Why Do Liberals Call Themselves “Progressive?”
By Gregg on Economics
Pundit Review
One of the major reasons that I wrote my book “Conservative Comebacks to Liberal Lies” is that I was sick and tired of hearing liberals refer to themselves as “progressive.” The more I thought about their stated positions and their actual track record of success (or lack thereof), I realized that the term “progressive” is actually a misnomer.
So I don’t get it. How is it that the political and educational elite left still refers to themselves as “progressive?” The word “progressive” is actually defined in my McMillian’s Modern Dictionary as, “proceeding forward or onward; advancing; making progress or improvement; favoring or advocating liberal or advanced ideas.” But if one evaluates liberal “progressive” ideas, proposals, and institutions, it becomes abundantly clear that their “advanced ideas” have all been unmitigated disasters for America.
A short list of these “progressive” brain children include: The ERA, The Great Society, public housing, The New Deal, Carter’s price controls, The ABM Treaty, The windfall profits/luxury taxes, the estate tax, the Wall Mart tax, the living wage, National Health Care (Hillary Care), government run schools, sex ed, national daycare, bilingual ed, motor voter, social security, abortion on demand, same sex marriage, embryonic stem cell research, human induced global cooling in the 70s and now “human induced global warming.”
And yet, the modern day liberal Democrats continue to refer to themselves as “progressives.” The “progressive” Democrats are now proposing in their “first 100 hours” a minimum wage increase among other “progressive” new spending bills which they like to euphemistically refer to as “investments.” Even though almost every economist who ever lived has said that raising the minimum wage leads to higher unemployment especially among low skilled minorities, those smarty-pants “progressives” are going to propose it anyhow regardless of whether it ends up hurting the very same poor constituencies they purport to represent.
My question is, why should any American with a least half a brain (for Senator Kerry this would included any of our military in Iraq) support any Democratic “progressive” economic proposal when they have been incorrect in every prediction they have ever made about supply side tax cuts since JFK?
Take for example some recently released economic statistics as reported in today’s Wall St. Journal:
“Job growth in December exceeded expectations at 167,000 and the jobless rate held at a very low 4.5%, despite a slowdown in manufacturing and construction.” (The very opposite of what the “progressives” predicted when they howled about the “jobless recovery.”)
“Since the Bush tax cuts on dividends and capital gains passed in mid-2003, the economy has created 7.2 million new jobs according to the survey of business establishments, and an additional 1.2 million in the more variable household survey.” (The very opposite of what the “progressives” predicted.)
“Federal receipts rose by 14.6% in fiscal 2005, another 11.8% in 2006, and kept rising by 9% in this year’s first two months despite slower GDP growth.” (The very opposite of what the “progressives” predicted.)
“The budget deficit…fell by $165 billion in two years, and including state surpluses is now down to about 1% of GDP, which as an economic matter is negligible. Tax revenues as a share of the economy are also back above 18.5%, which is their modern historical norm.” (The very opposite of what the “progressives” predicted.)
And now, Pelosi, Kennedy, Kerry, Clinton, and the rest of the “progressives” will conveniently ignore this “inconvenient truth” (to borrow a phrase from that other enlightened “progressive” Algore) and will continue to play the class warfare card by talking about “two Americas,” “excessive CEO pay,” the “evils of Wall Mart,” etc…with the hopes that Americans never figure out that their “progressive” ideas represent anything but real progress.
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