What is a liberal today? How are progressives different?

[banned from Kos]

Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but most liberals support such fundamental ideas as constitutionalism, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights, capitalism, free trade, and the freedom of religion.

(Wikipedia)

Liberals support the right to bear arms (as do the vast majority of Democrats).

Liberals support private property and trade for sure. Perhaps this is boring - at 10:30 EST - maybe not.

[Rex]

1. Liberalism.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism

Liberalism (from the Latin liberalis, "of freedom")<1> is the belief in the importance of liberty and equal rights.<2> Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but most liberals support such fundamental ideas as constitutionalism, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights, capitalism, free trade, and the freedom of religion.<3><4><5><6><7> These ideas are widely accepted, even by political groups that do not openly profess a liberal ideological orientation. Liberalism encompasses several intellectual trends and traditions, but the dominant variants are classical liberalism, which became popular in the eighteenth century, and social liberalism, which became popular in the twentieth century.

Anyone can wiki.

[banned from Kos]

2. Agree. I am only trying to inspire conversation on the topic.

Democrats are like a neighbors who speak different languages.

[Warpy]

3. Progressives are liberals who are willing to fight back

There is nothing wrong with liberals, they were the only ones to have created a stable economy that served everyone well. Even the rich got richer if they were paying any attention at all, although they weren't getting richer fast enough to suit them and couldn't wait to wreck that economic system.

Liberals just got steamrolled after Lyndon Johnson went out of power and got an undeserved reputation for spinelessness.

Progressives are overturning that but the ideas are largely the same.

[TheWraith]

10. That's funny, since I always saw using "progressive" as a cop-out.

To me, "progressive" has always seemed like just a way to say the same thing without having to associate yourself with the word "liberal."

[patrice]

4. I think one of the basic traits of Liberality is inclusiveness, but that same trait also implies

integrated balance, because if all are welcome, if all are included, if that's the basic principle, then extremeness must be moderated, because it, by its very nature, excludes (and exclusion, as the opposite of inclusion, is a conservative trait). Thus Liberals support things such as the right to bear arms, but it's a right moderated by common sense about certain kinds of threats to others.

[patrice]

5. To me, Progressive is based upon progressing, moving forward, which takes strength.

Progress also would not be that which is status quo, because going forward necessitates NOT just repeating characteristics of the past. This does not mean that being Progressive cannot use, develop out of, or be derived from previously established elements, just much more that those things of the past CANNOT be the essence of the Progressive, since going forward implies newness and innovation of essence. And because Progressive requires newness, CHANGE, it also requires maximum strength, because of systemic inertial resistance to change.

[banned from Kos]

9. Beautiful description - I like it a lot. Progressives push where liberals

(like me) allow democracy and Social Contract to rule.

We are on the same wavelength though.

Thank you.

[patrice]

26. Thanks! I worry about that word a little, because it could be taken kind of as "getting things done"

Getting stuff done might be thought of as Progressive, but I'm not sure unless what is done is authentically innovative.

If your progress is just doing something/anything as long as you can say you did something, even doing more of the same, that's not progress; that's just repeating.

*rhetorical you, of course.

[unkachuck]

6. Progressives are Liberals on steroids....

....Liberals are more heavily invested in our current economic, political and social systems than are Progressives....

....Progressives are willing to think out-of-the-box, try new things and pick a fight if necessary to advance our Left-wing agenda....and frankly, Progressives smell better....

(gateley said I could post this)

[patrice]

8. Hey, I'm a Liberal and I smell okay, but . . . yeah, that plant-based soap DOES require more frequen

t application.

:hi:

[leftstreet]

7. Liberals support free trade?

:shrug:

[TheWraith]

11. "Trade" is not the same thing as "free trade."

And "free trade" does not necessarily mean "unrestricted free trade."

Show me how refusing to trade with other countries and other places advances the cause of liberalism, and maybe I'll bite.

[leftstreet]

12. The OP quotes wikipedia, 'free trade'

:shrug:

[TheWraith]

18. And the OP said trade, not free trade, in QUALIFYING the Wikipedia quote.

If you're taking issue with what Wikipedia said, and not the OP, then I mistook your meaning.

[white_wolf]

15. Actually that is exactly what free trade means...

but don't take my word for it, listen to the good people at Merriam-Webster which defines free trade as: "trade based on the unrestricted international exchange of goods with tariffs used only as a source of revenue"

[TheWraith]

19. No, it means "free trade" as in not restricted by tariff used for protectionism.

It has come to mean in common vernacular trade not restricted by any form of regulation, but that's not implicit in the original concept.

[leftstreet]

20. So when liberals rant against 'free trade' they mean everything but the original concept?

You'd think they'd qualify that

[Rex]

22. LOL!

:rofl:

[TheWraith]

24. "Free trade" is sort of like "Christianity."

It's ridiculous to talk about the original concept when the meaning in the current popular vernacular is something vastly different.

[patrice]

16. Why not, if it were an authentically even field, i.e. no encumbrences, so the advantages of some

would be compensated to disadvantaged others so that all stakeholders at a given table would then be of equal weight, free to function without the oppression of an, unfree, system weighted ONLY by those who have the weight to acquire more weight.

[leftstreet]

17. Those are some big 'if's you've got there

just not reality

[patrice]

21. What is Germany doing with it's manufacturing & trade policies? They are THE source of goods

to most of Europe.

Their workers earn almost $20.00 more per hour than ours do. HOW is it possible to protect those kinds of wages, not to mention benefits and other perks, and STILL have robust trade with ALL KINDS of other economies?

[patrice]

25. Also not to mention that something less than 30 years ago they adopted an entire debtor nation,

their erstwhile and miserably abused sister, East Germany.

[patrice]

23. delete to move

[FarLeftFist]

13. All Progressives are also Liberals but not all Liberals are Progressives.

[FarLeftFist]

14. I would like to add VERY Pro-Workers Rights and Unionism.

[patrice]

27. Strongly agreed! To me, the notion of authentic functional integration implies that some compensatio

n occurs when/where/why/how -ever necessary and it is abundantly clear that at this particular point in our development as a nation, Workers and Workers Rights need compensatory action, they cannot be functionally integrated into a whole system/nation/economy/whatever without strong special emphasis, yes, FAVOR, for the Real Value they represent, because the fact is that relative to the rest of our systems at this point, that Real Value is being treated as though it is 0. And that's not good for A-N-Y-O-N-E, capitalists included.