My First Encounter With A Progressive

A couple of weeks ago I was scandalized but not surprised to read about a Quebec child that was punished because his parents put his lunch in a plastic ziplock bag.  It’s the expected result of the eco-religion’s ascension but no less frightening and appalling for being so easily predicted.  Hysteria coupled with righteous zeal is not new after all.  We’ve seen it again and again, from dogmatic institutionalization and oppression all the way to rejection and rebellion.

It reminded me of my own experiences with progressives growing up in a Catholic school in Ontario.  None of it was earth shattering or newsworthy, but it stands out to me like a first kiss.  It was my first encounter with progressive social engineering.  

I was your average kid.  I loved taking books out of the school library.  There was a book about volcanoes that I must have taken out six times.  It had some amazing pictures of billowing smoke and fire.  Most of them were picture books with at most a paragraph of explanation on each page.  It was a kids library after all and I was in the first grade.  

It was the time of the “save the whales” craze.  I used to wake up at dawn on Saturday mornings to watch Oceans Alive.  I can still hum the theme song and I knew all about whales.  Killer Whales especially.  They were on par with sharks being fearsome, deadly and impressive.
 

One day we were talking about saving the whales in class.  We listed off all the whales and I was jumping out of my seat to say my favourite one.  Finally it was my turn.  “Killer Whales,” I shouted, being very pleased that I had also found a way to shout killer in class.  

That was not going to fly in Mrs. Progressive’s Grade 1 class.  There was no such thing as a Killer Whale. 

I was dumbfounded.  Teachers know everything.  How could my teacher not know about Killer Whales?  I had been to MarineLand.  I watch Oceans Alive.  I’ve read the books in the library of this very school!  Now the ‘smart’ (obedient) girls are shaking their heads at me while I describe a Killer Whale.

“That’s an Orca,” Mrs. Progressive corrected, feigning ignorance.  

No it isn’t and I said so.  I refused to accept it.  I told her she was wrong and I would prove it.

I went to the library at recess and found the appropriate book all about Killer Whales.  That might have been the title of the book in fact: Killer Whales.  I brought it back to show her and she wouldn’t look at it.  She would not accept the animal’s name.  She told me the book was wrong.

I knew better, but I stopped thinking about Killer Whales.  I tried to figure out Mrs. Progressive instead and I think I got it.  She really liked whales.  She wanted to save them and didn’t want to think they were mean killers.  She was trying to change the truth so that I would act differently. 

This blew my mind.  My dad thought it was funny.  She told the whole class a lie to save whales.  She tried to trick us into saving the whales when we would have all been happy to save them, even the killing ones (they all kill).  

That was my first encounter with a progressive.  I didn’t know what they were back then and she probably didn’t either.  She probably would have been offended.  I also remember the day Brian Mulroney was elected.  She sat us in a circle and announced it as if the Pope had passed on.  That was also the first time I’d ever heard of elections and I asked if that was a good or bad thing that Mulroney had won.  She wouldn’t say, which meant she thought it was bad.  She would have said it was good if she thought so.

How many years have we lived with people like this?  -People who lie for their interpretation of the greater good.  –People who work their way into the bureaucracy and into public office so that they can shepherd us poor dummies around and look after us.  We can’t be trusted with our own money or we’ll spend it on beer and popcorn and end up homeless.  The facts?  Oh no.  We can’t have those because we’ll make the wrong conclusions.  

They constantly think they are smarter than the free market, that billions of minds processing their micro-economic decisions in parallel are less efficient than just a few powerful elites.  What arrogance.  What ignorance.    What great folly is the progressive worldview.  Progressivism is an enabling fallacy, a delusion, that allows people to pretend they are smarter than the masses and necessarily rule over them and overrule their dreams and hopes.

The good news is that the truth eventually gets out, especially the truth about nature and culture.  The Killer Whale incident kindled the flame of skepticism in me.  I knew from then on that some people will lie to themselves and everyone else to try and make a delusion real.  The poor kid whose parents committed an eco-sin, will remember that forever.  So will countless kids who don’t make the newspapers.  Nowhere is the green brainwashing stronger than in the schools.  They will all grow up ashamed of killing the world and they will rebel.  One fine sunny day they will cast aside the false guilt and fear.  They will laugh at the hysteria of their elders because it really is hysterical.  They will be free.