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Progressives are always right...

Thunder said:
abolitionists were Progressives. Suffragists were Progressives. Unionists were Progressives.

Folks who seek to make the human race progress, in terms of human rights, are Progressive. Folks who want to see the human race regress, are Regressive or Conservative.
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AH, but a lot of abolistionists would be considered almost reactionaries when it comes to econommics nowdays since a number of them advocated Lassaiz Faire capitalist..
And nice dodge as to wherther Communsits and other people on the extreme left are "progressive" or not.
 
fullflavormenthol said:
I wouldn't actually throw prohibition into a progressive/conservative spectrum, because the more one studies the overall movement you will find that it is comprised of both progressive and conservative forces. One of the strongest forces behind prohibition were in fact women's lib movements. Also I see an error in the assumption that all Christian or religious organizations at the time (or even today) could easily be placed under the label of conservatism.

Fact of the matter is that the Prohibitionist movement was not an exceptionally popular movement, and in fact gain their influence by being single issue and bringing as many different groups (progressive and conservative) to the table as possible by tying temperance into the issues those groups cared about.

EDIT: I see Kevin_Lowe beat me to it.
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Agreed. ALthough the Fundy Prohibitionists get a lot of publicity ,quite a few who were on the political left supported it as a way to improve society.
And some very conservative businessmen violently opposed prohibition as being an outrageous intrusion of government on individual rights.
 
BenBurch said:
Communism and Progressivism are not the same, unless you think Theodore Roosevelt was a Pinko.
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Communism was a progressive movement. Unless you're going to argue that it's conservative? Or are you going to argue instead that only ideas that work are progressive?
 
PixyMisa said:
Communism was a progressive movement. Unless you're going to argue that it's conservative? Or are you going to argue instead that only ideas that work are progressive?
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I'd go for a third option and argue that differences between the people generally referred to as progressives on one hand and Stalinists or Maoists on the other hand are greater than the similarities.

As evidence I'd point to the different societies that came about as a result of the victories of their respective ideologies.

Mind you I'm sure there were plenty of ideas touted as progressive that turned out to be really bad ideas, I suspect that the reason we find it hard to come up with any examples offhand is that we only ever hear about the successful ones.
 
I know this is the US politics section, but how do "progressives" here explain the failure of the "Swedish model"? It is now far from the socialist ideal it was once proclaimed to be.
 
Bob Blaylock said:
Communism is “progressivism” taken to its logical conclusion.
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I don't see how one could honestly see an authoritarian police state, with no freedom of speech, press, dissent, or religion, as the logical conclusion of 'Progressivism".

But I guess the key word here is "honestly".

;)
 
What about eugenics? Didn't that come out of progressivist ideals? That was a disaster


Bob Blaylock,

Communism is “progressivism” taken to its logical conclusion.
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Maybe no concept should be taken to it's most extreme conclusion. Even quite a number of good ideas when pushed to far goes from being a good concept to outright extremism


INRM
 
Bob Blaylock said:
Communism is “progressivism” taken to its logical conclusion.
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Ooh! Can I play?

Nazism is "conservatism" taken to its logical conclusion.
The FLDS cult is Mormonism taken to its logical conclusion.
Whiskey is beer taken to its logical conclusion.

This is fun!
 
NoScotsman said:
Historically speaking, aren't progressives always "right" ...in the sense that their ideas eventually bear fruit?
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What counts as bearing fruit?

Many progressives (including Margaret Sanger, Woodrow Wilson, and Theodore Roosevelt) advocated eugenics. Does that count as a borne fruit?

The past simply isn't worth conserving (this has been particularly true with social causes, civil rights, economic models etc.).

Thoughts?
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Nonsense. The world is always changing, and if you only look at what changes, then it looks like everything does. But of course, that's simply not true. Much also remains the same. Much of what is conserved is simply taken for granted.

Progressives can be proud that they stood on the right side of many social changes for the better. But the greatest horrors of the 20th century were not due to any perpetuation of unjust social orders (though that happened too), but rather to overthrowing social orders. Nazism, fascism, communism, all these ideologies were only capable of their vast evils because they removed the traditional constraints on social behavior. You may object that these are not progressive ideologies, but that's actually irrelevant to my point, which is that progressives would do well to have a little humility in their ambition for social change. When you remove the "conservative" ideas, what fills the void may not be the ideas you wanted, and the ideas you wanted may not produce the effects you expected.
 
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