Matthew Yglesias (February 06, 2008) - The Trouble With "Progressive" (Culture)

I think the notion that something like contemporary American liberalism is, in fact, the correct instantiation of the historic liberal project for our times is a proposition that's worth fighting for.

Hear, hear!

Posted by Led | February 6, 2008 2:54 PM

Next up: "Coke is it!" or "Have a Coke and smile."

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | February 6, 2008 2:55 PM

"Liberal" is the new "queer." Using it as self-description requires that you meet the sneers head-on, which usually has interesting effects.
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Posted by Grand Moff Texan | February 6, 2008 2:57 PM

Progressive Insurance are fascists.

Posted by Jayhawk Max | February 6, 2008 2:58 PM

"The people who went about rebranding liberals as "progressives""

I'm pretty sure they haven't stopped trying to rebrand liberals as progressives.

Posted by Christopher Colaninno | February 6, 2008 3:01 PM

I thought much of the reason for the rebranding as "progressives" was also to distinguish a very different American political coalition from the original English liberals, who are closer to a non-insane version of American libertarians.

Posted by Po-Mo Polymath | February 6, 2008 3:01 PM

I think the notion that something like contemporary American liberalism is, in fact, the correct instantiation of the historic liberal project for our times is a proposition that's worth fighting for.

Absolutely -- let's fight for that proposition! In the history departments of every American university, from sea to shining sea!

Meanwhile, let's drop the word from our political discourse, so we can win an election or two, okay?

Posted by Ted | February 6, 2008 3:01 PM

I never stopped calling myself a "liberal." The talk radio set seems to have had some success in turning that into a dirty word, and I'll be damned if I'm going to let them sway me from it.

Also, weren't the "Progressives" some of the main drivers behind Prohibition? Reason enough to avoid that moniker...

Posted by Just Another Greg | February 6, 2008 3:02 PM

I never stopped calling myself a "liberal." The talk radio set seems to have had some success in turning that into a dirty word, but I'll be damned if I'm going to let them sway me from it.

Also, weren't the "Progressives" some of the main drivers behind Prohibition? Reason enough to avoid that moniker...

Posted by Just Another Greg | February 6, 2008 3:02 PM

I never stopped calling myself a "liberal." The talk radio set seems to have had some success in turning that into a dirty word, but I'll be damned if I'm going to let them sway me from it.

Also, weren't the "Progressives" some of the main drivers behind Prohibition? Reason enough to avoid that moniker...

Posted by Just Another Greg | February 6, 2008 3:02 PM

Certainly, whatever sins liberalism may have committed in the 1970s as it fell into disrepute were distinctly minor compared to the problems with the Progressives.

Segregation and eugenics versus multigenerational welfare dependency and subsidized identity politics? Yeah, I'd guess I'd give that one to you on the push.

Posted by Dave | February 6, 2008 3:04 PM

Certainly, whatever sins liberalism may have committed in the 1970s as it fell into disrepute were distinctly minor compared to the problems with the Progressives.
Yeah but that's a really really long time ago. No one really remembers what the progressives stood for in a comprehensive way, and the term has taken on a pretty specific meaning in current usage. Worrying about being tarred with bad stuff the Progressive Movement did in the 20's is essentially worrying that someone will take Goldberg seriously. Which is crazy.

"Liberal," by contrast, is an important term with a noble history and a contested legacy. I think the notion that something like contemporary American liberalism is, in fact, the correct instantiation of the historic liberal project for our times is a proposition that's worth fighting for.
Liberal may well be a "term ... worth fighting for" but that's a different question.

Posted by IMU | February 6, 2008 3:05 PM

So, Matthew, do you embrace Gladstone or what?

After all, if we are going to worry about "Progressives" being conflated their historical predecessors, then we must likewise be equally concerned about "liberals."

Otherwise, we buttress the viewpoints that "liberals" are fellows who play games with words for contrived reasons.

Posted by Duncan Kinder | February 6, 2008 3:06 PM

They're not synonyms. In political theory, here is actually a distinction between 'progressive' and 'liberal'. And a philosopher recently wrote a book recommending progressivism over liberalism.

One of the two, I think liberals, believes in human rights, and the other doesn't? Off to Wikipedia...

Posted by goethean | February 6, 2008 3:09 PM

Progressive has (for old cold warriors like myself) the unfortunate connotation of being what communists used to call themselves when they were trying to hide the fact that they were communists.

Posted by SMcC | February 6, 2008 3:10 PM

PMP,

I don't think it had anything to do with Bentham or Mill. I think the distaste for the term "liberal" was based on...distaste for liberals as too militaristic and too fundamentally unwilling to fight for radical restructuring of society (take a look at Phil Ochs's Love Me, I'm a Liberal for an example of how this played out).

Liberals were, at one, time, seen as agents of the status quo, and in particular a status quo that was responsible for Viet Nam. It wasn't only the right who objected to them.

Posted by Pesto | February 6, 2008 3:10 PM

Blah. From a branding perspective, there was a fight over the word liberal, and we lost. After hearing, "we need to take back the word liberal!" a few too many times, I'm willing to say, "look, we lost, get over it, move on."

Posted by Tyro | February 6, 2008 3:12 PM

Ah, here we are (although the adjective "cultural" seems questionable):

Cultural Liberalism is ultimately founded on a concept of natural rights and civil liberties, and the belief that the major purpose of the government is to protect those rights. Liberals are often called "left-wing", as opposed to "right-wing" conservatives. The progressive school, as a unique branch of contemporary political thought, tends to advocate certain center-left or left-wing views that may conflict with mainstream liberal views, despite the fact that modern liberalism and progressivism may still both support many of the same policies (such as the concept of war as a general last resort).

Posted by goethean | February 6, 2008 3:14 PM

Maybe we need to start calling attention to the frat-boy, insult-based, ridicule-based discourse in our culture as a step to diminishing it.

Changing a word isn't going to help; the right-wing shit machine will just turn that new word into a similar smear.

What we need to fight is the zeitgeist that lets the schoolyard bullies control the language and the culture.

Posted by John Clavis | February 6, 2008 3:16 PM

A long time Radical Liberal friend used to poke fun at the word "progressive" and she would stand up and take these little shuffling steps with her index finger in the air saying, "we're progressing!". I asked her why she still liked the word "radical" and she said that liberal changes ARE radical - they are far different from the status quo. Always made sense to me, tho I'm plenty fine with calling myself a Liberal. And one who is glad to be.

Posted by bridget | February 6, 2008 3:16 PM

the fundamental and inescapable problem with the modern substitution of the term 'progressive' for 'liberal' is that it was done out of weakness.

conservatives said a bunch of bad things about 'liberals' and rather than fighting back - for their own name! - liberals capitulated and decided to call themselves something else.

there was another way to go with this: John Kennedy once gave a good speech asserting the right of liberals to define their own beliefs; Howard Dean tried something similar with his "if [balancing budgets/not starting crazy wars/etc.] is liberal, then call me a liberal" refrain.

the fact that so many others, however, just went with it and decided to abandon the term has been kind of disgraceful.

Posted by bob | February 6, 2008 3:22 PM

Reminds me a lot of the infighting in the American Academy of Trial Lawyers, which is now the American Association for Justice, after no small amount of controversy.

The basic dispute was: do we embrace the "trial lawyer" moniker, which we ourselves are proud of and like quite a bit, but which polls really badly? Or do we accept that the name has effectively been linked to bad things in most people's minds, and re-brand with a name that polls better and which will ultimately allow us to be more effective?

I don't really take a side on that, because I can see both sides of it. I like the principle of embracing the label you think represents you better, but I also think it is a slow, uphill battle to change people's minds when the negative connotations are so firmly entrenched. I guess I use them both and don't care too much. It's more important to me that people stop thinking of us as the bad guys, whatever we call it.

Posted by Jen | February 6, 2008 3:26 PM

Liberals kinda monopolize this sort of debate. One day, just one goddamn day, I'd like to see conservatives navel-gazing about just what exactly conservatism has generally been historically understood to mean (rather than, say, Jonah Goldberg's burbling, inane Andrew Sullivan redefinitions to refer to some policy-free vision of prudence or something, or the Republican party platform.)

Posted by Zack | February 6, 2008 3:26 PM

Somne of us don't like 'liberal' either. Liberals are elitists. They don't believe in Democracy, they believe in aristocracy. They don't believe in keynesian economics, they believe in laissez faire. They do not believe in unions, they believe that bosses should hold all the cards. THAT is classical liberalism.

Most of you just don't actually understand what the term 'liberal' has been historically used to designate. A 'liberal' wouldn't pursue FDR or LBJ's economic policies, they would pursue GWB's. They LOVED to start new neocon-style wars and they LOVED 'democracy' promotion at the barrel of a gun.

If you try to form a party based on classical liberalism, it will look a hell of a lot like the modern Republican party without all the racism. Unfortunately for you all, the racism is what actually gives Republicans a shot in hell of winning so you'd pretty much be fucked.

Posted by soullite | February 6, 2008 3:27 PM

When liberals are known for what they used to be known for, fighting for the interests of the broadest class of people against the attempts of the rich and powerful to dominate them, then we can use the word proudly without any fear. Until then we're just a bunch of pretentious wankers who use the word "instantiation."

Posted by scott | February 6, 2008 3:28 PM

"Liberal," by contrast, is an important term with a noble history and a contested legacy

A legacy that has absolutely nothing to do with the American Left (though, Ron Paul, Jeff Flake, John Sununu and Fred Thompson aside, it increasing has nothing to do with the American Right).

Stick with progressive, please. It's far more honest and far less confusing.

Posted by Shinyk | February 6, 2008 3:30 PM

Liberalism is the defining ideology of this country, and it's incredible that it has become an insult to many. We were the first liberal democracy 230 years ago (very flawed), and the ultimate resolution of many of our most important disputes since then have strengthened our liberal premises.

Except for the theo-cons (Dobson type) and the conservative authoritarians (Cheney type), liberal democratic principles are still dominant at least in theory. Most political disputes usually center on the definition and "correct" application of liberal principles. Almost everyone frames their side of a dispute in terms of liberal ideology and principles-- maximimizing the freedom, opportunities and well-being of the individual (even abortion opponents who used to define their opposition in terms of sin now define it in terms of the rights of an embryo as an individual human being -- a position that would have struck most theologians as ridiculous decades ago). We have progressive liberals, conservative liberals, libertarian liberals and various issue-centered liberals, but the underlying liberal premises are rarely attacked directly, even when they are undermined as they have been in recent years with the exploitation of fear and the national security issue.

Posted by Ben Brackley | February 6, 2008 3:30 PM

The problem for me with liberal is that is has developed a lot of connotations and when you have people saying and believing "McCain is a liberal" I think it might be time to leave the baggage behind and rebrand.

Maybe progressive isn't the best term, but I think the word has been fairly delinked from its earlier history and certainly implies a positive direction. Even at its best liberal still means 'giving freely' in its most mundane usage and when tied to policy just suggests 'tax and spend' which has always been the most powerful of the pejorative contexts that the word brings to mind for many and something that isn't yet tied to progressivism in its modern view.

Posted by Ricky | February 6, 2008 3:30 PM

I think some of us prefer to be called "Progressive" in order to distinguish ourselves from "liberals" who

a) whore themselves to the Zionists, and
b) who have killed thousands of US citizens by starting unnecessary wars on behalf of Israel after falsely claiming during their campaign that they favor peace and
c) who throw real leftists in prison on trumped up charges via kangaroo courts and
d) who screw the common citizens while hypocritically claiming to represent them and who
e) scrap the Bill of Rights after swearing to defend the Constitution

You know -- Liberals like Woodrow Wilson.

Posted by Don Williams | February 6, 2008 3:34 PM

God what a mess. One of the problems is that Matt and many Americans seem to have never gotten around to defining their position towards capitalism.

Posted by novakant | February 6, 2008 3:35 PM

I asked her why she still liked the word "radical" and she said that liberal changes ARE radical

The word 'radical' means 'root' (as in square root), so this does make sense. But 'radical' has always been a dirty word in US politics - even more and longer so than 'liberal'. The dynamic Spiro T. Agnew also sought to combine the two words when he spoke of 'Radical-Liberals' or 'Radiclibs'.

Posted by jonnybutter | February 6, 2008 3:37 PM

Meanwhile, let's drop the word from our political discourse, so we can win an election or two, okay?

The reason names like "Liberal," "Progressive," "Leftist," etc. are box office poison is that they've so often been attached to policies with disastrous side-effects. You can "rebrand" as many times as you like, but as soon as voters figure out that the new package contains the same crap product they'll reject that too.

Posted by Ralph Phelan | February 6, 2008 3:37 PM

Another advantage to rebranding, especially in this time change in the political winds, is that it allows you the opportunity to educate. When you say you are a liberal to someone in conversation you are likely just casting yourself into a pit of stereotypes, whether positive or negative. If you say instead you are a 'progressive' you might actually have someone reply, 'Well, what the heck is that?' Then you can tell them about how you want to protect the poor and the middle class from the depredations of corporations and their lobbyists, or how you want to ensure your children have affordable and quality health care and a quality public education, or a sane foreign policy that doesn't want to see brown people killed out of revenge, or whatever planks of the platform you find closest to your heart. Perhaps it is time for us to clean the slate and try to re-educate the populace that we stand for what they really want.

Posted by Ricky | February 6, 2008 3:41 PM

Don, I honestly can't tell if you are joking, but just in case let's make sure this is out there: Woodrow Wilson is probably the single US president most closely associated with Progressivism.

Posted by bob | February 6, 2008 3:41 PM

Well perhaps we need a little history lesson here before falling for this stuff. While there is some bad stuff that can be attributed to individuals who called themselves progressive - the most common being that they brought in to the eugenics movement - liberals of that era, and conservatives of that era did the same thing. Eugenics was an issue that crossed "party lines." What is rarely mentioned is that Progressives like Charles Beard, John Dewey and Arthur Bentley were also the strongest and most active in fighting policies and ideas spawned by eugenics. I would be most happy Matt if you could come up with some names of liberals who fought against such policies (I am sure there must be some).

There is a real difference between the Progressive movement and the liberal movement of the 1920s, and I believe that Progressives more reflect the current political movement. The first is that the Progressive movement was anti-war for philosophical reasons - no matter what the original reasons war is not Pragmatic and cannot be controlled (see Randolph Bourne, who by the way also fought against eugenics policies). Liberals were only against war in the 60s, and those were only the young liberals, and that was because they might have to go. Beinart can be called a liberal, but he cannot be called a Progressive.

Second, Progressives were involved in child welfare and social welfare the way a liberal movement has never been. It was the Progressive movement that was behind the Social Security Act (really, read your history - Roosevelt was to Social Security as LBJ was to Civil Rights). It was the Progressive movement that was behind the rise of the labor movement (Eugene Debs was a progressive before he went to prison and became a socialist). It was the Progressive movement that was behind the idea of the Social Safety net.

Worse, the worst thing we could do is simply go back to liberal from Progressive because a couple of conservatives pointed out a couple of Progressives with undesirable worldviews. What a bunch of weenies!!!!

Posted by Wilbur | February 6, 2008 3:42 PM

the fundamental and inescapable problem with the modern substitution of the term 'progressive' for 'liberal' is that it was done out of weakness.

conservatives said a bunch of bad things about 'liberals' and rather than fighting back - for their own name! - liberals capitulated and decided to call themselves something else.

there was another way to go with this: John Kennedy once gave a good speech asserting the right of liberals to define their own beliefs; Howard Dean tried something similar with his "if [balancing budgets/not starting crazy wars/etc.] is liberal, then call me a liberal" refrain.

the fact that so many others, however, just went with it and decided to abandon the term has been kind of disgraceful.

The above illustrates all the stereotypical characteristic of liberals that make their opponents consider the word an insult.

They never could have gotten away with it if they didn't have a real point.

Posted by Ralph Phelan | February 6, 2008 3:44 PM

Perhaps it is time for us to clean the slate and try to re-educate the populace that we stand for what they really want.

The jokes just write themselves, but I haven't the heart.

Posted by Ralph Phelan | February 6, 2008 3:49 PM

Don Williams 3:34PM:

You been reading Jonah Goldberg? Items c, d, & e sure sound like Golberg's take.

Posted by Ralph Phelan | February 6, 2008 3:51 PM

Except the words have totally swapped meanings in the past 75 years. Now, liberal means left-wing statist and progressive means left-wing whig.

Posted by yoyo | February 6, 2008 4:00 PM

Freedom lovers were forced to resort to the term "libertarian" because progressives stole the term "liberal." The founding fathers were liberals not progressives.

Posted by Murraymises | February 6, 2008 4:02 PM

I personally can't call myself a liberal in good conscience, because I can't get over the idea that liberalism historically denotes free markets, free enterprise, limited government and an individualistic conception of the good, and is thus inherently opposed to socialism and socialist values. I consider my own outlook to contain elements of both the liberal and socialist traditions, and using either term exclusively - "liberal" or "socialist" - just doesn't get it right.

Posted by Dan Kervick | February 6, 2008 4:05 PM

Second, Progressives were involved in child welfare and social welfare the way a liberal movement has never been. It was the Progressive movement that was behind the Social Security Act (really, read your history - Roosevelt was to Social Security as LBJ was to Civil Rights).

The funny thing is that you mention LBJ and Civil Rights, but fail to mention his role in crafting the Great Society, which plainly was a liberal policy that was exactly about child and social welfare. And was successful until it became unpopular during Reagan's tenure and eventually reconstituted under Clinton's.

Posted by Andrew | February 6, 2008 4:06 PM

Ralph, it strikes me that all of the problematic programs have been attached to "liberals" while all of the successful programs have been considered "just the way it is" or "bipartisan supported."

What you're missing is that liberals started both but Republicans like to take credit for the most popular ones. You're not going to see a Republican cry that Social Security is just another example of a "liberal government program."

Posted by Tyro | February 6, 2008 4:08 PM

The American version of Liberalism is not Liberalism.

Historically and world-wide, Liberalism has been about having smaller governments, more rights, more business, more trade, and less militarism.

While American Liberalism incorporates some of those elements, it isn't the same. Nor does it help on a world stage, when Liberalism (American sense) is so easy to conflate with NeoLiberalism--which has brought the selling of public lands and utilities, the privatization of public companies, and the collapse of South American economies under a banner of free markets for everyone.

Progressivism is a good term, regardless of the 1920s... as it incorporates populism and pragmatism.

Leftism is another good term.

Personally, I'm a leftist.

Posted by sd | February 6, 2008 4:09 PM

I stopped calling myself a liberal in the early 90s when an acquaintance of mine said something to the effect of "You can't be a liberal and support Bill Clinton!

Posted by Ted Kilvington | February 6, 2008 4:11 PM

Tyro,

Actually, there are Republicans that would say such things of Social Security. Ron Paul is one of them.

Posted by freddiemac | February 6, 2008 4:12 PM

I stopped calling myself a liberal in the early 90s when an acquaintance of mine said something to the effect of "You can't be a liberal and support Bill Clinton!

Posted by Ted Kilvington | February 6, 2008 4:12 PM

I stopped calling myself a liberal in the early 90s when an acquaintance of mine said something to the effect of "You can't be a liberal and support Bill Clinton!

Posted by Ted Kilvington | February 6, 2008 4:12 PM

What Dan Kervick said. Fer chrissakes, "liberal" simply doesn't mean what Americans- unlike the rest of the world- have been trying to make it mean all these years. If we had a rational political discourse in which the s-word didn't give people brain hemorrhages, mildly left-of-center people like me would call themselves "social democrats". But since we're not ready for that yet, "progressive" is at least less irritatingly inaccurate than "liberal".

Posted by Steve LaBonne | February 6, 2008 4:14 PM

Andrew, the libertarians here are right. as the word 'liberalism' generally used to denote a historical ideology, LBJ and FDR don't fit the bill. As a global term, they are truly closer to socialism and liberalism is mostly a dead ideology restricted to the fringe. However, the word 'socialism' has such negative connotations in this society that the party just kept calling itself a 'liberal' party long after it mercifully ceased to be so.

That is not to say that the Democratic party was truly socialist at that time, but that would be the term that most closely fits the trajectory the party was on at that point and the policies you just described as liberal. Really, you're arguing that we should just go back to hiding behind the term 'liberal', when we should really just think up a term that sounds good and accurately describes the social AND economic justice elements of our party. As you may have noticed, many of us were never happy with the term 'liberal' and it's historical connotations to begin with.

Posted by soullite | February 6, 2008 4:15 PM

I started calling myself a progressive because Ted Kennedy and Sam Nunn were liberals when I was in high school. The "tax-and-spend" label and the giant military-industrial complex were created by these liberals in the mind of a 16-year-old in the early 80s.

With that said, I call myself liberal a lot these days to piss off the conservatives in the room. Both labels work, but "progressive" sounds snooty.

Posted by Lefty | February 6, 2008 4:17 PM

Awright. Let's call ourselves "Liberal Progressive Democrats" and have done with it, so we can concentrate on the fight against authoritarian radical right-wing neo-conservative fascism.

Posted by Richard Banville | February 6, 2008 4:19 PM

murraymises wrote, Freedom lovers were forced to resort to the term "libertarian" because progressives stole the term "liberal."

No. Most if not all so-called libertarians actually despise liberty and hold freedom in the most profound contempt. They're basically feudalists.

Posted by liberal | February 6, 2008 4:19 PM

Re "Liberals Like Woodrow Wilson" see
a) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedition_Act_of_1918

b)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Debs#Opposition_to_World_War_I

c) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodrow_Wilson#Election_of_1916

d) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodrow_Wilson#Support_of_Zionism

Posted by Don Williams | February 6, 2008 4:19 PM

I always refer to myself as a radical. But then, I'm working class and not many of us sit around worrying about whether what we call ourselves will bolster any argument of Jonah Goldberg.

Posted by Susie from Philly | February 6, 2008 4:21 PM

soullite - the modern republican party, especially GWB & Co., is leagues away from classical liberalism. Classical liberals were not supportive of war, especially pre-emptive war, their fiscal policy was sound, and they had a great respect for people and rights. Remember, Adam Smith wrote The Theory of Moral Sentiments before he wrote The Wealth of Nations.

We haven't had a truly classical liberal president since, um,....geez. Anybody?

Posted by mike | February 6, 2008 4:23 PM

re: "Have a Coke and a smile!"

[Remembered from an old Eddie Murphy stand-up routine, but just as worth applying to this discussion]

Eddie relates how Bill Cosby called him and told him that now that he (Murphy) was getting famous, he should maybe think about doing less "blue" material, because he has a responsibility, etc. Eddie says he was surprised and offended, and called Richard Pryor for a reality check. Here's Pryor's (reported) response:

Richard said,
The next time the motherfucker call, tell him I said, "Suck *my* dick. I don't give a fuck. Whatever the fuck make the people laugh, say that shit. Do the people laugh when you say what you say?"
I said, "Yes." He said,
Do you get paid?
I said, "Yes." He said,
Well, tell Bill I said have a Coke and a smile and shut the fuck up. Jello pudding-eating motherfucker.

Might be worth thinking about. ;P

Posted by Phenobarbarella | February 6, 2008 4:24 PM

is the argument that "liberal" can't mean something different in the American context than in the European context sincere or a put on?

yes, liberal means something different in the rest of the world. Americans usually refer to the distinction between "liberal" and "classical liberal".

but "liberal" hasn't meant "classical liberal" that on this side of the Atlantic for like a hundred years. when an American politician refers to herself as liberal it has a clear meaning to other Americans. there is no confusion here.

this is akin to arguing that Americans have to change the name of the game we call "football" because it means something different in the rest of the world. we don't. the word can mean two different things in two different parts of the world. no big deal.

Posted by bob | February 6, 2008 4:24 PM

Re Richard Banville's suggestion "Let's call ourselves "Liberal Progressive Democrats" and have done with it "
---------------
How about "The People's Front of Judea"? (PFJ)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gb_qHP7VaZE&feature=related

Posted by Don Williams | February 6, 2008 4:25 PM

I agree with Susie from Philly. If we actually stood for helping the working and middle classes in this country, white, black, brown, and yellow, it wouldn't matter a good goddamn what we called ourselves because the message would sell itself. Fuck the branding.

Posted by scott | February 6, 2008 4:29 PM

except that it might undercut our message that we'll fight for working and middle class people a bit if we're seen as not even willing to bother to fight for our name and ourselves.

Posted by bob | February 6, 2008 4:41 PM

Something distinguishes liberalism from both progressivism and libertarianism--respect for democracy and community.

Libertarians hold democratic decision making in contempt--as only a necessary evil for controlling the minarchist state, if that. Their primary metaphor is that of market agents competing rather than of citizens cooperating. Ayn Rand was a libertarian. She was no liberal, classical or otherwise.

Progressives, though moving government towards democratic reform in many instances, are constantly tempted toward giving power to technocratic managers.

The progressive only sees the value of the formal, ordered process of the state bureaucracy. The libertarian only sees the value of the individual. It is the liberals, at their best, who knew that the community was only valuable because of the people who inhabited it, and the individual is only meaningful because of the community they participate in. The liberal, rather than choosing between the state and the individual, insists that they remain constantly engaged and answerable to one another.

Posted by Consumatopia | February 6, 2008 4:49 PM

If FDR, JFK, RFK, LBJ, and Hubert Humphrey were OK with calling themselves liberals while they fought for economic opportunity for everyone against rich assholes and for a truly multiracial community, then count me in.

Posted by scott | February 6, 2008 4:51 PM

I'd made the point that liberals calling themselves progressives, while annoyingly euphemistic and loose with language, is also a transparent attempt at branding. The idea of a "liberal"/"conservative" dichotomy is pretty well ingrained and not likely to go away. Calling yourself a progressive probably just confuses most people, and those who get it just see it for what it is: an attempt to trick people who associate certain people with certain policies, which are unpopular.

Liberalism is once again viable, and with Obama hopefully vital. But for reasons other than a name change. "Conservatism", as the set of policies Republicans favor, has been discredited by cold, hard reality. This is our chance. Let's not be shy.

Posted by Robert | February 6, 2008 4:51 PM

tomato tomahto.

So much for history. I like to think that I'm a liberal, I'm not dissatisfied with being a progressive. The real problem is that the main libgressives are slightly to the right of Barry Goldwater. I can't get no....satisfaction, nonono

The brownshirt conservative noisemachine controls the print media, the TV and radio. The only thing the libgressives control is P2P downloads. And their facebook page.

Posted by degustibus | February 6, 2008 4:52 PM

I'm best described as a progressive, not a liberal, there is a substantive difference, and I could care less what Jonah Goldberg writes, as most of America.

If you're just concerned with the image of a word, progressive has liberal beat hands down in the body politic (to many, especially anyone who ever supported Reagan, which is a whole hell of a lot of Americans, "liberal" is a bad word).

It may feel good to try and rehabilitate the word/title/moniker "liberal", but it's not necessarily wise, doable, or easily done.

Why anyone would focus on doing so is beyond me.

Posted by Jimm | February 6, 2008 4:53 PM

I'd say about 0.0001% of the voters knows enough about early 20th century American history to give a damn about whether it's good to be called a "progressive."

It's simple. For reasons good or bad, the word "liberal" has acquired a negative taint. The word "progressive" has the subliminally sweet word "progress" in it.

That is all.

Posted by santamonicamr | February 6, 2008 4:56 PM

An additional problem with "Progressive" as a term are the teleological implications of it. It equates a linear form of "progress" with the creation of a particular set of government institutions that might be considered a "social welfare state." This particular understanding of "progress" as linear and teleologically aimed towards a particular ideology is Marxist in its intonations, and not necessarily in line with the ideology of contemporary "Progressives."

Posted by Alex | February 6, 2008 4:57 PM

It's worth noting that throughout the anglosphere (except Australia, I guess), "liberal" has come in the twentieth century to not have much connection with classical 19th century liberalism.

In Britain, it was the Liberal government of Asquith and Lloyd George that created the social safety net, and the Liberal Party and its successor, the Liberal Democrats, while reduced to a third party by the rise of Labour, has generally been a left of center party. Indeed, at present, since the rise of New Labour, the Liberal Democrats might arguably be the furthest left of the major British parties.

In Canada, the Liberal Party has always been the main left of center party, as well (although it is, indeed, barely left of center). One might add that "Social Liberals" in continental Europe are far from unheard of, and are pretty comparable in policies to what Anglophonic "Liberals" do.

So, first point demonstrated is that American Liberalism is not, in fact, the opposite of Liberalism everywhere else in the world. It is very much in line with how liberalism has been understood in the Anglophone world for a long time now, and not entirely at odds with the (rather limited at this point) left liberal parties of continental Europe. The basic issue here is not that Liberalism means right wing, it's that in Europe, the left most position was taken by Socialists, while Socialists never emerged in the US.

Second point, on Liberal vs. Progressive, is that progressive sucks and sounds weaselly. "Liberal" is the term in general use in the United States for the left of center. It really still is, and not only as a term of abuse (c.f., for instance, Facebook, whose political categories were presumably created by someone basically apolitical, considering how lame they are).

"Progressive" is a term used out of weakness, and it has bad connotations. I'm going to echo SMcC here - until people started abandoning "liberal" in the 80s and 90s, the primary connotation of "progressive" was to refer to communists and other revolutionary socialist types. People who wanted to form the Fourth International and denounce splitters and debate minor points of Marxist doctrine in home made newspapers called themselves progressives (and still do). Henry Wallace ran his fellow traveling presidential campaign in 1948 as a "Progressive." It was the preferred term for people who disliked "Liberal" because of the connotation "Cold War Liberal". The term "Progressive" thus not only has bad connotations of Woodrow Wilson and eugenics, but of ridiculous leftist irrelevance.

And the common blogosphere appellation "proud progressive" (which Petey's used a lot, I believe) is particularly awful. If you're so proud about it, why are you using such an awful euphemism?

Ba to "progressive", and huzzah for "liberal"! I want to associate myself with the New Deal and the Great Society, not with a bunch of fellow travelers.

Posted by John | February 6, 2008 5:02 PM

"The reason names like "Liberal," "Progressive," "Leftist," etc. are box office poison is that they've so often been attached to policies with disastrous side-effects. You can "rebrand" as many times as you like, but as soon as voters figure out that the new package contains the same crap product they'll reject that too."

Bingo. Given that, in this country, "liberalism" connotes a number of failed 1960's-era policies (housing projects, welfare dependency, urban decay, etc.), and you are afraid of the term "leftist", you might as well go with "progressive". Progressive has the virtue of also describing your favored income tax structure. Also, "liberal" confuses most folks outside of America, to whom it denotes free market capitalism.

Posted by Fred | February 6, 2008 5:04 PM

Actually, I shouldn't say recovering the identification "liberal" is beyond me, because I'd love for it happen too, in an ideal world, at least as far as reclaiming the civil liberties tradition from classical liberalism, that emphasis, and at least having this meaning be shared in the public along with the more compassionate, welfare state liberalism that is currently the case (in the public mind).

Really, most people who I know who identify as progressive do so as shorthand for "progressive liberal", perhaps "progressive grassroots", and are not looking back to the original progressives, if they even have any awareness of what those original progressives were all about, but are instead emphasizing more self-reliance, localism, bottom-up, popular participation, universal education as a means of individual and social betterment (in terms of ignorance, knowledge and citizenship), reacting against both Big Business and Big Government as being necessary or necessarily positive, etc.

The old progressives were about paternalism in many important ways, while today's progressives seem much less so and rather focused on grassroots and bottom-up empowerment, networking, economics and government, not to mention that today's progressives are almost universally very strong civil liberals/libertarians, and one cannot necessarily say the same about 70's, 80's and 90's style liberalism.

Posted by Jimm | February 6, 2008 5:04 PM

As pointed out above, everyone in the world except us knows that "liberals" are for free enterprise, private property, low taxes, minimal regulation, and small government. The basic problem of trying to hold out for a unique American definition is one of original dishonesty.

Democrats in the New Deal era appropriated the term to avoid association with socialism, which is what they were actually pushing, and this got a big boost in the late Forties when mainstream Democrats wanted to separate themselves from the Stalinist sympathizing fellow-travelers of the Henry Wallace faction. It fit in terms of support for human rights, at least within the context of the nanny state, but nothing else.

As in the case of "Bolshevik", which means "majority" and was adopted because Lenin's gang patently wasn't one, this is a contaminated label in American usage from Day 1. It's come to be understood as a synonym for "leftist" or "statist", which Dems certainly don't want to own up to even though these terms are more accurate. Maybe we should just go with colors.

Posted by Robert Powell | February 6, 2008 5:04 PM

re: "liberalism" and "failed 1960's-era policies"

poverty rate in:
1960...... 22.2
1969...... 12.1

another such decade of liberal failure, please.

Posted by bob | February 6, 2008 5:15 PM

It's pretty much best to let people identify themselves as they naturally so do, and choose, rather than make the case that one term is preferable from some extrapersonal level, i.e. that people should reclaim "liberal", or should reclaim "leftist", or should rehabilitate and adopt a more modern understanding of "socialism" as far as democratic socialism or social democrats.

One can look at modern welfare state liberalism in America, as well as the most well known "liberals", and find plenty of examples and individuals who would not be akin to modern day progressives (who again are really mainly "progressive liberals" and "grassroots progressives"), and I've had discussions with life-long Republicans in the last months and years who have responded very favorably not only to the term "progressive", but also to many of the tenets of the "progressive grassroots" when these are explained to them.

If anything, "progressive" is taking on new meaning that has crossover appeal for both Democrats and Republicans, left and right, new school and old school, new money and old money, and there's still not any real core set of issues established yet beyond a strong emphasis on civil liberties, the inalienable dignity of the individual, and a pragmatic, bottom-up approach consistent with individual and citizen empowerment/development resistant to paternalism and authoritarianism.

Posted by Jimm | February 6, 2008 5:16 PM

RE "Liberals Like Woodrow Wilson", see also the Palmer Raids at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmer_raid

1) How was it Liberal Woodrow put it?? Ah yes:

"hyphenated Americans have poured the poison of disloyalty into the very arteries of our national life. Such creatures of passion, disloyalty and anarchy must be crushed out "

2) Historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr gave the final score in "The Crisis of the Old Order (1919-1933)", page 43:

"As Clemenceau slew the liberal dream in Paris, so [Attorney General Palmer] slew it in America; and, in each case, Woodrow Wilson was the accomplice. To the liberals who had opposed the war, all was coming about as they had foretold: war had destroyed progressivism. Wilson had silenced some critics by putting them in jail, commented Harold Sterns --others by putting them in government.

To Sterns the liberal collapse was the laboratory demonstration of the refusal of liberalism to pursue its analysis whenever the result became embarrassing. He called it the "technique of liberal failure."

------------
ha ha ha. I myself call it the "technique of the liberal Sellout" -- one which Bill and Hillary have mastered to perfection.

Posted by Don Williams | February 6, 2008 5:18 PM

I say we turn the table on Goldberg, and just call ourselves "fascists," much simpler.

Posted by vanya | February 6, 2008 5:23 PM

Hmmm. Yes, yes I see what you're getting at. The typical American voter -- who may or may not know who their own senators are -- is apt to be confusing our issue program with that of a 1920's political movement they may or may not have read about once or twice back in high school.

Well thank heavens they don't teach political theory in high school or undoubtedly Joe Sixpack would likely think we all believe the right precedes the good when, in fact, many of us believe precisely the reverse! Ahem.

Posted by The Fool | February 6, 2008 5:26 PM

Without reading all the other comments, let me just state that you assume too much -- namely, that many folks who proudly call themselves "progressives" nowadays have ZERO clue about the history of big-p "Progressive" politics.

They simply got sick and damn tired of hearing the word "liberal" used as an epithet, and decided to come up with something else. Something that sounded good, didn't have the weight of Rush Limbaugh's mouth tied to it, and was amorphous enough to contain a number of different ideas.

Of course, that's just a wild guess on my part from speaking with those who call themselves "progressives" and my own personal experience.

Some may know the history and not care, but most I've met probably don't.

Also, given the massive failures of conservative ideology the past several years (and using Fred's logic above), it will be interesting to see if conservatives come up with something new here in the next several years, or if they fight it out.

Posted by Mark D | February 6, 2008 5:26 PM

The problem with the word "progressive" is that at least two groups of people use it to mean two completely different things. Liberals who are shy of labeling themselves liberals sometimes refer to themselves as "progressives". AND members of the hard left who want to distinguish their political position from liberalism but are unwilling, I guess, to call themselves "socialists" or "hard leftists" or "anti-capitalists" etc. will sometimes call themselves progressive -- I don't know where this came from but it is something that some people do.

Posted by Joe | February 6, 2008 5:28 PM

From http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080206/ap_on_el_pr/campaign_money
"WASHINGTON - Hillary Rodham Clinton loaned her campaign $5 million late last month as Barack Obama outraised and outspent her in the Democratic presidential race. "
-------------
Hmmm. Hillary must be exceptionally frugal, to have saved so much on a Senator's salary.

But what's the point of leading the poor and the common citizens if you can't get rich doing so?

Posted by Don Williams | February 6, 2008 5:28 PM

Enough retreat. It's time to attack. Why not call ourselves "pro-business"? Businesses do better under liberal or progressive politics. Individuals do better also when businesses are healthy.

The Republicans keep talking about defaulting on the U.S. debt. Democrats are the party of fiscal responsibility. Enough people in this country rely on business for their daily bread and burger. We're the pro-business party, and the Republicans can squeal all they want.

Posted by Kaleberg | February 6, 2008 5:42 PM

Liberals who are shy of labeling themselves liberals sometimes refer to themselves as "progressives". AND members of the hard left who want to distinguish their political position from liberalism but are unwilling, I guess, to call themselves "socialists" or "hard leftists" or "anti-capitalists" etc. will sometimes call themselves progressive

Neither of those accurately represents what I was describing, and binary analyses can usually be discounted at the outset, just by the nature of splitting things into comfortable sets (not necessarily binary either, just a finite set).

As I described it, it's much more amorphous and emergent, meaning different things to different people, having some crossover appeal to folks who identify with the more traditional political and ideological delineations, with civil liberties and the reasoning/ideology behind them being the most identifiable core, and, as far as actual liberals and Democrats go who call themselves progressive, seems to be more a prefix/distinction in the sense of "progressive liberal" or "grassroots progressive liberal", as a means of identifying a point of emphasis and departure from mainstream, big party liberalism and Capital D Democrat (not in every case obviously, but this is the sense I get).

Posted by Jimm | February 6, 2008 5:42 PM

In my mind, a liberal is one who believes in social and political democracy while a progressive also believes in economic democracy. That is, I think progressives are more likely to support state regulation of markets than liberals are. And the term "progressive" does have a lot better reputation among people than does "liberal," mainly due to years of right wingers' investment in destroying the brand while liberals ran away from it. If you'd like to rehabilitate the good name of liberalism, go ahead, but I don't think you need to denigrate progressivism in the process.

Posted by Jim Cullen | February 6, 2008 5:45 PM

I'm sure there are folks who call themselves "progressive" just to avoid what they see as the more publicly tarnished term "liberal", so I don't mean to rule that out entirely either (and perhaps this is the group that Matt and Atrios are primarily intending to reach out to), but that's not really what's going on with the progressive movement in the larger sense (i.e. running away from liberalism).

Posted by Jimm | February 6, 2008 5:46 PM

What about those of us that actually understand the difference and worry more about Progressive issues than Liberal one? Those two things aren't the same thing, in fact, they're often opposed.

Liberals fight for, shall we say, civil equality, equality under the law, whereas progressives fight for social equality. Oddly enough, most of what the right likes to call 'liberal' actually is 'progressive', except gay marriage and abortion, which are liberal issues. But affirmative action? Progressive. Government health care? Very progressive.

Basically, what the right calls 'socialist' is actually progressive, whereas anything that liberals and libertarians would agree on is actually 'liberal'.

Oddly enough, invading countries to attempt to 'Democratize' them? Very progressive...except it was realized exactly how unworkable that was decades ago. (The right uses a lot of discredited progressive ideas. Like Prohibition.)

I know they're all blended together on the modern left, but that doesn't make them the same thing. In fact, they started on opposite sides, which is why Republicans are the 'party of Lincoln', whereas trade unions, sadly, often opposed civil rights in the 20s and 30s.

Progressives and Liberals just ended up on the same side because the Liberals had to flee the right in terror when it embraced out-and-out racism. (Although, oddly enough, the actual term 'liberal' had apparently left for the Left earlier.) Except for the Liberals who felt the most important 'civil right' in the universe was no taxes, who became Libertarians.

I'm a progressive. I have no beef with liberals, I agree with a lot of what they say, but I'm working for another round of Progressivism considering we've basically stood still since Reagan and the rich keep sucking up all the money and the economy is on the brink of collapse.

Posted by DavidTC | February 6, 2008 5:48 PM

So, what now - are we to stop calling it the "progressive movement" and start calling it the "liberal movement"? Ridiculous. Who gives a flying rat's ass what the progressive movement was in the 20s. And re-embracing "liberal" just makes us look like we are running away from "progressive" which I guess, really, some are. Whatever, the main point is that liberal and progressive can live under the same tent.

Id say that our framing efforts need to focus on what to call THEM, more than what to call ourselves. And when it comes to what to call them, we should call them what they most hate being called. (Hint: ask Jonah Goldberg.)

More return on tarnishing the name "conservative" than restoring "liberal."

Posted by Shredder | February 6, 2008 5:49 PM

Liberal is strongly associated them with the anticommunism that pushed the militarization of America since the end of WWII. They brought us or escalated tensions during the cold war and brought us Vietnam and the current war in Iraq. Thomas Friedman is after all a classic liberal. I have always felt more comfortable with the term progressive.

Posted by syvanen | February 6, 2008 5:50 PM

Re Don Williams

Mr. Williams forgot to mention Senator Clintons wealthy friend Hiam Saban. I thought he was in charge of Senator Clintons' effort to buy the 2008 election.

Posted by SLC | February 6, 2008 5:50 PM

Scheissliberalen!

Posted by otto | February 6, 2008 5:51 PM

Progressive has (for old cold warriors like myself) the unfortunate connotation of being what communists used to call themselves when they were trying to hide the fact that they were communists.
Posted by SMcC

Quite so. While Wilson through McGovern + campus speech codes may have discredited "liberalism"
- progressivism doesn't have much better a background.

It was what hardcore Communists called themselves outside the Soviet Union, and the Fronts they set up like the NAACP, Lawyers Guild, certain unions, the ACLU were called not liberal, but groups "committed to social progress". Progressive groups back then were still using the words proletariate, still saying an educated elite - mostly Jewish - was needed to guide the workers and peasants to progress...

Then the whole thing got an unpleasant reputation as Stalin and his Georgians and Jews of the NKVD slaughtered tens of millions in collectivisation, wiped out village Christian leadership - as an ungrateful proletariate resisted.

It didn't fare much better in Europe, where the progressive COMINTERN was thwarted. And the US sent a pile of violent and seditious undesirable aliens back to the Pale of Settlement inc. Poland, Marxist N Italy, and the Soviet Union - where they later became Nazi and Fascist fodder.

In that period, as well, the Zionists were peeling off the communist part of the Jewish Elite, not considering their being part of the Dictatorship of the Proletariate their #1 goal, but creating a Jewish state instead. And calling themselves liberal socialists, rejecting being communist progressives.

Modern Progressivism is post communist in the sense that they butchered too many proletariate to call themselves their protectors and defend communism as workable. So major tweaking now has Progressives - dominated by the Jewish elites again and the Euro-Left - abandoning "proletariate" for "Oppressed Peoples". Who are usually brown, noble, victims of evil whites and racism.....and to be saved through identity politics operating in a Marxist structure and by transnationalist lawyers and cultural elites who attempt to impose "international norms" of law and political correctness(in the Marxist tradition) on the masses, and focus on the urgency of more criminal and terrorist rights. Who define the masses as not the proletariate, but now the "oppressed victims". Who must be surrounded by lies and revisionist history to recast them as powerless people only held back by "the corporations", evil capitalism, evil white people of the West..

It does make it hard for red-blooded American Democrats who love their country and want everyone to be able to have a life better than their parents had with good justice and opportunities. They don't like the terms liberal and progressive anymore, and Reaganism, that appealed to all the middle class values & things that SF/Manhattanite liberals sneered at in red-blooded FDR Democrats, appears to have reached its dead end in Dubya, corporate corrupticans, and crazy theocrats that favor endless ME War until Jesus Comes and are more Zionist than the average Israeli Citizen is..

Not that the whoring, globalist Clintons are any better in giving a new name to patriotic, hard-working people that flocked to FDR. Their vision is a dead end too, no matter how much Hillary! says she is all for a Nanny State for The Children!, The Children! and wealthy white women who have been oppressed and powerless too long...

My thought is "modernist" to describe 80% of Americans who are Patriotic, believe in some redistribution of wealth to create a broad, powerful middle class instead of the present Elites, Gentile and Jew. Who believe in science and a balance between environmentalism and progress, who hate courts usurping their vote, and who believe realistically - good jobs matter and must be nurtured in America through policy, that the world is an exciting and dangerous place worth engaging - but not opening our Borders and dropping our guard to.

Posted by chris ford | February 6, 2008 5:51 PM

As a global term, they are truly closer to socialism and liberalism is mostly a dead ideology restricted to the fringe.

Bollocks. Classical liberalism, as a personal philosophy, is widespread among educated demographics, particularly in business. It just doesn't elect politicians as well as bribery.

No. Most if not all so-called libertarians actually despise liberty and hold freedom in the most profound contempt. They're basically feudalists.

Dan Sullivan (the guy you linked to) is an anarchist. Anarchists like Sullivan consider all non-anarchists to be either monarchists (feudalists), communists or theocrats. Unless you share that opinion, this link is meaningless to a discussion of liberalism.

Posted by Shinyk | February 6, 2008 5:54 PM

You can call yourself anything you want.

I'll stick with "American".

Posted by Volum | February 6, 2008 5:55 PM

I say we turn the table on Goldberg, and just call ourselves "fascists," much simpler.

:)

Both pithy and witty.

Posted by Jimm | February 6, 2008 5:55 PM

"Everyone seems to have their own definitions; mine involves the distinction between values and action. If you think every American should be guaranteed health insurance, you're a liberal; if you're trying to make universal health care happen, you're a progressive." - Paul Krugman

Posted by Frederick | February 6, 2008 5:59 PM

Anyone know if there's a word that accurately includes both the meanings pithy and witty, or should we invent/appropriate one...withy?

Posted by Jimm | February 6, 2008 5:59 PM

Damn straight. Just my humble opinion but liberal is a good word we need to reclaim.

Easter Lemming Liberal News.

Posted by Gary Denton | February 6, 2008 6:07 PM

I basically want to echo John Clavis @3:16, Robert @4:15, and everything bob said. I never stopped calling myself a liberal because the stupidest thing you can do when somebody's trying to smear you is to implicitly accept the smear, which is what liberals/progressives/Democrats/whatever have been doing for decades as the right has been on the offensive. It's exactly comparable to the Democrats' signing on to a disastrous war in the misguided belief that that's how they can stop Republicans from calling them "weak on defense". I don't have a problem with "progressive" as used today (though Don Williams, note that Wilson was in fact considered a progressive and not a liberal); I have a big problem with my side cowering rather than standing up to Rush & Co. all these years. Want to look strong? Be strong, for crissakes.

By the way, there was a time, not too long ago, when "conservative" was the term that carried a distasteful connotation for most Americans...

Posted by rj | February 6, 2008 6:15 PM

Ayn Rand was a libertarian. She was no liberal, classical or otherwise.

Consumatopia,

Rand was in no way a libertarian, either. Randian Objectivism was an inverse reaction to communism. That it sometimes overlaps with libertarianism/liberalism has to do with the fact that Marx was rejecting liberalism and Rand was rejecting Marx.

Objectivism is, at heart, a moral philosophy rooted in the idea that communism is so evil, its purest opposite must be just. Libertarianism, at its most elemental, doesn't concern itself with anything beyond maximizing natural law rights and thinks only of civics and economics--not personal behavior (except when it violates natural law).

Morals be damned. Evil is irrelevent.

Rand hated libertarianism because of this.

Calling Rand a libertarian is no more accurate than calling Edwards a Communist because both Communism and Edwards's populism lionize the uneducated and unskilled.

Posted by Shinyk | February 6, 2008 6:28 PM

Don Williams, that kind of stuff is what historical LIBERALS have done. I'm sorry, but you just don't know what the term actually has historically meant.

Classical liberalism = Herbert Hoover.

Posted by soullite | February 6, 2008 6:45 PM

Libertarianism, at its most elemental, doesn't concern itself with anything beyond maximizing natural law rights and thinks only of civics and economics--not personal behavior (except when it violates natural law).

Libertarianism does not require you to have beliefs on the morality of personal, private behavior--but it doesn't prohibit or disqualify you from having such beliefs either. Obviously Rand believed a lot of things that not all libertarians believed and held a lot of resentment for non-Objectivist libertarians. But she was still a libertarian--libertarians need not be Objectivists, but Objectivists need to be libertarians.

I also think that this statement you just made does a good job of distinguishing libertarianism from liberalism--even classical liberalism. Locke, Mills, Jefferson, etc did not limit their concerns--or governmental concerns--to maximization of natural law rights. Both libertarians and modern liberals are descendants of classical liberals. The former represent a narrowing, the latter a broadening.

Posted by Consumatopia | February 6, 2008 6:49 PM

When so called conservatives are starting unnecessary wars and running up deficits and debt, labels obviously have no meaning.

Consequently, using words like liberal, progressive, or conservative is absurd.

Posted by Rich | February 6, 2008 6:58 PM

I thought the Jews made us stop using "liberal" because anti-Semites where using that word as a code for "Jews", as in "Hollywood liberal", "New York liberal" etc.

Posted by MonkeyBoy | February 6, 2008 7:05 PM

I remember the first time I ever heard somebody described (in a modern, non-historical context) as a progressive. It was 1982. Reagan was riding high, Carter had had his ass kicked, it was rough time. The guy who used the was a liberal too ashamed to call himself one.

When we began to discuss politics in that bastion of conservatism, Arizona State's B-School), I realized we had a fair amount of politics in common, at which point I proudly proclaimed myself a liberal. His response: "I prefer to call myself progressive."

I've never been able to see a lefty using the word "progressive" in the same way since. I've always considered its use to be a mark (usually self-applied) of shame.

I'm not ashamed of what I believe. I'm willing to die for what I believe. If I'm willing to die for it, I'm more than willing to listen to somebody try (and fail) to ridicule it.

I'm a meat-eating, beer-drinking, proud "liberal" Democrat, not a mealy-mouthed, whiny "progressive." I always will be.

Posted by Desert Rat | February 6, 2008 7:50 PM

I can't get over the idea that liberalism historically denotes free markets, free enterprise, limited government and an individualistic conception of the good, and is thus inherently opposed to socialism and socialist values. I consider my own outlook to contain elements of both the liberal and socialist traditions, and using either term exclusively - "liberal" or "socialist" - just doesn't get it right.
Posted by Dan Kervick | February 6, 2008 4:05 PM

I consider it an annoying accident that economists like to call free markets, free enterprise, and limited government "liberal". The plain word liberal means generous. I sometimes call myself a bleeding heart liberal to make the distinction. But other times I call myself an ACLU liberal to make a different distinction. I admit I do consider generous freedoms of speech, thought, and so forth more fundamentally important than economic generosity. But I don't think there's any inherent incompatibility. Socialism doesn't have to be illiberal; it just sometimes ends up that way when poorly conceived or half baked socialist plans resort to bossing everyone around too much. We just need smarter socialists.

Posted by Gary Sugar | February 6, 2008 7:59 PM

Go to Hyde Park, FDR's birthplace, watch the 30 minute film of he & Eleanore's speeches, that comes before the tour, and then take the tour.

I could care less what you call us-just let us start re-accomplishing what they so bravely did. My god, they were SO BRAVE. Listen to their words. It has been since then, that anyone has stood up and said this is the way all people should be treated-equal, and we are going to make it happen.

And then look around at how under funded the place is, how shabby it looks. If there is a shrine to US liberalism, Hyde Park is it, and we have let it be shamed.

Posted by Mary | February 6, 2008 8:03 PM

But she was still a libertarian--libertarians need not be Objectivists, but Objectivists need to be libertarians.

I still have a hard time swallowing that, particularly since just about any Objectivist, anywhere, will have a fit if you describe him/her as a libertarian. Sometimes the rhetoric can be similar, but libertarian and objectivist views on specific issues don't map out in a similar fashion at all (Iraq, drugs, homosexuality, charitable work, to name a few).

(libertarianism) represent a narrowing, (progressive liberalism) a broadening.

Close on libertarianism. I'd say libertarianism represents, at times, a gross oversimplification of classical liberalism (even though more formulative thought has been put into modern libertarianism than either modern conservatism or modern left-liberalism).

With progressive liberalism, I've met self-described Democrats whose ideas fit your definition, but I can't, offhand, think of any Democratic politician or political activist who could be described in such a way (though a case could be made that Obama corresponds more closely to "a broadening of classical liberalism" than to Wilsonian progressivism).

In addition, many common and uncontroversial ideas on the left (health insurance mandates, product bans, hate crime legislation, censorship of violent content in private media) represent not a broadening, but an abject rejection of any form of liberalism.

Posted by Shinyk | February 6, 2008 8:07 PM

Both "liberalism" and "progressivism" are useful terms because they each describe something different. To me, liberalism is a set of beliefs that include civil liberties, the right to health care, war as a last resort, and so on. Meanwhile, progressivism describes a movement towards those rights. Its less ideological and more action-oriented.

Here's an example. If the mayor of my town supported moving towards a curbside recycling program, would I say "we sure have liberal leadership in this town" or would I say "we sure have progressive leadership in this town"? I think the latter is more appropriate. It does not presume that I know the mayor's ideological beliefs, merely that I know he is acting in a way that progresses the town forward. Thus progressivism is a more inclusive term that can help foster alliances on specific issues between people who might have broader ideological differences, which is why I like it.

Posted by nathan | February 6, 2008 8:29 PM

Haven't read all the comments here, but I think there is a need to distinguish the different strains of early 1900s progressivism. Specifically, the what-I-would-call-genuine progressivism of Sen. Robert La Follette (whose 1924 Progressive Party platform I will still take in a second over almost any ostensibly liberal platform the Democrats have put up in the past 50 years) and the fake progressivism of Woodrow Wilson and Teddy Roosevelt.

It's a damn shame TR jumped into the 1912 race only after he saw that La Follette was going to win the Republican primaries, thereby creating a progressive split that insured a Taft convention win, insuring a Roosevelt third party entry and a Wilson general election victory. Which is a near-tragedy, as I consider Wilson one of America's worst presidents, who did far more to hurt progressivism than advance it. Furthermore, it's actually arguable that by enforcing anti-trust acts without prejudice, Taft, an ostensible conservative, was genuinely more progressive than Teddy, who had rather selectively enforced them. This caused the amount of trusts to increase exponentially during his presidency, at which point it was largely too late for Taft's more equitable enforcement to make much of a difference.

At any rate I interchangeably refer to myself as "liberal", "progressive", and "leftist'".

Posted by Hunter H. | February 6, 2008 10:06 PM

Sorry, but the liberal brand was corrupted long before the Reagan or Rove -- come on, it's due to liberals we don't have universal health care, 6 weeks vacation and the rest of the quality of life that Europeans consider a right. Liberals were a top-down group who managed to contain the left (quick, name your favorite blue-collar liberals), promising enough change to keep the lid on but without really rocking the boat (thus leaving the right wing to take the blue collars in during Nixon & Reagan by nativism & "patriotism.") Liberalism is still considered the primary ideology of the ivy league, those bastions of egalitarianism & true meritocracy. The "liberal elite" and "limousine liberal" are, sadly not just figments of the right's fevered imagination.

I haven't seen it referenced above, but maybe it's time to sum it up with the old Phil Ochs song,

Love Me, I"m a Liberal from the 50s:

I cried when they shot Medgar Evers
Tears ran down my spine
I cried when they shot Mr. Kennedy
As though I'd lost a father of mine
But Malcolm X got what was coming
He got what he asked for this time
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal

I go to civil rights rallies
And I put down the old D.A.R.
I love Harry and Sidney and Sammy
I hope every colored boy becomes a star
But don't talk about revolution
That's going a little bit too far
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal

I cheered when Humphrey was chosen
My faith in the system restored
I'm glad the commies were thrown out
of the A.F.L. C.I.O. board
I love Puerto Ricans and Negros
as long as they don't move next door
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal

The people of old Mississippi
Should all hang their heads in shame
I can't understand how their minds work
What's the matter don't they watch Les Crain?
But if you ask me to bus my children
I hope the cops take down your name
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal

I read New republic and Nation
I've learned to take every view
You know, I've memorized Lerner and Golden
I feel like I'm almost a Jew
But when it comes to times like Korea
There's no one more red, white and blue
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal

I vote for the democratic party
They want the U.N. to be strong
I go to all the Pete Seeger concerts
He sure gets me singing those songs
I'll send all the money you ask for
But don't ask me to come on along
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal

Once I was young and impulsive
I wore every conceivable pin
Even went to the socialist meetings
Learned all the old union hymns
But I've grown older and wiser
And that's why I'm turning you in
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal

Posted by Leisler NYC | February 6, 2008 10:56 PM

What's missing in this political discourse is pragmatism. Too much dogma.

On the left, there should be less demonization of the most productive individuals and institutions in our economy, and more of an embrace of rational pro-growth economic policies that will expand the pie for everyone (e.g., tax, regulatory and legal policies that will encourage more investment and private sector job creation in the U.S., and will expand the tax base).

On the right, there should be less resistance to effective programs to help the poor and lower middle class (e.g., the EITC, policies to make health insurance more affordable, etc.). This is the tribute capitalism has to pay to democracy.

Posted by Fred | February 7, 2008 1:09 AM

Please. "Progressive" is so much better. "Liberal" is totally hoary.

Posted by Jen | February 7, 2008 1:22 AM

The term 'progressive', is most commonly associated with left-liberal policies, government intervention and regulation, social justice, nationalism (initially, but not now), and opposition to war (at least since La Follette).

To my knowledge, 'liberal' is not generally associated with the left-wing except here and to a lesser extent Britian and Canada. In Europe, 'liberal' is associated with a hands-off approach, and is the oppposite of the big-government connotation here. "Neo-liberal policies" are decribed by social justice movmements as furthering the domination of multinational corporataions.

I always find it amusing how idiotic Rush and his like sound when they denounce 'liberalism'...seemingly without irony or any historical understanding.

Posted by Scott Kern | February 7, 2008 1:25 AM

"I always find it amusing how idiotic Rush and his like sound when they denounce 'liberalism'...seemingly without irony or any historical understanding."

Do they sound any more idiotic than American leftists, the majority of whom are unaware of the denotation of "liberal" overseas? Rush "and his like" and American leftists are speaking to American audiences, using the definition of "liberal" that is more common in America. Either both groups are idiots, or neither of them are.

Posted by Fred | February 7, 2008 1:33 AM

Ditto Fred, on pragmatic policy and idiots.

The essential question for "Progressives" is, in my view, "progress towards what?". Even leaving aside the clear racist/nativist factors that were so intrinsic to this group originally, attempting to return to isolationism, protectionism, and government control of much if not all of the economy in the name of "the people" doesn't strike me as progress.

Posted by Robert Powell | February 7, 2008 2:45 AM

I'll third Fred's two comments.

Posted by Shinyk | February 7, 2008 3:00 AM

attempting to return to isolationism, protectionism, and government control of much if not all of the economy in the name of "the people" doesn't strike me as progress

doesn't strike me as anything the progressive grassroots are advocating either

Posted by Jimm | February 7, 2008 4:02 AM

Jimm--
Maybe that's because it's not what you WANT "the progressive grassroots" to advocate. Objectively, I think I've characterized the likely preferred policy outcomes rather than the typically glossy intentions of this hard-to-pin-down subculture.

Posted by Robert Powell | February 7, 2008 5:53 AM

To my knowledge, 'liberal' is not generally associated with the left-wing except here and to a lesser extent Britian and Canada. In Europe, 'liberal' is associated with a hands-off approach, and is the oppposite of the big-government connotation here.

I don't think Europeans should imitate anything we do in America, Britain, and Canada, except the way we speak English.

Posted by Gary Sugar | February 7, 2008 6:44 AM

quick, name your favorite blue-collar liberals

Tip O'Neill. Who I think can be counted as plural, as he he was like three normal men, both politically and physically.

Posted by Ralph Phelan | February 7, 2008 7:48 AM

"A 'liberal' wouldn't pursue FDR or LBJ's economic policies, they would pursue GWB's."

FDR was the one who started calling New Deal-style policies "liberal," which drove European laissez-faire economists crazy.

Also, a lot of American Catholics are resentful of the term "progressive," which has a long history of anti-Catholic bias.

Posted by Reality Man | February 7, 2008 8:03 AM

In addition, many common and uncontroversial ideas on the left (health insurance mandates, product bans, hate crime legislation, censorship of violent content in private media) represent not a broadening, but an abject rejection of any form of liberalism.

Call it "positive liberty", autonomy, or capability, but the motivations behind those are descendants of the motivations behind classical liberalism. Simply put, if you're sickened by an unnecessary disease, poisoned by unsafe products, or threatened by racial terrorists, you can't really be said to be free.

Censorship of violent content in private media actually does strike me as a controversial idea--assuming that by private you mean non-broadcast.

Posted by Consumatopia | February 7, 2008 8:05 PM

MESSAGE

Posted by ISHMAel back | February 29, 2008 7:05 AM

MESSAGE

Posted by ISHMAel back | March 3, 2008 11:21 PM

The Trouble With "Progressive"

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