Progress is in Order

This is kind of a riff on a thought I had while listening to the end of Dean's speech at the DNC winter meeting where he said "Republicans stop progress, but Democrats start progress." It got me thinking about the way those of us on the left frame ourselves and are framed by other people. The moniker that most of us have been using for quite some time now is "liberal." That's how we refer to ourselves and are referred to by other people. For example: "I'm a liberal," "I'm a proud liberal," and "He's a liberal piece of sh*t." According to dictionary.com there are a bunch of definitions, but let's stick with these two for the time being:

1. A political theory founded on the natural goodness of humans and the autonomy of the individual and favoring civil and political liberties, government by law with the consent of the governed, and protection from arbitrary authority.

2. An economic theory in favor of laissez-faire, the free market, and the gold standard.

As we can see the true definition is a little more specific than most of us are aware of today. Today we usually use the word liberal to connote socially liberal policies. I don't think I've ever heard someone refer to a government's liberal fiscal policies and mean definition 2 above. If anything if someone described a government's fiscal policy as liberal I'd assume he meant that it taxed as was necessary to spend on social programs or maybe it ran deficits in a Keynesian manner. What struck me in Dean's speech was the constant invocation of the word and frame of progress. I started wondering about how different progressivism is from liberalism. Once again, courtesy of to dictionary.com here are a couple definitions of progressive:

1. Promoting or favoring progress toward better conditions or new policies, ideas, or methods.

2. Increasing in rate as the taxable amount increases: a progressive income tax.

I can't speak for everyone out there, but at least for me once I started thinking about it I realized (and yes this is partially a result of reading Lakoff) that although the difference is not insurmountably huge, I think I identify more with the progressive label than the liberal label. For a contrast, let's take a look at our opponents on the right who style themselves as conservatives. There's only one definition worth looking at here:

1. Favoring traditional views and values; tending to oppose change.

By contrasting this definition with those above, it becomes obvious that conservativism is not necessarily at odds with liberalism (minus all the connotations we've given it) but is 180 degrees from progressivism. There are a couple of conclusions we can draw from this. First, we must recognize that our opponents in the administration are anything but conservatives. They may be social conservatives in the loosest sense when it comes to gay marriage, but otherwise they are reactionaries. Maybe a hundred years ago they'd have been conservatives, but that time has long passed. The desire to abolish any form of social support (by the state and not the church) is not a conservative value, it's a reactionary one. They're a wolf in sheep's clothes, using the word reform to disguise reactionary policies. Furthermore, the current administration isn't even fiscally conservative, they're more like liberals according to the definition above. What we can draw from this is that we now have a new opening that we can exploit. When so-called conservatives invoke the word and frame of conservative, call them out on it. They're not conservative at all, and feel free to point this out. It will push them back on the defensive and force them to restate and reinvent themselves, and we know how well reinvention on the spot (call it for what it is: opportunism) goes over with people. For even more fun, toss in the environmental connotations of conservativism and see how they respond to that. If they really were conservatives this wouldn't be a problem for them, but that brand of conservativism left the Republican party years ago during Reagan's administrations.

Second, it is time we realigned ourselves with the progressive label as opposed to the liberal label. If our opponents want to call us opportunists then just be sure to point out the question that after we've both realigned with what we really are as progressives and reactionaries, which side would you rather be on? In addition to better representing the ideas and ideals we stand for, progressivism has two additional benefits. 1. Liberalism invokes faith in good government. The cardinal sin that liberals and Democrats committed years ago, and that conservatives and Republicans are committing now, is telling people to trust the government. Fact of life here, people are usually unwilling to trust something that takes their money and tells them what to do. Progressivism has none of this baggage; it just says we want reform and better policies (which should take the form of more transparent government). It lets us communicate simply and clearly that we are for progress, and by contra-definition, our opponents are against it. 2. Using the word progressive invokes the progressive frame and the connotations inherent to it such as better public schools, more fair taxation, more affordable and available healthcare. If you want to be against those things would you also like a cigarette to smoke with your blindfold?

As Dean said, "Republicans stop progress, but Democrats start progress." If the Democratic party is the party of progress and reform then it is time we started effectively communicating that image and one of the first steps in doing so is to define ourselves for what we really are by phasing out liberal from our vocabulary and making a point of using progressive to describe ourselves. From here on out I am no longer a liberal, but a progressive. You should be too.