To the editor:
As I listened to the other candidates speak at the recent GOP caucus, I had flashbacks of a 1970s Newsweek article.
The article was about the accreditation councils for our university schools of education and their efforts to get universities to change their ways of educating and preparing classroom teachers.
The accreditation councils wanted the role of prospective teachers expanded to include that of being agents for social, political and economic change and reform.
They wanted those pursuing teaching degrees to be prepared to promote and incorporate prevailing progressive views in their classroom instructions.
The accreditation councils also wanted new teachers to teach their students that one of the primary roles of government was to impose social, political and economic changes on otherwise non-conforming community members.
The idea is that once teachers buy into the premise of being agents for social, political and economic change, they would instill similar thinking and behavior in their students. The students would then similarly influence others.
In this way, the mindsets of numerous individuals can be dramatically changed over a relatively short period of time.
Changes of this type ultimately result in changes in community social mores and values and community perceptions of the roles of government. Conduct once considered overreaching by government is no longer considered overreaching.
In a like manner, individual conduct previously deemed immoral or socially unacceptable becomes diversity conduct to be publicly celebrated and emulated.
Never was the success of this strategy more evident than at the recent Republican caucus.
With the exception of a couple of candidates, all the candidates lauded Hancock County as being a great community.
They then went on outlining their progressive initiatives for making it even greater. These candidates and the vast majority of the participating precinct officials seemed clueless to what should have been the obvious and inevitable consequences of what was being peddled by these pandering candidates.
Everything they said involved expanding the role, size and cost of an already overreaching government.
Clearly, the outcomes of what these candidates were proposing would be reduced choices and opportunities for community members; more unfair and inequitable taxation; more redistribution of wealth; less disposable income for households; far more intrusive government; and a more stifled local economy.
Worse yet, decisions about what is best for our community would be continued to be decided by the empowered progressive elitist groups of our community outside the open meeting without input from those affected.
Most of the caucus candidates somewhere along the way have obviously bought into the ideology of progressivism.
Though the how and where of their conversions are not known, it is clear that they are perfectly comfortable with the premise of government being an agent for social, political and economic change.
Further known and far more alarming is the fact that all these progressive ideologues and pundits are eager for the opportunity to make their progressive views a reality.
Everybody, especially those of us who like to refer to ourselves as “Republicans,” needs to understand that the Hancock County Republican Party is not immune to today’s brand of progressivism.
Progressivism is no longer a psychological disorder restricted to the diehard far-left liberals or to a single opposing political party.
I daresay that the Hancock County Republican Party has far more than its fair share of “progressives.”
I would venture to say progressives comprise a significant portion of the registered Republicans and a very high percent of the currently serving elected officials in this County.
If they don’t realize it, they are either in denial or ashamed to admit to it.
Today’s county Republican Party is no longer predominately comprised of traditional constitutionally limited government Republicans and moderate centrists.
Traditionalists are being attacked and driven out of the party by both the centrist and the progressive elements within the party.
At the same time, the control of and influence within the party continues to shift more and more from the centrist to the progressive element of the party.
The Republican Party of Reagan, which saw government as the cause of most problems and not the solution, has obviously been replaced by the progressive Republican Party, whose members see more government and more taxes as the solutions to all problems.
This progressive element of the Republican Party sees government as a tool for imposing the social, economic and political views of progressives on others and as an instrument for punishing nonconforming members of our community.
John Priore
