Progressives have a significant history of intolerance

Progressive Founding FathersThese men were leaders in the progressive movement, but they were not the only leaders of the progressive movement.TRPro claims that TR did endorse the book, yet his link does not work, so it cannot be concluded that he did so from the evidence presented by my opponent.WilsonMy opponent argues that since we cannot judge whether the bill was supported by progressives, we must see who progressives feel about Wilson's presidency as a whole. In doing so, he commits the logical fallacy of division [1]. This fallacy is when a person draws a conclusion about something as a whole, and then tries to say that the parts of the whole also bear that quality. Just because liberals (which are not necessarily the same as progressives I might add) like a president as a whole, does not mean they approve of every action he took. I can use personal experience to verify this, as I myself am a liberal. I do like some of the actions taken by Wilson, such as his 14 points plan. Nevertheless, I do not approve of the Sedition Act. I believe most progressives would agree with me on this point. You cannot draw conclusions about the individual parts from looking at the hole the way that my opponent has done, because that is a logical fallacy.TaftWhile it is true that Taft did join the Republicans over the Bull Moose Party, my opponent's source says that Taft did consider himself a progressive [2].Second GenerationHooverMy opponent's defense of Hoover makes no sense. He says "Hoover was objected to conservatism and even described himself as a conservative." First, just because a person calls themselves something, does not make them that. I am sure that we are all familiar with so-called conservatives, Republicans, and Democrats in name only. Someone labeling themselves something does not make them that thing. My opponent continues by saying that he does not need to talk about Hoover's actions as they were similar to FDR's, but I am afraid it would have been greatly helpful for his case to elaborate on that point. His vagueness can only lead us to say that based on what has been presented on his part, Hoover cannot be considered a progressive.FDRThe trend of vagueness continues. My opponent makes an analogy between FDR and Reagan without explaining it in the least: there is no reason presented to believe that FDR being a progressive is like Reagan being a conservative. He then says that a progressive website calls FDR's policies what TR and Wilson wanted. This one website, without any substantiation on what is meant by this on his part, is not enough for us to conclude that FDR was a progressive.Modern ProgressivesA tale of two BushesMy mistake. Pro was referring to the latter Bush, but my objection still stands. We still have no reason to consider either Bush a progressive, therefore both are irrelevant.ObamaPro claims that it is possible for a person to be intolerant of themselves. While this may be true, it is clear that Obama is tolerant of people of faith: He has enough trust in people of faith that he supports one as President of the United States. He also is married to a person of faith and is likely raising his children to have faith. If he was so intolerant of people of faith, he would not have done these things. My opponent says that Obama has ignored the Catholic Church, however the U. S. is a secular country, so giving special exceptions to a religious institution would be a violation of the First Amendment's Establishment Clause [3]. Obama is clearly a tolerant person.Most ProgressivesPlanned ParenthoodWhile it is true that the Planned Parenthood founder considered light-skinned races to be above dark skin races, she was not intolerant of dark skin races as described on Wikipedia: "Sanger believed that lighter-skinned races were superior to darker-skinned races, but would not tolerate bigotry among her staff, nor any refusal to work within interracial projects" [4]. She may have held racist beliefs, but she was not intolerant. My opponent also claims that Planned Parenthood continues to represent her values. While it is true that they do represent some of her values such as reducing the need for abortions, saving women and children's lives, and strengthening the family [5], no evidence is presented leading to the conclusion that the organization still agrees with their founder's values concerning eugenics.Maxine WatersMy opponent is taking Water's quote partially out of context. The full quote is "I'm not afraid of anybody. This is a tough game. You can't be intimidated. You can't be frightened. And as far as I'm concerned, the 'tea party' can go straight to hell" [6]. Based on the full context of the quote, it can be inferred that she is not being intolerant of conservatives, but rather intolerant of intolerant actions by the tea party. Intolerance of intolerance equals tolerance. Boy Scouts of AmericaThe BSA is not a tolerant organization because of their discrimination against gays. The progressives in Congress were being intolerant towards intolerance, which equal tolerance. ConclusionNone of the presidents mentioned by my opponent, except for Wilson, were shown through solid evidence and reasoning to be both progressives and intolerant. Even if he had been able to show that all of them were both of these things, he could still not make the claim that most progressives are intolerant. I was able to demonstrate that the modern progressives he mentioned were not intolerant. Finally, in R2 I explained why being intolerant is at odds with the ideas of progressivism, therefore it does not make sense for most progressives to be intolerant. This point was never refuted.It is clear that my opponent has not met his BOP to show a significant history of intolerance among progressives.I thank my opponent for this debate.Vote Con!!Sources:[1]- http://www.nizkor.org...[2]- http://www.conservapedia.com...[3]- http://www.archives.gov...[4]- http://en.wikipedia.org...[5]- http://www.plannedparenthood.org...[6]- http://www.washingtonpost.com...