Part 1, what the hell is “Progressive-ism” thing any way?”

When I ask you what is means to be a Progressive, its a safe bet you have a good idea of what it is.

Liberals have a utopian vision of the future. It may be a literal future that Liberals may think we are distend for, or metaphorical utopia, one that man will forever be striving for. Regardless, Liberals take that vision and asks this very basic question, what sort of changes can we make to take us closer to that utopian future?

Of course Conservatives disagree. They say that we have already had a utopian society in the past. It was those damned changes insisted by Liberals that destroyed it. So they ask this basic question, what changes can we undo to return to the utopian societies of the past.

This is where the Libertarian horns in, saying that both Liberals and Conservatives are wrong. There is no such thing as a utopian society because one man’s paradise is always another man’s purgatory. They argue that “paradise” is a profoundly personal idea. So they ask this question, what changes can we make to maximize every one’s freedom and liberty so they can achieve their own personal utopia.

The Progressive however don’t bothers with such metaphysical concepts as utopian societies; future, past, or persona, these are essentially undefinable concepts. So Progressives take the world as it is and as this basic question. What sort of changes can we make that solve today’s problems.

What? You mean to tell me that is not your idea of Progressive-ism? Well obviously your notion of Progressive-ism is completely wrong… bla bla bla… my view is better… bla bla bla… let’s just agree to disagree. This is the point where the conversation usually falls apart to shouting and overall hard feelings.

Actually, it would be something if we ever got to that conversation. Usually when a new organization or caucus is formed, the assembly usually falls apart just trying to figure out what the rules should be – to figure out what the rules should be. Thus never getting around to deciding what “Progressive-ism” actually means.

You may or may not like my definition. Regardless, there are two very important points to keep in mind. First, as well reasoned (or not) that it may be, nearly every self described Progressive out there will have their own definition. So at best all I have done is tossed yet another definition that every one else now needs to sift through. Second, its not actually a complete definition. It’s a perspective that one could use to build a definition, but until one actually digs into the issues a Progressive sees as a problem that needs fixed, and how they intend to fix them, my definition is little more than a word salad. For it to be a definition, it has to be clear and specific.

The whole point of defining something is that so every one understands what that something is. Until that happens, a meaningful conversation about it is fundamentally impossible. This is literally high-school level philosophy where the first step of any debate is to rigorously outline and define the terms to be used. So until every one can agree on a common definition for Progressive-ism, than it as an ideology literally dose not exist, and we might as well be hairless apes yapping and yammering on about what ever hairless great apes get exited about. Which now that I think about it…

This first point is rather hard to overstress. Without a clear and common definition of what Liberalism and Progressive-ism is, it’s literately game over, there is no where to start from, and no where to go from here.

To make maters worse. This seems to be by design. Democrats seem to have a profound aversion to even the concept of defining Liberalism or Progressive-ism. They may talk about the importance of diversity, or argue that a common definition some how leads to authoritarianism. This is usually when I start banging my head on the desk. Of course when a parasitic ideology moves in, such as Neoliberalsim moves in, the very first thing it dose is it destroys definitions, deliberately making it harder to address and discuss issues that were previously resolved.

Even terms such as “left-center-right” are by intention nebulous terms that admit up-front that there are no usable definitions here. They may as well mean “us-surrender-them”

Let me give you an example. Consider “education reform.” “Education” usually means our K through 12, public school system, and “reform” usually means to repair or make better, so it usually means to repair our dysfunctional public school system.

However, when most candidates say they are for “school reform”, what they are truly proposing or supporting involve school consolidation, charter schools, school vouchers, breaking up the teachers unions, letting Creationist write the science and history textbooks, and so called “high stakes testing” where the schools with more issues are systematical defuned. These “reforms” actually make education worse if not the original cause of many of the issues parents and students are facing today.

So to find out what a candidate really believes, you need to dig deeper, requiring information that most voters do not have access too. But even dismantling a candidates real position is not much help.

So, what’s the alternative. Really, this is a real question, what’s the alternative to “education reform?” There are proposal out there, I have seen them. But if the average voter doesn’t have access to these plans, they may as well not exist. And if they don’t exist, then how can voters put pressure on candidates to support policy’s that actually address the issues found in education?

And to make mater worse, just simply having alternatives out there is not enough. You have to build a popular consensuses behind a specific set of ideas to gain any traction. This is where a shared ideology comes in. An ideology is a necessary starting point for generating and vetting ideas. For education reform, an ideology helps to paint a common picture of what public education should look like and the things it needs to be able to accomplish. This helps to suggest common reforms that members of the ideology can get behind.

This must be the first function of a political party. To help foster one or more common political ideologies that its members can subscribe to, and in turn use to define there relationship with the political party itself. The political party must provide the space and frequencies over which the people can build and discus these common ideologies and harness it to solve real problems. Without it, the people literally have nothing to work with.

The Photo was taken by Rob Speed

https://www.flickr.com/photos/rspeed/3737705985