 Our topic this week is progressives and progressivism and our guest James Estrowski is here to explain exactly how progressives came to control the political, legal, cultural and social landscape in America and what we as Liberty-minded people can do about it. Jim is an appellate lawyer, he's a writer, a very effective libertarian activist and agitator and a long time observer of progressives in one of their top natural habitats, namely the state of New York. Murray Rothbard called Jim one of the finest people in the libertarian movement, so if you want to understand progressives from a Rothbardian perspective, stay tuned for a great interview with Jim Estrowski. Jim it's interesting to me you bring up the idea of how progressives have a seductive message for people and we know of course that progressives control media, education, art, literature, pop culture, music, etc. Do you agree with this perspective that progressives have done their long march through history and that they're really good and really patient when it comes to incrementalism? Well I do, one of my current research interests is cultural Marxism because it seems like their points of view are sweeping through the country at an incredibly rapid rate, but there's no question that they control the main organs of idea dissemination either formally in the case of public schools, which are really almost an explicit progressive institution and then of course the media is sort of informally progressive and there's a lot of research that could be done on that, the revolving door between the media and the government and how the government controls the media through giving them sources of news and so on or punishing them if they don't report properly. Really journalism generally has almost become a branch of the government, I think that's pretty obvious. So they unfortunately do control access to the minds that we need to reach and there's no particularly easy answer to get around that other than what a lot of institutions are doing, reaching out to the internet and social media and probably our best shot at this point in YouTube is your program. One thing you discussed in the book, Jim, is the error of calling progressives liberals. Can you talk a little bit about progressives control of language? I think language following Orwell and others very, very important. I'm not a huge fan of the book of the word libertarian for a number of reasons. I think it has not served us well, I think we should take back the word liberal. Professor Gordon could explain this better than I could, but back about a hundred years ago the word liberalism, which did stand for smaller government and things like individual rights and the things we believe in, sort of got misappropriated by the socialists and the progressives. We've lost that word, unfortunately, but I really do think we should try to take it back. On the other hand, I think we need to have a word for the opposition and progressive I think is out there. Many of them use that word themselves. I think it's really important, there's a lot of people don't like to label me and I always print it because it's like, you know, should I label the furniture and my role in it is you label things to identify what they are and I think I think labels are actually very important as long as they're accurate. It doesn't mean liberty, it doesn't mean freedom. So I think it's important to take that word back, the word liberal. I think it's a great word. It reconnects with the glorious history of liberalism, classical liberalism, as we call it now. And I think that we need to label the opponent progressive now that that word itself is a somewhat dishonest word, but because they're not in fact creating progress, but given its historical roots in the progressive Europe and how Rothbard and Professor Waco and others have done a lot of excellent scholarly work to expose the true nature of the capital P progressive movement. I think it's about the best word we have and I don't think this goes on and more and more people are using that term and we just really need to explain to people what that term means and what it has meant in history, what it means in policy and hopefully what it means in psychology, which I guess is a lot of what my book is about. Well, I agree with you about labels, Jim. I think that's human nature and labels go to narrative, right? It seems we all know, for example, progressive programs have been disastrous for the poor, right? Yeah. And the so-called war on poverty has created a tendency, not prosperity, but yet, progressives still maintain the narrative that they're the champions of the poor. They absolutely do. And one of the essential elements of progressivism, since it's not really a rational system of thought, but a way for individuals and groups to convince themselves that they have gotten control over their lives or gotten control over what's going to happen in the future, that there's no internal definition or criteria for the failure of progressivism. I was just going to say in a program this morning about how the schools in New York are failing. And it never occurs to the progressives that there's something intrinsically wrong with the government school system that you can't work and should be gotten rid of. Always the progressive will sometimes recognize that the progressive policy is not working out well, but the answer is always a point that's out in the book. The answer is always more progressive, more spending, more power. In this case, they were trying to play against tax credits for, you know, basically private and Catholic schools, but there's never a recognition. And, you know, you can look in the city of Buffalo, Detroit, Baltimore, where I was last Friday talking about these issues. And, you know, it's a wasteland. It's an economic wasteland. And so many of the young people, particularly men and boys, are in the county jail and in the Atticus Bay prison. There's vacant houses, vacant storefronts and garbage-drawn locks. And yet, wow, you know, we've been in charge for 50 years, 60 years, 70, 100, depending on how you define it, certainly for a long time. And it's not working. And the fault is progressiveism. I need to change my views. So I think the evidence that there's a psychological, powerful psychological dynamic behind progressiveism is really strong. Well, let me give you another example. Progressives are good at painting some conservatives and certainly libertarians as radicals, right? Progressives, however, seem to get away with radical associations. For example, Hillary Clinton with Saul Linsky and Margaret Sanger, Obama, of course, and Frank Marshall Davis. It almost seems like to flirt with or confess full communism if you're a progressive is seen as a youthful badge of honor. But yet here we are as libertarians, promoting what we would consider very sensible policies and we're tainted with the broad brush of radicalism. Again, if you look at it from a psychological point of view, what is the progressive's response to really anybody that disagrees with them? And I think increasingly, I think we're finding that they know who the true their true opponent is. It's classical liberals, libertarians. Again, they don't want to argue with us because they really they cannot. I mean, do they really have an argument for the men on waves? No, it's sort of this wishful thinking, you know, this is going to give us a sense of control over the world. So what do they do instead of arguing? They smear, they vilify, they attack, they challenge, they question your motives, they question your character. But they never really argue with us. So that that type of smear technique, I think this flows out of the nature of of progressivism. And again, I mean, if you listen to this and have ever had not a flight argument, but an argument, a rational con discussion with a progressive, it's it's it's almost impossible, it's almost impossible to have that. They often, you know, I've had a number of them and either they change the subject or they get angry and, you know, they raise their voice and they criticize you or they attack, you know, attack you as they attack your personality, whatever, add harm to the attack. So I think that, you know, the the concept that I'm putting forth in the book, I think pretty well explains a lot of the ways that progressives think and act in the way they approach our policy. Well, you talk about progressives impugning bad motives to libertarians. It seems to me that if you look at the history of the 20th century, the progressive century, which is, of course, full of body bags, does it make sense for us as libertarians to assume that when we're arguing or talking with progressives that they're well intentioned? Or is the evidence at this point so overwhelming that perhaps that's a naive way to do to wage what is in effect a war? Yeah, you know, I've heard that line over the years, don't challenge people's intentions, assume they have good intentions. And I always was puzzled by it because I guess one objection would be, what if they don't? I mean, why would you assume that they don't now? Okay, you know, it's hard to read people's minds. Well, you know, in the law, we read people's minds all the time. Somebody picks up the rifle and shoots an unarmed person in the back. We assume that in their mind they wanted to murder them. So I do have the sympathetic view to progressives. I do believe we need to reach out to them. And they actually, I have a flyer that's mentioned in the book and it's on the website designed to do that. But I don't, you know, necessarily want to assume that they all have good intentions. I think ultimately, if you understand what progressivism is, it's not, it's not a good thing. Everything they do is a form of coercion or violence. It's really kind of a selfish philosophy. Now, maybe they don't realize that you're just coming out of high school or college and they have a different deal of it. But when you really study it, and I tried to get some examples in the book, 12 or 13 sort of policy areas that show that their policies, not only didn't make logical sense in the first place, didn't have a rational argument for them, but actually worked out very badly. And in practice, you have to at some point say, you don't have good intentions. I think your intentions are not good. Your intentions are to stick to this failed ideology when evidence has been presented to you, but it's failed. And of course, they talk about this in the book and based on my revisionist historians, such as Rothbard, it's just sort of the dark side of progressivism, which is not so much, hey, we're going to solve all your problems, but we're going to have this ideology of progressivism to sound good, but really, we're just trying to get control of the leaders of power so we can be wealthy, punish our enemies, we can be powerful. There's two sides to progressivism and one is maybe a sincerely held belief at some level that government can improve life, but there's also always the special interest backing up behind that. We may not believe in the ideology, but they certainly want to get rich and be powerful and control the government for their own selfish purposes. And by the way, just real quick, you see this in New York where all the corruption scandals up here, two of the three leading officials have already been invited and who knows if the governor is going to be. So, you know, behind all these all these progressives and you read the indictment, you can read all the various progressive powers that have been granted to the government that were then manipulated by these politicians for personal, you know, grandizement and wealth and in power. So you see this, this dualism played out in New York state currently in the headline. Well, let's discuss activism, which you go into in the book. There's a great line in the book. Strategy is the Achilles heel of the Liberty Movement. In your view, Jim, what does the movement do wrong? Basically, we need to be more concerned about how we are perceived as a trade by the public. We need to sort of reconstruct the history of the last three or four hundred years and explain to people that, hey, you know, a lot of these good things that are part of the modern world that we like, you don't like everything, but we like a lot. A lot of these policies and programs and accomplishments were the result of people who like to get no credit for it. That's the classical liberals and the libertarians. But then also politics is rigged. I've been in it since I was a child. So let's, I'm 57, I've really been in it since I was about 10 because my father was a judge and he ran for all five or six times. So I've studied in various books, outlined why politics is a rigged game. So that being the case, you know, just like perhaps Pickett's charge wasn't the best strategy at Gettysburg to go into a frontal heavily fortified position where your people are exposed to. But I think that we have to emphasize direct citizen action more in that title. One of my prior short books talked about a lot in the current book. In other words, since politics, which by which I mean elections and lobbying are both rigged, so that we will not be seen generally. Let's, you know, instead of going forward, let's go sideways around that fortified position. Let's use direct citizen action. And the clearest example, really, I think the most important one is instead of lobbying the legislature for school choice, just yank your children out of the government school and either home school or find a private school. Not easy to do, but this is the type of thing that you don't have to persuade anybody. You don't have to change anybody's mind. You just have to engage in your own direct action. And I think that if enough people did that, we would really start a sort of a snowball effect. And there's other examples of direct citizen action. I think that juries, although we object to the fact that they're compulsory, I do believe that generalification is a form of direct citizen action. The citizen is directly empowered to put a halt to things like the war on drugs. But if people fail to indict in grand jury, if they fail to conduct, sure, one verdict is not going to, you know, create a revolution. But I do believe in the butterfly effect, three or four in some publicity and now other people learning about it. And social change and political change can happen very rapidly. You saw that in, you know, around into the Shah, Marcos in the Philippines and more recently, the so-called Velvet Revolutions in Europe. Political change, you know, people may say, well, that's a slow strategy. You ain't going to keep a lot of government schools or your children. Not necessarily, political change can happen very, very quickly. But, you know, we don't start, it's not as the way to use that peacefully as a metaphor to get this ball rolling. And I know that, not that we're working on, I know Ron Paul is putting together, he's kind of would just working on this as well and others, a curriculum for people who do that very thing. So basically, I think we need to shift. If you want to be an activist, then you don't necessarily have to be. That's personal choice. But we need to shift away from electoral politics, not entirely, but mostly into direct action. And that's really what I, to try and get those ideas out and to people energize and show people examples of that. That's why I started the website, you know, I was down in Baltimore the other day, calling for an end of the drug war, explaining to people all these government agencies and how they can be empowered on juries. That's sort of an example of what I'm talking about. It's been a lobbying, you know, the legislature convincing the people themselves to refuse to any longer be associated with this ridiculous drug war. Jim, do you think events like those in Baltimore recently opened people's eyes to the failures of progressivism? Or do you think it just strengthens their narrative, which is, hey, we need more help for these poor, more government help for these poor downtrodden folks in Baltimore? That's a good question. And it's going to take a while for people to, you know, get to know us and to trust us and, you know, to think that they're not just being kind, you know, one more time. But I sat down with the local Baltimore resident over a cup of coffee after the press conference. He's running for our counseling down there. I'm going to keep in contact with him. He's going to read the literature over. And if we can, you know, establish these small little, you know, openings, small little battle funds. And again, I mean that peacefully. The metaphor in meetings like Baltimore, that people will, you know, will realize that we're genuine sincere. We're not, we don't want anything from them. We just want them to have a better life under, under liberty than what they have now. So I think, I think there's hope. I think we need to, we need to try. I'm an optimist and I'm a natural optimist. I think it's a rough part of many people on a movement. Our work. Jim, as we wrap this up, I want to ask you a final question. You mentioned how understanding progressivism is really about understanding the psychology. And it's not necessarily a rational outlook or perspective. Can you elaborate a little bit more for us how you've come upon this idea? Yeah, I just think that the world we live in, the, the individual often feels out of control. They're not in control of their life. They're not in control of events. It's a big scary world out there. And as various problems come up, a plane crash or some sort of an accidental death or a police shooting that was unjustified in a riot, whatever it is, the problem of the day, you have the progressives out there claiming, I guess kind of like the Marxists in the old days would claim to have a, you know, hey, I got this great idea. Let's try it out. We know that doesn't work, but the progressives are still out there saying, we can solve this problem for you. We'll pass a law or we will increase the budget by a billion dollars. And that that is satisfying to that person. They now feel okay. I now feel like I have this problem under control. I feel better, that terrible feeling that I'm not in control of my own life situation, which none of us really like that feeling has been ameliorated. They feel better. And and that's, I think that's really after 45 years of studying this stuff for the time I was a teenager, watching the politicians and studying the progressives and people just, you know, regular people are progressives. I do believe that that's what this is. And it's not a rational system of thought, which is why so often our sort of, you know, abstract logical approach does not work. Hey, Jim, I want to thank you for your time. They great interview. Ladies and gentlemen, check out Jim's book on Amazon. It's called Progressivism, a primer on the idea of destroying America. And if you want to find him more directly, go to his site libertymovement.org. Again, it's libertymovement.org and have a great weekend.