The
labels Liberal and Progressive are thrown around in Democratic Party politics
without any reference to either historic meaning or consistent current
definition. We have reached a point in
our politics today where anyone can label them self what they like, their
opponents can label them what they want and people just accept those labels --
giving those labels their own understood meanings. Thus the labels become meaningless.
In
1896 a relatively conservative Democratic party controlled by the money
interests of the northeastern states and the ex-confederate Bourbons of the
South was subjected to a popular revolt and transformed into a populist party.
That original Populist agenda included many items of economic justice (anti-big
banks, anti-monopolies), political justice (direct election of Senators,
referendum, recall) and global justice (anti-imperialism and anti-war). After the turn of the 20th century Populism,
whose roots were rural and western, merged with urban Progressivism and became
the Progressive movement. Progressives added social justice (labor conditions,
health care, and slum eradication) to economic and political justice and on the
global scene became advocates for an American style world justice and
organization. The Progressive movement
was personified by Theodore Roosevelt and institutionalized by Woodrow Wilson.
After
World War I, as Progressives embraced woman suffrage, extreme elements pushed
successfully for prohibition and many nativist elements opposed Wilsonian world
leadership. These divisions, which often reflected urban rural differences, lasted throughout the
1920's. And, then came Franklin Delano
Roosevelt and the New Deal.
FDR, a
firm Wilson Progressive and cousin to Teddy Roosevelt, considered himself a
LIBERAL. Read his speeches and you will
be hard pressed to find one that doesn’t use the world Liberal in it. He
advocated economic, social, political, and global justice. He preached Four
Freedoms “everywhere in the world” and an Economic Bill of Rights. His twelve years in office made the
Democratic Party a Liberal Party. Truman, Stevenson, Kennedy, Johnson and
Humphrey were all proud to call themselves Liberals.
The
Vietnam War divided Liberals on global issues and the degree to which the US
should be willing to engage in war to defeat communists and so called fellow
travelers. After the 1968 convention the
anti-war Democrats took control of the party apparatus and the 1972 convention
and nominated George McGovern on a Liberal platform strongly anti-war. His crushing defeat by Nixon caused a
reaction among Democrats that can only be described as cowardly as most
Democrats began to deny the word Liberal and instead use the word Progressive
which they felt would denote liberal views on social and economic issues and
not carry the “stain” of McGovernism. In
contrast when LBJ decimated the Goldwater Republicans in 1964 they responded by
hunkering down and pushing conservatives from the school board to the court
house and building the base for the Reagan revolution sixteen years later.
And so
for twenty years the Democrats, having rid themselves of the segregationists
and having taken a clear pro-choice position on abortion, see sawed between
centrists Progressives like Carter and Liberals like Mondale and Dukakis. Finally in 1992 the centrist Democrats led by
Bill Clinton took control of the party and Liberal became an unused label.
It was
not until 2014, when Senators like Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and Sherrod
Brown began to crusade for economic justice again - and people went into the
streets to demand that government reign in Wall Street, raise the minimum wage,
and rescue the middle class from extinction, that the word PROGRESSIVE began
again to have its historic meaning of economic justice and opposition to the
power and greed of the wealthy and the corporate interests. And people also began to again use the word
LIBERAL with pride as contra CONSERVATIVE.
The
two labels tend to denote the same views on social issues and support for the
economic programs of the New Deal and the Great Society. I would argue that Progressive today includes
liberal values with a heightened concern about the oligarchic power of big
business and the influence of the military industrial complex on our
international relations. But, I would
also say that it is difficult today to give precise meaning to the two labels:
Liberal and Progressive. While both support equal rights for all only some in
each oppose the death penalty. Today both labels now denote opposition to
corporate power and Supreme Court decisions like Citizens United; but,
Progressives place more value on minimum wage and single payer health care than
many Liberals. And, most unfortunately,
many Liberals today are not advocating political reform - they are satisfied
with the reforms that were enacted post 1972 and the party structures they
control and so resist changes such as open primaries, abolition of automatic
delegates, ending caucus systems.
But,
now (2016) in the mind of the public the labels Liberal and Progressive have
become somewhat synonymous. Many people see them as the same-- which they are
not. And, many party activists argue
over the Progressive bonafides of candidates.
If the key litmus test is economic justice and attitudes toward Wall
Street and corporate political power than we should begin using the terms
Progressive Liberal and Traditional Liberal. A Progressive Liberal being one
who holds basic liberal values on most issues but is clearly anti-Wall Street
and all that entails. A Traditional
Liberal would be one who holds basic liberal values on most issues but has
become comfortable with the role that corporations and big business play in our
government. (To be clear I would denote Bernie Sanders the former and Hillary
Clinton the latter.) Personally I prefer either type of Liberal to a
conservative, or an extremist tea-partier, or an enabling so-called moderate or
Trumpian.
24
July 2016
