What makes progressive values progressive? I think these core things:
For me, the key words that define progressive commitments are:
Progressives, unlike liberals or blanket Democrats, are ALWAYS willing to see how micro, or “personal” inputs affect the larger picture. Vegetarianism, local cooperatives, defining home work as work, holistic health care, small scale loans are all micro issues with a macro impact. Whether we buy into any of these ideas or not…we progressives seek to explore how they connect to macro issues like energy policy, militarism, and Big Box stores selling cheap goods from China.
We can trace the roots of our movement deep into the past, whether it is the Declaration of the Rights of Man, the writings of the founding fathers and mothers of our nation, or the utopian idealists and socialists of the 19th Century. We are, fundamentally, humanists who see interconnectedness and human equality as THE core values from which all else flows.
One of the most popular essays I’ve written was titled “link it.” That, at its core, is what progressives do, it is how we see the world. We link things.
It is precisely the long haul battle of moving from the micro to the macro and linking the two that is the essence of the progressive political movement at the start of the 21st Century.
None of us can be sure, ultimately, of the success or failure of the progressive project. We seek not so much perfection as amelioration: we seek no less than the sustainability of the human community on this planet. We are long term thinkers with muddy hands and boots from working in the real world; we work both sides of the equation, the long and the short term, electoral politics and idealistic projects which we will never see realized.
No one who is truly convinced of the value of progressive ideals doubts, ultimately, that those ideals represent our best and most pragmatic hope for justice and peace. Our aspirations are rooted in that conviction, that progressive politics are both idealistic and pragmatic. We progressives are called starry-eyed idealists…when, of course, it is often our opponents who are living an illusion: polluting the earth in the name of development, making war in the name of peace, torturing in the name of the rule of law.
The progressive task is to build a city we may never see or live in. We know this city will be far from perfect but we hope that it will be a city more joyful and more sustainable and secure for every human person both because of the ideals we aspire to and the hard won pragmatic lessons we’ve learned about how to live as humans on this earth.
We draw our strength and hope from the human dignity to be found in simple things. We are inspired by those who’ve gone before us, and those who share our work in so many ways. Though none of us may ever see it, we’ve tasted in our daily lives what a city built on justice, equality and dignity might be like; we know its building blocks because we’ve helped shape them with our hands.
At the end of the day, the progressive movement is based on an authentic hope forged where ideals meet praxis, a hope without illusions, a hope rooted in fundamental humanist values.
On our darkest days, like so many who’ve come before us, that hope is enough to move us forward.
{Speaking of “hope without illusions”…judybrowni’s diary Make yourself heard on Alito is worth a visit and a click or two for the cause}
