Could this be the difference between liberal and progressive? A subtle but distinct difference?

[mmonk]

I've been trying to figure it out recently, especially as I see people gather in the Clinton camp who call themselves liberal vs the Bernie camp who consider themselves liberal but are progressive and populist as well. What is justice? How do you define it? This is from the movie "Gettysburg". Take care and have a good evening.

[Jamaal510]

1. A key difference between liberals

and progressives is that a progressive is someone who not only supports leftist policies, but also works to move towards them, even if it's just little by little and even if it's just something like voting in every election or (in regards to lawmakers) agreeing on compromised parts of a bill. That's where the "progress" in "progressive" comes in. That's why I consider myself a progressive instead of a liberal. I follow politics daily, and have participated in every election since 2008 when I could first vote.
P.S. The guy in the video reminded me of the gatekeeper from the one Monty Python sketch.

[mmonk]

3. Interesting. Monty Python never entered my thought process.

And I'm big on them.

[cprise]

20. What a liberal is *not* ... Radical

Progressives are open to viewing some of the problems in our society as springing from a systemic or 'root' cause, and usually advocate radical changes to the system (or moving to a new system) for the betterment of society.

Liberals are reformists who are committed to protecting the (Anglo-Saxon) capitalist system; Fundamental change on questions of economic class and property are out of the question for them.

For some perspective, one could describe the UK New Labour party as essentially liberal, having turned away from old Labour's progressive emphasis on worker rights and more economic equality.

[HassleCat]

2. Here's my take

Liberals believe the system is essentially good, but is tilted in favor of certain people, and against others. They propose to use the power of government to mitigate the results of the unfairness by such means as welfare, jobs programs, etc. Liberals feel it's not possible to change the system, so we have to relieve the suffering brought about when the system screws people. We should concentrate on programs and policies that allow individuals to improve their situations through education, career development, and so on.

Progressives believe it is necessary to change the system. They are wiling to use the power of government to directly challenge the ability of corporations to screw people. Progressives want stronger anti-trust laws and banking regulations. Welfare, safety nets, jobs programs, etc. are merely stop-gap measures. The real deal is getting significant control away from the elite and distributing it to the masses, particularly working class and middle class people.

In other words, progressives lean significantly more toward socialism, and the communist idea that the government should establish a "dictatorship of the proletariat."

[mmonk]

4. I would agree with your assessment except parts of your last sentence.

Overall though, two thumbs up.

[jtuck004]

7. That sounds a bit like a 2015 liberal's take on progressives - after 1935 or so.

Now it's just 50 shades of liberal, despite most protestations. They killed off most of the real progressives, and what you have are people who compromised and collaborated themselves into survival. There are a few who live the ideal, but the rest of the country has sold their birthright, so they have no real power.

One who cares might look up the letters of complaint sent by communist agents to enlist people from the IWW, letters back to the homeland about how they could not work with these Wobblies. And the IWW didn't want what they offered.

Business Unions, the government, and business conspired to associate the anti-war sentiment among the progressives to begin to paint them with the earliest "Red Scare", but in truth many didn't think the communists had anything much to offer.

Go look up Big Bill Haywood's Autobiography, Mother Jones, the organizers from the UE that wrote "Them and Us" - it's all there, in their own words.

So, no, not really socialists or communists. The answer is in their words.

They wrote that you own your labor, and need to quit giving it away. You can stop doing that by, among other ways, learning how to hang on to it by standing with your neighbor against the bastards that are trying to steal it from you.

They have no intention of taking away anything from anyone - they want you to stop giving it away. I know, the thieves have had a couple hundred years to accumulate their ill-gotten gains. Makes no difference. We were robbed.

The industrialist never had anything you, or someone else, didn't give them, most often coerced. They didn't have a right to it then, and don't now.

The Progressives lost when they had the spirit to fight murdered, stomped, and jailed out of them in a collaboration between government, capitalists, and business unions, specifically the AFL, because they thought to control their own lives and world.

They were looking for those answers and who to be when they were, mostly, annihilated by the greatest enemy they ever faced, the American people, purchased by capitalism to destroy them. They even say who they were hadn't really been determined in their own writing.

That was an era when business owners hired an assassin to murder the ex-gov of idaho, progressive, and blame it on IWW workers. Today people think they have it bad when people throw McDonalds applications on them.

Two different worlds.

Good luck trying to define Progressives. I don't think most people can conceptualize what one might be today. We are too comfortable.

[olddots]

5. I am a liberal

N.T.

[mmonk]

6. And I progressive.

I believe my days are short in the Democratic Party that believes it can fashion a society out of corporate rule.

[KoKo]

8. Thanks for the Post, Film Clip and the Replies...

Last edited Fri Sep 4, 2015, 08:27 PM - Edit history (1)

N.C.......ahhhhh.....

Can we Take It Back? We had our chance......

We work harder..

Anyway...Thanks.

And, NO my CANDLE doesn't mean I'm a "silly" person. I truly don't know what else to do except to have HOPE.

[mmonk]

9. .

[Dorn]

10. I am a liberal

While I want our society to progress -- I am a liberal. Remember when Ron Reagan started talking about the "L" word as if it were something vulgar? People tried to find another word that meant they cared for one another, that they thought that being in a union was not a bad thing, that they should show concern and give help to the weak and the sick. And the poor. It also means I don't want to kill people on the other side of the globe and then "support our troops". It means we all live on the same planet as we are all very similar within our skin; it means that if you harm one of us you harm all of us; it means I care for you. So if some are too young or too ignorant to know what liberal means I will tell them.

[KoKo]

11. ...!

[RoccoR5955]

15. That's the way that I see it.

I certainly remember when Raygun made Liberal a bad word. The younger folks think that there is a difference. If there is a difference, today's "Progressive" is less liberal than yesterday's "Liberal," as far as I'm concerned. Progressives seem less willing to fight for what they want, as they believe that fighting seems to be angry, and nobody likes an angry person. I even remember JFK's speech where he defined a liberal.
Here's a little bit of it:

What do our opponents mean when they apply to us the label "Liberal?" If by "Liberal" they mean, as they want people to believe, someone who is soft in his policies abroad, who is against local government, and who is unconcerned with the taxpayer's dollar, then the record of this party and its members demonstrate that we are not that kind of "Liberal." But if by a "Liberal" they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people -- their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties -- someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a "Liberal," then I'm proud to say I'm a "Liberal."

Kennedy went into more detail, so here's a link to the whole thing.

I disagree with some of that stuff. I do not believe that we should support the military industrial complex any more than we do with our taxes, and that is even too much.

I guess that I am more of a some kind of socialist, because I believe that the current economic model is a failure, and we would all be better served if businesses were run as cooperative, employee run enterprises.

I really think that the current crop of "progressives" are not as liberal as they should be, but that's me.

[Eko]

12. I'm a humanist.

And that makes me a liberal, a progressive and a democrat. This post reminds me of my freshman philosophy class, mostly coming up with a non existent problem just to have a discussion.

[-none]

13. That's pretty much what I was thinking.

Liberal and Progressive have about the same distinction as the 3rd way and Republican do.

[cpwm17]

14. Liberals started calling themselves progressive after the right-wing made liberal a dirty word.

So progressives don't have the courage to call themselves liberal.

[RoccoR5955]

16. Bingo! n/t

[navarth]

17. that's how I remember it.

but I don't give a fuck what they call me. 99.99% of the time Bernie speaks for me. And Thom Hartmann and Mike Malloy too.

[Skittles]

18. liberals care about people other than themselves

that's really all it is

progressive is just the word people use because they're afraid to say they are liberal

[lobodons]

19. Hillary can take majority away from Roberts

Bernie not so much.

As much as I like Bernie, the GOP will skin him alive with Socialism, Socialism, Socialism.

Hillary or even Biden/Warren is the Dems best hope at getting a Majority on SCOTUS for the next generation.

Bernie can do his job at exciting the base and GOTV in down ballot races. That would be HUUUUUUUGe for the Democratic Party!!