Why I Am A Progressive

Some may ask why I call myself a Progressive and not a liberal. While I do not shy away from the liberal title, I prefer Progressive for several reasons. First, conservatives have demonized the term liberal, equating it with un-American. They have not made progressive a pejorative term as they have the term liberal. Second, the meaning of liberal has changed according to time and/or place. A modern day liberal in Britain, for example, is a centrist. A liberal in 19th Century Europe was more like a modern day American conservative. The term Progressive has not really changed in meaning and has an American origin. Finally, the term progressive was affiliated with a third party and it transcends the two major parties. The earliest Progressives were Republicans and even FDR hoped someday to unite the progressives from both parties into one new entity. As a Progressive I am not beholden to either party, although I am a registered Democrat. Too many Democrats have abandoned progressive principles and I will not hesitate to criticize Democrats when they deserve it.

Now you know why I call myself a Progressive. Why do I espouse those principles? I think an easy way of explaining myself is to list policies that have been favored by Progressives and opposed by conservatives. Here is a quick and short list just off the top of my head. Anti-trust legislation, pure food and drug act, outlawing child labor, limits on hours worked (first 48 hour week, now the 40 hour week), minimum wage laws, anti-sweat shop laws, work safety legislation, clean water act, clean air act, other environmental legislation, social security, civil rights /anti-segregation laws, voting rights act, medicare, putting seatbelts and air bags in cars, auto mileage standards. In all of these cases conservatives warned of dire consequences if these bills were passed. Every time a minimum wage law is passed, for example, the right proclaims it is a job killer. Given the number of times they have proclaimed this, by now no one should be working if they were accurate. History has shown conclusively that on all of these issues and on many more, progressive policies were right and conservative policies were wrong.