Whats in a name? Much more than Juliet could imagine. Failing to precisely name and define our terms we flail away taking wrong turns and making bad choices. Words and our reaction to them have immense power.
Alas among the murkiest terms in the modern lexicon are the political ones and the most devilishly deceptive term today is progressive. Who of course would be against progress? Progress must be something spiraling ever upwards and brightly onwards toward a shining future. Not favoring progress puts one on a par with the man who is asked have you stopped beating your wife" you are trapped and condemned however you answer. Everyone of course wants progress but the next question that should be raised and often isnt is progress towards what? To call yourself progressive literally means you are moving towards something and nothing more but it sounds good. You may be moving in the direction of quicksand a hornets nest or the edge of a cliff but you are progressing.
Who today calls themselves progressive? The answer is the political left. However it has not been their label of choice for very long: during most of the last sixty years or more they called themselves liberals why the switch? Obviously the word liberal derives from the word liberty and in the classic definition denotes an attachment to liberty as a first principle but todays progressives are not much interested in liberty especially as delineated by the Constitution. The main reason however they distance themselves from liberal is that it connotes the old tired shopworn ideas of the past: the beached bloated bilious carcass of the welfare state.
Progressives then in Orwellian fashion have re-christened themselves as the complete opposite of what they are. Remember that in Orwells dystopian future the Ministry of Peace made war and the Ministry of Truth spread lies. Progressives yearn for the past: they want to go back to the future. The progressive agenda includes bigger government higher taxes and spending more regulations globalism and an interventionist foreign policy: tired old retrospective ideas that have failed.
Above all progressives want to move in the direction of socialism. As an economic system socialism has failed every time it has been tried. From Russian Communism to the collapse of Venezuela where the people are eating rats pets and zoo animals in what was a formerly prosperous country with the worlds largest petroleum reserves socialism has produced economic chaos: insufficient supplies of shoddy products at prices nobody can afford. Socialism in Russia: failure and renunciation. Socialism in Eastern Europe: failure and renunciation. Socialism in China: failure. Socialism in Cuba: failure. Socialism in Venezuela: failure. Socialism in Western Europe: now failing. This of course does not count the odious human toll of death and murder perpetrated by these regimes. You did not live in a socialist peoples republic; you endured and survived if lucky; if not lucky you were standing in the way of the ineluctable law of historical progress and needed to be eliminated.
The progressive response would be that socialism simply hasnt been done right...yet…but isnt a hundred years of failure enough? When asked neither former Democrat national chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz nor Hillary Clinton could answer the question: what is the difference between a Democrat and a socialist". Well the right answer is nothing: they are both progressives who want to take us back to the thirties forties fifties sixties and seventies. Progressive by any other name liberal Democrat or socialist is not so sweet.
David W. Rash is a history professor at Everett Community College in Everett WA
