re: #117 marjoriemoon

I’m a bit irritated by Progressive because I think it came into being because the Right was dissing the term Liberal so much so they moved to something more 21st century/future like. I think Liberal means progressive and forward-thinking, too, so why change it? Certainly it doesn’t stop name calling.

It was actually a move back, recovering “progressive” from an earlier political era. It eventually succumbed to creeping irony, and “liberal” was adopted. It, too, met the same fate by the end of the Reagan years. Now here we are back again with “progressive”.

Myself, I’d rather stick with liberal, so that I can accommodate liberals’ wish to not be conflated with leftists. “Progressive” has been a stalking horse for much leftist mischief over the years, and is thus harder to define in practical terms.

I was guilty of judging capitalism by its operations and socialism by its hopes and aspirations; capitalism by its works and socialism by its literature.
— Sidney Hook