Putting it another way...
The law of unintended consequences defines essentially ALL of the Progressive initiatives of the past 100 years. More specifically, Progressives implement policies (or promote technology) that is intended to "help" people and "make their lives better." There is no question about this...they are always trying to help.
But GOVERNMENT cannot make lives better; it can only get out of the way so that people can make their own lives better.
Some examples:
The legalization of abortion (along with the Pill and other ubiquitous contraceptive strategies) was SUPPOSED to relieve women of the very rare burden of being unintentionally pregnant, and to remove the likelihood of women being reproductively destroyed or killed in crude attempts at "back-alley" abortions.
And yet, it became an alternative means of BIRTH CONTROL, killing hundreds of thousands of Americans every year. More insidiously, it became an EXCUSE for every swinging dick in the country to impregnate his paramour and TAKE OFF, totally rejecting the obligation to raise a child that they have fathered. (Men are, in this instance, PIGS).
The unionization of Teachers (largely a Progressive innovation) was SUPPOSED to end the phenomenon of teachers working for peon's wages, sacrificing their entire working lives only to retire in poverty. What it actually did, however, was to introduce a destructive labor-union antagonism into Academe, protecting incompetent and lazy teachers, taking away management's ability to reward success and sanction failure. The results in quantitative terms, have been a disaster for public education in the United States.
The "War on Poverty" was SUPPOSED to eliminate extreme poverty and give the poorest of the poor a path to the middle class. What it really did, however, was to INCENTIVIZE bastardy by providing money, food, housing, medical care, and other subsidies to anyone with the minimal native intelligence to exploit the system.
As a result, more than 70% of "Black" Americans are born to single mothers (40% of white children as well); a single parent is the most prominent factor in cases of crime, addiction, incarceration, unemployment, educational failure, etc.
In ALL of these cases, Progressive initiatives intended to help people have BACKFIRED, harming the society immeasurably more than the original planned benefits would have helped.
It is almost as though Progressives have embarked on a decades-long campaign to destroy American society. If they had actually done so, they could not have done a better job.
