Is Progressivism a Cancer?

The short answer is "no, of course not".

In Glenn Beck's Common Sense -- a book in which Beck attempts to aspire to the lofty heights of Thomas Paine, by crafting a tome of the same title, and publishing it along with Paine's version -- Beck argues that progressivism is, indeed, a cancer.

Surely, a great many Americans -- and Canadians -- would be tempted to agree with him.

But the question needs to be asked: is it civically safe to denounce a philosophy ascribed to by any significant number of citizens to be inherently dangerous?

Progressivism can only be as dangerous as progressives allow it to become. Earlier this year, Daily Show host Jon Stewart gave Countdown host Keith Olbermann a dressing-down on his program -- long a favourite of American progressives.

Olbermann, a former sportscaster and noted progressive, had grown positively feverish in his denunciations of Scott Brown, a Republican poised to win the late Ted Kennedy's seat in the United States Senate.

Olbermann noted that himself, Stewart, and fellow MSNBC personality Rachel Maddow were considered the "big three" progressive truth-tellers (one presumes he forgot about Stephen Colbert) on TV and seemed to imply that conventional wisdom suggested that Stewart should overlook Olbermann's excesses.

Stewart did not. He took Olbermann to task for his ad hominem attacks on Scott Brown, as well as on many others. In turn, Olbermann accepted Stewart's judgement, and admitted that he had been "over the top" recently.

Neither Olbermann nor Stewart allowed their progressivism to run away with them that amount of self-control is an indispensible virtue. Sadly, not all prominent public commentators share that virtue.

To cite a conservative example, Rush Limbaugh clearly lacks that virtue. He often plays directly into the hands of his critics with ambiguous comments into which his detractors can insort all manners of repulsive stances.

In his lack of self-control, Limbaugh is his own worst enemy.

Progressivism has its own out-of-control demagogues. Janeane Garofalo rightly sparked outrage when she denounced Tea Party protesters for all being motivated by racism, and attributing to them conditions akin to mental illness. (Olbermann, present for that rant, did nothing but nod in approval.)

There were almost certainly some racists amongst the Tea Party participants. And certainly there were few black participants among the movement. But few black participants does not an inherently racist movement make -- no matter what demagogues like Garofalo would insist.

For individuals like Garofalo, progressivism has very much become a cancer. Their dedication to it has decimated their capacity to control themselves, and instead descend into the folly that accompanies that.

Their meltdowns are the symptoms of greater meltdowns, those that occur when ideological movements lose interest in truth-seeking and more interested in attaining a position of dominance.

This is particularly pronounced when such ideological movements reject the notion of collaborative truth-seeking -- the process of searching for truth via discourse, by exchanging and debating ideas with movements that would otherwise be their rival.

A progressivism that embraces this impetus can be nothing but a cancer. A progressivism that rejects it is anything but.

It's in the hands of progressives, not the hands of Glenn Beck, to decide whether or not progressivism is -- or will become -- a cancer.