Perfect Example of Too Much Government Control!

originally posted by: diggindirt

originally posted by: Sremmos80
a reply to: WeAreAWAKE

What I suggest you remember...as an example is this. At one time, black people were discriminated against by even the government and the law as were gay people. They could easily have been targeted in the same manner by a socialist government at the time.

Seriously?
A non socialist gov DID target both of them, so not sure what your point is here and what a socialist gov has to do with anything.
All you described was some sort of "lets not let the gov doing anything because one day they might come for you!" That same logic would have prevented the civil rights movements you speak of. Pretty ironic actually.
Also more if this than that and then using an extreme as the 'that'.

I'd suggest you read a bit of history. Dr. Walter Wiliams has an excellent article here on the Progressives and their racial prejudices, showing plainly it was the Progressives who discriminated against blacks.
hosted.verticalresponse.com...

The Progressive Era is generally seen as the period from 1890 to 1920. President Woodrow Wilson, a leading progressive, had a deep contempt for the founding principles of our nation. Progress for Wilson was to get "beyond the Declaration of Independence," because "it is of no consequence to us." President Wilson implored that "all that progressives ask or desire is permission -- in an era when 'development,' 'evolution,' is the scientific word -- to interpret the Constitution according to the Darwinian principle; all they ask is recognition of the fact that a nation is a living thing and not a machine." President Woodrow Wilson was a believer in notions of racial superiority and inferiority. He was so enthralled with D.W. Griffith's "Birth of a Nation" movie, which glorified the Ku Klux Klan, that he invited various dignitaries to the White House to view it with him. During one private screening, President Wilson exclaimed: "It's like writing history with lightning. And my only regret is that it is all so terribly true." When President Wilson introduced racial segregation to the civil service, the NAACP and the National Independent Political League protested. Wilson vigorously defended it, arguing that segregation was in the interest of Negroes.

...

President Woodrow Wilson's predecessor, Theodore Roosevelt, was another progressive captivated by the notions of racial inferiority. He opposed voting rights for black Americans, which were guaranteed by the 15th Amendment, on the grounds that the black race was still in its adolescence. Theodore Roosevelt said that "race suicide," a term coined by sociologist and eugenicist Edward Ross, was the "greatest problem of civilization." "The theory that races are virtually equal in capacity," wrote Ross in the journal of the American Sociological Society, "leads to such monumental follies as lining the valleys of the South with the bones of half a million picked whites in order to improve the conditions of four million unpicked blacks." The Progressive era gave birth to the "separate but equal" doctrine that emerged from the Supreme Court's notorious 1896 decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, a case that symbolized Jim Crow racism. Progressives were also people who attacked free-market economics. Along with muckraking journalists they attacked capitalistic barons. They were advocates of what might be called "scientific racism" that drew from anthropology, biology, psychology, sociology, eugenics and medical science. Popular books during the Progressive era included Charles Carroll's "The Negro a Beast" and R.W. Shufeldt's "The Negro, a Menace to American Civilization." A best-seller was Madison Grant's "The Passing of the Great Race," where he argued that inferior races were out-breeding their betters, leading to race suicide. Economist John R. Commons regarded blacks as immutably inferior therefore justifying slavery.

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Legal scholar Richard Epstein concludes that progressivism sought to grant the state vast new authority to manage all walks of American life while at the same time weakening traditional checks on government power, including private property rights and liberty of contract, two principles that progressives hold in contempt. Epstein notes, "The sad but simple truth is that the Jim Crow resegregation of America depended on a conception of constitutional law that gave property rights short shrift, and showed broad deference to state action under the police power." It is clear that today's progressives have the same constitutional contempt as their predecessors.

Your examples are from 100 years ago. That's pretty pathetic. Yes the men therein were considered progressive, but if you're trying to make some sort of connection to today's progressives, you missed about 100 years of change and history.

If you want to believe that progressives have contempt for the US Constitution you are free believe so, but you'd be wrong.

If you want a solid example of having contempt for the US Constitution you should look toward right wing legislators who see this nation as a Christian nation and want to run it as such; completely disregarding the 1st amendment and making Thomas Jefferson roll over in his grave.

a reply to: spinalremain
Tell it to Dr. Williams. They are his examples and his connections.
Look at their actions. Their actions deny your words. If Obamacare isn't a Progressive agenda item, what is it? Forcing people to do business with corporate entities against their will isn't anti-Constitutional? Seriously, what about freedom of association. I don't chose to associate myself with any corporate health insurance company so I pay a fine to the IRS each year. That's what has old Tom spinning in his grave.