The Occupy Wall Street movement that began in 2011 protested government policies that favored the 1%, the elite, over the 99%, the masses. Their protests were justified. The Wall Street fat cats who owned mortgage-backed securities were bailed out, but homeowners who had lost their jobs and couldn’t pay their mortgages were foreclosed. But that’s the way Progressive Democracy works.
We can look at those two ideas of Progressivism and Democracy to see why.
Democracy can be thought of in several ways. One is that it is a method of peacefully choosing and replacing those who hold government power. But that view of democracy has been replaced by a broader one. People view democracy as a type of government that carries out the will of the people, as determined by the outcomes of democratic elections.
This view of democracy, widely accepted today, legitimizes anything the government does, because a democratic government is just implementing the policies chosen by the voters.
Progressivism is an ideology that views the role of government as not only protecting individual rights but also looking out for people’s economic well-being. Often, this means imposing costs on some for the benefit of others.
Read the rest at The Independent Institute.
