Dr. Prasad, how much do you know about Progressivism as a historical movement? Its first great achievement was Prohibition - exactly the sort of grand-scale, intrusive public morality drama we see with certain aspects of COVID. There are many examples of such campaigns, some abandoned and some still ongoing.
Progressivism has always had the vicious tendencies you describe (which do of course spring from the desire to do good). It also has a long history of turning former adherents into the next Great Enemy, as soon as they begin to dissent. Stay safe.
Interesting perspective. As long as I can remember being politically aware I have though of myself as a Libertarian and more recently, a Classical Liberal, as I began to understand what that term really means. That being said, as I heard Progressivism used more and more and began paying attention to the Progressive movement, I never identified it with the positive traits you admired but instead always saw in it the opposite, especially the lack of tolerance and lack of freedom of speech (and/or shaming of others for their speech). More recently, the more radical shift of progressives to try and use government to solve any and all inequality or societal problem will only lead to larger government and drastic changes - not incremental improvements.
About 95% of progressives are suffering from Long TDS, which seems to produce an order or two of magnitude larger declines in IQ than Covid.
I used to largely identify with progressives, largely for the causes they pushed, but they always had the 'protect the stupid from the themselves via government policy' streak to them.
What you point out has been going on longer than just the last year or so. "Progressives" have had this problem at their core for a long time. I'd suggest you read Thomas Sowell's "A Conflict of Visions" which was first published in 1987, he exposes the problem progressives have with their Unconstrained Vision.
He speaks truth. it has always been that way historically. When it has been said, your rights need to be curbed for the greater good, all has been eventually lost. Never has the greater good been defined, debated and agreed upon. It has been imposed by those who tell us what the greater good is and if you disagree or have another point of view or whish to discuss, you are an enemy of truth and more widely in the west, an enemy of the state....sound familiar?
Thank you Vinay for writing this. Reading the heart behind your progressive leanings is refreshing to me, a conservative that leans libertarian or, as another commenter stated, a classical liberal. It helps restore my hanging-by-a-thread belief that most Americans want the same things for our country, at least in principle, and still value such American hallmarks as freedom of speech, thought, and association. We're not that different after all... Actually, I find that the biggest difference between me and friends on the other end of the political spectrum from me is often related to how we "get there" to achieve, advance, or protect the values we share for our country and community. Sadly, one of the biggest problems we face today is how easily we judge the motives/hearts of those with whom we disagree, which taints any effort to have honest debates or discussions about so many important things.
Thank you again for all you do! Based upon the comments on your posts, I get the impression that you're reaching a politically diverse group of people united by the search for truth based on facts and data as opposed to feelings and ideology.
Dr. Prasad-No regrets! You have done more than most and probably more than you know. And if you had somehow gotten more traction in the summer of 2020 you probably would have been destroyed in the All Must Think the Same To Defeat Trump wood chipper and then had even less impact as this whole calamity has dragged on.
Instead I with others were able to use your writings and videos along with research done by Vlad Kogan to pressure our all progressive college town to open schools. Kogan's research on school's being open as the defining characteristic to gain Black and Latino parent's trust was the hammer I used over and over and I found that info through you. I also have shared with my teens the excellent debate you did on masking after vax with another doctor who's name escapes me. It was an excellent lesson on fully understanding both sides of an argument-something my kids no longer learn in school when there is only one right way to think. I also show them your videos so they can see what weighing many complicated issues at once and using grey area thinking look like. I consider you to be like a monk in the dark ages keeping literacy alive.
But I feel your progressive pain. I ended up being called a racist opportunity hoarder who was using disadvantaged kids to open schools for my own white kids. Never mind that I have been tutoring the disadvantaged kids in our district for years and knew what closing schools would do to them. Now we are finally getting to work with them in person and the devastation is as you imagine. 2nd graders who were struggling to read when last saw them in person are completely unable to read now in 4th grade. Kids are very over weight. The whole social fabric of the school has been destroyed. In a little over 10 years they will be adults. That is a blink of the eye. I’m just putting my head down and getting on with tutoring them. I don’t know what else to do.
In the end I think it comes down to fear. Some of us abandon all principles and go into hiding and some get in the dingy and sail to Dunkirk to get the soldiers. Dr. Stuart Shanker has some great writings on what fear/stress does to a nervous system-how many will slip into our mammalian/tribal brain and think only in black and white. The characteristics you listed-freedom of speech/freedom to think, treatment of the poorest amongst us, structures not individuals as root of problems and tolerance & compassion are products of our prefrontal cortex and executive functioning/emotional regulation. Theses are short circuited when we are in fight or flight. In the end progressives just read too much NYT and WaPo and scared themselves into hysteria over Trump and Covid. In 10+ years when these kids are older I wonder what they will think about that. I plan on making sure as many can read and write so we can hear exactly what they have to say!
I come from a family of progressives and this pandemic has tried our relationships. There is no discussion or compromise on mandates, what defines misinformation and use of NPI. All I hear is red states and republicans are stupid and blue states and democrats are enlightened. Real life is never that cut and dry. Heels are dug in. Long term what will happen to this “United” States?
It's good to know there are people saying these kinds of things out loud in a respectful way. Is it okay for me to say that the current President is the worst in history? Anyway, I'm glad you are passionate about the proper way to write policy and insist scientists do the trials, not just purport intuitive thoughts based on biases.
I agree. Especially the point about folks having such binary thinking. I.e. One can be pro vaccine and still worried about myocarditis in young men. As a small business owner, I was anti-shutdown the whole time. Meaning I was willing to risk a minimized (masks, distancing) level of exposure to not go bankrupt. I was pro-mask, pro-vaccine and pro being-honest-with-people-about-where-you've-been before you spend time near them. But many of my friends, upon learning I was anti-shutdown, decided I thought Covid was a hoax or didn't care if people die.
I think there’s a clear disconnect between your evidence based scientific approach to medicine and how you [used to] see government. Despite what Progressives tend to believe, non-Progressives also generally believe that ‘done well’ government can be a force for good.
What non-Progressives have traditionally rejected is the idea that having an announced good goal was not only necessary but sufficient to meet the ‘done well’ hurdle. A position I think you would very much take with respect to medicine.
Non-Progressives have generally wanted ‘evidence based approaches’ to government and Progressives have generally wanted ‘hope based’ approaches. If you truly used to be a ‘Progressive’, as opposed to a Liberal, I think you were engaging in some serious cognitive dissonance there…
Thank you for expressing your analysis of how progressivism is dying. When nurses and police officers and firefighters are being fired over vaccine mandate, and there are people cheering as their livelihood is taken away, that is a sad day for liberal democracy. It is time for people to seek God’s kingdom and his righteousness. Better society is coming as people learn about empathy, dialogue, and common good.
Dr. Prasad, I suggest that you read "America Transformed: The Rise and Legacy of American Progressivism" by Ronald J. Pressito to better understand what Progressivism is and is not. Progressivism is not dead, it is alive and well and threatens the very foundations of America.
From it's inception in the late 19th century Progressivism has focused on supplanting the original intent of our founding principles of limited government, checks and balances and protection of natural rights with a huge administrative state run by experts unaccountable to elected officials. What you are seeing and arguing against is the direct result of Progressive philosophy unchecked. It's consequences on the response to Covid will be extraordinary, but it is just the tip of the iceberg. Policies on social justice and climate change are other examples of what we have allowed to happen.
As the lockdowns began and schools closed I urged often about the damage to children. I saw the Europeans put the children back into classes with little adverse effect to students or teachers. Our state, NM, is one of the poorest with awful problems in education. Few families have the resources to home school given many parents lack skill and most have to work. I watched the State create excuse after excuse to opening the schools. The better-off families were fearful, stoked by the incessant story of immediate death from the virus. Despite the developing science, the vocal well-off parents aligned with the unions to keep schools closed. Efforts to open particular schools for low income, disadvantaged and special needs children were ignored. In this very progressive state we ignored those with no voice. This school year opening was nearly another fight that at least wiser heads prevailed and the vaccines allowed some relaxation of the adult fears. This disregard for our least has hurt so many, perhaps dooming them for anther generation of poverty. All because these progressives only thought of themselves.
I'm most certainly not a progressive but I know governments have purpose and function. I do think that states must operate to support their citizens and prefer that states do most of that function. But this one-party state is an example of poor assistance for the least of us. A shame.
Dr. Prasad, how much do you know about Progressivism as a historical movement? Its first great achievement was Prohibition - exactly the sort of grand-scale, intrusive public morality drama we see with certain aspects of COVID. There are many examples of such campaigns, some abandoned and some still ongoing.
Progressivism has always had the vicious tendencies you describe (which do of course spring from the desire to do good). It also has a long history of turning former adherents into the next Great Enemy, as soon as they begin to dissent. Stay safe.
Interesting perspective. As long as I can remember being politically aware I have though of myself as a Libertarian and more recently, a Classical Liberal, as I began to understand what that term really means. That being said, as I heard Progressivism used more and more and began paying attention to the Progressive movement, I never identified it with the positive traits you admired but instead always saw in it the opposite, especially the lack of tolerance and lack of freedom of speech (and/or shaming of others for their speech). More recently, the more radical shift of progressives to try and use government to solve any and all inequality or societal problem will only lead to larger government and drastic changes - not incremental improvements.
About 95% of progressives are suffering from Long TDS, which seems to produce an order or two of magnitude larger declines in IQ than Covid.
I used to largely identify with progressives, largely for the causes they pushed, but they always had the 'protect the stupid from the themselves via government policy' streak to them.
What you point out has been going on longer than just the last year or so. "Progressives" have had this problem at their core for a long time. I'd suggest you read Thomas Sowell's "A Conflict of Visions" which was first published in 1987, he exposes the problem progressives have with their Unconstrained Vision.
He speaks truth. it has always been that way historically. When it has been said, your rights need to be curbed for the greater good, all has been eventually lost. Never has the greater good been defined, debated and agreed upon. It has been imposed by those who tell us what the greater good is and if you disagree or have another point of view or whish to discuss, you are an enemy of truth and more widely in the west, an enemy of the state....sound familiar?
Thank you Vinay for writing this. Reading the heart behind your progressive leanings is refreshing to me, a conservative that leans libertarian or, as another commenter stated, a classical liberal. It helps restore my hanging-by-a-thread belief that most Americans want the same things for our country, at least in principle, and still value such American hallmarks as freedom of speech, thought, and association. We're not that different after all... Actually, I find that the biggest difference between me and friends on the other end of the political spectrum from me is often related to how we "get there" to achieve, advance, or protect the values we share for our country and community. Sadly, one of the biggest problems we face today is how easily we judge the motives/hearts of those with whom we disagree, which taints any effort to have honest debates or discussions about so many important things.
Thank you again for all you do! Based upon the comments on your posts, I get the impression that you're reaching a politically diverse group of people united by the search for truth based on facts and data as opposed to feelings and ideology.
Dr. Prasad-No regrets! You have done more than most and probably more than you know. And if you had somehow gotten more traction in the summer of 2020 you probably would have been destroyed in the All Must Think the Same To Defeat Trump wood chipper and then had even less impact as this whole calamity has dragged on.
Instead I with others were able to use your writings and videos along with research done by Vlad Kogan to pressure our all progressive college town to open schools. Kogan's research on school's being open as the defining characteristic to gain Black and Latino parent's trust was the hammer I used over and over and I found that info through you. I also have shared with my teens the excellent debate you did on masking after vax with another doctor who's name escapes me. It was an excellent lesson on fully understanding both sides of an argument-something my kids no longer learn in school when there is only one right way to think. I also show them your videos so they can see what weighing many complicated issues at once and using grey area thinking look like. I consider you to be like a monk in the dark ages keeping literacy alive.
But I feel your progressive pain. I ended up being called a racist opportunity hoarder who was using disadvantaged kids to open schools for my own white kids. Never mind that I have been tutoring the disadvantaged kids in our district for years and knew what closing schools would do to them. Now we are finally getting to work with them in person and the devastation is as you imagine. 2nd graders who were struggling to read when last saw them in person are completely unable to read now in 4th grade. Kids are very over weight. The whole social fabric of the school has been destroyed. In a little over 10 years they will be adults. That is a blink of the eye. I’m just putting my head down and getting on with tutoring them. I don’t know what else to do.
In the end I think it comes down to fear. Some of us abandon all principles and go into hiding and some get in the dingy and sail to Dunkirk to get the soldiers. Dr. Stuart Shanker has some great writings on what fear/stress does to a nervous system-how many will slip into our mammalian/tribal brain and think only in black and white. The characteristics you listed-freedom of speech/freedom to think, treatment of the poorest amongst us, structures not individuals as root of problems and tolerance & compassion are products of our prefrontal cortex and executive functioning/emotional regulation. Theses are short circuited when we are in fight or flight. In the end progressives just read too much NYT and WaPo and scared themselves into hysteria over Trump and Covid. In 10+ years when these kids are older I wonder what they will think about that. I plan on making sure as many can read and write so we can hear exactly what they have to say!
https://self-reg.ca/a-self-reg-lens-on-freedom-part-three-in-pursuit-of-liberty-and-freedom/
I come from a family of progressives and this pandemic has tried our relationships. There is no discussion or compromise on mandates, what defines misinformation and use of NPI. All I hear is red states and republicans are stupid and blue states and democrats are enlightened. Real life is never that cut and dry. Heels are dug in. Long term what will happen to this “United” States?
It's good to know there are people saying these kinds of things out loud in a respectful way. Is it okay for me to say that the current President is the worst in history? Anyway, I'm glad you are passionate about the proper way to write policy and insist scientists do the trials, not just purport intuitive thoughts based on biases.
I agree. Especially the point about folks having such binary thinking. I.e. One can be pro vaccine and still worried about myocarditis in young men. As a small business owner, I was anti-shutdown the whole time. Meaning I was willing to risk a minimized (masks, distancing) level of exposure to not go bankrupt. I was pro-mask, pro-vaccine and pro being-honest-with-people-about-where-you've-been before you spend time near them. But many of my friends, upon learning I was anti-shutdown, decided I thought Covid was a hoax or didn't care if people die.
I used to consider myself a conservative, but converted to being a realist, and I have no one to represent me in government.
Interesting.
I think there’s a clear disconnect between your evidence based scientific approach to medicine and how you [used to] see government. Despite what Progressives tend to believe, non-Progressives also generally believe that ‘done well’ government can be a force for good.
What non-Progressives have traditionally rejected is the idea that having an announced good goal was not only necessary but sufficient to meet the ‘done well’ hurdle. A position I think you would very much take with respect to medicine.
Non-Progressives have generally wanted ‘evidence based approaches’ to government and Progressives have generally wanted ‘hope based’ approaches. If you truly used to be a ‘Progressive’, as opposed to a Liberal, I think you were engaging in some serious cognitive dissonance there…
Fantastic take as always Vinay.
Thank you for expressing your analysis of how progressivism is dying. When nurses and police officers and firefighters are being fired over vaccine mandate, and there are people cheering as their livelihood is taken away, that is a sad day for liberal democracy. It is time for people to seek God’s kingdom and his righteousness. Better society is coming as people learn about empathy, dialogue, and common good.
Dr. Prasad, I suggest that you read "America Transformed: The Rise and Legacy of American Progressivism" by Ronald J. Pressito to better understand what Progressivism is and is not. Progressivism is not dead, it is alive and well and threatens the very foundations of America.
From it's inception in the late 19th century Progressivism has focused on supplanting the original intent of our founding principles of limited government, checks and balances and protection of natural rights with a huge administrative state run by experts unaccountable to elected officials. What you are seeing and arguing against is the direct result of Progressive philosophy unchecked. It's consequences on the response to Covid will be extraordinary, but it is just the tip of the iceberg. Policies on social justice and climate change are other examples of what we have allowed to happen.
As the lockdowns began and schools closed I urged often about the damage to children. I saw the Europeans put the children back into classes with little adverse effect to students or teachers. Our state, NM, is one of the poorest with awful problems in education. Few families have the resources to home school given many parents lack skill and most have to work. I watched the State create excuse after excuse to opening the schools. The better-off families were fearful, stoked by the incessant story of immediate death from the virus. Despite the developing science, the vocal well-off parents aligned with the unions to keep schools closed. Efforts to open particular schools for low income, disadvantaged and special needs children were ignored. In this very progressive state we ignored those with no voice. This school year opening was nearly another fight that at least wiser heads prevailed and the vaccines allowed some relaxation of the adult fears. This disregard for our least has hurt so many, perhaps dooming them for anther generation of poverty. All because these progressives only thought of themselves.
I'm most certainly not a progressive but I know governments have purpose and function. I do think that states must operate to support their citizens and prefer that states do most of that function. But this one-party state is an example of poor assistance for the least of us. A shame.