« Message to Our Readers from the ACLU | Main | Peggy Noonan: Give the terrorists what they want »

May 03, 2006

What's in a name?

That which we call a rose
By any other word would smell as sweet.

Tompaine.com has an interesting piece today by Paul Waldman about The Progressive Identity Complex, which got me to wondering... What exactly is "Progressive"?

Lots of people use Progressive as an ideological label to either identify a person's political persuasion or to describe an idea or plan. But, I get the distinct impression that many, many of them mean different things by it.

Merriam-Webster defines it:

Main Entry: 2progressive Function: noun 1 a : one that is progressive b : one believing in moderate political change and especially social improvement by governmental action 2 capitalized : a member of any of various U.S. political parties: as a : a member of a predominantly agrarian minor party that around 1912 split off from the Republicans; specifically : BULL MOOSE b : a follower of Robert M. La Follette in the presidential campaign of 1924 c : a follower of Henry A. Wallace in the presidential campaign of 1948

Senator McCain openly identified as a "Bull Moose Republican" during his aborted presidential run in 2000. His policy stance is widely considered to be centrist. So is that was Progressive means? In relation to... say... Senator Santorum I think it'd be fair to say that McCain hold more progressive beliefs of the two, although the gap seems to be narrowing as we get closer to the 2008 election season.

How do you define Progressive? And how would you juxtapose that label to other ideological labels such as Conservative, Liberal, Libertarian, Centrist and Moderate?

Posted by Kevin at May 3, 2006 07:39 PM

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.preemptivekarma.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/1276