that if that guy really thinks he is Napoleon then he orders the invasion of Russia every week he gets excited, but that does not make him less insane. To believe in the "direction of history" to the point where you side with those who would behead you needs to be considered insane, no matter how much rationalization one includes to explain oneself away from the consequences.
Progressivism is just an outgrowth of liberalism reacting to how classical liberalism (of the late 18th century) was hijacked by capitalism in the 19th century. (Until recently, some conservatives could legitimately claim to be Classical Liberals, but now they call themselves "Libertarians".)
Liberalism has always been about countering, checking, controlling, or devolving concentrated power. The original Progressive Movement at the turn of the 20th century was mostly about countering and controlling (even breaking up) capitalist corporate power with Prohibition being, in part, an unforeseen result of women finally winning the vote. That's a major reason why their New Dealer heirs rejected the term Progressive and successfully monopolized the term "Liberal" which later allowed Reactionaries to make the term an epithet in the late 70s.
Liberals (including their Progressive wing) have roots Christian (and especially Protestant) reformism, another reason why it swayed into the Prohibitionist experiment. It is no great insight to see modern day progressivism's roots in New England Puritanism which, not totally unjustly, can be caricatured as "preachy" and "sanctimonious." Today's secular Progressives (and the reactions to it) are a direct outgrowth of the 60s with the realization that the US was not innocent of malign imperial atrocities in Vietnam and elsewhere along with a belief that democracy could be strengthened by including the voices of the young, women, minorities, the old, in fact the actual "people" of the United States in one context and the world in a another.
The corporate led reaction to 60s Progressivism is ongoing and relentless. So is the human spirit no matter how much we may depend on corporations for OUR jobs, OUR innovations, OUR wellbeing, and OUR government.
You know people in the upper-left quadrant, and they side with the underdog. Maybe the people you know limit your outlook.
I am in the upper left quadrant because this very common analysis has an inexorable logic:
- Two peoples call a rather small slice of land home
- Forcibly removing either people is a war crime to be avoided at great cost, as is one side controlling the land and denying the other legal and political rights.
- Therefore the two-state solution is the only path that is both feasible and humane. (I understand there are intelligent good faith advocates of a single state with equal rights for all, that is not widely seen as feasible given established hatred).
For decades now both the Israeli government and Hamas have done what they can to prevent two states. The Palestinian Authority deserves much criticism for corruption and poor governance, but they have not wavered in their support for a two-state solution since they accepted Israel as part of Oslo. So I end up, for now, in the upper left quadrant. All Israel need do is re-embrace the two-state solution, it is not about strong vs. weak.
I'm hardly alone. You can hardly get more mainstream than Biden, Blinken, and Thomas Friedman. Their great sympathy for Israel is vestigial, affection for an Israel that no longer exists. They share my fundamental analysis; only the two-state solution can bring a humane peace.
Noisy campus protesters screaming about settler colonialism and oppression by the powerful is analogous to Michel Foucault in 2001, significant but not the real story. Few people are strongly ideological but the few who are scream really loudly. A better understanding of opinion change among the young is Kevin Drum's
https://jabberwocking.com/seeing-israel-through-young-eyes/
Similarly "progressive" came into wide use after Reagan and later Republicans made "liberal" a dirty word. "Progressive" evoked Teddy Roosevelt and other progressives after the gilded age. It was a self-description that for a time did not turn off voters. Discussion about the meaning of progressivism are like discussions of true conservatism, common usage differs from clean ideological descriptions.
I don't think tying people like Butler to progressivism will work. "Progressive" is now closely tied to Bernie Sanders and AOC and the Squad, all of whom are, in the political science sense, liberals.
I can generally support all of what you wrote, especially your first line.
Limiting "history" mostly to written history (last 4-5k years in the Eurasian core), or history close enough to writing to be somewhat captured (e.g. some capture of Aztec, Inca, Polynesian, and parts of African history in the early colonial period), I'm not sure history has an arc (cf MLK for example), but I suspect it has a vague direction - think Brownian motion with a drift velocity superimposed. If given half an opportunity I would throw in a great deal more math :) and physics/chemistry analogies.
My other, admittedly fairly trivial, observation in response to your subtle and excellent theses is that while binary thinking and ingroup/outgroup dynamics probably predate the Pleistocene, the deeply historicist worldview of progressivism *seems* to be mostly limited to cultures formed under Abrahamic religions**. n.b. being of post-Christian background myself, I don't see that as such a bad thing, although I do share the descriptive (vice normative) observation of a lot of the NRX/Dark Enlightenment types that 18th-21st C Euroamerican progressivism can reasonably be viewed as an evolution of Christianity (the NRX/DE types do, oft-times at least, view the putative egalitarian foundation(s) of progressivism as a Bad Thing).
** Counterexamples welcome - China, Taiwan, Singapore, and to lesser degrees (S) Korea and Japan would make fascinating studies in terms of how "Progressivism with metaConfucian characteristics" evolves, but I lack any substantive cultureal knowledge of any of those countries, not to mention the ability to read their literature, to say nothing of reading it in context.