like the right has. They want less government and lower taxes they say and the country will get it come hell or high water.

I am progressive and liberal and I may not agree with everything on your list.

We have no litmus test.

Some people on the left want an ideology too only opposite of the right.

the exact opposite of the right?

to define liberal and progressive.

The right can tell you what a conservative is and can tell you with their list of conservative ideas who is conservative and who isn't.

I don't think that is a good thing for us to do.

We just have a lot of Dems who are not liberal or left leaning anymore in the slightest, but may only be a little less than right wingers.

I see myself as a Democrat. I vote Democratic, it is an easy decision for me.

The TP has managed to fracture the GOP, they went crazy and now crazy rule them.

are cowards who knuckled under to the right wing, and let them take stigmatize the word liberal.

I call myself a progressive AND a liberal, I haven't been knuckled over by the right wing, I am not ashamed of the word, I call myself a progressive because of my beliefs, I couldn't care less what the right thinks.

Last edited Mon Dec 21, 2015, 08:09 PM - Edit history (1)

or vice versa.

Every liberal/progressive may have a different emphasis at one time or another, but everyone here believes in the importance of both.

As to the terms seems like a lot of people self-identify as liberal and progressive.

My gut-feeling was that the term progressive initially was revived because the Republicans and MSM had successful turned "liberal" into a bad word.

I do love the term because of the connection to Teddy Roosevelt.

Anyway, seems like the term liberal has been reclaimed which is terrific!

So to me the terms are synonymous.

Sorry if I am babbling, long day of Xmas!

I always viewed the two terms as describing two things. Progressive- One who seeks out an economy that works for all people. Liberal- One who supports equality for all. I would definitely classify myself as both either way.

I believe that there isn't much daylight between Dems who self identify with either or both terms. Especially on DU. Some have read Marx and some haven't, so they may have different ways they frame it. But they all want more economic parity.

On the otherhand there are moderate Republicans in my immediate neighborhood I could characterize that way. And I ran into some other ones like that when I knocked doors in 2012. Increasingly they are finding themselves voting for Democrats because of the extreme positions 'mainstream' Republicans politicians are taking on social justice.

so you are more pure than the "liberals?" You still have to work with them to get anywhere.

I think you are reading too much into whatever differences you may think exist.

I and many people I know prefer the term Progressive-Liberal Democrat. Progressive as in economic progressivism, and liberal as in social equality.

there economic progressives and social progressives in addition to economic liberals and social liberals. I think there are too many things confusing what is going on. As members of the democratic party we believe in both economic and social equality. Though it may not all be there it is happening.

I think there used to be a bigger difference between Progressive thought and Classic Liberalism. Progressives used to be more concerned about seeking the best solutions to societal or governing problems. Conservative or Liberal ideological labels did not really mean anything. More important was a political disposition towards constant improvements with no set endpoint considered an optimum state of affairs.

But since the 80's or thereabouts many Liberals have taken the Progressive name because of the perceived negative connotations of the word Liberal.

I am unhappy about it because I always considered myself a Progressive in the original sense of the philosophy.

My opinion. Others may differ.

They seem particular to you. Unless everyone, or at the very least a significant majority, agree that your descriptions are what those words actually mean, the distinction becomes meaningless.

just because "progressive" started being used when liberal became a dirty word. That just made me more determined to call myself a liberal.

Liberalism started in the 1700's and the Progressive movement in the late 1800's neither is recognizable in their current iterations.

John Stuart Mill formalized Liberalism into a form similar to what we use today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stuart_Mill

Progressivism was a philosophy but most people who use the term are probably referencing the Progressive era in the US.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_Era

That's more of a political movement than a particular ideology.

The progressive era died in the trenches of WWI.

Liberalism had a major change with the New Deal that wedded liberalism with vigorous government action. That form of liberalism fell out of power with the Kennedy administration who believed in "pragmatism" as a working philosophy. The last bit of big government New Deal liberalism met its end during the Carter administration with the cancellation of big water projects.

A more modern form of liberalism grew out of the 50s and 60s with the Civil Rights and ecology movements. Later in the late 60s and early seventies the labor movement and modern liberals became estranged over the Vietnam war.

And of course Reagan changed everything, or should I say the media sold out completely in the 1980s.

The word liberalism has been under attack since the 20s that ramped up in the 1950s and by the time Reagan was in office it was a living breathing strawman, that many people avoided just as many now avoid the word feminism. Very few people on the left were prepared to offer a defense of liberalism as a concept, ideology, let alone a philosophy. And the media by that time was deep in bed with the Reagan administration.

Then starting during the Clinton administration people started calling themselves progressives, possibly as a means to differentiate themselves from the 60's liberals, or more likely to dodge the label of liberal.

At this time neither word has a formal philosophical framework at this point and both words can be and are used interchangeably.

In the 90s Steve Kangas and others tried a defense of liberalism, but it was a bit too late because of the number of people opting for the progressive title.
http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/tenets.htm Worth a read even if it is 20 years old.