Are there inherent contradictions in the Progressive Movement? I got this in an email this morning (sorry, I can’t reveal the source).
Many other folks who describe themselves as progressives hold an admixture of views that, if not related in any obvious way, often seem to go together. In modern usage, it’s “progressive” to be for gay marriage and against restrictions on divorce; for the troops and against the war; for multi-culturalism and against patriarchy, for bans on “hate” speech” and against encroachments on “free speech,” for tobacco smoking bans and against the criminalization of marijuana; for stem cell research and against the use of lab animals, for science that warns of the dangers of global warming, and against science that questions the dangers of nuclear power, for tolerance but intolerant of intolerance, etc.
I think I reside, ideologically, firmly on the the left-wing of the Democratic Party, but I don’t share some of these ‘contradictions’. For example, I have serious qualms about most Hate Crimes legislation, I oppose smoking bans, I am not much of an animal rights advocate, I am not anti-nuclear energy, and my ‘intolerance of intolerance’ doesn’t extend to supporting legislation that restricts free speech. I also see no contradiction in supporting gay marriage and opposing restrictions on divorce, as I see both as matters of personal liberty. Likewise, opposing the war and supporting the troops is not a contradiction in my mind because the troops will benefit more from an end to the occupation of Iraq than they will by political support for their mission. And I can respect a soldier’s adherence to their sense of duty even when I strongly oppose what they have been ordered to do (with obvious limits).
In some senses, I have quibbles with the above characterization of the Progressive Movement, but I recognize that many on the left do not share my more libertarian ideology. If I have a vision of what political leadership should do, it is to secure the liberty of our citizens. You don’t have liberty if you can’t get a job, if you can’t engage in commerce, if you have poor health, or if the government defines who you can love, who can adopt children, or otherwise restricts your choices. The more education you have, the more choices you have, and the more choices you have, the more liberty you have.
Proper leadership involves striking the correct balance between empowerment and getting out of the way. You have to protect people from environmental hazards at the same time that you preserve the widest possible scope for personal freedom.
This libertarian strain is strong among New Progressives, but it is mostly lacking in the old hard-line left that came of age in the 1950’s-1960’s.
Anyway, I mostly wrote this to get feedback, not to do some kind of treatise on what I believe. What do you think defines the New Progressive Movement from an ideological standpoint?
organized by transparency, accountability, personal freedom and the common good. And the common good sometimes requires elevating the community interest over the individual. I may like my health benefits but as a member of this society I have an obligation to pay taxes so our national community has access to affordable health care that works. As a member of our national community whether rich or poor, we all have a stake in the environment. But any personal activity or value systems that doesn’t infringe upon the national community’s well being should not be regulated by any thought police or moral preachers.
progressives believe in personal responsibility but also believe that public power (meaning the state) has an obligation to help people help themselves as well as those incapable of helping themselves (young, elderly, disabled and mentall ill for example).
I’m not sure what is meant by the phrase, “personal responsibility”. IMHO, I don’t think this nation upholds basic constitutional principles. If it did it could erase the need to take “extraordinary remedies” to secure rights. For example, why do we still need a Voting Rights Act (1965) when the Fifteenth Amendment (1870) says “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude”? Why do some African-Americans think their right to vote expires unless Congress keeps renewing the Voting Rights Act?
The Long Shadow of Jim Crow: Voter Suppression in America (2004)
I’d call myself a New Progressive if the Constitution was the primary focus, because I think that alone “preserve[s] the widest possible scope for personal freedom”.
I am against nuclear energy. It’s based on a finite resource – uranium, for which we have moved entire Indian reservations to get.
The most it could do is supply us supplemental energy for maybe 10 years, then we’re done. With literally hundreds of thousands of years of pollution waiting in the wings.
Nuclear power is not the answer to our problems.
You’re off by two orders of magnitude. The actual potential of nuclear energy is closer to 1000 years, handling our complete energy production, if we drop the silly political restrictions on breeder reactors. Oh, and it produces a tiny fraction of the waste produced by the old reactors that everyone thinks of whenever “nuclear’s” mentioned. Fortunately, we only need nuclear to handle about 4 terawatts; renewables and fossil fuels can handle the remainder.
Nuclear is commonly advocated as a “base load” technology, supplementing and stabilizing the variation in localized, distributed generation schemes. I strongly recommend reading the rest of the Wattzon slides, if you haven’t already.
At this point, there’s no good reason to oppose nuclear. All solutions to energy production that solve the global warming problem are going to require public subsidies due to high up-front costs. (Never mind that, as progressives, it’s somewhat absurd to object to something by saying “Oh, but that requires government involvement! That’s bad! We need to let the unfettered market work it out!”) Nuclear’s hardly special there. Modern reactor designs are safe, affordable, and produce little waste.
Like many environmentalists, I am rethinking my position on nuclear power as a result of climate change. I remain concerned about the security issues and centralization of political/police power that goes swith nuclear power, and think that decentralized power like solar and wind are better solutions precisely because the technology can be scaled up or down as needed and does not lend itself to concentration of political power.
Having said that, however, nuclear power (especially if newer, smaller-scale technologies are adopted) can be a part of weaning us off oil. If old nuclear warheads can be transformed into material for power plants that is another reason to explore the option.
While Yucca Mountain may not be the ideal spot for a waste depository, I think that issue ultimately can be managed, and certainly can be better managed than how we’re doing it at present, storing each plant’s waste on site. The more such locations we have the greater the chance for leakage, terror incidents, etc.
In the last couple of weeks there was a news story about a new process developed for converting nuclear energy directly to electricity without boilers, cooling towers, etc. – unfortunately the link is at work. The process involved a membrane of alternating layers of heavy metal atoms (I believe gold) and a conducting material. The radiation from the source would knock electrons from the gold which then would land in the conducting layer and be available for electrical power. The system was designed to power spacecraft, but there seems to be no reason why it wouldn’t work for vehicles or even to power buildings. It looks like it should scale easily, and isn’t overly picky about the radiation source – material that’s currently nuclear waste might find a productive use here. I could see locomotives running on this power source in a generation from now.
It seems to me that part of being a progressive is a willingness to consider new solutions to problems with an open mind, and to challenge existing power structures of whatever type (we used to call that “the establishment” back in the day) that say “it can’t be done.” It also means favoring solutions that empower people directly, not big institutions, which is where my remaining concerns with nuclear power rest. The technical issues are increasingly soluble – countries like France and Japan that use nuclear power more extensively than us have not been sitting idly by since Three Mile Island and Chernobyl.
Precisely. It’s certainly something to be cautious about, I freely admit that. The issues of centralization, security, and quality are definitely things to watch carefully. Basically, ensure that nuclear power companies don’t get too much power, make sure that breeder reactors don’t get used for nefarious ends, and come down hard on anyone who’s even starting to cut corners in training or maintenance. But we’re probably going to need it, at the very least as a transition technology.
I hadn’t heard about those technologies you mention. They sound fascinating, and there is indeed a lot of interesting potential there.
I don’t think there is such a thing as a progressive movement.
At best, I think we’re simply seeing the results of information when it’s allowed to flow more freely.
But look how split the Dems are between Hillary and Obama. There’s no consensus even among the so-called left as to which candidate is right.
There’s no movement. There’s just a lot more people paying attention, and speaking up. Occasionally, when they all pull in the same direction, miracles can happen.
I agree Lisa, I don’t think there is any co-ordinated Progressive Movement that has anything like a stated platform. We have a loose federation of people with progressive ideas but in many different areas and not all agreeing with each about which or what is more important. That’s not necessarily bad as someone who is passionate about one particular subject can get other people to join that movement by their sheer passion and power of persuasion that this is a good and progressive idea..such as say advocating and educating people to do one simple thing like switch to a better light bulb.
I know I get particularly incensed that gay people do not have equal rights like everyone else and that politicians can continue to act as if denying rights is somehow considered ok.
We are all human beings and we should be able to expect and believe that we will all start out our life with the inherent right to live our lives the same as everyone else.
I’m tired of politicians using religion(which has no place in government anyway) to deny human beings equal rights…not special just equal. And I do get tired of some people telling the gay community to pipe down, now is not the time to press for equal rights-if not now just when in the hell is the time right for equal rights?
You have to protect people from environmental hazards at the same time that you preserve the widest possible scope for personal freedom.
to protect people from hazards of second hand smoke we have to have smoking bans.
we only need one law to cover everything….if people want to smoke tobacco, marijuana or crack, they need to only be able to do that in the privacy of their own homes.
I just came back from visiting relatives. My uncle has been chain-smoking for at least seventy years (he’s in his mid-eighties). My aunt is dying from the second-hand smoke and will probably die before he does.
My point isn’t against smoking at home, after all she’s had sixty years to leave. But second-hand smoke is a health risk, and people in public spaces shouldn’t be subjected to it.
But it’s an interesting jumping off point, the individual versus the public good. I think most “moral” crimes, things you do at home without hurting anyone else or scaring the horses, shouldn’t be crimes. The difficulties arrive when you enter the public sphere. This involves healthcare, business profits versus the public good. Etc.
As far as drug laws, I’d rather the money spent to incarcerate users be spent working on developing drug antagonists and addiction cures (and better, safer drugs!).
Many other folks who describe themselves as progressives hold an admixture of views that, if not related in any obvious way, often seem to go together. In modern usage, it’s “progressive” to be for gay marriage and against restrictions on divorce; for the troops and against the war; for multi-culturalism and against patriarchy, for bans on “hate” speech” and against encroachments on “free speech,” for tobacco smoking bans and against the criminalization of marijuana; for stem cell research and against the use of lab animals, for science that warns of the dangers of global warming, and against science that questions the dangers of nuclear power, for tolerance but intolerant of intolerance, etc.
Booman, you did a good job taking this part already. Most of my comments will probably echo yours:
Wanted to add to point #5: I thought smoking bans were a health issue, which wouldn’t make this a progressive issue at all. Also, if marijuana were legalized, smoking bans against tobacco would probably also include a ban against smoking marijuana. Since the debate regarding smoking bans is centered around safety standards for common spaces, not about whether or not smoking marijuana should be legal.
Smoking bans are commonly a progressive issue in that the same folks concerned about other public health and environmental issues are also concerned about second hand smoke, and those who oppose smoking bans are often:
We recently went through enacting a statewide smoking ban in most bars and restaurants here in Tennessee (bet y’all thought we’d never do it!) so I speak from some experience.
or, you know, people that want to be able to smoke somewhere other than the sidewalk.
Speaking as someone who had asthma as a kid, and who knows people that basically collapse upon getting a lungful of second-hand smoke… Your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins. What you do in the privacy of your own home is your own business, but smoking should be banned in all public places. The alternative is blatant discrimination, like buildings constructed without wheelchair access.
#3: This is a conservative smear job. They frequently complain about “multicultural” “liberal” American feminists condemning domestic patriarchy, but embracing “Islamist” patriarchy. It’s a bunch of garbage, but it’s a complicated bunch of garbage, and so somewhat hard to debunk concisely. I believe that Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon has done so at least once.
#5: Many progressives actually support smoking bans because of the hazards of public smoking. While we typically don’t care what one does in their own home, public smoking crosses the line into a “pollution” issue. This is particularly important since there’s a growing segment of the population with allergies or sensitivities to tobacco smoke, among other things. Again, this is a false distinction.
#6: Again, it’s a conservative smear job. The idea here is that we’re for “killing babies” for research, but against inconveniencing animals for research. Five seconds of thinking about the actual processes and participants (clusters of unfeeling cells VS actual living organisms) debunks it.
#7: Basically. A lot of progressives are somewhat ignorant about the state of modern nuclear science and engineering, and oppose it based on arguments from the past that aren’t valid anymore. Unfortunately, this is hard to untangle because there’s a lot of people on both sides with a vested interest in muddying the issues. Modern nuclear reactors are quite safe, and modern breeder reactors in particular produce little waste and can potentially run for a very long time. (We’ve got almost 1000 years worth of fuel, if we used breeder reactors to produce all our energy) They’re a tool worth using carefully, as “base load” generators and supplements to renewables.
However, the bulk of #7 is an attempt to discredit science by saying that progressives are only for “science” when it’s science they like. We are honestly vulnerable on this as long as people remain uninformed about the state of nuclear power.
#8: This is actually a perfectly reasonable, logical, progressive position. Your right to swing your fist stops where my face begins, as it were. The specific philosophy goes as such: we should tolerate any set of beliefs that includes tolerance for other beliefs, or at the very least adopts a “live and let live” or “private concern” attitude. Disagreeing with others is fine, but be polite about it. Belief systems that call for the extermination of, suppression of, discrimination against, or attempt to force their beliefs on other beliefs are unacceptable.
I agree with most of your positions, but I’m not with you on smoking bans. Everyone focuses on patrons of smoky bars, but smoke really affects the employees. I think smoking bans belong in the same category as OSHA regulations.
I’m also not a fan animal rights activism. Animals have more rights than children these days. I also work with lab rats, so I obviously support their use. I see that position as anti-science, but I think it’s a pretty rare position in the progressive movement. I think we have to separate ourselves from our friends on the far-left, which I think of as anti-nuclear power, pro-animal rights and pro-peace (different from anti-Iraq war activism).
Less ideologically, I think we should focus on government competence, rehabilitation of the constitution, and general liberal pragmatism. I think these issues can win over lots of people.
I agree with all, or most. There is no Progressive Movement. Amendment. There is a group I love, Progressive Democrats of America. They get things done. And Barack meets with them often. So when Progressives tell me he is not liberal enough, I just walk a way. I konw from experience they are wrong.
Smoking bans are terrible. in work, in resteraunts, most buildings, fine.
But we just got it in Illinois, and it is going to put a lor of people out of work. You can have non-smoking bars, no problem. But most people in bars I go to smoke, and now they aren’t going. And non-smokers aren’t going to macically appear.
Bowling alleys will go broke, and casinos here are dying, people go to Indiana to gamble.
And if the Progressives think they have all the answer, where is their great candidate. Nader? Ron Paul? That is the only thing they give me.
They just want to be negative, rail against the two party system and think they are smarter then everyone.
They want to change things, they have leader, Barack Obama, he will listen and work on their issues. But they would just rather sit on the sidelines and throw their bombs.
Our experience in Knoxville (and in many other places as well) has been that initially smoking bans cause a drop in business, but if the business can survive the first year, then profits actually pick up later beyond what they intially were, as people who intially avoided smoky bars or restaurants start patronizing them, perhaps even with kids in tow.
I agree with Lisa that there is no progressive movement, just a collection of individualists who occasionally agree with each other.
For example, I think of reproductive freedom as a matter of personal liberty. Sometimes I’ve got an extreme viewpoint, and I know that not everybody will agree with me on everything, but often we can pull together to serve the common good.
Elders helping the young learn how to do right by the planet and its inhabitants is my idea of the new progressive movement.
Wellstone Action Network
Obama Organizing Fellows
Agreed. I doubt there’s any one thing, except possibly a few very basic (and vague) principles, that we would all agree on. As far as I can tell, “progressive” is just latest name of the Loose Group Formerly Known As Liberals.
Personally, I identify as a social democrat. I wouldn’t use the term libertarian, since as I understand the term, it implies a certain social Darwinism. I’m generally in favor of decriminalizing the class of activities known as victimless crimes, but in other areas, I probably believe in restrictions most people don’t. For example, I don’t believe in religious freedom in the sense most Americans do, and I think the 2nd Amendment should be repealed.
Of course, I’m also a statistical outlier with no intention of ever running for office, so none of that need bother anyone. 😉
I too disagree with my fellow “progressives” on mostly libertarian issues. I am on Booman’s side on most of the issues he lists above. What I find interesting is that Republicans also differ from their party lines most often on libertarian issues. Libertarianism is the true “middle” of American politics–not the fake middle that Michael Bloomberg, Hillary Clinton, or Joe Lieberman peddle. Libertarianism is the key to the riddle that this post raises.
But Booman is correct to wonder what progressive means. We are going through a big cultural and political change that hasn’t been fully articulated yet. But the progressive label does indeed describe a real change. To me, it means many of us liberals are rebelling against the boomer generation of Democrats. The liberal boomers spent their adult lives trying to fix the negative image of the 60s. I think there was a backlash against the Democrats in the 80s and 90s and the Republicans milked this stereotype into power (mostly using libertarian arguments–personal responsibility and less government and less taxes). Clintonian 3rd way politics was all about running away from the hippy liberal stereotype and trying to counteract the damage by moving to the right.
Progressives are now rebelling against Clintonian liberalism and have begun to recognize how the Clintons and 3rd way Democrats have abandoned real liberals on the battle field and joined the enemy in many instances.
Basically progessivism, to me, means a return to basic liberal ideology and a rejection of Clintonian 3rd way politics. Progressive means not being afraid to defend traditional liberal ideology.
I like this list.
To me, the core of progressivism is to promote the common good of the everyday person, even if it requires limiting the options or activities of large man-made institutions, like business, government, churches, etc. – even political parties, which was part of how I ended up over here rather than at Big Orange as my primary cyberhome. (My comment at the time was “The party exists for the people, the people don’t exist for the party!”)
People come before power structures, whether in public health and environmental matters, taxation and business regulations in general (corporate “personhood” needs to be greatly reined in, or abolished altogether), matters of churches versus personal choices, and so forth.
Public education is essential in this, as only a well-educated populace can govern itself without making foolish mistakes.
The “harder cases” come in places where the rights of one person versus another person are in play, rather than of one person versus an institution. Hate speech is a perfect example. Ultimately, it seems that “hate speech” can be opposed without being against “free speech” by demonstrating that hate speech is an incitement to criminal activity, or has a demonstrated history of resulting in criminal activity – then it can fall under laws against criminal endangerment or criminal conspiracy. I think this approach would also be more palatable to those in the middle of the political spectrum who are afraid of “political correctness” (that right-wing red herring) infringing on their freedoms.
Lots of good stuff here.
But somebody explain to me why nuclear power is a good alternative to solar, wind and tide-generated power. It involves a highly poisonous waste product that no one wants anywhere near them, it is a target for terrorism with terrible consequences if an attack is successful, and it continues the concentration of wealth derived from the industry run by the same schmucks who brought us Ronald Reagan.
Maybe it’s better than coal (and if reinjecting CO2 safely underground is effective, maybe not as good as coal). I can think of a lot of places I’d rather go than nuclear, though.