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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
of course this is one of the most important battles there is going. the semantics battle. by controlling the language you control the playing field and the war is waged on your terms, literally. see george orwell.
i like progressive because of the connotations. im 31 and so i think that those older than me use liberal because what the word represents to them and their era. but progressive has been co-opted by the centrist wing of the democratic party as cover for their agenda, and this is the war of words that i speak of. i don't like to be associated with centrist democrats, who i despise more than hard right republicans because those on the hard right let you know plainly where they stand, while centrist democrats use words like "progressive" as cover for their pro business, pro war, pro imperialist aspirations.
basically if you want to know what im all about i use other words: "green party, noam chomsky, bernie sanders, chris hedges" and so on. thats a quick summation of what im all about.
"green party" sums it up nicely. or actually my favorite word of all for inciting rage almost universally: Ralph Nader. i would usually use those words in a sentence like: I love Ralph Nader, and all that he stands for.
Liberal parties anywhere else in the world are the political expression of the bourgeois. They are hostile to or at least uncomfortable with labor unions and are rather opposed to large social programs. They dislike government regulations of financial markets and of workplace safety standards. They are for market self-regulation, for low taxes and are very libertarian vis-a-vis government interference in people's private lives. The US is the only country in the world where the word "liberal" is confused with being left wing or a social -democrat.
Always have been. Always will be. And darned proud of it!!!
My husband wears a shirt that says PROUD LIBERAL and I drive a car with a PROUD LIBERAL bumper sticker. Can't imagine displaying something that says "Proud Progressive."
We can't even conceive of using the term "progessive" to describe how we think and what we've worked a lifetime to accomplish. And we've repeatedly urged others not to use it either because there was never anything to be ashamed of in the title LIBERAL. Some of us stuck to our principles as the DLC tried to change the Democrat party to republican-lite. We were never in the closet. We may have been viewed as stubborn old folks, out of sync with the latest terminology, but we stuck by our pride of liberalism and now we're glad to see the rest of the folks are coming around.
The term "progressive" is usefully used to describe the politics of social change outside of the framework of established power and the state.
Liberals, by contrast, are what the Libertarians might call "statist" in their attitudes toward social change and political power. Positive, but fundamentally oriented toward established power structures.
The basic distinguishing premise is that progressives, like their populist cousins, distrust the state, established institutions, and power elites. Liberals, by contrast, have a fundamental faith in those forces.
Thus progressives oppose "free" trade the WTO; liberals support it. Progressives called for Bush's impeachment and marched against the war in Iraq; liberals scorned the hippie losers and wrote about how we could all count on reasonable, responsible voices winning out in the end. Progressives tended to back Obama and the "50 state strategy;" liberals tended to support Clinton and felt that honing the traditional Democratic focus on swing states was the only safe route to victory.
Progressives, in other words, don't trust the system, while liberals keep saying (as much to themselves as anyone else) that this time, no really, it's all going to be good, we just have to give it some time.
At the same time, liberal values gave us Title IX, while if it had been up to them progressives would still be agitating and demonstrating in the streets one college campus at a time. Liberals have nursed and coaxed along a fragile coalition in the Senate, while progressives would have split the baby in two and left the Republicans in charge. Liberals gave us the EPA and continue the fight for the ERA. Liberals may not trust the netroots the way progressives do, but what progressives can't admit to themselves is that the jury is still way out on whether the netroots is going to matter in the long run.
In other words, there really is something to statecraft and institution-building, in addition to activism, and while they haven't been at their best these past 25 years liberals have a lot to show for their side of things.
So, yes, there is a significant difference in the two terms; yes, Michael Lind's not getting it is as demonstrative as one might wish of the reasons why; and, finally, yes, he certainly may call himself a liberal, since that's what he is — and here's to finally making something of it in 2009.
As a civil-libertarian, self-styled JFK-liberal, I've tended to think current progressives are well defined by the term's founder, President Wilson. Though they may not say it, and the radical conservatives may have made it unavoidable for the time being, anyway, I perceive these progressives to admire and favor a brand of state-sponsored capitalism managed by the bureaucracy more than well regulated free enterprise, "well" being a term of quality, not quantity.
I am opposed to American Empire, but not American power as a force both for our own security and for good in the world. I was opposed to both Viet Nam and, for basically the same reasons as President-elect Obama, the Iraq war, though I did not hear his speech on the issue until recently, and pretty much held my views in a vacuum for some time. I'm sure a great many of us held such views in isolation. A great many of today's progressives, I fear, are simply opposed to military power, and have no appreciation for it's unfortunate but inescapable need. They risk re-branding us as the party of weakness, and show little respect for the exercise of power by liberals which, in my view, played the leading roll in defeating totalitarianism in the world, of both left and right-wing stripes, in the last century. My own, though not-proveable view, is that Hillary probably felt the same about iraw, but that she beleived the Republicans could not be stopped, and that the Democratic party could not afford, in a losing effort, to be labeled again as the party of weakness.
I admire President Clinton as a similar liberal to myself. He is disdained by today's progressives because he was too centrist, and they give him no credit for restoring the Democratic party to power, for re-establishing Democrats as the party of fiscal responsibility, creating an economy that was raising all ships, especially as juxtaposed now against Bush, and for conducting a sensible foreign policy. They do not credit that he undertook to improve the status of gays in the military, or that he and Hillary attempted an overall reformation of our health care system, and that the then clearly center-right country responded by throwing Democrats out of Congress. They cannot see that he accomplished more in the political environment of his day than anyone else could have, and that he was an extremely competent president. President-elect Obama sees it. President-elect Obama sees it so vividly that he is largely staffing his government with people President Clinton brought into government in the first place. President Clinton is a liberal who has a lot more in common with FDR and Truman and Kennedy and Johnson than do today's progressives, and President-elect Obama seems headed down a similar liberal path. I'm proud to be a liberal in our liberal democracy, and I'm proud to be in coalition with these progressives that are so passionate in their beliefs, and share my love for civil liberties, but I believe it is appropriate that they call themselves progressive. The liberals among us, however, do need to rise up and reclaim the badge of honor which the more "progressive" wing of our party enabled Reagan and Limbaugh to besmirch. In my view, it is the finest political badge both in the world and in history, and President Clinton and President-elect Obama have proved and will prove it is as honorable as ever it has been.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
