Howard Dean and an Odd Bit of the Reagan Legacy

The Weekly Standard has an interesting piece on a "Take Back America" rally in Boston with appearances by Howard Dean and Michael Moore.   While the article is thoughtful, Base10 was struck by this passage:

Dean 3.1 has a new message: Getting progressives to run for office. His idea is that if progressives start running for school boards and town councils and dogcatcher, then eventually Democrats will have an organization that rivals Republicans. Dean himself is now actively involved in this crusade, announcing that he's been trying to help one progressive get elected to her library council.

Base10 is intrigued by the use of the term "progressive" and presumes that Jonathan V. Last, the author of the article, was directly quoting Dean's use of this word.  While it is obvious that the word "progressive" has become a code word for "liberal" these days, what is not so obvious is when the liberals started using the term themselves. 

One of the (few) unfortunate things about the Reagan revolution is the relegation of the word "liberal" to almost curse word status.  Base10 always likes to make a distinction between small-l "liberalism" and big-L "Liberalism" where the former stood for those holding liberal ideals like free markets and representative governements and the latter stands for a "progressive" political party or ideology. 

We are all small-l liberals, as opposed to monarchists or communists.  I do think it's a shame that such a useful word was removed from political dialogue.   Yet clearly, politicians of the big-L variety cannot aford to be identified with the "L" word since the vast majority of Americans have rejected this philosophy.  So the Liberals now use the code word "progressive."


- posted by Base10 @ 12:48 PM