Liberal or progressive?

What’s in a Name?

Words are ambiguous and ambivalent. That’s their nature as symbols and as figures of speech for thoughts which are essentially analogies. The same word often has many different meanings that become clearer when we consider the word in context and from the point of view of the speaker or many of them. This is why we often disparage semantic discussions as “splitting hairs.” 

A recent article in the WP by Greg Weiner, a professor of political science who distinguishes “liberals” from “progressives,” seems to be splitting hairs.  Yet I find that the discussion may be illustrative to clarify one’s position in or towards politics. It may even get us to avoid using names for people as though that the name says it all when we really don’t know what we are talking about. 

The professor wants to support liberals over progressives. I am just the contrary.  But if we were to discuss it, we might find that we have different usages for those words based on different life experiences and conversations.  

The same I suggest is true for many of the names we call each other that often abstract us from a conversation about who we are, what we want, and how we might work together. To me, for instance, “radical” is a good word, better than progressive, except when it means extreme, e.g. “going too far” or sacrificing persons for principles. “Conservative” to me is a good word meaning learning from the past, conservation of nature, and defending institutions of personal and social growth (like democracy). But not when it means refusal to listen, to question, or to change. Not when it means using status or class, culture and economics, to judge and segregate persons. And not when it means reactionary intolerance.

That points to another strange thing about names. They reveal and conceal at the same time. When we call persons or things names we put them into categories that make them similar without attending to difference and uniqueness. That’s why we need to keep speaking without pretending that we know or have the truth, with faith that we can converge upon knowing and truth in our speaking, listening, and acting together. And that's what I call real politics.

Professor Weiner teaches that progressives are liberals who have gone too far. He accuses them of adhering to the ideology of progressivism that states that everything, persons, the world, the universe, history itself is and will inevitably advance. I am reminded of the slogan of the Detroit Edison Company when I was a boy after World War II: “Every day in every way we get better and better.”

“Liberal” in a social context in America today means someone who wants to help others and especially those who have been left out of the development of the potentials of their full humanity.  They are called enablers or “do-gooders” by self-labeled conservatives. I remember my mentor Saul Alinsky disdaining liberals as good talkers for social justice without doing anything substantive about it. They saved people from drowning in the river without going upstream to stop who or what was throwing them in. And they left people powerless to take responsibility for themselves.

“Liberal” in an economic context means a completely free market. A market where goods are made, priced, sold, and consumed without any interference—especially by government dominated by “liberals.” They argue for free and open competition through which the invisible hand will do its magic neglecting that the wealthiest through wit, luck, or inheritance dominate the market and its rules. 

Social and economic liberalism came together in the two major American parties where there was a firm commitment to representative democracy and moderately regulated capitalism under FDR and carried forward through Nixon. But that alliance has been breaking down since Reagan who opted for unrestricting corporations and restricting welfare. In general, especially after Nixon’s Southern strategy, Democrats became the party of social liberals focusing on inclusion of those being “left out” because of their identity (racial, cultural, sexual, immigrant) and wealth. Republicans have been the party of economic liberals claiming that all persons will prosper when wealth multiplies wealth even if there is greater divergence in wealth. 

I rather call myself progressive, than liberal, because of my work with Alinskyites and also because conservatives, which I am when it comes to democratic institutions and civil society, have so tainted the word—remember GHW Bush’s sarcasm towards the “L-word.” And there is the Tea Party and their demonization of liberals.

To be a progressive is to cut across the conservative-liberal, left-right split. While progressives espouse liberal education which embraces science, free-thinking, art, and the questioning of all belief systems, they also believe that through an examined life and concerted action they can make the world and humanity better. And they take on the responsibility to do just that.

Progressives today (unlike some ideological progressives earlier) do not believe in inevitability. I cringe when I hear people say "being on the right side of history.”  Only old predestination Calvinists, Marx-misunderstanding communists, deterministic faux scientists, apocalyptic evangelicals, free market ideologues, and maybe some depressed Taoists keep the remnants of that disempowering rhetoric. Not today's progressives. 

Naming, shaming, and blaming in Twitter sized blasts is the opposite of civility, makes public service a scam, and impedes citizen action. That is the antitheses of citizenship and civil society. It induces the fear and hate of the other through which violence springs. Whatever you call yourself or label me, may I, by listening to your story, discover your visions, dreams, and ideals and with you find and expand the hidden power in us? 

We have a future together. Not alone. Not in enmity. That's the belief of a progressive person or nation. Yes, we must rid ourselves of the obstacles that hold us back--that's the meaning of liberty.
But we must also engage with each other to create a space for all of us--that's the meaning of freedom.