I’ll buy that, but tell me which experiments fell flat on their faces, please.
[QUOTE=RTFirefly]
The crackdown on illegal drugs was a progressive idea?
[/QUOTE]
Well, maybe I created some confusion there by wording that badly. The crack down was actually on then legal drugs and stemmed from the same thing as the crack down on alcohol. And it was a long time before Nixon. And yes…it was definitely a progressive idea.
So, what you want to do is only list progressive ideas that have failed and that progressives still want to take ownership for. Progressive ideas that failed and they abandoned, but that modern conservatives have picked up on are now owned by conservatives?
If you haven’t espoused something since your great-grandpa’s generation, does that mean you’re stuck with it?
Look, a lot of these things have been espoused by people who might share an attribute or two with me, but whom I disown without ambiguity. The Democrats who resisted integration in the 1950s and 1960s, for example. If I disagreed with them then, why should I be saddled with the positions that I fought against, today? Just because I tend to vote Democratic in 2012? If there are any of them still alive who will admit being anti-integration Dems, they’ve left the Democratic party long ago.
And I should note that there have been genuinely progressive ideas put forth in this thread that have clearly failed–communal living, for example. I remember when the decline of the family unit was spoken of, and new organizational methods were proposed and tried, including many different parental groupings living collectively and raising their kids communally, sharing expenses, etc. Few people were ready for it, fewer could sustain such a community even over the short -term, and the idea seems to have fizzled out.
There have been other such suggestions that seem reasonably close to fulfulling the OP.
Dude, you just tried to blame conservatives for monarchy.
And who do you think the biggest supporters of monarchy are? Anarcho-syndicalists, maybe?
And rightly so. Do you know where the terms “Left” and “Right” come from?
Also, PRR, it’s clever that you should mention anarcho-syndicalism. It’s a tendency with which I identify, and it’s a great example of the anti-authoritarian left, struggling against kings and queens and capitalists and racism/sexism/heterosexism/etc., while simultaneously keeping a check on the more authoritarian segments of the Left.
Stupid Progressive ideas:
Busing
Welfare aka “War on Poverty”
Institutional racism today
Roe vs Wade
Judicial activism in general and a disdain for the constitution
Higher taxes
Spending way too much
War on drugs
Gun banning
Anti-religious interpretation of the first amendment
Lax immigration policy and enforcement
Stimulus
Stupid Conservative ideas:
Institutional racism in the past
Anti-abortion amendment to the constitution
Spending too much
War on drugs
Legislating religion and morality
Lax immigration policy and enforcement
Stimulus
Your problem is tying ancient institutions to modern-day political descriptions. They don’t fit.
Who was the “progressive” and who was the “conservative” depends very much on context. In the English Civil War, you could make a good case that Oliver Cromwell was the “progressive”, as he was attempting to impose a radical new order, but I doubt you would find much “progressive” about his social policies today!
Similarly, the monarchy itself could be a “progressive” force when it is used to break up the privileges of the aristocracy and allow careers open to talent.
Sure, and if you wanted to make the case that Cromwell was a flaming progressive in the context of the mid-17th century, I wouldn’t argue with you. But somewhere over the past 350 years, his positions became retrogressive, as more and more progressive ideas emerged. Every idea, as I acknowledge, is progressive at some point in the dim, murky past, even burning logs in the middle of your cave, but there’s typically some large period when the idea is no longer remotely progressive but is still defending as necessary or desirable because we’ve always burned logs in the middle of the floor, and now you wild kids want to build fireplaces? It will never work out, you nutty lunatics.
Yes and no. Most of the same principles are perennial. In cases like the English Civil War, remember that reactionaries sometimes quarrel amongst themselves. Which should raise the question: “What if they gave a war and nobody came?”
I would certainly object to call the crackdown on illegal drugs to be a progressive idea, but the architect of the most extreme of the anti-drug laws, Nelson Rockefeller, certainly was a progressive unless one wants to radically redefine the term.
Of course, like many ideas it had widespread bi-partisan support amongst both “progressives” and “conservatives.”
Conversely arguably the most vocal respected public intellectual of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s who argued for the legalization of drugs was William F. Buckley whom no one would classify as a progressive and who was one of the founders if not the modern conservative movement.
Of course that is hardly proof that the pro-legalization movement was conservative.
With all due respect, you seem to have an extremely narrow, somewhat limited view of the world.
If you travel around the world you’ll find that often the big supporters of monarchy are not who you might think.
For example, the Queen in the UK has long been extremely popular amongst striking miners who freely waved red flags while cursing out police officers trying to break their strike and Tony Blair, the leader of the Labour Party did everything he could to save them during the time when their popularity was at an ebb.
Many of them most certainly think the Queen serves a good role for several reasons, amongst others, providing checks on unpopular governments by calling for elections if they get too unpopular, which she has done, at least once that I know of(Australia).
By contrast, it’s been long known that one of the major opponents of the monarchy and an adamant Republican(not in the American sense) was Rupert Murdoch, whom I don’t think any would classify as a progressive.
[QUOTE=pseudotriton ruber ruber]
If you haven’t espoused something since your great-grandpa’s generation, does that mean you’re stuck with it?
[/QUOTE]
So, as a single example, when you brought up slavery as a conservative idea that’s failed, you were perhaps still under the impression that slavery is still part of the modern conservative platform and agenda? 
I mean, come on PRR. You are all over the place here. If you only want a list of progressive ideas that are accepted today then you are only going to get a list of progressive ideas that have worked, at least partially or debate-ably. If all you want is an echo chamber of fellow progressives circle jerking about how great progressive belief is and how it’s all worked perfectly then you should have the mods move this out of GD and into a different forum.
WTF are you talking about?? You seem to be using Democrat and Progressive interchangeably, and you are all over the place in this cluster fuck debate. Fuck man…civil rights and desegregation were absolutely progressive. Conservative thought at the time was status quo. It’s not a Democrat verse Republican issue.
Consider wage slavery. Also, many reactionaries do in fact cling to slave-based economic and social structures. On top of that, I grew up in the American South, and the neo-Confederate sentiment is not hard to find, for now. I once saw a bumper sticker on a pickup truck, featuring the Confederate flag above the US Capitol, with the words “I have a dream.”
Are you asking me who I mean by hard-line segregationists with a “D” after their names?
In that case, those miners were, in part, acting against their own interests. Not due to the strike, far from it, but due to identifying with someone who exemplifies the diametric opposite of their lives, needs, and agenda.
Murdoch is a case of a reactionary clashing with other reactionaries, and so much the better.
Um, no. You seem to still be missing the point. I’m not sure how to explain it any differently either, unfortunately. 
Again, no idea how any of this has anything to do with anything under discussion…and certainly not anything I have written. So, not sure what you want me to consider, to be honest.
Not 20th century in its origination, but the concept of Separate but Equal was certainly progressive for its time.