Author: James Ostrowski

Note: This is an excerpt from Progressivism: A Primer on the Idea Destroying America (2014).  The utter failure of conservative Republicans to combat progressivism in any meaningful way explains the nature of GOP politics today.  Like the Seinfeld sitcom, it is much ado about nothing, but without the laughs. Having failed to roll back any major progressive program in the last 100 years, how does the GOP manage to keep the votes and donations of the rank and file flowing in sufficient quantities to keep the GOP machine in power? Highly paid and talented GOP consultants have brilliantly risen to … Continue reading →

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Note: This is an excerpt from Progressivism: A Primer on the Idea Destroying America (2014).  Conservatism is a reaction to progressivism and its essence is to be against progressivism as opposed to having a positive program.  To fill the void, conservatives have often repaired to the safe harbor of constitutionalism as a substitute for a coherent ideology. There are numerous problems with constitutionalism as a bulwark against progressivism and constitutionalism has been and will continue to be a spectacular failure in staunching the continual growth of progressive government. First and foremost, there is no way to enforce the Constitution against the … Continue reading →

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Note: This is an excerpt from Progressivism: A Primer on the Idea Destroying America (2014).  After Progressivism replaced liberalism as America’s dominant ideology, liberals faded from the scene and, like the cheetah, almost went extinct.  From 1900 through 1960, as the saying goes, all the prominent liberals in America could have fit into Murray Rothbard’s living room. Nature abhors a vacuum so conservatism stepped into the void left by the apparent death of liberalism.  Sandwiched in between progressive Republicans Taft and Hoover were two men who could be considered conservatives in the contemporary sense: Harding and Coolidge.  Harding did cut spending and Coolidge kept spending low … Continue reading →

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Note: This is an excerpt from Government Schools Are Bad for Your Kids. Your local government high school is often the best drug store in town.  Government schools are the key distribution point for illegal drugs in many communities.  One study concluded that “80% of the nation’s high school students and 44% of middle-schoolers have personally seen illegal drugs used or sold and/or students drunk or high on the grounds of their schools.”[1]  Another study warns that rates of illegal drug use are no lower in suburban schools as than urban ones.[2] Illegal drugs are tiny and easily hidden.  The … Continue reading →

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I wrote Progressivism: A Primer to explain certain anomalies in the behavior of progressives that I had noticed over a number of years.  For example, I found that progressives were rarely amenable to rational persuasion.  Facts, logic and even experience rarely changed their minds.  You couldn’t really argue with a progressive.  You would argue; they would fight.  They would get angry, insult and change the subject.  They never stopped proposing new government programs, spending and laws, though they appeared to lack a grand vision of what they were trying to accomplish. To explain all this and more, I propounded an … Continue reading →

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[This is an excerpt from Progressivism: A Primer on the Idea Destroying America (2014).  It appears in a section called “A Rogue’s Gallery of Progressives” along with articles on Lincoln, TR, FDR and LBJ] Woodrow Wilson was our worst president.  He did many of the things that Lincoln did to destroy life, liberty and property but did them on a grander scale, with less excuse and with more lasting consequences.  It is true that Lincoln laid the groundwork for the modern monstrosity we suffer under now, however, it is also true that federal spending sharply declined after his war and remained … Continue reading →

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[This is an excerpt from Progressivism: A Primer on the Idea Destroying America (2014).] One of the great virtues of liberalism is that, it alone among the political worldviews, discovered a way for people from different ethnic, racial and religious groups to live together in relative peace.  In all systems of powerful government, including progressivism, these groups struggle with each other for control of the state.  As I demonstrated in a paper presented at the Mises Institute in 2002, the major cause of war in the last fifty years was conflict between or among competing ethnic, racial and religious groups inside … Continue reading →

The analytical framework laid out in Progressivism: A Primer on the Idea Destroying America is extremely useful for explaining the formulaic reaction of progressives to mass shootings. Keep in mind that progressivism is a kind of self-imposed mental disability wherein the progressive convinces himself, without evidence or logic, that government action is the solution to all human problems and therefore becomes blind to any evidence that government itself may be the culprit. Also, keep in mind that in order to distract attention away from prior progressive government failures, the progressive instinctively resorts to a set of pre-determined non-governmental or societal … Continue reading →