[Qwinn]

This accusatory label is reminiscent of the habit of some political speakers 50 years ago who declared that their opponents were "Communists" or "Communist sympathizers." Such a similarity, while not precise, is at least interesting, since the increasingly rapid fall of the popularity of "liberal" began just about 50 years ago.

Idiot. That "coincidence" occurs precisely because the similarity in question is absolutely precise, and the growing hostility toward liberalism has grown in direct proportion to the public's realization of that fact.

Qwinn

[Recon Dad]

All conservatives beware! There has been focus groups working day and night since November 2nd and what has emerged is the disappearance of the liberal and the rise of the Progressive.
Please note all MSM folks referring to the Progressives. Last night on O'Reilley he referred to Progressives repeatedly in the opening statement.
Progressives smell exactly like Liberals. Anytime you hear Progressive please correct the speaker fast

[tkathy]

The problem with "Liberalism" is it has morphed into "victimhoodism".

[stopem]

Progressive liberal = socialism, communism, secular humanism.

[7.62 x 51mm]

Liberals, progressives, communists, socialists = The Enemy Within™.

[ClearCase_guy]

Liberalism in its noblest, and also in its most essential, sense has always meant (and, to be fair, here and there it still means) an exaltation, a defense of the fundamental value and category of human dignity.

Which is why, I suppose, that the only Core belief of all Liberals is that it is OK to dismember babies in their mother's womb.

[RinaseaofDs]

There should be a puke alert on this for two reasons

1. The elephant in his room, that he won't describe in any detail is that liberals are directly responsible for homicide without the guilt, and on demand. They some how read the right to murder into the constitution, and for women only.

2. The biggest of the achievements he attributes to liberals, civil rights for minorities - specifically blacks - was delivered by conservatives. More than a third of their elected officials in congress were against the idea.

Liberalism used to be what people today called conservatism. Reagan was a Democrat, and had to go. John Kennedy today would no doubt be to the right of Zell Miller today, which puts him far to the right of Specter and John McCain.

Liberalism is a dirty word today because they traded the pursuit and retention of the priveleges that go with power for the principles necessary to retain power as a function of respect. It's hard to get behind an idea that defends pornography and infanticide, but cringes at the words "Merry Christmas".

Progressive isn't going to stick either. O'Reilly is that arrogant though. If progressive means murder on tap, high taxes, abrogation of individual liberties like the use of the Declaration of Independence in the classroom, the Boy Scouts of America, owning a gun, defending the US, and fair voting (where an ID is required before being handed a ballot), then it won't take Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, and Mark Steyn fifteen minutes over their morning cruller to parody the term as it applies to quasi-socialists and bolsheviks.

The old marketing tricks don't work anymore. There is no more implicit trust in institutions such that a marketing makeover will allow them to resume pursuit of an anti-America agenda.

[The_Reader_David]

Oh, good! If the left is abandoning the word 'liberal' will they give it back to us? I kind of like having liberated red from the left--it's a good color which got missappropriated by the commies just like their fellow-travelers here misappropriated the word liberal. Properly speaking it's our word: we defend liberty, want limits on government, champion individual rights, etc.

The only reason we're conservatives is because we want to conserve the American Founding (which was liberal in the original meaning of the word)--Ike had the wit to see that and adopt the name just about the time the so-called 'liberals' showed themselves to be manifestly socialists by running Adlai Stevenson against him. In Continental Europe we'd certainly be liberals (since conservatives there tend to be clericalist and monarchists)--the main problem with Europe is that it doesn't have enough liberals in the original meaning of the word (that is analogs of American conservatives), and they rarely come to power (I think Berlusconi's movement in Italy has a core of supports from the area near Milan who are recognizably similar to us in ideology, but it's them and the Free Democrats in Germany--always a minor party, one wing of the 'center-right' party in France, whatever it's called these days,
and that's about it in 'Old Europe').

'Progressives', eh? Well out here in Kansas we already know what that means--it was the Progressive Party that briefly held the Kansas legislature in the 1890's and instituted courses in Marxist political economy at the universities here. The Republical legislators who succeeded them had to exercise their 2nd Amendment rights to be certain of getting the statehouse back. (I bet that jerk who wrote 'What's Wrong with Kansas' doesn't correctly trace our state's revulsion against the hard left (which the demonRATs have become since the 1970's) to being the one place in America that saw them in power early on.)