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From Wikipedia:
Progressivism is a broad political philosophy based on the Idea of Progress, which asserts that advances in science, technology, economic development, and social organization can improve the human condition.
Progressivism became highly significant during the Age of Enlightenment in Europe, out of the belief that Europe was demonstrating that societies could progress in civility from barbaric conditions to civilization through strengthening the basis of empirical knowledge as the foundation of society.
Figures of the Enlightenment believed that progress had universal application to all societies and that these ideas would spread across the world from Europe.
Sociologist Robert Nisbet finds that "No single idea has been more important than ... the Idea of Progress in Western civilization for three thousand years" and defines five "crucial premises" of the Idea of Progress as being: value of the past, nobility of Western civilization, worth of economic/technological growth, faith in reason and scientific/scholarly knowledge obtained through reason, intrinsic importance and worth of life on earth.
Beyond this, the meanings of progressivism have varied over time and from different perspectives.
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I don't see anywhere that humans are intrinsically good. I also see ONE person's definition of "progressivism."
HORSE puckey.
The author was speaking of the present American ideological camp that generally describes itself as Progressive, not addressing 300 years of philosophical and ideological history.
This camp was known as Progressive from the late 1800s through about the 1920s, when they changed it to Liberal. In recent decades they changed it back to Progressive.
I strongly suspect most conservatives are Progressives in the Wiki definition sense. I know I am. I just don’t believe Progress is inevitable.
IOW, the author has described the beliefs of an American group that has chosen to use this title for themselves reasonably accurately. Take up any misuse or abuse of the term with them, not the author.
It seems to me that progressivism views people as essentially good in that it asserts that we can attain utopia merely by doing things correctly. That is, progressives think ultimate human potential is good and that this potential can be reached through human efforts alone.
WHAT a load of horse manure.Progressivism, on the other hand, tends to view the human spirit as intrinsically good. For some progressives, “good” becomes a relative term defined by the individual. The only “bad” is to infringe on another person’s ability to express their own version of “good.”
From Wikipedia:
I don't see anywhere that humans are intrinsically good. I also see ONE person's definition of "progressivism.”Progressivism is a broad political philosophy based on the Idea of Progress, which asserts that advances in science, technology, economic development, and social organization can improve the human condition . . .
HORSE puckey.
I wouldn’t suggest taking dictionary, let alone Wikipedia, definitions of political terms too seriously. If you consult Safire’s New Political Dictionary, for instance, you will learn that the meaning of “liberal” was changed - essentially inverted - in the 1920s. And anyone who considers the matter realistically will realize that the term “progressive” has undergone a similar metamorphosis. After all, one of the few powers the Constitution explicitly grants to Congress isTo promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveriesAnd yet the modern “progressive” systematically looks for reasons to regress from the use of fossil fuels upon which modern electric power and cars and trucks depend.
There is a reason wikipedia is considered a suspect source in scholarly circles.
The definition it gives of “Progressivism” is the one self-proclaimed “Progressives” (later “liberals”, now “Progressives” again) used to sell their ideas, rather than a dispassionate description of the movement’s views. (Hardly surprising considering the dominant political views of wikipedians.)
If, however, you look at the program of the American left from the time it called itself “Progressive” near the turn of the twentieth century to the present when it is starting to use the name again, having exhausted the benefit they got from stealing the name “liberal”, one of its fundamental premises is the denial of the Fall. Man is either fundamentally good or a tabula rasa. The moral-relativist strain of progressivism favors the former, the more totalitarian sort, the latter.