Category: Progressives

The Intersection of Politics and Philosophy

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September 21, 2025

By Stephen Stofka

Last November, I first introduced Abel and Cain as a narrative device to explore two sides of an issue (Substack, Innocent Investor). I hope readers have enjoyed some of the arguments, whether you agreed with them or not. I often found it difficult to adhere to the discipline of reaching for arguments and reasoning that I did not agree with. Could it be that there was a bias in my thinking? Perish the thought! The boys are going fishing for a while as I analyze opposing perspectives in a more traditional format.

In politics, we contrast progressive and conservative ideologies. In philosophy, we contrast subjective and objective viewpoints. Let’s combine these two axes of comparison and look at some intersections. What does it mean to be conservative and subjective? Someone like Adam Smith might fit that description. The free market was an emerging consensus of individuals and businesses trying to satisfy their needs. He believed that this exchange, despite its flaws, would improve the general welfare of society.

What about progressive and subjective? Progressives want to manage the agenda in schools to instill the “correct” social attitudes in children, to steer their subjective experience along a progressive ideology. In his recently published book The Progress Trap, Ben Cobley (2025) writes that schools manage their reading lists and curricula to ‘decolonize’ the subject matter students are exposed to. Books that tell a historical narrative from the viewpoint of the colonizing nations are removed from the curricula. Is this a version of Fahrenheit 451?

Conservatives act to implant their ideology in the subjective experience of the population. In 2022, Florida passed the “Florida Parental Rights in Education Act.” After amendments in 2023, the policy required the removal of books with any gay character in them from K-12 school libraries (Source). Like the progressives, conservatives want to instill the “correct” attitudes in children.

Can conservative and progressives agree on what are the “correct” attitudes? It seems unlikely. In the preface to his book, Cobley identifies one cause of the policy failures and disagreements we have. We assume “that we are right and good and can only cause good to occur in the world, while our opponents can only cause bad” (p. vii). He notes that progressives rely on social science as their authority. They see the world in a mechanistic way of cause and effect, oppressors and victims. Arnold Kling (2017) has written about the three languages of politics and echoes the same point. Conservatives rely on cultural and religious traditions as an objective authority. In Kling’s typology conservatives view the world as a struggle between civilization and barbarism.

Is there a middle ground, an alternative authority that might resolve their differences? People form groups based on an allegiance to an authority, and group allegiances are not easily changed. There are several methods to effect change, some directed toward the subjective, others employing a more objective approach.

Subjective methods use persuasion to get others to change their authority allegiance. These include essays, videos, and debates that appeal to rationale as well as emotion. A more negative type of persuasion is ridicule, often used to silence opposition rather than convert opinion. Activist groups on both the right and left organize ridicule campaigns on social media to attack unwanted behavior and opinions.

In an objective approach, interest groups win control of civil institutions to exert change by legislation or policy. The Florida law mentioned above is an example of civil force by conservative groups. On the left we see mandates of diversity, equity and inclusion training in college curriculums. Copley writes that progressives have a “comforting illusion that things will inevitably get better so long as they and their allies are in control of things” (p. vii). Conservatives have a similar illusion but a different goal, the preservation of civil and moral order.

Critical to any human society are its resources. Progressives promote policies and investments that preserve the environment. The costs, both in terms of money and convenience, are a small price to pay for the benefits of a healthy ecosystem. The resources that conservatives care about are cultural and religious. These are the glue, the connections that evolve between members of a society. If preserving the environment means the sacrifice of these community connections, then conservatives would rather preserve those connections rather than the environment.

In a large multicultural democracy like ours, groups compete to design or control those institutions which shape the subjective experience of people in society. Since children are so impressionable, school curricula can become a battleground for ideologies.

Beginning in the 19th century, schools in states and local districts have struggled to control the religious traditions of students in their charge. A Wikipedia article has a history of the conflict over school prayer (Source). Since the 16th century, Protestants and Catholics have quarreled over Christian text and doctrine. Today, the Catholics include the Apocrypha, early Christian writings, in their Biblical canon. Most Protestants do not. Catholic doctrine holds that God inspired the authors of the Bible. Some Protestant sects believe that the Bible is the literal word of God.

Naturally, these two religious denominations brought their disputes into the schoolroom. Ending the practice of prayer in schools came not from a Christian denomination but a Jewish family disturbed that their son was forced to pray in a Christian manner. In Engel v Vitale (1962), the Supreme Court ruled that publicly funded schools must not promote any particular religion. They based their decision on the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment that prohibited the federal government from favoring a particular religion (Source). The Fourteenth Amendment extended those prohibitions to the state governments as well. The Legal Information Institute at Cornell University writes that it is “one of the most unpopular decisions in Supreme Court history” (Source). Numerous attempts to amend the constitution have failed to reach the required two-thirds majorities in Congress. Lastly could the current conservative court overturn that decision? In Kennedy v. Bremerton School District (2022), it allowed private prayer in public places, but it has reaffirmed that 1962 precedent prohibiting state-sponsored religious practice.

Is this the familiar battle between science and religion or between secularists and religiously affiliated? According to Pew Research, 70% of Americans are religiously affiliated and 90% of those affiliated are Christian (Source). In the battle between Christian sects for control of the classroom, Christians have lost the battle to secularists. Could the many Christian sects join together, agree on some central canon, then pass an amendment to the Constitution? Agreement over religious doctrine is a tall hurdle and amending the Constitution is particularly difficult.

In addition to persuasion, ridicule and civil regulations, governments can enforce ideologies through police force. In the former Soviet Union, the KGB suppressed unwanted thought by arrest and exile to the Gulag. In Nazi Germany, neighbors were encouraged to “rat” on their neighbors if they suspected any anti-Nazi opinion or behavior. In the three decades following World War 2, Red Guards in Maoist China punished their citizens for incorrect thinking by beatings and re-education in labor camps. Today, the citizens of North Korea are brutally tortured for expressing disloyalty to the Kim family who rules the nation.

What drives human beings to replicate their ideologies? While they may lack substance, they promote social cohesion among the followers, and endow the leaders with economic benefits. In his book The Social Conquest of Earth, E.O. Wilson (2012) described a critical aspect of human societies, their eusociality. First coined in the 1960s to describe bee colonies, Wilson expanded the term to describe the ability of human beings to build multigenerational societies and cultures. Biological organisms evolve through discrete or sporadic genetic mutations that provide an adaptive advantage. The evolution of ideologies is not discrete, but a continuous adaptation to social, cultural and political pressures.

In E. O. Wilson’s analysis, human societies evolve through the conflict between group cooperation and individual competition. Individuals struggle within each group to define the group’s shared values and outlook. As I’ve shown above, there is also individual cooperation within each group to win the competition between groups for control of a society’s institutions. The tension between the individual and the collective, the subjective experience and the objective shared environment, drives change in any human society.

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Photo by Dimmis Vart on Unsplash

Cobley, B. (2025). The progress trap: The modern left and the false authority of history. Polity Press. Available from Amazon

Kling, A. (2017). The three languages of politics: Talking across the political divides (Rev. ed.). Cato Institute. Available from https://www.cato.org/three-languages-of-politics

Wilson, E. O. (2012). The social conquest of earth. Liveright Publishing.

Two Natures

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October 13, 2024

By Stephen Stofka

This week’s letter continues my look at the two types of Golden Age voters. Last week’s post was about those who look to the past as more – fill in the blank here. On the TV show All in the Family, Archie Bunker was a comic representation of this type of thinking. The lyrics of the show’s theme song Those Were the Days echoed a nostalgia for an earlier time in American history.

This week’s subject is the second type of voter, those who believe that people can construct a better society. In the extreme, that better society is a utopian Golden Age. Nineteenth century writers called this type of person perfectibilians, who believe that man’s imperfect or corrupt nature can be perfected. They believe that creating institutions and institutional rules which encourage sharing, equality and community can help perfect flawed human nature and improve society. Out with selfishness and exploitation. In with charitable spirit, equity and respect.

Hesiod, the 6th century BCE Greek poet, recounted the myth of the Isles of the Blessed, islands in the Atlantic where reincarnated people lived in an idyllic state. Thomas More placed his Utopia, published in 1516, on an island off the mainland in the New World. More detailed the institutional practices that sustained this utopian society: a society based on agriculture with small democratic urban areas. There existed a welfare state with no private property, but each household had one or two slaves. More’s acceptance of slavery in his vision of utopia distances a modern reader. And the excess population on this idyllic island? They were shipped off to the mainland. Who made those decisions? More’s utopian vision sounded more like a version of hell.

More’s work was fiction. Some hope and believe that human society can improve toward a utopia that lies in the future. Reformers in the 19th century, known as Ricardian Socialists, advocated for reforms that they hoped would correct the social ills that emerged or erupted during the Industrial Revolution. These included poorly paid and overworked people crowded into dense urban areas. Children worked long hours and suffered horrible injuries from dangerous machinery. The reformers sought a more equitable system that distributed the surplus of economic activity and trade to worker cooperatives, not capitalists.

John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) Mill favored the idea of worker’s coops and profit sharing rather than Communism, which he thought did not account for individual differences of talent and effort (Roncaglia, 2005, p. 240). More radical reformers known as Utopian Socialists sought the abolition of private property entirely. Robert Owen was a Scottish financier who set up the utopian community of New Harmony, Indiana in 1826 – 1828. It was a kibbutz style working community with no private property and the workers shared profits. Owen believed that if poor workers were productive, they might improve their habits (Heilbroner, 1997, p. 112). The experiment failed and Owens suffered severe financial losses.

Karl Marx (1818 – 1883) was the most prominent of these utopian reformers. Murray Rothbard, an Austrian economist, considered Marx primarily as a millennial Communist. Watch out, big revolution ahead and the purging of the old ways. Then, the new order and a flourishing of human society.  

Flourishing good. Everybody likes flourishing. Revolution and other cataclysms bad. Some voters are resistant to change or reform because existing arrangements suit them. Last November, I wrote about the many subsidies and tax expenditures that benefit some at the expense of others. Improved society? Check. I’m all for that. Lose my subsidy? Get your hand out of my pocket, comrade. In his 1965 book The logic of collective action public goods and the theory of groups, Mancur Olson (2012) argued that people cling to their benefits, especially when the benefits go to a small number of individuals or companies, but the costs are spread out among all taxpayers. Because the cost to each taxpayer is small, there is less incentive to advocate for reform.

In the United States, the reformers of the Progressive Era advocated more practical and less radical reforms that instituted conditions we take for granted today. These included women’s suffrage, more humane working conditions, laws against child labor, and a civil service system based on merit rather than cronyism and corruption. The Sherman Anti-Trust act and other business reforms curbed the power and growth of vertical monopolies (see notes below) like the Standard Oil Company. In 1914, the Federal Trade Commission was established to prevent price fixing and other forms of collusion between businesses that distorted the free market.

Can human nature be reformed? To those who believe that people are inherently corrupt, there is a flaw in the perfectibilian strategy. There will always need to be regulators to constantly monitor human behavior in the marketplace and our shared social spaces. That puts too much concentration of power in the hands of government regulators. Because regulators are people, they will by nature be corrupt, pursing their own self-interests, their inherent drive for control. Who will regulate the regulators? Who will reform the reformers?

The price system promotes a competition between individual self-interests. In a transaction between John and Mary, John’s corruptible nature is pitted against Mary’s corruptible nature. Out of that contest of self-interest, a benefit to both people emerges. This is the marvel of the price system. Unlike the price system, a regulatory system lacks natural checks and balances. Governments can pass a law that induces people to act more charitably, for instance, but government cannot mandate that people be more charitable. Some people have a more charitable spirit than others. On the other hand, the Greek philosopher Aristotle believed that acting in a virtuous manner would promote a more virtuous character. If a government forces people to act more charitably, will they develop a more charitable character?

Two types. Two visions. One looks to the past. One looks to the future. Simple, isn’t it? Unfortunately, many voters have a complicated set of perspectives and tendencies that defies simple analysis. We might be a blend of nostalgic and perfectibilian. Are people inherently corrupt, seeking to serve their own parochial interests rather than the greater good? What do you believe?

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Photo by Joel Filipe on Unsplash

Keywords: progressive, human nature, prices, regulation

Heilbroner, R. L. (1999). The Worldly Philosophers the Lives, Times, and Ideas of the Great Economic Thinkers (7th ed.). New York: Simon and Schuster.

Heilbroner, R. L. (1997). Teachings from the worldly philosophy. New York, NY: Norton & Company.

Olson, M. (2012). The logic of collective action public goods and the theory of groups. Harvard University Press.

Roncaglia, A. (2005). The wealth of ideas: A history of economic thought. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.

Vertical monopoly: one company owns or controls the various stages of extraction, refining and production, for instance.

The Armies of the River

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November 15, 2020

by Steve Stofka

This is a story about two armies camped on either side of a river running down the center of your screen – and this nation. On the right side are the Conservatives, and further away from the river, toward the right edge are the Regressives. These radicals of the right include the Tea Party and Christian Evangelicals. On the left side of the river sit the Liberals, and further toward the left edge the Progressives. I hear tell that there are a few Socialists in that bunch. While the Conservatives and Liberals fight each other for control of the river, they must tangle with their more extreme brethren on each side.

Both the Regressives and Progressives are convinced that they should have control of the river, but first they must take the shore position from the Conservatives and Liberals. To do that they have to pull the Conservatives and Liberals away from the river, away from the political center.

I’ll begin with the Regressives, who believe that the way forward is a return to an idealized past. They hearken back to the Constitution, written at a time when less than a few thousand people, the legislatures of each state, voted. In a room with 1000 people, one person got to make all the rules. America was founded on aristocratic, not democratic principles.

The popular vote for President was not tallied until 1824 when some states began to allow popular voting for President. 1.2% of the country’s population voted in that election. These were white males who owned property. Andrew Jackson won the popular and electoral vote but did not win a majority of electoral votes. The winner, John Quincy Adams, was decided by the House of Representatives. Andrew Jackson championed a loosening of voting restrictions to allow white landless men to vote. That got him enough votes in the mid-Atlantic and southern states to win the next two elections. Such is the course of voting rights.

Christian Evangelicals are strongly regressive as they look to the past and future. Again, I caution that these are broad strokes I am painting here. They profess or imply a belief in the saved and the not saved, a Calvinist theme that has influenced Protestant belief since John Calvin in the 16th century. Jesus Saves is a restatement of that Calvinist theme.

The saved vote Republican. Mr. Trump is not one of the saved but offered the saved a way to grab an advantageous position nearer to the river and control the political agenda. Some of the saved believe he is the flawed messenger of God.

Some Evangelicals think that professing their faith is living their faith. They wear their faith on their sleeves, not in their hearts. A fundamentalist Christian preacher cheered the Trump hotel near the White House as the Grand Central of angelic spirit. The faithful are encouraged to patronize the hotel to support the President. It’s harder to hear the stronger and moderate voices of those who live their faith as a profession of their faith. It is they that the loud voiced Evangelicals on the fringe want to unseat.

The representatives of foreign conglomerates patronize the Trump hotel on visits to Washington to promote their country’s interest. “First Tuesdays” at the hotel bring in $1000 donations to various political campaigns. Meeting planners for the gun association get preferential rates at the hotel. Long ago in the 1990s, Republicans raised their voices in outrage when President Clinton allowed influential donors to sleep a night in the White House. Many of those Republicans were pushed into the river by the Tea Party and Evangelicals who were intent on winning control of the party’s agenda.

As many Republicans saw it, Democrats – and the Mainstream Media – punished Mr. Trump for winning the 2016 election. Former President Obama and candidate Hillary Clinton and the FBI and the deep state conspired to get her elected. Their plans were foiled by the Constitutional machinations of the electoral college.

Here is a Christian Regressive interpretation of the Electoral College. It was created by the Constitutional Convention which was inspired by God himself. They can see God’s hand in Mr. Trump’s 2016 win. Some, including Trump himself, are convinced that he won the popular vote as well. In a black and white world, the facts must line up. If they don’t, change the facts.

God’s inspiration created the Constitution; this implies that God approved slavery, of course, and there in the Bible we can see support for slavery. In the black and white, saved or not saved, conceptual framework of Christian Regressive thinking, slaves became slaves because they were not saved. None of the saved become slaves. A slave may become saved but the saved do not become slaves.

The Progressives think in several colors but share a fundamental belief in change, but not gradual change. They are an experimental bunch, willing to try policies that will affect over 300 million Americans. If it doesn’t work out, they believe that the country can flip a switch and try something else. They dream of a fairer world; they disagree on the path to get there. They interpret the Constitution’s “general welfare” clause to mean that the government’s job is to take care of us; that the sum of each’s welfare is the general welfare.

Let’s ask a question, “If your proposed program were failing, what signs could I look for?” What is the answer? The proposal will work because Progressives are confident that they will. They tug at the centrists who believe in gradual change; Progressives cannot get to their vision quickly enough. Despite centuries of evidence to the contrary, they believe that human nature can change quickly. Legislative change is too slow; frustrated with the legislative process, both the Progressives and Regressives look to the courts to enact their visions and beliefs.

From the fringes of conspiracy believers and devotees of the anarchy that will bring on the promised Apocalypse, Donald Trump has torn open the Republican Party in a rush to command the river. To accomplish that, he relied on the Republican fealty to party, not person. The hordes that follow him are convinced that he will bring a return of traditional American values to this country. How his untraditional and vulgar personality and lifestyle will accomplish that is a mystery to many. Most of the moderates in the party have been brushed aside or are quietly acquiescing to his influence. Only those legislators who are retiring dare speak their true opinion of the man for fear of reprisal.

Is there a person from the utopian fringes in the Progressive wing that could tear open the center of the Democratic Party? Bernie Sanders tried and lost – twice. He, Andrew Yang and AOC are candidates for the role, but they are intelligent, devoted to their principles and vision more than they are to themselves. The successful candidate will be someone like Mr. Trump whose loyalty is to himself, who has little analytical intelligence but lots of people smarts.

For much of the last century, only the Democrats have had a strong enough legislative coalition to bend the course of the river. They did so during the Great Depression and again in the 1960s with the programs of the Great Society, Medicare, and Medicaid among them. In each of the past Presidential elections, Republican candidates struggle to capture 50% of the vote. They have not held a filibuster proof majority in the Senate for more than a hundred years. The changing demographics of the country are threatening to consign them to a minority in the Federal power structure. If they are to bend the river, they must do it with a smash and grab person like Mr. Trump.

Mary Trump made a remark about her uncle that has stuck with me. “Don’t look away.” It’s the kind of caution a park ranger might give someone when encountering a wild animal. He is prowling on the bank of the river. Don’t look away.

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Photo by Gláuber Sampaio on Unsplash