I imagine that former Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire fancies himself a deep thinker. And, in today’s Republican circles, he probably qualifies. But, as he does his utmost to sully the word “progressive,” he ought to stop and consider what is happening to the word “conservative.”
It’s quickly becoming shorthand for dysfunction and radicalism and intraparty cannibalism. For a while, we distinguished between conservatives and Tea Party folks, but those days are in our rearview windows now.
Since it’s primary season and some people are slow learners, we still see the presidential candidates clamoring to assert their conservative bona fides, but it won’t be long before we see folks shying away from the term with the same gun-shyness that Blue Dogs once had for the “liberal” label.
Some people I know and respect think that the word “progressive” has been so co-opted and misused that it simply isn’t worth anything anymore. I’d prefer to fight for the term, which means something a little different than “liberal” and isn’t quite synonymous with Gregg’s definition:
Folks who want to define themselves as being further to the left than orthodox liberals now use the term “progressive.” If this were Denmark, they would be calling themselves socialist. But only Bernie has the courage and integrity to do that, so they refer to themselves as progressives.
It should be remembered that we had a Progressive Movement that preceded and then existed alongside Franklin Roosevelt’s liberal revolution. The movement had roots that were at least as strong in the Republican Party as in the Democratic one. It gave us things like a popularly elected Senate, a national income tax, women’s suffrage, campaign finance reform, the beginnings of environmental consciousness, energy for the Civil Rights movement, banking regulation, and trustbusting.
It also gave us Prohibition, which is a cautionary tale for modern day Progressives who might sometimes let their desire to improve the world go too far in trying to legislate about personal behavior and healthy lifestyle choices.
Still, this is a strain of political thought that is both older than FDR’s liberalism and less partisan.
It’s an interesting exercise to try to dissect those two political movements and see how they remain distinct today, but you can’t do that by simply declaring that Progressives are big government statists best understood as being to the left of ordinary liberals.
It never occurred to me that the progressive movement of today had much if any connection with Bob La Follette’s Progressives. After reading this, I still don’t think it does.
I guess I’m one of the people who believe that “the word “progressive” has been so co-opted and misused that it simply isn’t worth anything anymore.” More misused than coopted, I would think. But then, the same could be said of the word “conservative.”
To me, the word “progressive” is based on a metaphor in which history is imagined as a road leading in a certain direction toward a certain destination, let’s call it the earthly paradise or the heavenly city or utopia, something like that. If you are on that road and heading in that direction, you are a progressive; if you are heading in the other direction you are a reactionary. If you are on any other road, I’m not sure what you are, but you’re not going where you should be going.
Marxism makes much use of this idea, but not only Marxism, any conception of history based on the “idea of progress”.
I don’t think there are any such roads, I just think we as a political community need to solve problems, do good and avoid evil.
Conservatism on the other hand just means you believe there are some good things about what has been inherited from the past, and they should be conserved. It doesn’t necessarily specify what those things are, though we usually think of them as bad things such as unwarranted privilege, wealth, etc. So “conservatism” sounds bad to “progressives”. But, frankly, I’d like to conserve our democratic heritage, among other things. I’d like to conserve our public amenities, like the psot officeand public school systems. There doesn’t seem to be any word in American politics for the desire to hold on to good values of the past.
In my life I have seen many, many good things from the past destroyed by both capitalism and communism, and I am seeing that right now.
Given the above, I don’t put much stock in present-day political designations. Actions speak louder than words, and I mean effective actions not merely symbolic actions.
I don’t have any great liking for the word ‘socialist” either, but I do like Bernie. Maybe that’s how a lot people feel, they don’t know what all these words are supposed to mean, and actually they’re right because, as words, they are totally ambiguous. So when Bernie says he’s a socialist he’s just being honest, but it’s his actual program, in concrete terms, that is appealing in the current climate.
What a load of right wing bullshit from that Republican Judd Gregg .
So we’re supposed to be one people from citizens with many disparate roots. No class here because as immigrants we came to escape any class distinctions. Now we seek to be divided to produce class envy for our own political gain. What Gregg fails to mention is the red line practices that forced certain segments (and still do) to live in areas that require extra police services staffed by officers from the `good’ community to keep the animals in line. There is certainly no class here.
Now when we finally have a major candidate for President who points out that the economic benefits from our collective explosion of productivity has gone to the top 1% or more accurately to the top 0.1% is bad accusing us of creating class envy. The truth is that the rigged economy created this situation but the likes of Judd Gregg would rather that remain hidden.
I think it interesting that Republicans like Gregg think the most important Democratic topic is Hillary wanting to continue Obama’s policies but go further the new label of “Progressive taking a back seat to no one.” I always considered Obama’s policies dealing with our corporate masters as Center-Right Republican and that’s being generous. Goldwater Girl Hillary is now, according superpac donations, Wall Street’s favorite along with Jeb! Maybe we should cede the `progressive’ label to Hillary since I know it’s hard to find a label that expresses; vote for me because I’m not as crazy as they are.
Now we have a progressive candidate for President telling us all the policies Democrats should have supported instead their sellout to the Republican-lite DNC corporatist interests. On this `progressive’ blog we just wish Hillary was better, with that being unlikely to happen, wishing Joe will jump in so we could have something besides Republicans to talk about while continuing to say nothing about Bernie’s issues that resonate with so much of the voting public. If this is what being a progressive is all about then it’s corrupt and useless along with the label. Give it to Hillary because we need a new label.
The Socialist label by itself is toxic because it’s associated with communism and wants to replace the Capitalist system. Planned economies are proved a failure. On the other hand the label of Capitalist is increasingly becoming toxic as well because all the economic resources get redistributed to the top under a constant threat of meltdown that has already happened in each gilded age including this one. The strength of Capitalism is the free market that determines what gets produced plus the idea that each individual will decide how they will participate or not. After WWII with the rest of the world in rubble and balanced by strong unions, our Capitalist system created an expanded middle class along with an unheard of quality of life. Destruction of the unions by the Republicans has changed all that.
The Republican base has decided that Establishment Republicans are useless so the Tea Party replaced them in their own little conservative movement resulting in the mess we see today. The Democratic base has also decided that Establishment Democrats are equally useless so they stay home handing both houses of Congress to Republicans because what’s the point to vote since they’re all corrupt anyway.
We now have a new label. Bernie is a Socialist Democrat, keeping the strengths of Capitalism but correcting its major flaw by giving it a social conscience. Bernie’s campaign is about defining that social conscience around issues that most Americans already support and the Establishment Democrats forgot when they were captured by corporatist money.
Bernie would win the general election for the same reason Hillary would win if nominated; the other side is just too crazy. If Hillary gets the nomination it’s more of the same where Democrats go back to sleep and the Republicans stay in power. If Bernie wins the nomination and surely becomes President Sanders, it won’t be enough. It will take an election cycle or two to clean out the corporatists Democrats (I’m talking to you Debbie Wasserman Shultz and Chuck Schumer) and defeat the conservative movement Republicans with record high Democratic voter turnout because finally there will be something to vote for.
What it takes to win this thing is to reach enough people before the primary elections because people respond to Bernie’s message. The key is to do something about getting Hillary’s 2008 campaign co-chair Debbie Wasserman Shultz out of that leadership role so we can have at least as many debates as the Republicans. There is an open revolt at the DNC on this issue but we have more important things to talk about. Go figure.