Why do american regressives call themselfs "progressives"?
Using the state to advance your ideas, which is what the modern day "progressive" movement believes in, is not a new idea at all. It is regressive: dating back thousands of years to the very first statists, such as the kings, emporors and other dictators of Egypt and Mesopotamia. So why do they call themselfs progressive? Statism is regressive.
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The only thing "new" in the last 5000 years was private property and individual rights.
These 2 simply ideas have brought about the more prosperity & freedom for more people than any other idea in history.
Liberals want to bring us back under total gov control for every aspect of our lives ....been there done that many times before in history .....won't work libs.
"Using the state to advance your ideas"
Such as proposing a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage or for congress to interfere with the private medical decisions made by a husband regarding his comatose wife in Florida? Neither of those was initiated by 'progressives'. So if you are using the word 'progressive' to differentiate between the left and the right you should know that you are doing so based on a flawed assumption, that being that there is a difference. Both parties use government to advance their own agenda.
I don't know why people call themselves progressives. I call myself an independent The ideas of the progressive movement of the early 1900s are nothing new today, those ideas have mostly either failed or been co-opted by conservatives, or both. Other people call me a progressive because I want to try new things that might work instead of being so afraid of change that I just stick with old things we already know don't work.
Conservatives are in fact regressive, and the only reason the left wing is using the term progressive is because it meshes nicely with conservative and does not have the connotations that liberal does. As you point out, progressives are not necessarily liberal or permissive. They like control. As do conservatives. It is just that the aim of that control is to create a society with more equality for progressives and to conserve or retain our traditionally steeply hierarchical power structure for conservatives.
Stop it! I'm still trying to figure out why they call the electric car "new technology"; I saw an early model in a museum and it had the same rudimentary design: batteries hooked up to a charging station. The limitations the car had as explained by the museum sign was the number of batteries it had to carry, the recharge rate took too long between charges, and limited driving range. The only difference between then and now is that 'then' the taxpayer did not fund the project!
It's been done thousands of times over the course of history around the world, and only made its debut in the States with the introduction of women in the political arena.
I guess they think it sounds better. But I think everyone but them knows that everyone else knows that it is just another word for "Marxist" and/or "Socialist."
But I guess they feel the need to deceive as a matter of principle.
The Communists have always called themselves progressive so the ignorant and stupid masses will follow and vote for them.
They think that they are moving the country in the right direction, when it is obvious from the economy that they are not. They have no real solutions to anything, so they let the government take over every aspect of our lives.
Somehow, that is considered "progress".
"Liberal" is a noun, meaning a person who is open-minded and tolerant.
This, however, is a historical term that no longer applies to the liberals of our current day. They just have no other name to come up with, so they are using the current one.