that old progressive – liberal tango
Recently I noticed one of those blog to blog to blog conversations dealing with the issue of the words “Progressive” and “Liberal”. I don’t remember who was involved in this — I think it was Josh Micah Marshal, Matthew Yglesias, and someone at the National Review.
Hillary Clinton used the word “Progressive”, which was determined to be the final nail in the coffin in the transferance of the word “Liberal” to the word “Progressive”. A poll was released which found in the tipsy world of public opinion which had held the moderate, conservative, liberal hiearchy of public esteem had been inverted with the introduction of the word “Progressive”. Meanwhile, the National Review person attacked the Progressive Moment of the early twentieth century — which lead the realization that the word “Progressive” is in for as big a whirlwind as “Liberal”.
Actually, if you want the clumsy beginnings of that consult Bill O’Reilly and his dichotomy of “Traditionalists” versus “SPs” — “Secular Progressives” shortened to “SPs” and I would like to give him the trademark so that I may avoid anybody else from picking up his cringe-worthy invention. I can also point to a Reason article which tied “Progressivism” into such things as the Eugenics Movement and the nadir of America’s civil rights for black people (I think that was the National Review columnist’s tact)– and that book “Bully Boy” from a libertarian perspective attacking Teddy Roosevelt because the Food and Drug Administration is an unwanted intrustion of Big Government into the market-place.
The poll results that show the favorable impression toward “Progressive” and the lukewarm at best impressive to “Liberal” — I do not know what to do with.  The basic problem is that theoretically the two words have two different meanings, but for marketing purposes we now use them interchangably, and thus the use of one to displace the other makes the meanings meaningless. I have seen debates that posit that the two words have two different meanings, and by the principals that the two stand for — this is what I am. I find these debates to be meaningless within the context of American politics, angels dancing on the point of the pin, and it shall be that way until the two words are not used reflexively in political discourse to the same ends.
The other problem is that I am out of step with the mindset of Average America in that I am apt to think about these things — as opposed to reacting on a check-off-the-list level. I assumed that people will regard “Progressive” as a weasley way to avoid the word “liberal” — thus reinforcing the “wimp” stereotype of liberal and getting the liberal/progressive nowhere, but apparently the check-off-the-list equation occurs quickly enough to not give them that pause. Or maybe I am wrong and they have conjured a difference of meaning where I never knew one existed.
I have been meaning to delve into the history of how the two words have been bandied about over the course of the past century or so, more to the point how we arrived at this rather bizarre liberal – progressive dichotomy. I have heard repeatedly that the word “Conservative” at its nadir was held in less esteem than the word “Liberal” in the sort of post 60s backlash which has had it at its nadir, but a quick bit of checking shows a few surprises — it is not quite that simple.