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Feb 09Blue politics.
Today’s Yesterday’s (fuck, I should keep up on my feeds) “The Two Progressivisms” post on 538 is interesting, and mostly dead-on:
[Rational] progressivism has its philosophical underpinnings in 18th Century, Enlighte[n]ment-era thought. It believes that politics is a battle of ideas. It further believes that through the use of reason and the exchange of ideas, human society will tend to improve itself through scientific and technological innovation. Hence, it believes in progress, and for this reason lays claim to the term “progressive”. … The project of rational progressivism, then, is to propagate good ideas and to convert them, through a wide and aggressive array of democratic means, into public policy.
Radical progressivism is more clearly distinguishable from “conventional” liberalism and would generally be associated with the “far left” — although on a handful of issues such as free trade, it may find common cause with the “radical” right. Radical progressivism embraces the tradition of populism and frequently adopts a discourse of the virtuous commoner organizing against the corrupt elite. It is much more willing to make normative claims than rational progressivism, and tends to view conservatism as immoral and contemporary American liberalism as amoral (at best). Its project is not reform but transformation.
The full post is really interesting, but if you don’t feel like reading there’s also a nifty little chart. In the spirit of facile dichotomy, here’s where I landed on the progressivist spectrum:
I guess I’d call myself a “depressive progressive” or something.