The level of hate and vitriol that is leveled at conservative government officials, students, educators, entertainers, media and business persons by progressives has exceeded all bounds and set a frightening example for the American people. Semi-hysterical attacks on the Vice President because of his religious beliefs. Attacks on the First Lady’s clothes or shoes by reporters. Personal attacks by media talking heads concerning the President’s mental stability. Labeling every policy disagreement as racially motivated. Have Progressives been reduced to hate and ridicule as their only reason for being?
This no holds barred approach, this politics of personal destruction, is not limited to just Washington. It has spread throughout our total body politic. In our own State of Maine, conservative Gov. Paul LePage is regularly savaged by media pundits, educators, rivals and progressives in general.
What are the sins that President Trump and Governor LePage have committed? Their policies are designed to give the poor a hand up instead of a hand out; to bring the poor out of government dependent poverty into self-reliant independence. They have cut taxes, expanded the economy, eliminated unnecessary regulations and created real jobs. Now, they are encouraging hardworking entrepreneurs, concentrating resources on students rather than the educational bureaucracy, pursuing school choice and expanding charter schools, and placing the property rights of individuals before the prerogatives of the State. Perhaps most importantly, they are putting government on a diet until it fits back into the confines of the Constitution.
What’s not to like? Both men have run businesses, created jobs, made payroll and gotten their hands dirty. Maybe progressives, who tend to think they are above most of us, don’t like the Trump or LePage personalities. I know sometimes they aren’t very polished and can sometimes be a little crude, but they are doers who make a better life possible for the American people by getting government out of the way.
Progressives think government should replace the Creator as the granter of our rights and that the State is more important than the individual; that people are cogs in the great machinery of government. This is the existential difference between progressives and conservatives. And today, their policy is driven by hate and resistance.
I can only conclude that fear of losing their power and prestige is what engenders this level of blind, lemming-like hate on the part of progressives.