Progressivism Forces Americans to Forget Their History

... The consequence of the increasing strength of progressivism is the loss of the country’s ability to meet the challenges that it once possessed... Thus, the progressive movement is regressive by its very nature.

Like a dementia patient in gradual decline, the U.S. is regressing, gradually becoming enfeebled and infantilized, losing its knowledge, memory, coherence, and the ability, desire, and willingness to meet challenges. This is due in part to the ageing of the Baby Boomers (1946-1964) and Generation X (1965-1980) who possessed the direct experience of fight against the Soviet Union and its allies in the Cold War...

But a more significant cause is the rise of progressivism and its deliberate consequence - the decline of political liberalism in the U.S... The U.S. population and leadership either willingly forget or are forced to forget... If they do so with considerable resignation, they are political liberals, and people compelled to go with the progressive flow.

The forced memory loss is part of the "Great Forgetting" of the knowledge, behavior, culture, skills, practices, and abilities that led to victory in America’s wars, allowed the country to overcome economic difficulties to become the world’s greatest economic engine, the world’s leader in science and technology, possess peerless universities and professional schools, and a standard of living unmatched...

The pillars of that success, political liberalism, a willingness to forego personal gain for the good of the country, adaptiveness, creativity - what used to be termed "Yankee ingenuity" - and meritocracy, are eroding...

At root, countering the regressive memory loss imposed on Americans by progressives requires that older generations teach the tenets of America’s political beliefs and culture to younger ones, while at the same time explaining the totalitarian, perverse, and hollow nature of progressivism...

The Intellectual Foundations of MAGA, by Edward Ring, American Greatness, 18 January 2024.