What it Means to be Progressive

Recent conversations with others, in person and in social media, have led me to realize that the term Progressive seems to mean something different to everyone. There's a lot of people out there calling themselves Progressives despite a widening gap between policies. Many of these people are members of the Democratic Party -- and in fact, several on Twitter seem to equate a Progressive with someone in the Democratic Party (in other words, all true Progressives are Democrats in their minds). I'd like to discuss today a little more about what I mean when I say "Progressive".

I have often thought of a difference between personal (individual) freedoms and business (economic) freedoms when talking politics, and I think this viewpoint is summed up well in the Political Compass. They have a free quiz that finds your alignment; you may want to try this first, see where you land, and come back and read my discussion.

Essentially, the simple "Left vs Right" portrayed on the media is of course extremely simplistic and doesn't do a great job of capturing one's political philosophy. Consider the split between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton (both "Left-wingers"), and a similar split between people like John Kasich and Ted Cruz on the Republican side. There's a big difference in policies from these people despite being lumped into the "Left" or the "Right", respectively. Can we break it down more?

Well, if you view Left vs Right as a difference in economic freedoms, this is close to how everyone tends to think of it. Left-wingers economically tend to prefer government regulation of businesses and the economy, while Right-wingers tend to prefer free markets and businesses free of government regulation.

But what about personal freedoms? The freedoms of an individual, rather than a business. Sadly, these freedoms get lumped in with the economic ones very often, meaning we don't get a whole lot of direct discussion on it. The Political Compass proposes that we need to include a measure of individual freedoms along with the Left-vs-Right economic freedoms. So, while economically we have Left vs Right, individually we have Authoritarian vs Libertarian. The difference between the two is similar to Left vs Right: Authoritarians tend to prefer government regulation of individuals and their personal lives, while Libertarians tend to prefer individuals to live free of government regulation.

And now we can start to see more of the difference between our politicians, despite them being the in the same political parties. While most Republicans are Right-wing economically, some are Authoritarian (Ted Cruz's of the world, that want to restrict individual rights for women, LGBTQ+, etc.) and some are Libertarian (Rand Paul, for example). Similar is true between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton on the Democratic side, although the difference is even wider; I'll save this for a future blog post.

With Left vs Right and Authoritarian vs Libertarian, we basically come up with 4 different combinations, which I'll call the 4 Party System of politics. In reality, we do have 4 "major" parties but they don't quite lay out this evenly.

1. Right and Authoritarian -- this means limited government regulation of business and the economy, but generally ok with government growing large and regulating personal freedoms and decisions (not just things like abortion and drugs, but also preventing your ability to unionize and negotiate with business, for example). The Republican party is definitely in this category, but what many don't realize is the Democrats generally are too, albeit not quite as extreme. More on this later.
2. Right and Libertarian -- this means limited government regulation of business, AND people. In other words, you want a very small limited government entirely. The Libertarian Party is in this category, as they generally want a very small government. I tend to think this would lead to it being too small and being a repeat of the Articles of Confederation that almost had our country fall apart, but at least they have a consistent philosophy.
3. Left and Authoritarian -- this means you generally favor government regulation of everything: businesses as well as individuals. A distrust of everyone. The old Russian and Chinese Communist regimes are in this category, albeit extreme examples. There isn't any major or even minor party in the US advocating this currently that I'm aware of; however, I believe some modern Democrats might be leaning a little toward this direction, even if not firmly planted in it.
4. Left and Libertarian -- this means you prefer lots of freedoms and limited regulation on individuals' rights, but generally favor regulation of business and the economy. This is the category that I consider Progressive, at least a modern Progressive. The Green Party is in this category. When I took the quiz, I scored in this category (see the red dot below!), and agree with it pretty well.
    

To me, a Progressive is that Left-wing Libertarian. We heavily support maximum personal freedom and stand strongly against attempts to take away an individual's right to set their own life and destiny. I see no reason to put regulation on individuals; as long as you're not bothering anyone else, why should I care what you do in your home, for example? However, we also tend to be distrusting of the power business can wield over individuals, and believe in effective regulation of businesses and the economy (think of things like: minimum wage, safety regulations, environmental regulations, etc.). Business, especially the huge multinational conglomerates of today, can have massive influence over our rights, our economy, and our environment. Think of the damage done by the BP oil spill, or fracking in general. Think of the economic collapse of 2008 due to unrestrained Wall Street speculation. These are things that affect all of us, and yet, we had little-to-no say so about preventing these problems because business was generally allowed to act as it pleased by our current elected officials (think of how much push back strong regulation on Wall St. and fracking is getting from many of our current elected officials, both Republicans and Democrats!). Progressives view an unchecked free market as disaster, and generally support strong regulations to make business "do the right thing" -- pay living wages, protect the environment, etc. And if a business gets too big and has too much power, we break it up.

In short, a Progressive values and fights for individual liberty, while advocating sensible regulation on business to prevent business from curtailing our individual liberties. We still believe in free markets, but believe some level of strong regulation is required to keep a functioning free market; otherwise, businesses will buy each other out and the system will decay into monopoly that hurts individuals or even the environment. Our friends in the Libertarian party disagree strongly here, obviously, as they think the regulation is the reason the free market doesn't work out; they actually believe bad events such as monopolies result from the government influence via regulation. It's an age-old debate I doubt I will solve tonight, but thinking about the differences helps clarify who I am as a Progressive.

I hope this blog post made it clear what I consider to be a Progressive! Do you agree? Disagree? Let me know with a comment, I'm curious to hear what you think.

I have more to say on the current major parties, particularly the relationship between Democrats and Progressivism, but I'll leave this for a new blog post later.