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Obviously, if there were ever a time for the stigma attached to the word Liberal to be washed away that time is now.
However, I believe Lind is too quick to brush aside the word Progressive. Our nation was founded on ideals based on individual freedoms, representative democracy, and civil rights. However, while progress is not a straight line from start to finish, there IS a progression into what it means to advocate for the rights of man. In the beginning that term applied to property owning white males. Eventually, it became all white males, then with the emancipation of the slaves minorities began a 100 year odyssey towards the civil rights movement. In the meantime women were granted suffrage and joined them in the fray. While America is not a country with universal equality we've come a long way, and gays are the ones who are openly assaulted by the bigots now (it's instructive to note in this discussion, that homosexuals re-branded themselves as gays, because they homosexual had such a negative connotation.
Similarly, with the rise of civil rights for all groups morals have similarly Progressed in a uniform fashion throughout most parts of the world. Richard Dawkins calls this the moral zeitgeist, and he points out that our conception of what is morally acceptable advances all the time. Donald Rumsfeld horrifies us with his rhetoric about collateral damage, but if you dial back the clock 50 years Rumsfeld would sound 'like a bleeding heart liberal'. It is unthinkable that we would enslave an entire population during wartime as we did during WWII. In another 50 years morality will have further evolved, and intelligent freedom loving compassionate people like those of us who self-describe as Liberals and/or Progressives will as always, be the ones instigating this progress
The Moral Zeitgeist marches on!
