"Progressives" Win Big In Dem Primaries

sorry, occupational hazzard. I'm a professional historian so my favorite phrase is "well, yes, but it's not that simple..." :o

You mean there's two of us? :eek:

Out! Both of you! Go on, git!

This, if you haven't noticed, is the USA Politics sub-forum. It's my shouted opinion versus your shouted opinion. Don't be clutterin' up the place with none of yer fancy-dancy new-ahnces! Got no room for that kinda egghead nonsense. Now go back out and come in again with a blinkered opinion.

(The nerve of some people!)
 
The "progressive movement" was actually a range of movements, many of which disagreed with each other. They won support from every part of the political spectrum, depending on the issue. Factors such as religion, region, ethnicity, class, education, sex, etc. etc would affect what reforms, if any, an individual supported. It was a rare individual indeed who opposed every reform proposed between 1890-1920.

Prohibition initially won support from multiple groups, both conservative and liberal. It had majority support in both major parties. Drys on the left tended to see alcohol as a way big businesses could keep workers in poverty and dependent upon their jobs--"The Whiskey or Beer Trust." Conservatives often saw alcohol as a moral issue. Baptists and Methodists, regardless of their politics, saw alcohol as sinful. etc.

Opposition came from all over the political spectrum as well. Liberal "wets" saw prohibition as discriminating against workers, who tended to drink beer, which could not be stored for long periods of time, in contrast to the wealthy, who could store a lifetime of whiskey and bourbon. Samuel Gompers opposed it for that reason. Conservative wets saw prohibition as an over-reaching government regulation on private property. Both left and right saw it as a violation of personal liberty.

You can not lay the blame for prohibition on any one political group. It had support, and opposition, from every part of the political spectrum. It was a progressive reform, but not every progressive reform was liberal. Just because in the early 21st century "progressive" means left-wing does not mean that you can label political causes from 100 years ago using the same definition. Any cause that wins the support of JD Rockefeller AND William Jennings Bryan can not be pigeon-holed into one political ideology.

Hence my use of the term "in modern lingo". It is presently used for a hate-word much like "liberal" was used in the 2000's, and "leftist" a few years later. Its current use is scare-language much like "commie" was in the 1950's, and it's uttered by the same people who so distorted society in the 1950's as to cause the 1960's.

By the way, your attempt to be rational is applauded here.
 
Someone has posted in the coments that if they allowed this to be covered under Obamacare then the GOP would implode.
 
Junior high school social studies reminder, the spectrum goes like this:

Radical < Liberal < Progressive < (Center) > Moderate > Conservative > Reactionary

The OP speaks of the closest-to-right left side as if they were the farthest-from-right. I can't imagine the reaction should such a thing as an actual radical emerge.

Source/reference?

This still seems right-shift biased and a little confused, as liberals are more akin to conservatives than to progressives, and moderates are typically either centrists or centrist leaning people from either the progressive or conservative side of considerations.
 
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This entire discussion is a demonstration of just how futile it is to reduce the full range of political views on everything to a point on a line.

Useful for one dimensional thinking though.
 
Additionally, progressivism was itself of Republican origins.

Well, in a way, but let's not go all Coulter Critter (we're your best friend, brothas and sistahs... no, really we are... remember Lincoln, he was one of us). It was less a Republican ideal than it was a movement that found some traction in the GOP of the early 20th century. But, as noted above, Progressivism had support on both sides of the aisle. A 1910 Progressive, today, would probably be in the Tea Party.
 
Additionally, progressivism was itself of Republican origins.

well, not really. Just like not every dry voted for the Prohibition party, not every progressive voted to the Progressive Party in 1912-1916. Basically there were large progressive factions in both major parties. But the Democratic progressives stayed within their party and the Republican progressives temporarily left theirs.

As for what they'd be now.. Well, some, like Newton Baker opposed the New Deal as going too far, and others, such as Helen Keller, were Socialists. Remember, it was multiple movements, not just one.
 
well, not really. Just like not every dry voted for the Prohibition party, not every progressive voted to the Progressive Party in 1912-1916. Basically there were large progressive factions in both major parties. But the Democratic progressives stayed within their party and the Republican progressives temporarily left theirs.

As for what they'd be now.. Well, some, like Newton Baker opposed the New Deal as going too far, and others, such as Helen Keller, were Socialists. Remember, it was multiple movements, not just one.

If you say so; I was brought up as a progressive Republican and assumed the mantle myself in the mid'60s, a few years before I was legally able to vote, but more than old enough to enter the military. If you want to say that progressivism used to be strongly involved in political considerations on both sides of the Republican/Democratic divide in America, I'd have no qualm with the claim. I'm not saying that it is a uniquely Republican tenet, merely that it reached its purist progressive expression (to date) as a Republican offshoot public policy alternative in the form of the Progressive Party of 1912.
 
I'd say that "Progressive" is not too far off pinko commie; it is only a matter of degree. At any rate, I think we can all agree that "Progressives" are more to the left than Democrats in general, perhaps somewhat less left than admitted Socialists.

Not hard when the Democratic Party is actually a centre right party, with a bit more of a step to the right. Centralists would be considered left wing in the US.
 
Because nothing says "fascist" more than limited government?

I thought you said you were a professional historian.

Since when have conservatives demonstrated a desire for limited government? They just want the government to intrude into different aspects of private life.
 

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