The New Progressives -- something new under the sun??

The obama movement has spurred a debate over what to call these members of the new left? Liberals, leftists, socialists, radicals? I've noticed that many on the left have seized on the term "Progressive" and that seems fitting. The obama-ites are not liberals, but have a much more aggressive agenda toward collectivization and income redistribution.

The term progressive has a long history, but one of the high (or low) points of the progressive movement was the formation of the Progressive Party of 1948. Led by former Vice President Henry Wallace, and motivated by the communist scare and the activities of the House Un American Activities Committee, these left-of-center americans broke with the Truman Administration and plunged ahead with even more aggressive New Deal programs.

The party ran Henry Wallace from Iowa for President, and Idaho Senator Taylor as Vice President. "The Wallace/Taylor ticket was also supported by several other small parties, such as the American Labor Party (ALP) of New York. Wallace's platform advocated an end to segregation, full voting rights for blacks, and universal government health insurance." (Wikipedia article, cited below)

"The Communist Party USA did not field a presidential candidate, and instead endorsed Wallace for President; given that the Cold War was beginning to gain momentum and with it the Red Scare and anti-Communist sentiment, this endorsement was to hinder Wallace far more than it would help him. Wallace had served Franklin D. Roosevelt as Secretary of Agriculture, Vice President, and Secretary of Commerce. He was fired by President Harry S. Truman because he denounced Truman's foreign policy regarding the Cold War. When Wallace refused to expel Communists working in the party during the 1948 election, his campaign was severely criticized by both the rigidly anti-Communist Truman and Dewey camps."

We see that even in 1948, at the height of the cold war, the "progressives" had an easy, even accomodating attitude toward communists and communist sympathizers, known then by the term "fellow travelers."

The Wikipedia article continues to explore the communist agenda being forwarded by the progressives of 1948:

"Historians have disputed the degree to which Communists shaped the party. All agree that Wallace himself was not a Communist, but they also agree that he paid very little attention to internal party affairs. Historians Schapsmeier and Schapsmeier argue (1970 p 181)

"Progressive party stood for one thing and Wallace another. Actually the party organization was controlled from the outset by those representing the radical left and not liberalism per se. This made it extremely easy for Communists and fellow travelers to infiltrate into important positions within the party machinery. Once this happened, party stands began to resemble a party line. Campaign literature, speech materials, and campaign slogans sounded strangely like echoes of what Moscow wanted to hear. As if wearing moral blinkers, Wallace increasingly became an imperceptive ideologue. Words were uttered by Wallace that did not sound like him, and his performance took on a strange Jekyll and Hyde quality—one moment he was a peace protagonist and the next a propaganda parrot for the Kremlin.

"One historian (further to the left than the Schapsmeiers) explores the internal dynamic (Schmidt 258–9):

"At one pole were the extreme leftists, three closely related groups—admitted Communists, past and present; the party-liners and fellow travelers who failed to differ noticeably with the Communists as to either policy or principle; and finally those non-Communists who, in … 1944–50 failed to take issue with the Communists on policy, but whose underlying principles seemingly differed….
In the middle were grouped an apparently large majority of Progressive Party followers—the moderates. Exemplified by both national candidates, these individuals were willing to accept Communist support, because they felt that it was inconsistent, in the light of their ideals, to oppose Redbaiting by others, yet attempt to read Communists out of the new party. "

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_Party_(United_States,_1948)

The Atlantic Monthly published an article in 1948 about the Progressive Party and Henry Wallace, which is available online.

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/194808/henry-wallace

The author of the article, Osler Petersen, was also an FDR New Dealer, and associate of Wallace's. He writes how Wallace took a stand, refusing to fire Alger Hiss for reported Soviet ties. Of course, the article was written before the famous Alger Hiss trial, where Hiss was found guilty of perjury in January 1950. Even without the rear-view mirror knowledge we have of the Hiss case, Peterson is highly critical of the Progressive Party, and of it's nominee Henry Wallace:

"It is not a Communist Party campaign, despite the closeness with which he has hewn to the Kremlin's Party line and despite the number of Party members and Party-liners manning the machinery of the campaign. Wallace turned a deaf ear to many of his friends and former associates who pleaded with him not to take the step. But their earnest arguments were deflected by the Communist and other voices, both from outside and from within himself, which impel Wallace on."

Further, the Atlantic article's description of how the progressives tried to create a messiah-like cult around the former Iowa pig farmer running for President is eerily reminiscient of how obama was handled by his "progressive" advisors during the campaign and even as president:

"The techniques of his mass meetings at Madison Square Garden and elsewhere are designed to play on people's emotions and cloud their judgment—the single spotlight in the darkened auditorium focused on the lone speaker (the holy leader) surrounded by a battery of microphones on a platform in the center of the vast assemblage rising tier on tier on all sides of it; the organized chants through a loud-speaker system proclaiming the urgency of the need and the self-sacrificing courage of the savior eager to lead humanity to salvation; the spotlight ceremony of lighting the path of the savior when he threads his way among the multitude to and from the platform amid the exulting cheers of his followers. These techniques are a far cry from the old torchlight parades and other traditional methods employed by Theodore Roosevelt in his 1912 Bull Moose effort to reach the White House and by Senior Bob La Follette in his 1924 campaign. They are borrowed from the Sportpalast in Berlin and the Red Square in Moscow and a modern technology applied to make the individual sink his identity in the herd. "

The Progressive Party of 1948 won no electoral votes. With the tension between the US and the Soviet Union running high, and with US troops bogged down in North Korea, there was little sympathy for the pro-communists and "fellow travelers" who made up the Progressive Party then. Sixty years later, the Soviet Union has collapsed. The obama progressive are running their candidate with exactly the same image as they ran their 1948 candidate, and with most of the same agenda. Ayers, Flanagan, Wright, Axelrod, Emanuel , Mr. and Mrs obama, and most of the member of the obama politburo of czars and advisors -- they are all cut from the same cloth as the fellow travelers and open communists of the 1948 election. Lacking the mirror image of them in Moscow, however, americans seem puzzled how to respond to slogans their parents and grandparents rejected out of hand.

Hiss, the Rosenbergs, Klaus Fuchs and Henry Wallace are long dead. As are those people who stood against them in 1948: Truman, Nixon, Hoover. Without a historical context, the progressive might seem harmless -- even their rabid partisan attacks against everyone from joe the plumber, miss california and sarah palin might seem just more of the same old politics. Wake up america. These people, from obama down, are not "more of the same". They are pushing a stalinist agenda, with stalinist tactics.