Misc. Ramblings

Republicans have been successful in making the word "liberal" have negative connotations. The next word to take a hit seems to be the word "progressive." For example, this column is from someone who says he is "leaving the left" because he can "no longer abide the simpering voices of self-styled progressives." In this two part post called Sanctuary, another writer echoes the call to abandon being progressive.

I have to ask, is being retrogressive a GoodThing? Isn't the root word of progressive: progress (from the Latin word for advance)? Isn't progress or advancement what most of us want? I mean, if you aren't trying to improve things, what are you trying to do? Make them worse? Is this what these people who look down on progressives want?

Further, what does it mean to leave the left? Does that mean you are joining the right? Or does it mean you are part of the majority who abhor the extreme rhetoric of both the far left and the far right?

I dunno. I agree that the far left, seemingly full of Socialists, is not where I find myself. But neither does it mean I agree with the far right tyrannical policies of expanding government's power over the individual citizen. Whether the bullet to the head comes from a faith-based black helicopter or a Socialist's AK-47, matters not to me.

What matters to me is the attitude that being progressive, that is reform minded, is a BadThing. I can't speak for anyone else, but as for me, I want to live in a world that is rational, forward looking, and open to accepting progressive reform.

If the these columnists want something else, then I want no part of their world.

Aloha!