And why wouldn’t the rest of us lumpen proletarians want to follow the lead of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex? The only hitch is that it’s hard to think of a more recent phonier claim to a progressive future since Hugo Chavez promised eternal bliss and prosperity to the people of Venezuela.
The Queen has been forced to accept their decision to “carve out a progressive new role” for themselves within the monarchy. What choice did Her Majesty have?
But to coin a phrase from Johnny Rotten uttered in a refreshingly less progressive era, never mind the bollocks, your royal highnesses, please tell us what you really mean.
Having been there no more than a minute, Meghan Markle has had enough of the kind of work that comes with being a B-grade royal, but she seems to like the A-grade royal perks. She and Prince Harry had their big royal wedding. The progressive Sussexes want to keep other expensive, unprogressive royal accoutrements, the big royal home along with royally expensive renovations. Carving out their progressive future, they plan to do away with royal duties but keep their royal titles to boost their celebrity and personal bank balances.
It is entirely understandable if the duke and duchess are unhappy with frolicking in the shadows of the heirs to the British throne. It’s not easy being born No 2 in a royal family where only No 1 counts. And clearly the former TV star is finding it hard to adjust to a royal life in the shadow of Kate. But why must these royal discontents camouflage their unhappiness by claiming they are now carving out a “progressive” new role? The answer to that question is because they can. The word progressive has two critical characteristics the Sussexes desperately need right now. It is simultaneously devoid of precise meaning, and steeped in virtue signalling.
In reality, the attention-seeking Sussexes are caricatures of phony progressivism. Prince Harry, who travels by private jet, stood barefoot on an Italian beach last year to tell us to save the world from climate change. Harry has told us, more than once, that he and his wife are limiting themselves to two children to save the planet from the wasteful use of resources. Take that, brother William, second in line to the throne, with your three heirs. Now the Sussexes want us to swallow that, in the name of progress, they want the perks of royalty but not the work. As progressive frauds go, this one is a doozy. For that reason alone, the way Harry and Meghan have chosen to leave the royal family warrants more attention than it should. It is a reminder that if there is one word that needs to be expunged from the English language as a crime against meaning — it is progressive.
History is replete with examples of misguided fools, selfish dolts and plainly rotten people claiming to be progressive doing dreadful damage in the name of being progressive. To give only the most historically significant example, communist heroes promised workers an enlightened, progressive future only to deliver despair, poverty and death.
Whenever anyone utters the word progressive it pays then to wait and watch. It can end in tears when it is (a) a political ruse, (b) a public relations exercise or (c) a selfish stunt rather than a path to genuine progress. In the Sussexes case, it is two out of three.
Harry and Meghan join a long, sad tradition where progressive has been used by some people to justify bad decisions that have led to dreadful outcomes for others. Take the long, sad history of flawed indigenous policy in this country. In the 1970s, we were told that progressive policy demanded special handouts to indigenous people to make up for past injustices. In the name of being progressive, the old-fashioned model of individual rights coexisting with individual responsibilities was thrown out. What emerged was a handout culture that created a toxic and generational cycle of sit-down money and concomitant misery. That work delivers human dignity, that responsibility provides empowerment, both were added to the trash heap of old-fashioned ideas. And the results are still being played out in Australia with each annual Closing the Gap report setting out higher than average rates of economic disadvantage, child abuse, domestic violence, unemployment and poor educational outcomes.
Beyond indigenous policy, progressive educators in schools decided that teaching kids to read the old-fashioned way, learning phonetic sounds to words, was for the dustbin of ideas too.
Progressive educators would deliver higher rates of literacy and genuine appreciation of literature with a new progressive whole-word method of teaching. Progressive education of teaching kids to read by osmosis was based on a wing and a prayer, and not sound research. Weirdly, given this is about children learning to read, the progressive path was also deeply political. Progressive educators decided the only way to do away with the old phonic system of teaching was to paint it as some kind of right-wing plot to stop young minds critically analysing literature. It turned out that kids can’t critically analyse anything if they cannot read fluently.
But the damage was done to generations of young school students who fell through the gap of these phony progressive educational policy settings. The same has happened in other areas, from maths to science, where the basics have been thrown out in the name of progressive teaching and, along with them, the educational outcomes of students.
Climate change activists are an especially objectionable class of progressive frauds. Despite her promises before the last election, the federal member for Warringah and climate change progressive Zali Steggall still doesn’t own an electric car. She tweeted her promise and is now waiting for the government to subsidise one. That’s another tenet of progressivism: call on others to fund your faux progressive path. And in recent days, climate activists who claim to be ushering the world towards a more progressive future have shown up their unenlightened means, waving placards that wish Scott Morrison’s home would burn down.
It is one thing for Harry and Meghan to move to Canada for half the year in the name of carving out a progressive future. It makes sense for them to live in a country with a prime minister who is a fellow caricature of fake progressive culture. Only in Canada can you dress in blackface multiple times, flagellate yourself before the gods of progressivism, and get re-elected. Even the National Post has reported that a majority of Canadians would love to see Harry as their governor-general.
But the way they have framed their departure from royal life will surely encourage others to claim to be taking a progressive path to hide similarly selfish motives and misguided politics. The Sussexes built on a lazy and tawdry, but sadly a well-established, tradition of believing that sounding good is the same as doing good.
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Workers the world over are downing tools, packing up desks, handing in their resignations, telling employers they have had enough of work, and are carving out a new, more progressive role for themselves. In this new progressive Utopia, workers don’t work but keep the perks, namely a gravy train of someone else’s money.