Yes It’s True: I’m not a liberal, I’m a progressive

“At General Electric, progress is our most important product.” — Ronald Reagan

“Those who don’t learn from history are condemned to repeat it.” — Georges Santayana

I’ve been called a lot of things while editing and publishing this on-line rag for the past dozen years, but perhaps mostly frequently some readers have attempted to insult me is by calling me a liberal.

Army Bob has zeroed in on “Proud liberal.” Ranger Rick often insisted that I’m a Marxist. Both, and many of their ilk, have not been shy about their disdain for progressives, often asking just what is a progressive, anyway?

I hereby proclaim loudly and proudly that I am a progressive. My political opinions spring from historical perspectives.

I can think of younger days, in grade school, where I learned consistently that history showed us that our ancestors had it tough. They didn’t have fancy shmancy home conveniences and they had to do so many things manually. And too many diseases were fatal.

But through the march of time, you might call it progressive, their conditions slowly but steadily improved. The notion was that things improved and whatever handy dandy tools we were able to use as time went on were handed down with the intent of making our children’s lives better.

At the same time, I was led to believe that history of mankind was fraught with many mistakes caused by lack of knowledge and understanding. However, things politically and socially have improved since.

The United States of America was not born of purity. Even some of out greatest heroes had faults. Our task has been to acknowledge past mistakes, correct them and then move on to make things better. That’s progressivism.

Perhaps our biggest sin since the Birth of the Nation has been our refusal to admit to these sins, so correcting them has not been our strong suit.

When this country was formed, our flawed Founding Fathers, some of whom owned slaves, came up with a bold idea of self-governance and live by Thomas Jefferson’s declaration that “all men are created equal.” The only previous examples of workable self-government had come from ancient Rome and Greece.

So when those 13 colonies decided to shed the yoke of Great Britain, at that time the most powerful military in the world, they collectively decided to let themselves be governed as a democracy or constitutional republic. I choose not to split hairs on the difference.

When this courageous and bold step was taken, we still had a lot of problems and poor examples of practicing what we preached in the beginning. We hadn’t yet rid the country of the evil practice of slavery and we hadn’t yet allowed people of color or women to vote, to participate as well in this bold experiment.

These two huge problems were resolved somewhat after much conflict and by the time the 20th century rolled around, we were continuing our steady march toward decency and justice.

In my study of history, I developed a keep appreciation of the work of Republican Theodore Roosevelt and Republican Senator Robert M. LaFollette of Wisconsin (at right), both of whom, embraced being called progressives. During their time, it was referred to as The Progressive Era by historians.

Things changed a great deal with the arrival of the Great Depression in the 1930s, so hard times demanded fresh new ideas, provided by Franklin D. Roosevelt, who overturned the philosophy that government couldn’t solve problems; that should be left up to business.

Between 1933 and 1981, we saw the greatest economic growth in this nation’s history. Working with labor unions, Roosevelt sparked a lot of the forward movement, particularly with Social Security, the end of child labor, the 40-hour work week, Unemployment Insurance the Conservation Corps and other programs.

And 30 years later we watched government create Medicare and Medicaid for our health care system.

It can be said that perhaps some of this went too far, but most of these new ideas created modest improved prosperity for the middle class, embracing the idea (as I do) that it’s a good idea to put money in the hands of lower and middle class citizens because they will spend it.

So I call myself a progressive because I fervently believe in the principles of making our collective lives better as we go and make the future even more livable for those who inherit what we’ve done.

That includes climate change, sane gun laws, a more fair health care system and avoiding wars unless absolutely necessary.

I’m not a proud liberal. I’m a proud progressive.