Jeffrey A. Eisenach
The economist Eisenach, president of The Progress & Freedom Foundation and author of the book The Future of Progress, is in agreement with Nisbet’s stance that progress is an American idea which lost its attractiveness over the last thirty years.[8] 13 years after the publication of Nisbet’s book (the first edition came out in 1980) the attitude toward progress worsened still further. Eisenach’s evaluation of progress is based on the ideology of conservatism which is professed by the Republican Party. In the mid-1990s during the period of the Democrats’ rule its supporters thought that “people no longer believe in America’s future.” In Eisenach’s opinion, this was due to the destructive generation which was active in the period from the late 1950s to the early 1980s. During that period all of civilization’s achievements were called in question. However, since the mid-1990s signs of renascence of progress started to show. For starters, however, we must understand what progress is and whether it is good or bad, and how to tell good from bad. To some people, making great numbers of cars is good, to others it is bad; some thinks that unmarried cohabitation is a good thing (for individual rights are being preserved); others thing it is a bad thing. “The point is, – Eisenach writes, – that progress is a heavily value-laden concept, measurable only in terms of an explicit understanding of what is good and evil, right and wrong. "Good change" is progress; "bad change" is decay. Change by itself can never be, as President Clinton suggested in his Inaugural Address, "our friend." It is either our servant, or it is or our enemy.” In Eisenach’s understanding change is a description, a statement of some movement, while progress is a direction, i.e. it is something toward which we should strive. (He is correct on this count, by the way.) He is in agreement on the whole with the interpretation of progress given by Nisbet (with his five premises). Still, the main thing which became imprinted in his soul is America’s messianic role in the world. It is perhaps a myth, but it means everything to America; this myth was supported by all politicians and philosophers who mattered. In this connection Eisenach quotes with pleasure Michael Vlahos, a scholar of international affairs at John Hopkins University, who wrote: “America in our national idea is, and must be, the source of human progress: first as model, but also as agent of world democratic reform . . . . This myth of America as the dynamo of human progress simply cannot be given up. To do so would put at risk the American identity itself.”
This is why, Eisenach believes, the renewal of American civilization is inevitably tied to the renascence of the idea of progress. Accordingly the entire world will start reviving under the banner of progress. Should the world fail to understand this messianic role of the USA, there will be need of recourse to “compelle intrare,”[9] based on which Saint Augustine approved forcible joining of heretics to the Church.
This was realized by a Republican administration led by the junior President Bush concerning Iraq. The Iraqis, though, don’t understand to this day that invasion of a foreign country and the killing of several hundred thousand people is called progress. Evidently they’ve been reading the wrong kind of books.