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It means he’s out to do what conservatives have been dedicated to ever since the enactment of the New Deal: that is, Rolling Back the 20th Century.This has been the ambition of movement conservatives ever since the 1930s, at which point America enacted a set of social safety nets (Like Social Security) and financial regulations to prevent another Great Depression in the United States. These programs were taken up to solve serious problems, but their enactment (along with a significant income tax) meant a loss of wealth, influence, and prestige for some- for example, in wartime the income tax was used to pay down debt, and the Robber Barons of the day made it their mission to roll that back too. Thus, a movement was born:The movement’s grand ambition–one can no longer say grandiose–is to roll back the twentieth century, quite literally. That is, defenestrate the federal government and reduce its scale and powers to a level well below what it was before the New Deal’s centralization. With that accomplished, movement conservatives envision a restored society in which the prevailing values and power relationships resemble the America that existed around 1900, when William McKinley was President. Governing authority and resources are dispersed from Washington, returned to local levels and also to individuals and private institutions, most notably corporations and religious organizations. The primacy of private property rights is re-established over the shared public priorities expressed in government regulation. Above all, private wealth–both enterprises and individuals with higher incomes–are permanently insulated from the progressive claims of the graduated income tax.These broad objectives may sound reactionary and destructive (in historical terms they are), but hard-right conservatives see themselves as liberating reformers, not destroyers, who are rescuing old American virtues of self-reliance and individual autonomy from the clutches of collective action and “statist” left-wingers. ~[Rolling Back the 20th Century]Along the way, this movement recruited what we now know as organized religion: [How corporate America invented ‘Christian America’ to fight the New Deal] This fostered a new breed of megachurch and televangelist (and politicized religion) in America, one dedicated to leveraging its new political influence toward the end of re-casting the USA into an overtly Christian nation. This lot appreciate the fact that prior to the advent of Social Security, often the poor had to go to church to beg for food- and this gave the Church relative influence.Another part of the game here is to roll back the ability of the US government to regulate its affairs effectively via its regulatory agencies (like, for example, the EPA). If that happens, new regulation would literally require an act of congress to enact, and that in turn would give big players with an interest in avoiding being regulated an opportunity to ‘lobby’ their legislators on the issue, in what would likely become a huge backlog of issues constrained by congress’s capacity to act.The goal of dismantling the administrative state is entirely about shifting power and influence away from government, toward those who stand to gain by its diminishment: notably, certain industries (think: industrial polluters and… tobacco), and organized religion.What is to be reversed is the “modern” agenda. The aim a century ago was to mobilize the Industrial Revolution’s soaring productivity and technology to raise living standards and use progressive taxation, public regulation, central banking and financial reform to distribute wealth fairly and make societies more equal. Today’s financial aim is the opposite: to concentrate wealth at the top of the economic pyramid and lower labor’s returns. High finance loves low wages. ~[Rolling Back the Progressive Era]This may sound appealing to conservative ears, (at last! being rid of government! no rules! no regulations! frrreeeeeeedommmm!) but it really amounts to trading one set of rules and authority for another less accountable one:This road to neoserfdom is an asset grab. But to achieve it, the financial sector needs a political grab to replace democracy with financial technocrats. Their job is to pretend that there is no revolution at all, merely an increase in “efficiency,” “creating wealth” by debt-leveraging the economy to the point where the entire surplus is paid out as interest to the financial managers who are emerging as Western civilization’s new central planners.In the end, it’s the re-assertion of an old order, the one that was overthrown by American progressives in the late 1930s, and again during the War Years [Wall Street Was America’s First Foe in World War II]. Since the American Revolution, through the industrial revolution, American industrialists had emerged as a sort of new royalty, exploiting the power vacuum left in the wake of overthrowing the old one:For out of this modern civilization economic royalists carved new dynasties. New kingdoms were built upon concentration of control over material things. Through new uses of corporations, banks and securities, new machinery of industry and agriculture, of labor and capital—all undreamed of by the fathers—the whole structure of modern life was impressed into this royal service. […] It was natural and perhaps human that the privileged princes of these new economic dynasties, thirsting for power, reached out for control over Government itself. They created a new despotism and wrapped it in the robes of legal sanction. In its service new mercenaries sought to regiment the people, their labor, and their property. And as a result the average man once more confronts the problem that faced the Minute Man.~Franklin D. Roosevelt, [Acceptance Speech for the Renomination for the Presidency, Philadelphia, Pa.]Deconstructing the modern state is about nothing less than relieving our titans of industry of their current regulation, so they can get back to their prior business: ruling.

What’s wrong with progressivism? What isn’t wrong with progressivism?[Quotes below are from Michael Faraday, a third-generation social democrat, a preference for social democracy being the hallmark of progressivism. He converted to liberal.]Just some of the predations of progressives that have troubled me during my lifetime.The Curley EffectDetroit, Buffalo, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Miami, St. Louis, El Paso, Milwaukee, Philadelphia and Newark. What do these cities have in common besides being our ten poorest with poverty rates between 24 percent and 32 percent? Only two have had a Republican mayor since 1961, and those two (Cincinnati and Cleveland) haven’t had one since the 1980s. While we’re at it, nine of the ten least-solvent states are Democratic as well. This is far from accidental.The Curley Effect, named for four-term Democratic mayor of Boston James Michael Curley is a political strategy of “increasing the relative size of one’s political base through distortionary, wealth-reducing policies.” Tax flight of the wealthy is a key tactic.http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/glaeser/files/curley_effect_1.pdfContrary to opinion, leftism isn't just about hate. Leftists are more complex than that. From my time as a red diaper leftist, I can tell you that a whole range of emotions are involved. Hate, anger, fear, bitterness, jealousy, envy, rage, greed, pride, smugness and paranoia (not technically an emotion, but it is widespread among leftists).“I’ll have those niggers voting Democrat for two-hundred years.”With that promise, Lyndon Johnson convinced a critical number of Southern politicians to support his War on Poverty program. This was the result.So, was the War on Poverty that much of a failure? No. The Democrats simultaneously changed the definition of poverty from an absolute one to a relative one so that they would always be able to direct benefits to ten to fifteen percent of the poor [read: voters]. The minister of education of Venezuela recently admitted that the goal of the socialist Chavez regime was “not to take the people out of poverty so they become middle class and then turn into escuálidos” (a derogatory term to denote opposition members). I don’t know of such a candid quote from an American progressive, but it’s the same concept.The victim narrative of the Left is very infectious. You are always the victim and you are always owed something. The wealthy are always evil, while you are always good and wholesome.Cloward–Piven StrategyThe Cloward-Piven strategy was a scheme published in The Nation by two Columbia University professors of Social Work to so overload the welfare system that a guaranteed annual income would be the result. The scheme went nowhere, but it did raise public awareness of the progressive penchant for causing failure as a means of bringing about the changes they desire. The latest instance is the passage of Obamacare, which, given the remarks from central figures like Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama, was clearly designed as a step toward full socialistic health care on its eventual failure. They just didn’t expect failure to arrive so swiftly.Leftists combine child-like naïveté and paranoid aggression in all of their narratives. It is a remarkable and very damaging pairing. The child-like naïveté protects the narrative from facts while the paranoid aggression protects the mind from doubt.The Long March Through the InstitutionsAs a young student radical, I was actually in on discussions of this one. The first Long March was famously conducted by Mao, but in the heady days of the sixties when student radicals were taking over college administration buildings and getting away with it, the thought became “why not emulate Mao and take over the whole system?”This actually became a large, conscious effort greatly assisted by the fact that public-sector unions had just gained approval in the early sixties. And so now public-school teaching, academia, journalism, law and public service are dominated by progressives—the areas of society they consider the high ground for controlling opinion, policy and political outcomes.With one worker in five now paid from tax revenue and the compensation of those workers having grown from eighty percent of a private-sector worker in the early sixties to more than one-hundred-fifty percent today (while two private sectors have held their own and the rest have shrunk), we are facing a debt crisis as it now takes the taxes of four workers to pay for the fifth public worker. Progressives have been creating a highly-rewarded mandarin class of their loyalists at taxpayer expense.The child-like thinking solves all problems without pesky details and facts interfering, leading to delusions of intellectual brilliance.When I argued with leftists, their near-psychotic rage shocked me. I felt I was talking to lunatics.Climate ChangeClimate Change, which started out as Anthropogenic Global Warming until not only did the predicted heat spike not materialize, the underlying mechanism hypothesized to produce it was not detected either, stands as a fine example of a key progressive method going back more than a century—William James: The Moral Equivalent of War. These are the levers and pulleys progressives use to justify their power grabs.“Inequality” is another, a well-understood chimera, a transient property of a dynamic process, but progressives freeze it into snapshots and declare, “Look, some people are richer than others. Elect us and we’ll make it all much more fair.” And why would anyone want to cede any power to a party headed by Harry Reid, the Clintons and so many others who openly and notoriously participate in corruption and influence-peddling?Another hoary theme pushed is progressive virtue. To listen to progressives, they ended slavery, emancipated women, stopped child labor and on and on. They did no such things.The right of women to vote started out as a liberal, that is Republican, effort. Progressives first got behind it as a means to water down the black vote and later to assure passage of Prohibition. When the suffragettes marched, the crowds that heckled and even attacked them were also progressives.Minimum wage started as a progressive drive to make it more difficult for “undesirables” to find employment.They did not stand up for science and evolution as the textbook in question was purely a eugenics screed having nothing whatsoever to do with Darwinian evolution. The Scopes Trial:So many progressive themes all intended to signal their supposed virtue and justify their control of the levers of power. Perhaps the most rancid theme is their superior caring:But there is another reason why it takes time to dig out the leftist brain parasite. A powerful lie lives there. It is the most powerful lie they have. It is that the Left “cares.” You must fully embrace the fact that this is a lie. All leftist “caring” has a hidden agenda.Marx’s scathing indictment of social democracy/progressivism (Critique of the Gotha Programme) remains quite accurate. The problem is that it became a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie with no concern for elevating the working man, exploiting, yes, elevating, no. And it readily relied on state authority.In short, where right-wing is defined by state power, like every implementation of fascism and communism, but contrary to Marxian theory, social democracy is a right-wing movement. The “lefty” label owes to their pretense to caring when in reality what they truly care for is power—power to run the lives of others.We in the United States are constitutionally guaranteed Republicanism in the United States at both the federal and state levels as our form of government. Social democracy is quite antagonistic to republicanism, and politicians who pursue it are in violation of their oaths of office and should be removed.But somehow, progressives have vaulted themselves as a political class and made themselves superior even to our productive class that actually creates the wealth they see it as their right to distribute for political gain. Progressives have become a parasite on the United States, a state of affairs that would not have come to pass had not the Republican Party also become enamored of statism and corruption.

This is certainly memorable.Collapsebot doesn't like an answer that short, so here's something from Wikipedia' history of Philadelphia to add to it:After World War II ended, Philadelphia had a serious housing shortage. Around half of the city's housing had been built in the 19th century, and many units lacked proper sanitary facilities, were overcrowded, and in poor condition. Competition for housing, as African Americans (many had come to the city in the Great Migration from the South) and Puerto Ricans moved into new neighborhoods, resulted in racial tension. The wealthier middle-class residents, often white, continued to move out to the suburbs in what became called white flight.The population peaked at more than two million residents in 1950; afterward the city's population declined while that of the neighboring suburban counties grew. Some residents moved out of the region altogether due to restructuring of industry and loss of tens of thousands of jobs in the city.Philadelphia lost five percent of its population in the 1950s, three percent in the 1960s and more than thirteen percent in the 1970s.Manufacturing and other major Philadelphia businesses, which had supported middle-class lives for the working class, were moving out of the area or shutting down in industrial restructuring, including major declines in railroads.The city encouraged development projects in University City in West Philadelphia and the area around Temple University in North Philadelphia, it removed the "Chinese Wall" elevated railway, and developed Market Street Eastaround the transportation hub. Some gentrification occurred, with restoration of properties in historic neighborhoods such as Society Hill, Rittenhouse Square, Queen Village, and the Fairmount area. The airport expanded, theSchuylkill Expressway and the Delaware Expressway (Interstate 95) were built, SEPTA was formed, and residential and industrial development took place in Northeast Philadelphia.Preparations for the United States Bicentennial in 1976 began in 1964. By the early 1970s, US$3 million had been spent but no plans were set. The planning group was reorganized and numerous city-wide events were planned. Independence National Historical Park was restored and development of Penn's Landing was completed. Less than half the expected visitors came to the city for the Bicentennial, but the event helped revive the identity of the city, inspiring annual neighborhood events and fairs.Mayor Joseph S. ClarkIn 1947 Richardson Dilworth was selected as the Democratic candidate, but lost to incumbent mayor Bernard Samuel. During the campaign Dilworth made numerous specific charges about corruption within city government. The City Council set up a committee to investigate, with findings followed by a grand jury investigation. The five-year investigation and its findings garnered national attention. US$40 million in city spending was found to be unaccounted for, and the president judge of the Court of Common pleas had been tampering with court cases. The fire marshal went to prison; and an official in the tax collection office, a water department employee, a plumbing inspector, and head of the police vice squad each committed suicide after criminal exposures.The public and the press demanded reform and by the end of 1950, a new city charter was drafted. The new charter strengthened the position of the mayor and weakened the City Council. The Council would be made of ten councilmen elected by district and seven at large. City administration was streamlined and new boards and commissions were created.In 1951 Joseph S. Clark was elected as the first Democratic mayor in 80 years. Clark filled administration positions based on merit and worked to weed out corruption.Despite reforms and the Clark administration, a powerful Democratic patronage organization eventually replaced the old Republican one.Clark was succeeded by Richardson Dilworth, who continued the policies of his predecessor. Dilworth resigned to run for governor in 1962, and city council president James H. J. Tate was elected as the city's first Irish Catholic mayor. Tate was elected mayor in 1963 and reelected in 1967 despite opposition from reformers who opposed him as an organization insider.As elsewhere in major US cities, the 1960s was a turbulent decade for the city. Numerous civil rights and anti-war protests took place, including large protests led by Marie Hicks to desegregate Girard College.Students took over theCommunity College of Philadelphia in a sit-in, race riots broke out in Holmesburg Prison, and a 1964 riot along West Columbia Avenue killed two people, injured over 300 and caused around US$3 million in damages. Crime was also a serious problem. Primarily drug-related gang warfare plagued the city, and in 1970 crime was rated the city's number one problem in a City Planning Commission survey. The court system was overtaxed and the tactics of the police department under Police Commissioner Frank Rizzo were controversial.Frank Rizzo was credited with preventing the level of violence seen in other cities at the time and was elected mayor in 1971.The outspoken Rizzo, who was reelected in 1975, was a divisive figure who had loyal supporters and passionate opponents. Police and fire departments and cultural institutions were well supported under Rizzo, but other city departments like the Free Library, the Department of Welfare and Recreation, the City Planning Commission and the Streets Department experienced large cuts.The radical group called MOVE formed in 1972, and tension soon developed with city officials. The first major clash occurred in 1978 at the group's Powelton Village headquarters, resulting in the death of a police officer. Nine MOVE members were convicted at trial and sentenced to prison. In 1985 a stand-off occurred at the group's new headquarters in Southwest Philadelphia, whose residents were believed to be armed resisters. The police dropped a satchel bomb on the house from a helicopter; it set off a fire that killed eleven MOVE members, including five children, and destroyed sixty-two neighboring houses.Survivors sued the city in civil court and won damages.Crime continued to be a problem in the 1980s. Deadly Mafia warfare plagued South Philadelphia, drug gangs and crack houses invaded the slums of the city, and the murder rate skyrocketed. William J. Green became mayor in 1980, and in 1984 W. Wilson Goodebecame Philadelphia's first African-American mayor. Development continued in areas in Old City and South Street, and large modern skyscrapers of glass and granite, designed by nationally known architects, were constructed in Center City. City employee labor contracts signed during the Rizzo administration helped set up a city financial crisis that Green and Goode were unable to prevent. The city was near bankruptcy at the end of the 1980s.A group of Hmong refugees had settled in Philadelphia after the end of the 1970s Laotian Civil War associated with the Vietnam War. They were attacked in discriminatory acts, and the city's Commission on Human Relations held hearings on the incidents. Anne Fadiman, author of The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, said that lower-class residents resented the Hmong receiving a $100,000 federal grant for employment assistance when they were also out of work; they believed that American citizens should be getting assistance.Between 1982 and 1984, three quarters of the Hmong people who had settled in Philadelphia left for other cities in the United States to join relatives who were already there.Vietnamese and other immigrants from Asia have settled in the city, many near the Italian Market area. In addition, numerous Hispanic immigrants from Central and South America have entered the city, settling in North Philadelphia.