I’m completely opposite, HMS. To me “liberal” is a great word and liberalism is perhaps the greatest achievement of civilization. It’s too bad that in the US it’s been shoe-horned into one party and then demonized by the other.
Progressivism has too many tendencies towards totalitarianism (or at least isn’t fundamentally opposed to it the way liberalism is).
The problem here, and with all political labels, is failing to recognize that their meanings have changed over time. Few of them describe the same political position in different eras. Which is why political labels are, IMHO, the touchstone of small minds.
That is akin to saying libertarianism has tendencies towards anarchy.
Both characterizations are patently wrong.
Progressives opposed limited government. They may have favored a democratic form of totalitarianism, but it was still totalitarianism, with individual rights being granted by a benevolent government rather than by nature.
What are these “natural rights” that you think progressives would have doled out by the state?
The fact is any society, any government, is an exercise in balancing people’s rights against other people’s rights. Our rights are circumscribed all over the place and that is with liberals and conservatives at the helm.
As obvious as that statement is, I have to say it’s one of the more cogent phrasings I’ve seen in this quadrennial.
It also helps crystallize a line of thinking I’ve had along this front: that the left of 2012 is aware of this balance and is openly seeking to adjust it, while the right of 2012 denies any such thing and is convinced the opposition is trying to make a massive steal of their eternal rights.
Not at all. Progressives oppose goverment by monarchs, oligarchs, feudal lords, and in general the kind of hereditary dictatorships that conservatives tend to favor.
The fake conservative love of “limited goverment” really only refers to limiting the checks and balances against a few powerful people running society as their own fedual fiefdom. Apart from that, conservatives embrace and nurture big and intrusive government with their every living breath. If you have a quibble with “conservatives” or think you’re not one, justsubstitute “not progressives” or “libertarians” or whoever it is that rides the white horses in your fantasy world.
Phrasing it in terms of ‘balance’ is kind of misleading, though. It’s entirely accurate to say the right understands that there exists a ‘balance’, they merely feel it should be shifted in the direction of hereditary power by a few. On the other hand I’m not sure many liberals understand that there even is a balance, they seem to think there’s some order of natural harmony that can be restored just by the forceful application of a few good ideas.
Reasonable people understand that there’s a multi-directional tension involving human rights, civil liberties, economic development, and environmental protection. That there’s no way to solve them all without compromises, and the that priorities will shift from time to time, and anyone who seems to be consistently tilting governance to favor one group over all others should be regarded with deep suspicion. I prefer to call this ‘progressivism’ or maybe ‘neoprogressivism’, recognizing that the term is freighted by as many positive associations as negative ones from the early 20th century.
I agree with you on almost everything but gun control, affirmative action and single payer health.
I think that a federal gun registry with each gun registered at all times to a single owner would be a good idea. I think I should have as much of a right to own a gun in NYC as I do in Montana.
I think that affirmative action is justifiable (for Blacks and Indians) until we achieve parity and then get rid of it entirely. If this means that we overreach in favor of blacks and indians for a generation or two, I’m not entirely bothered by that considering our history. If they can maintain their parity, great. IF they cannot, then that would be fine too.
The single biggest fiscal challenge that we (and almost every other industrialised nation) face is the rising cost of health care. Even with the cost savings of single payer, we will be in the same shitty position we are in today in a few decades, but at least it will give us few decades to figure out how to deal with the problem.
The problem comes when you start inventing positive rights and then declaring them to be superior to negative rights. Or even seeking “balance” between these rights. The positive rights that progressives have thought up are not rights, because they are dependent on the wealth of a society and the desire of individuals to provide the necessary services. They are more properly understood as benefits of a wealthy society, subject to change should something bad happen to that society, like famine or war(a society with few doctors can’t provide universal health care).
Liberalism starts from the premise that individual constitutional rights are supreme and universal. Progressivism makes no such concession. Rights are subject to being balanced against the needs of society. Furthermore, liberals believe in limited government(not as limited as conservatives would like of course), while progressives believe that government should be able to do whatever the people want it to do at any given moment.
This progressive mindset was best seen during WWI, when the US virtually became a fascist state. WWII, despite being a much more serious war, saw much better protection of individual rights(assuming you weren’t Japanese-American).
Here’s a good way to test the difference:
If you are pro-choice, you are liberal.
If you are pro-choice but think that measures must be taken to prevent overpopulation, even coercive measures and you “understand” China’s one-child policy while not necessarily condoning it, then you are a progressive. Progressives used to support sterilization programs.
I would have thought that “progressive” was a very broad category touching on a wide variety of issues and covering the entire spectrum of moderate to extreme. But if it means something very specific, then so be it.
But IMO liberalism is support for the freedom develop and disseminate views while free from ideological constraints. Religion can be an obvious source of ideological constraints as can government, corporate interests, various traditions, etc. The meaning can change according to what the constraints are in a given context.
What I think Smiling Bandit is doing in this thread is trying to prevent any positive-sounding definition of these terms from being allowed to gel. If they don’t mean something negative then they don’t meaning anything at all.
I should have said gun bans. I have no problem with gun registration.
Affirmative action is anti-market social planning and creates a stigma worse than any problem it tries to solve. We are past the need for it.
Single payer in Canada bans private commerce - a loathsome idea. If I am Warren Buffett and want to pay my full-time physician $10 million a year that should be allowed.
I understand that single payer countries prohibit such. That is as anti-liberal as it can get.
So you think progressives demand a certain level of “service” (for lack of a better word) no matter the ability to deliver such services?
I think the powers-that-be have you hoodwinked. Sure liberals and to a greater extent conservatives talk about wanting smaller government but to date neither have delivered any such thing and, interestingly considering their strong rhetoric on this, conservatives (republicans) have grown government more than anyone else.
And conservatives used to be democrats in the south and liberals were republicans in the north once upon a time. What of it? Things change.
And this is why I shouldn’t have bothered. Good lord, people - can we not have a thread about definitions without it devolving into name-calling? Must you insult half the country? I mean, is this actually a requirement - is your mouth is incapable of talking politely, or do you just choose to slowly ruin the thread?
Neither of those is exactly true. Maybe not even remotely true. It all depends on how you look at it.
No, I think that progressives misuse language to give more moral weight to their agenda. I know progressives don’t really believe health care and education are rights, so much as equal access is a right. The equality is the right, not the services themselves. But when they sell it to the public, they clearly state that the service itself is the right, equal to free speech or trial by jury. And if somehow those rights conflict with access to health care or education, they are subject to being limited in a balanced way. Progressives used to also like to make everything the moral equivalent of war, because they wanted to mobilize the country to fight social ills in the same way the country was mobilized for war.
I’m only citing what they believe, not what the realities of politics and governance cause them to do in practice. And liberals and conservatives have been known to resort to the Constitution to disallow laws from taking effect. Progressives might do this for tactical reasons, but progressives have written extensively that the Constitution should not limit the freedom of action of the government.
Where do you categorize a person who believes that everyone should have access to a minimal level of health coverage and education but who is fine with people of means availing themselves of much higher quality levels of these services? And how many people would agree that they are “Progressives” according your definition here?
I’m not sure what you’re talking about here.
As usual, Heinlein said it best:
***“Political tags — such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth — are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. The former are idealists acting from highest motives for the greatest good of the greatest number. The latter are surly curmudgeons, suspicious and lacking in altruism. But they are more comfortable neighbors than the other sort.” ***
I take issue with this quote. Heinlein speaks of people at the extreme ends of the social spectrum as the only types in existence but the reality is, nearly everyone is in the middle somewhere. And, there is much more similarity between people facing the same personal situation (say, a drunk guy just drove his truck into your living room, or, your dad just got diagnosed with terminal cancer) than if you ask them what their political stance is.
OK so then we only disagree on affirmative action.
We both think federal gun registration is acceptable.
We both think that it is importnant to allow a private insurance market outside of the single payer system. I don’t see why we can’t do this. If we can have a public school system operate alongside a private school system, why can’t we do the same thing with health insurance?
We disagree on Affirmative Action. I don’t think we can say we have made an honest attempt until we reach demographic socioeconomic parity for at least a generation. Then we let American Indians and African Americans sink or swim on their own. I would limit affirmative action to the descendents of American Slaves and American Indians. We have been halfassing affirmative action for decades in the face of racist opposition.