Progressive or Liberal?

In his survey course of American history since Reconstruction, my adviser is careful to note during his lecture on Progressivism that while liberals are fond of referring to themselves today as “progressives,” the sense in which they use the term is distinct from the historical Progressive Era and the Progressive Party which flourished, for a time, under Teddy Roosevelt. He includes a sly comment about his confusion over why liberals have started using the term "progressive," as they seem to simply be capitulating to the attempt of conservatives to turn “liberal” into a dirty word. 

I will have to admit that this is probably the primary reason for the popularity of the term “progressive.” And yet I still prefer to think of myself as progressive, rather than liberal. Why? For me, it has nothing at all to do with an attempt to distance myself from the negative connotations conservatives attach to the term – indeed, I’ll be happy to embrace them. Am I a latte-drinking liberal? For sure. (Actually I prefer tea, but insofar as we are talking about a liberal whose favorite public dwelling space is a bourgeois coffee shop, I am surely guilty.) Am I a “tax and spend” liberal? Well, considering I can’t imagine what else a government is supposed to do with its time, yes I suppose I am. (And for that matter, nearly everyone is; the trick behind the “tax and spend” tagline is that what conservatives are really complaining about is not spending, but what the money is being spent on.) Do I believe all Americans are responsible for the well-being of their least fortunate citizens, do I believe that all Americans deserve public health care, do I believe that the inequality of gays and lesbians is a national travesty? Yes, yes, and yes. And do I think that religious bigotry and scientific illiteracy pose grave threats to a civilization which, in my mind, should first and foremost be based on Enlightenment values? Absolutely. So far from wanting to distance myself from all that being “liberal” might imply, I would push it even further.

So considering I am a liberally liberal, why don’t I feel perfectly comfortable with the term? For me, identifying as progressive is actually a way of distancing myself from the center-right consciousness of this country. When I think “liberal,” what comes to mind more than anything else is a Blue Dog Democrat, or the Cold Warrior side of John F. Kennedy. The 1960s radicals of the New Left were the most instrumental in creating this definition of the term – when Mario Savio refers to a “well-meaning liberal” in his famous speech on the steps of Sproul Hall, the implication was not flattering. A “liberal” in this discourse is someone who always believes in gradual change, in negotiating with the power structure rather than challenging it directly. A “liberal” in this discourse is someone who buys the redemptive storyline of American political thought, from the boot-straps myth to the benevolence of (almost) all free markets. 

By way of introduction.

Welcome to Isolation Incomplete, a blog that focuses on progressive politics, history, and philosophy. Allow me to introduce myself with this opening piece I wrote several months back. It is rather long, but my hope is not that anyone will read it carefully but, rather that it be casually referred to in the future as an answer to the question of "who the hell is this chick?" It details my political history -- which I argue, is inherently personal -- and how I ended up where I am today, philosophically and intellectually.

Another reason I put this piece up is to be as honest an intellectual as I can be -- to put all my cards on the table. I believe that the denial of how the personal is political, the false wall we often put between our condition as human beings and our attempts at analysis, can at times distance us from the real reason we care about society, and care about human justice. Because if you do not admit from the beginning that you are human -- that you are part of and prey to the whole range of conflicting desires and needs that this entails -- you will become tempted to focus more on being right, rather than focusing on finding the truth. But if we do our best to be honest with ourselves, and honest with each other, the end goal in sight -- a better world for everyone -- can be kept more clearly in view.
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Progressives aren’t particularly known for being moralistic, at least not in the individualistic sense. Yet an argument for social justice inevitably lies at the heart of progressivism, and therefore so does a moral argument. For those who value pluralism and are wary of any statements of Truth as such, this can present a possible conflict. How can we trust ourselves to advocate for change and social justice without merely producing a potentially biased system of dos and don’ts? How do we know our intentions are sincere, and our proscriptions for our society won’t ultimately, at some indefinite point in the future, turn into a self-righteous straight jacket? 

This is a question I have had good reasons to ponder. For most people who know me as I am today, a progressive who is quite allergic to the center-right culture that surrounds me, would never guess what I once was. That I once, in fact, identified mostly as a “conservative.” That I even – horror of all horrors! – was an ardent fan of Bill O’Reilly, right up to my doorstep, which greeted you with a “No Spin Zone” doormat. 

Now that you know perhaps my most shameful secret, I’ll turn to the narrative of my political history. I believe my early identification as conservative had much to do with my parents, who I can roughly describe as center-right conservatives with a good dose of old-fashioned backlash thrown in. In their personal lives, neither are narrow minded or closed off to the acceptance of those who are different from them; but their political rhetoric was always peppered with the classic conservative complaints about big government, the erosion of personal responsibility, and the oppressive power of political correctness. 

I got along abnormally well with my parents when I was a teenager; you could even say that at times they were my best friends. Therefore I lacked the youthful desire to resist their politics, and my father had a short, pithy way of delivering his sentiments that seemed to drip with common wisdom unburdened by human folly. My earliest political memory is seeing Bill Clinton on TV, and intuitively disliking the man, a tendency immediately reinforced after asking my father, “Who is that?” 

However, even as a young adult there were visible conflicts between me and my parents’ views. The only heated political conversation that ever occurred between my father and I before I was in graduate school took place during the campaign for Prop 6, the ban on gay marriage which was later overturned by the Ninth District Court. Although I might have identified with the rhetoric of no-nonsense independence conservative pundits so successfully peddle in, I was too weird of a kid to pick up on too much of the conservative cultural package. I struggled with obsessive and paranoid thinking; terrified, at various points, of spontaneous combustion, abduction by aliens and, for a while, a fear I was possessed by demons. I was also given to occasional extreme bouts of hysteria, resulting in fits well into high school that an outsider observer might think qualified me for institutionalization. When happy, which fortunately was most of the time, I was loud, creative, confident and very obnoxious to people who found breaking routine social rules offensive. In high school most of my friends were either the dreaded “drama kids” or they had connections to said drama kids. I was a weird kid.