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Though I have always considered myself liberal, I've generally preferred the term "progressive" to describe myself because of its more definitive connotation of left politics and activist stance. Progressivism describes a worldview seeking to address the needs of the whole, especially the poorest and most vulnerable: e.g., a progressive tax code is necessary to ease the burden on the working poor. This worldview is more hopeful than the Hobbesian cruel and brutish one, seeing over the course of history a general progression of human evolution toward the wiser, more humane, and more evolved.
Liberalism, on the other hand, has been associated as often with lax government regulation, spending without accountability, and laissez-faire capitalism as in promoting the common good. Depending on the context, it can mean the very opposite of ‘disciplined.’ “Liberty” (from the Latin ‘libertas’) means freedom; “liberal” (sort of ‘libertas’–ish) means open-minded, free-thinking, tolerant, noninterventionist, generous, laissez-faire. Whether good or bad, enlightened or not, depends on the context.
While libertarians can certainly identify with the term “liberal,” so could the robber barons of the late nineteenth century. They could freely help themselves to untold riches through corporate schemes without a pesky interventionist government standing in the way. The term liberal more accurately describes the de-regulators of the Reagan era than those on the left seeking social justice and genuine reform. And while the centrist DLC might have used the term “progressive,” it wasn’t to hide from liberalism, it was to reassure those on the left that their agenda could somehow satisfy true progressives while simultaneously appeasing a center-right coalition.
One of the reasons I’m more inclined to use progressive as a descriptor than liberal is that it is only the mildest, most moderate policies of liberalism that have been demonized by the right. The norm in the 60’s and 70’s was so far to the left of where it is now that “liberal” has lost all meaning. The term does not do justice to what I consider truly left-progressive. To me liberal sounds too wimpy when what is needed is real change.
As someone else pointed out, liberalism is not much of a philosophy and certainly not a movement. Progressivism speaks truth to power.
