"progress"ing us off a cliff

Bidinotto says "anybody but McCain"

"While the (Jonah) Goldberg article zeroes in on Democrat "progressives" like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, he surprisingly -- and completely inconsistently -- gives a pass to Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain. McCain embodies not Wilsonian progressivism, like the other two; rather, he embodies Teddy Roosevelt progressivism. Here's a candidate who calls himself "conservative," but who spends much of his time channeling bully-boy Teddy R while bashing corporations, extolling "patriotism" over "profits," assaulting the First Amendment (McCain-Feingold), pushing hardcore environmentalism (no oil drilling in Alaska; imposing cap-and-trade restrictions on carbon dioxide emissions; touting the horrors of "global warming"), voting against major tax cuts, demanding individual self-sacrifice on behalf the great unifying causes of The State -- and calling us "my friends" while he picks our pockets and directs our lives.

If Mike Huckabee embodies the extreme social-conservatism minority within the GOP, McCain represents a resurrection of progressivism, long-interred since the early twentieth century. And his brand of progressive statism, like Hillary's, borrows from an ugly intellectual tradition long denied by progressives, but thoroughly exposed by Goldberg: fascism.

No, Bidinotto is not saying that the election of Hillary, Obama, or McCain will be a harbinger of brownshirts in the streets kicking down doors and beating up writers, bloggers, and editors like...well, like me. No, modern times require more sophisticated methods of social control and coercion. Like compulsory "national service" programs, in which we will all be required to do our Patriotic Duty by participating in various "progressive" social causes. Like controls on political activity and political speech via the IRS and "campaign finance reforms."

For people on the right, opposition to the liberal, Wilsonian progressivism of Hillary and Obama is a no-brainer. But in their visceral reactions against liberal Democrat progressives, many of these same right-wingers seem poised to rush headlong and without reflection into the waiting arms of conservative Republican progressive John McCain.

On the heels of George W. Bush's "compassionate conservatism" -- i.e., big-government altruism on behalf of conservative values -- John McCain's selection as the GOP leader would be a further ideological disaster for the party, and for the nation. His ascendancy would cement in place within American politics two hard-core variants of statism as the only major-party alternatives, and thus effectively banish the individualist/limited-government faction from participation in the political process.

That trend has been underway for decades, with growing numbers of Republican candidates doing their best to repudiate and run from the party's individualist premises. Some of the better conservatives, like George Will and Rush Limbaugh, have been sounding the alarm. So has Objectivist writer Robert Tracinski, the most philosophically astute of the various commentators.

But now, with the best GOP candidates (Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson) gone, and two remaining candidates (Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul, in their own ways just as bad ideologically as McCain) not realistically in contention, that leaves the underwhelming Mitt Romney as the last best hope of stopping McCain. But at this point, unless Romney manages to pull the proverbial rabbit out of the proverbial hat (I turn my secular eyes to California tonight, and desperately offer up a secular prayer), then the fall election will be a choice between Tweedledee liberal progressivism and Tweedledum conservative progressivism. And either way the election turns out, the next four years will be a statist nightmare."

(emphases mine)

I'm not ready to say who I'd vote for in a McCain-vs-either-dem race (update: CSM is), but in the "lesser of two evils" sense it might feel like a choice between cthulhu and morgoth...