Liberal vs. Progressive
A lot of people, when I tell them the name of this blog, sigh or moan at the "liberal" part. Not that surprising, really. Except that it doesn't matter whether they're on the right or left -- they sigh just as hard. Now, I'm fine with the conservatives giving me crap for being a liberal; that's their job. But I am always surprised at how averse my friends on the left are to the dreaded "L" word. I live and work in Boston, so I am continuously surrounded by people of leftish persuasion. And most now prefer the moniker of Progressive, instead of that moldy old liberal label. Well not me. I have stuck with the Scarlet L, despite its bad press, for several reasons.
First, let's look at some obligatory definitions (I'm pretending I get paid by the word, so this is padding). There are tons out there to choose from, so I'll grab the ones that illustrate my point:
- LIBERAL
- favorable to or in accord with concepts of maximum individual freedom possible, esp. as guaranteed by law and secured by governmental protection of civil liberties
- favoring or permitting freedom of action, esp. with respect to matters of personal belief or expression
- open-minded or tolerant, esp. free of or not bound by traditional or conventional ideas, values, etc.
- of, pertaining to, or befitting a freeman
- favorable to or in accord with concepts of maximum individual freedom possible, esp. as guaranteed by law and secured by governmental protection of civil liberties
- PROGRESSIVE
- favoring or advocating progress, change, improvement, or reform, as opposed to wishing to maintain things as they are, esp. in political matters
- making progress toward better conditions; employing or advocating more enlightened or liberal ideas, new or experimental methods, etc.
- going forward or onward; passing successively from one member of a series to the next; proceeding step by step
- favoring or advocating progress, change, improvement, or reform, as opposed to wishing to maintain things as they are, esp. in political matters
Now of course, there is a lot of cross-over and overlap in these two concepts of liberalism and progressivism, and the definitions above suggest that the former coils around individual characteristics, while the latter has a more social cast. So there would seem to be a natural complimentary relationship between the two ideas. But I'm suggesting that it is the very directionality and over-ambition of "progressivism" that gets it into trouble, and make it a less-desirable term than good old-fashioned liberalism. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
The first reason I like "liberal" instead of "progressive" is just the feel of it. Look at the definitions above again. "Liberal" is just more my style. That's what I believe in and want for everyone: individual freedom to say and do what you want, as protected by law -- and, just as important, tolerance of the rights of others to do the same. Live and let live. Essentially, this aspect of liberalism is very libertarian, only it also recognizes that the government is vital in preserving and defending individual freedoms.
Once we cross over into the descriptions of progressivism, however, I start to get uneasy, and my sympathies start to swing towards conservative suspicion of centralized control. Sure, progress sounds great. Who doesn't want real progress? But once you move from individual freedom as a goal to social progress, you have switched over from bottom-up to top-down. After all, who gets to decide what "better conditions" are? Usually, it's the people who are in power -- and who's to say that they know any better what they're doing than some joker on the street?
I'm currently re-reading Thomas Frank's What's the Matter with Kansas, a must-read for anyone in any field. In it, he describes the conservative backlash temperament, and why the conservative rank and file are duped into voting on cultural issues only, to the detriment of their actual material conditions, which the GOP so relentlessly squash. One point Frank makes is that in the conservative mind, there is an intense distrust of the top-down expert: the Ivy League, think-tank know-it-all who dreams up all the government programs of social engineering. Now, whether or not that's an accurate depiction of what goes on in American government (I don't think it is), the important point is that the sentiment is actually admirable. People should be suspicious of all forms of centralized power, be it governmental or private (the general conservative blind-spot is that while they distrust centralized government, they simply cannot see the co-evolution and danger of corporate power -- but that's a subject for another time).
A good illustration of this is what we're seeing in the current economic collapse. Centralized financial and corporate power got us into the current mess, and the wizards of Wall Street and their cronies in the Obama administration are trying to fix everything with massive top-down activity. I'm not saying that this is not a correct course, considering the dire straits that we're now in. But it will likely not work, and grand schemes of getting things back on track will falter, as we drift further into the Long Emergency. The Progressive Project, if you can call it that, would seem to be further out of reach than ever before.
So that's the first reason that I prefer Liberal instead of Progressive: too much top-down, centralized baggage in the general idea of progressivism.
My second reason for staying with the "L" word is that I am not willing to concede defeat to the blabbering a-holes on the right by fleeing from a once-proud title. "Liberal" has been demonized to such a degree that it's hard to even think the word without hearing the Limbaugh inflection in your head; as in, "Now, good friends, some [pregnant pause] LLLIIIB-erals at the ACLU are maintaining that....."
Conservatives pundits have for years been pushing the utter bullshit notion that the nation has been moving to the right. You hear it all the time. But it's simply not true. In poll after poll, Americans are becoming more [pregnant pause] LLLIIB-eral on virtually every issue you can think of: sexuality, abortion, health care, religious beliefs, race relations, etc. Blame or credit whomever you want, but people are simply not moving to the right en masse, and efforts to slime Liberalism as the fading embarrassment of a rightward-moving society are simply attempts to shore up political power or entertainment dollars (i.e., the Culture War industry). Now this is not to say that the political culture in Washington hasn't been moving to the right. It obviously has. Look at how fast the "progressive" Obama agenda has been jettisoned for corporate-friendly policies on every front (say goodbye to a public health-care option to compete with bloated private plans). But this conservative drift in politics is an unavoidable side-effect of selling legislation, budget pork, and tax cuts to the highest corporate bidder. It has nothing to do with an alleged cultural shift to the right. So we should not be moved off of the liberal label out of simple fear of the punditocracy. Stand up for the L word.
Finally, I prefer liberal because its opposite is conservative, which I believe accords the proper respect to our friends on the other side of the aisle (don't be thrown off by my little venomous paragraph above -- that disdain is reserved for jackass pundits like Coulter and Hannity only, not for the true conservative rank and file who I do not believe they truly represent). I have great sympathy for an older version of conservatism, which distrusted government power while maintaining a sane understanding of the potential danger in private concentration of wealth, while still supporting a robust secular public life. I understand the conservative fear that our culture itself is unraveling, and that we need to turn back the clock and recapture some of the great things that we have lost: civility, patriotism, piety, virtue, charity, etc. I too often succumb to the guilty pleasure of nostalgia, and I think that the conservative mindset has a crucial kernel of goodness. I don't think that we'll ever actually rehabilitate these Kinkaidian institutions of yore, but I admire the conservative desire to do so.
But the opposite of progressive is regressive, and too often people on the left view their conservative opponents as backward and stupid, wanting to drag us back to the Dark Ages. Now, certainly, the culture wars have seen their fair share of idiocy (i.e., Intelligent Design and the Abstinence Birth Control "strategy"), and polls of the general public's knowledge of science, history, and world affairs are gruesome reminders of the profundity of American ignorance. But to paint yourself as progressive means that by default, your detractors want to drag our country backwards. And I just don't think that is a fair assessment of the hopes and dreams of conservative Americans.
So..... onward I'll toil, proudly flying the tattered flag with the Scarlet L on it. Maybe someday, after the grand projects of the Petro-Era have faded into the gaseous fumes of the stratosphere, we'll be able to call ourselves liberal again; because certainly the Post-Peak world will require all the tolerance and generosity we can muster.
Posted by Jeremy Raymondjack at 8/5/2009 6:04 PM 
Categories: Politics and Economics
Tags: Conservative Ideology Liberalism Progressivism Political labels Progressive Liberal
Categories: Politics and Economics
Tags: Conservative Ideology Liberalism Progressivism Political labels Progressive Liberal
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