One step closer to understanding the disease called Progressivism.

[PredFan]

Cracks me up that I start a thread wherein, among other things, I point out the stupidity of Progressives, and Progressives come here and add more stupidity. "I don't get it there for it is wrong!" and "Progressive has the word "progress' in it so it means Progressives ARE progress!"

The comedy writes itself.

 

[Foxfyre]

The United States became the greatest country in the world, because it progressed versus going backwards.

But thanks to the progressives in both parties we are regressing not progressing.
We have so many laws and regulations that they are staring to contradict each other.
It's gotten so bad that no matter what you do now you are breaking some law or regulation, that is not freedom.

I think it was day before yesterday morning, I was half watching a news cast when somebody said that the Obama administration has signed off on something over 75,000!!!! new regulations in 2014 alone. If that was right, and I would lay odds it probably is given the size and scope of the federal government, how could any business no matter how big, let alone any individual, possibly learn and apply all of the new stuff from just last year, plus all the stuff initiated for years and decades before that? Chances are that each and every one of us is violating some federal regulation each and every day and not even knowing it.

In his book Extortion, Peter Schweizer cited this phenomenon as one way the federal government exerts power and keeps difficult people and entities in line. By threatening to enact or withhold some piece of legislation or a regulation that would affect somebody or by suggesting that they might or might not look the other way re that little 'infraction', they can pretty well get anybody to agree to anything plus cough up big sums of money to leadership pacs, political parties, and campaign coffers.

Do the progressives want to know this? Do they care? Or is their support and worship of big government as the solution to all major human problems so fervent that they just don't want to see or hear about any downside?

 

[Pogo]

You are right about the proper spelling of Progressives but that is what the Liberals are starting to call themselves again. Even they don't know the real difference of the original Progressives verses the Liberals of today.
Progressives from 100 years ago still had traditional morals. The Liberals of today do not, they believe in self expression, especially sexual liberation and they are obsessed with equality done by government.

We are not in a classroom Pogo, we are on a political message board and when they use the word Progressives or progressives they are talking about the ideology of the Democrats.
I understand where you are coming from, to make that distinction in order to make it absolutely clear though.
Most Americans want this country to have progress but we can't do that until we start to pay down out Debt, not just our Deficit.
Todays Democrats no longer has representation for Moderates or Conservatives.
Conservative Dem's know that all to well because they fought them for over 20 years to get more Conservative Democrat representation. They gave up and left the party.

Yep. I simply won't get into a battle of semantics or definitions or what capitalization does or does not mean. Those who want to nitpick and split hairs and make THAT the important thing should start threads and hash that out as a separate topic. But it is a favorite ploy of some progressive types to use that to deflect from the topic or concept being discussed. Which of course has already been discussed in this thread.

There is no topic established where terms have not been defined. Nothing has been discussed here.

Which reminds me I'm still on the crusade to stamp out Greeblings and Meezledorfs. Are you with us or against us?
See how that works?

I differentiate between libertarianism (little "L") and Libertarianism (capital "L") because these are two very different animals in modern day America. One represents the values of liberty or classical liberalism as promoted and understood by the Founders and others with whom they shared a particular point of view. The other represents a political party with an agenda that I cannot fully embrace.

Progressives (capital "P") and progressivm with or without capitalizations are understood as one and the same in modern day vernacular. There is no Progressive party.

Indeed there isn't, nor is there such a movement just because you (or Glenn Beck) makes one up. If it exists, it can be defined. If not, not. This one doesn't seem definable. Peach above says it means "Democrats" but from what you have here it means the historical sense. Those don't agree with each other. So we still have nothing.

When I debate on these issues of policy and ideology and, in this case, why and how 'progressives' and 'progressivism' are doing more harm than good, I am using the term with or without captalization based on how the term is defined, understood, and used in modern day vernacular in America, I make no distinction between Progressives or progressivism. If I capitalize Progressive I am identifying a particular group of Americans who embrace progressivism sometimes also referred to as leftists or liberals or statists or political class as those terms are understood and used in modern day America. Those who don't like the terms I use to express my point of view certainly don't have to use them, but I will use them because they ARE the modern day vernacular.

-- that has apparently no definition, and therefore does not exist.

You will understand if I take the position that just because you don't understand a term and therefore say it does not exist, despite how many definitions have been furnished to you over the months, and because you refuse to look it up yourself, I am under no obligation to accept that your opinion about it has any validity whatsoever?

Whether I understand it is irrelevant. Whether those who actually use the term --- which isn't me -- can understand it, is crucial. Because if you don't -- you can't.

I understand it quite well. You apparently can't, but don't feel badly. Most of those in the progressive camp can't. Numerous definitions have now been provided you and a least a dozen links to scholarly discussions on the subject. Not all on this thread of course, but over the course of the past months as these discussions come up.

I simply have no power to help you understand because you refuse to even consider, much less discuss those definitions or discussions. The closest you have come is with severely abridged dictionary defintiions whiile refusing to comment on encyclopedia defintiions or scholarly definitions that expand on those and put them into historical context.

Such willful ignorance--referring back to the OP--is simply too large an obstacle to overcome in order to have a reasoned discussion on something.

One does wonder, however, how one can be so sure that the terms themselves are being misused and at the same time insist they have not been defined and therefore nobody knows what they are talking about.

Very simple. Using labels one cannot define IS misusing them. Misuse isn't limited to treating a known and agreed definition in a variant way.

So we're still where we started -- an OP that purports to "understand a disease" yet cannot even define what disease it's talking about. That pretty well precludes any sort of "understanding" wouldn't you say?

What about those Greeblings and Meezeldorfs? No comment?

 

[Pogo]

Cracks me up that I start a thread wherein, among other things, I point out the stupidity of Progressives, and Progressives come here and add more stupidity. "I don't get it there for it is wrong!" and "Progressive has the word "progress' in it so it means Progressives ARE progress!"

The comedy writes itself.

In contrast to your OP which can't define itself...