What's up Slug?
The more I think about things... the more I keep landing on a single solution:
The democratization of Education is the key to all freedoms.
I think Marx & Engels thought the same thing... that's why they included "free" public schools as one of the 10 critical planks of Communism.

No government "of the people" is going to work, if the People themselves don't understand how it's supposed to work, and what their role is to keep it working.
And one thing that will never be a priority for the Government, is to teach its future citizens about the limits of its own authority over them; and the painfully-learned reasons for those non-negotiable limitations.

Education is an activity that belongs entirely in the private sector; like religion.
In America, we have a common understanding of the need to keep Church and State separate. We, in the West, have seen the devastation that Theocracy inevitably inflicts upon Freedom.
But we've failed, dramatically, to recognize Theocracy in its myriad instantiations.
Theocracy is not constrained to merely the "16 major"[1] religions that are popularly recognized as such. In fact, again... in America; the Government explicitly has no authority to decide which religions are valid, and which are not, in the first place.
That would be making a "...law respecting an establishment of religion" [see: 1st Amendment to our Constitution.]
And any ideology that claims a "moral imperative" is just that, a religion.
As such, any influence that such an ideology... e.g. "Progressivism", has over Government... is in imposition of Theocracy; which, if left unchecked, will only get worse... until it inevitably becomes absolute.

We've been pretty successful at keeping the few classically-recognized organized religions out of Government. Not entirely, but then... there is much overlap between the principles of Individual Sovereignty, and the principles of Christianity from which they emerged.
We've done that by institutionalizing the idea of Separation of Church and State.
However, we've ignored the other cultural spheres that present the exact same dilemma through claims of their own "exclusive insight" or moral imperatives, i.e.:
Separation of Education and State
Separation of Science and State
Separation of Medicine and State
Separation of Business and State
Separation of Banking and State
(others...?)

In short: if the Government would only stick to that which it has been explicitly chartered, in America anyway... then the People could go about their business in the private sector, dealing amongst each other as Free and equal individuals; which is their natural lot, and their respective Right.

That seminal epiphany of Western Civilization has been lost forever, unless we the People restore the role of "Education" away from the State itself, and return it to the purview of private individuals and their local communities, where it belongs.

Anyway, that's what I think. What do you think?

[1] [enkivillage.org]