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.
