Why Do Liberals Call Themselves “Progressive?”
One of the major reasons that I wrote my book ??Conservative Comebacks to Liberal Lies? is that I was sick and tired of hearing liberals refer to themselves as ??progressive.? The more I thought about their stated positions and their actual track record of success (or lack thereof), I realized that the term ??progressive? is actually a misnomer.
So I don??t get it. How is it that the political and educational elite left still refers to themselves as ??progressive?? The word ??progressive? is actually defined in my McMillian??s Modern Dictionary as, ??proceeding forward or onward; advancing; making progress or improvement; favoring or advocating liberal or advanced ideas.? But if one evaluates liberal ??progressive? ideas, proposals, and institutions, it becomes abundantly clear that their ??advanced ideas? have all been unmitigated disasters for America.
A short list of these ??progressive? brain children include: The ERA, The Great Society, public housing, The New Deal, Carter??s price controls, The ABM Treaty, The windfall profits/luxury taxes, the estate tax, the Wall Mart tax, the living wage, National Health Care (Hillary Care), government run schools, sex ed, national daycare, bilingual ed, motor voter, social security, abortion on demand, same sex marriage, embryonic stem cell research, human induced global cooling in the 70s and now ??human induced global warming.?
And yet, the modern day liberal Democrats continue to refer to themselves as ??progressives.? The ??progressive? Democrats are now proposing in their ??first 100 hours? a minimum wage increase among other ??progressive? new spending bills which they like to euphemistically refer to as ??investments.? Even though almost every economist who ever lived has said that raising the minimum wage leads to higher unemployment especially among low skilled minorities, those smarty-pants ??progressives? are going to propose it anyhow regardless of whether it ends up hurting the very same poor constituencies they purport to represent.
My question is, why should any American with a least half a brain (for Senator Kerry this would included any of our military in Iraq) support any Democratic ??progressive? economic proposal when they have been incorrect in every prediction they have ever made about supply side tax cuts since JFK?
Take for example some recently released economic statistics as reported in today??s Wall St. Journal:
??Job growth in December exceeded expectations at 167,000 and the jobless rate held at a very low 4.5%, despite a slowdown in manufacturing and construction.? (The very opposite of what the ??progressives? predicted when they howled about the ??jobless recovery.?)
??Since the Bush tax cuts on dividends and capital gains passed in mid-2003, the economy has created 7.2 million new jobs according to the survey of business establishments, and an additional 1.2 million in the more variable household survey.? (The very opposite of what the ??progressives? predicted.)
??Federal receipts rose by 14.6% in fiscal 2005, another 11.8% in 2006, and kept rising by 9% in this year’s first two months despite slower GDP growth.? (The very opposite of what the ??progressives? predicted.)
??The budget deficit?fell by $165 billion in two years, and including state surpluses is now down to about 1% of GDP, which as an economic matter is negligible. Tax revenues as a share of the economy are also back above 18.5%, which is their modern historical norm.? (The very opposite of what the ??progressives? predicted.)
And now, Pelosi, Kennedy, Kerry, Clinton, and the rest of the ??progressives? will conveniently ignore this ??inconvenient truth? (to borrow a phrase from that other enlightened ??progressive? Algore) and will continue to play the class warfare card by talking about ??two Americas,? ??excessive CEO pay,? the ??evils of Wall Mart,? etc?with the hopes that Americans never figure out that their ??progressive? ideas represent anything but real progress.
January 6th, 2007 at 4:33 pm
Here is a quirky video about global warming I thought you might find interesting:
http://peoplegeek.wordpress.com/2007/01/06/global-warming-a-clear-and-present-danger/
January 7th, 2007 at 3:05 pm
Great post. “Progressive” is one of the most absurd political euphemisms in American history, and should be exposed as often as possible.
January 8th, 2007 at 7:58 am
Ditto “Conservative”
January 11th, 2007 at 12:54 am
I read your book, btw. It’s a great read, and really nails home how wrong the liberals almost always are.
It’s a shame that the press will never tell us that.
January 11th, 2007 at 2:00 pm
wHAT IS A PROGRESSIVE? Just before the election of 2000 got started..the Progressive Caucus in the US Congress was Called the Socialist Caucus..the same folks..Kucinic, Waters, Pelosi, etc were active members..approvimately 95 congressional members were involved and listed. The causes they pushed were the usual Socialist Agenda and noted on the Congressional Site was the travel and speaking engagements of Top Members..Both Kucinic and Pelosi were Key Note Speakers at CPUSA Conventions in San Francisco..and many other members spoke at these events as well. In 1998 they “changed” the name to the “progressive” Caucus so as not to give away their hopes for success and for defeating Republicans. I was working in San Francisco for a few weeks in the late 90’s and as I walked the street I was handed a pamphlet from a CPUSA person touting the BIG event..Pelosi and Kucinic were Keynoting.. In Europe and many Socialist Countries we often hear the term Progressive or Socialist Democrat parties. The names are interchangeable and since I have family in France and other countries..I am well aware of the Communist ideology…oops, Socialist Ideas for Progress. Progress for them is One World..we can “claim” Bush and Neo Cons want this, however, that is the exact opposite of the facts…The Socialist Democrats had a Convention in Ireland not too long ago..Hillary was a Keynoter for that one..and their own website brags about taking over the Governments of the world! One such event several years ago ended up with Hillary Clinton kissing Mrs. Arafat and the press failed to name the actual name of the “meeting” at which that occurred! Here in Massachusetts we are seeing OUR leaders such as Delahunt and McGovern lauding Chavez..who is now Nationalizing Private business in his country. During the past few years he took the property of Citizens who had farms and business and gave it to his “followers”…now he is taking over business and intends, as he says, to create a country like CUBA… So Hugo and the others are “progressives” and want to make America into a Not So Thriving Economic “weakling” and have a 10% unemployment rate. They want us to cut out using OIL, but that does not happen overnight..and many of those who progressives consider “Rich” are unable to afford either the commuter fares or the price of “Hybrid” vehicles…but once the rich start paying 99% of the taxes…perhaps they can get us minimum wage jobs nearer home ..can’t wait for that!
Of course, when folks can’t heat their homes and Hugo decides NOT to send “cheap Oil”..we will all be to weak and weary to BOTHER to fight back! I guess American Progressives truly think the Iraqi Progressives will let them stay in power..I cannot wait to see that come true…It didn’t work when Hitler signed a pact with Stalin and it won’t work with Osama either..but I cannot wait to see Dennis Kucinic, Durbin and Reed in their Head Gear and Nancy and Hil in their Buka’s…Will the Mullahs …progressives..allow them to show themselves in public, at least the women?
What a vision, but some rewards will be found..Abortion will be outlawed unless they want us to become extinct..then it will be forced ..gay marriage will be absolutely forbidden in any form or under any name..in fact, those are people who are murdered in Progressive Baathist Islamic countries..I guess too, Nancy and I will be BACK IN THE KITCHEN..NO MATTER HOW FAR WE WENT..For me, I am going to enjoy it..for her it may be harder, doubt she “cooks” much lately..it will take some time…or will she be punished for lack of womenly skills???
January 12th, 2007 at 2:49 pm
Labels are like statistics, which Mark Twain said are like ladies of the evening: once you get them down you can pretty much get them to do whatever you want.
Given that the Iraq War is the biggest military blunder in more than 2,000 years and the blame sits squarely with the right-wing Republican administration now occupying the White House, I??m not surprised that you??re resorting to the old ??label shtick? for material.
Don??t take my word on the historic scope of the military blunder, by the way. That comes from Martin van Creveld, a professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and one of the world??s foremost military historians.
According to The Guardian (UK), Creveld wrote an article in the American Jewish weekly, Forward, in 2005 in which he called for President Bush to be impeached and put on trial “for misleading the American people, and launching the most foolish war since Emperor Augustus in 9 BC sent his legions into Germany and lost them”.
Professor van Creveld has also drawn parallels between Iraq and Vietnam, and pointed out that almost all countries that have tried to fight similar wars during the last 60 years or so have ended up losing. Why President Bush “nevertheless decided to go to war escapes me and will no doubt preoccupy historians to come,” he told one interviewer.
Hey, I have an idea. What about having van Creveld on your show?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1653454,00.html
March 15th, 2007 at 7:33 am
So, lets see your examples of the Republican “Progressive” thinking are:
1. Cutting taxes creates jobs
2. Cutting taxes cuts budget deficit.
Lets look at the first fact:
You give an example of 7.5 million jobs created during George W. administration. WOW! In addition you attack Democrats for complaining about “Jobless recovery”. To that I would reply that if you check your facts you would realize that most of the jobs were created in the past few years, and not much in the initial 2-3 years after the cut was introduced.
Now lets put 7.5 million in perspective. I beleive that this is just a normal number of jobs, economy just recovering from all the shocks that were introduced in the first couple of years of George W presidency (one of them not caused by him obviously).
Why do I think that? Lets look at the previous president. He introduced a largest tax increase in the history of this country. How many jobs did his administration create after that? 22 million, 3 times the number of jobs George W created, and more jobs than your favorite actor’s administration and George senior administration combined. So by following the same logic (of omitting the important related facts) I could conclude that raising taxes actually creates jobs. I am not going to be that superficial. After all I am a progressive and I am open to all ideas and using a common sense logic to decide for myself to what is right.
By the way, lets go to the second fact, the one about the budget deficit. Again you are omiting facts here. First two years after the introduction of the tax cut were the largest budget deficits in history. Also I beleive that some of the “creative accounting” by the current administration does not include the Iraq spending into the budget deficit, which would more than double it. I guess Iraq is another “progressive” idea of this administration. But lets get back to the point. With deficit doubled, then these tax cuts do not look so appealing. And what about the previous (Clinton’s) administration that introduced largest tax increase: There was no budget deficit after that, we actually had surplus.
So what happened with these republican progressive ideas. Maybe you are not progressive for one fact: you are not trying to take all ideas into account, but are narrow minded greedy folks that are trying to sell their vision of the world. And just to prove how un-progressive you are, lets see how long it takes you to censor this post.