How the West Can Be Won. Again
By J. Jeff Toler for Shenandoah Christian Alliance j.toler@sca4christ.org
If you were to query an LLM—a large language model like ChatGPT or Perplexity—about the post-war progressive project, you will discover this:
“The post-war progressive project refers to the set of political, economic, cultural, and institutional efforts that emerged after World War II—primarily in the Western world—to build a more just, stable, and equitable society. It aimed to respond to the devastation of the war, prevent the rise of authoritarianism, and promote social cohesion through a mix of democratic governance, social welfare, international cooperation, and moral reform.”
The progressive project is at once a political movement impacting and shaping cultural, economic, and social institutions; and a reaction to the brutality of the Second World War. Some could argue it was an over-reaction. Others might say it was deliberately calculated to allow massive interventions by government to impose sanctions and develop powerful institutions under the auspices of a more centralized government.
The key take-away is that the world, but most especially the West, was determined that we must never return to fascism, communism, or authoritarian rule—ever again. This summary amounts to what can only be describes as stunning irony. Since the end of the war, the West has marched inexorably toward those very things until now.
The irony is the these very threats to democracy, and more importantly, to republicanism were in fact the very things that massively grew to the point where we find ourselves today: sweating under the threat of authoritarianism—communism or whatever label we might want give it, largely because of the “success” of the progressive project.
After World War II, the strong urge for building and strengthening liberal democratic institutions to prevent the return of fascism, communism, and authoritarian rule was overwhelming. This post-war effort prioritized the establishment of free and fair elections, the rule of law, civil liberties, and the independence of both the media and the judiciary. The overarching goal was to safeguard individual rights while fostering a shared sense of national purpose and democratic stability.
How did the progressive project actually work out? Did it manage to fully realize its objectives? How has the western world managed to achieve those objectives?
75 years later, free and fair elections would eventually come to be thoroughly corrupted by mail-in balloting, ballot harvesting, controversial initiatives, redistricting, and even last-minute attempts to remove a presidential candidate from the ballots altogether.
Social welfare morphed in the welfare state, a massive dependency on welfare systems that dismantled far better institutions like marriage and family by replacing the head of the household—the father—with government largess. In this particular case, the result was the devastation of the emerging black American family.
The progressive project confronted moral reform by simply redefining morality altogether. Most all institutions embraced the progressive project—often with little understanding of what it was leading to: the replacement of only the labels of fascism, communism, and authoritarianism.
These were the institutions of higher education, the media, central banking—to name a few. It ushered in the idea of globalization, feminism, homogenization—ironically, the latter under the rubric of diversity.
If the goals and objectives of the progressive project were to safeguard the people from such ideologies, why only now are we just waking up to the failure of this project?
Simply put: because we, like sheep, have gone astray, and we always will it would seem. Almost as soon as the opportunities of American prosperity were realized, the erosion of economic and social mobility quickly set in. With a stronger middle class clearly emerging, the aim of the progressive movement geared up to divide the classes by something other than material success and property ownership. A war was waged on Western culture. It was a war on what really made the west great: Christendom. Yes, that’s right. Christianity itself.
This idea is certain to invite derision and denouncement, but only because these last 75 years have been a slow, methodical, and successful erosion of social and cultural norms based on the rule of law, civil liberties and independent media. As you read this, you may or may not realize that these things—and many don’t—have been overtaken by a cultural hegemony whose sole aim is to divide and alienate the people by prioritizing another set of desired outcomes.
Equality, anti-racism, sexual revolution, genders, agism; all are representative of the new progressive movement. The trouble is, the old and the new progressivism both produce the same recurring outcome: division, unrest and unending turmoil.
The tools of the progressives are those of Antonio Gramsci, who died in Mussolini’s prison system in 1937. He developed the cultural hegemony that declared by arguing that the ruling class maintains power not just through political and economic control, but by shaping cultural norms and ideas. This made their dominance seem natural or inevitable. This concept has succeeded in influencing sociology, cultural studies, and political theory. This is the continuing goal of Western Marxism or as it is often called, Cultural Marxism.
Victor Davis Hanson
In the league of agitating against Western thought and ideals are some strange bedfellows indeed: transgenderists, anti-colonialists, critical theorists and pedagogs, liberation theologians and post-modernists. And most strangely. They all think they can get in bed with militant Islamists. If they only knew how dangerous that is.
Victor Davis Hanson parsed it out in a YouTube mashup titled, “Nobody Noticed What Trump Just Did—Except Victor Davis Hanson” [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGxn8iDDy44&t=255s]
We still remember how things looked truly bleak, and the game was all but over. With one setback after another, the unthinkable happened—mostly in the Summer run up to election 2024. After months of outrageous criminal trials, assassination attempts, and seemingly never-ending outrage—by the Progressives especially—this one man, seemingly against all odds, emerged to wrest back control and almost single-handedly push Western leadership back onto the world stage by sheer force of will, and almost frenetic activity of executive orders, deals and tariffs is reigniting the embers of the once familiar American ethos.
The skirmishes will continue. The rogue judges will continue to interfere. The last seven decades won’t just go away quietly. But for the first time in a long while, the prospects look promising. Dreams are becoming clearer.
“AI and automation are gutting the job market, and open borders flood the system with labor we don’t need. The contradictions are now too big to hide. Everyone is pretending they know what’s going on—but no one does. Except, maybe, the plumber making $50 an hour under the table… and Donald Trump, who Hanson says may ride off like Shane—unthanked, misunderstood, but victorious.”
- “Let us not lose heart in doing good, for in due time we will reap if we do not grow weary.” Galatians 6:9
Photo by Natalya Ukolova on Unsplash
