Progress.

It [middlebrow culture] was a culture of effort and self-improvement that aspired to higher education and an appreciation of the arts. Middlebrows included liberal Protestant, Jewish and Roman Catholic families, all of whom shared a common pride in the primacy of family values, in the importance of community identity and in the imperative of religious faith. Many aspects of middlebrow culture could often be found in the Australian Labor Party, and the rise and fall of its values is well captured by Kim Beazley Snr’s famous remark that when he joined the ALP in the 1930s it was composed of the cream of the working class; when he left it in the 1970s it was made up of the dregs of the middle class.

Why do we assume that what some grasping pack of leftist jackals dreams up for us is an improvement? The rise of Homo bolshevikus has everywhere meant decay, lies, hypocrisy, or death. Without exception.

Yet we are in thrall to doctrines that enshrine the enslavement of the mind of man far more than anything imagined by the left-wing fascists (a redundancy) of the last century. In the United States, where the politics and culture have lurched far into the realms of statism and elitism, "moderation" and "the center" are things that have only the most tenuous of a relationship with individual liberty, limited government, and private property.

The "center" here is advanced socialism. In Europe, it's a whisker away from naked authoritarianism.

"Stoic Philosophy and the Profession of Arms." By Michael Evans, Quadrant, January-Febuary 2010.

H/t: kg at Crusader Rabbit.