A History of Violence

reason ^

[Def Conservative]

In fact, as the historian David Southern has documented, the worst evils of the South's Jim Crow regime, including segregation, disfranchisement, mob violence, and lynching, all "went hand-in-hand with the most advanced forms of southern progressivism." Remember that progressives wanted an interventionist government with sweeping powers to regulate all walks of life, an approach that fit nicely with Jim Crow's bullying assault on economic liberty and freedom of association.

[HiTech RedNeck]

There had to be a nanny state to be sure those “uppity blacks” didn’t get outta hand.

[HiTech RedNeck]

(I’m not saying I agree with either the goal or the method, of cuss! I’m saying that’s how they thought.)

[Rockingham]

Southern Progressives may well have been racist, but it is not at all clear that they were much different in their views on race from most white Southerners in that era. That said, the end of Republican rule in 1912 and the election of progressive Democrat Woodrow Wilson was a major reverse for Black Americans. Wilson was a Southerner, a pernicious racist, and a determined segregationist.

[Yosemitest]

I bought a book just for this.

Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology

progressive. adj. 1607-12, making progress, in Bacon's Essays;
borrowed from French progressif (feminime progressive), formed as if from Latin *progressivus, from progressus, past participle of progredi go forward;
for suffix SEE -IVE.
Progressive in the sense of flavoring or advocating efforts toward progress or reform,
especially in political and social matters, is first recorded in 1884, perhaps after earlier use in French (about 1880).
The meaning in the field of education,
that of aiming to develop the ability and interests of pupils
rather than fitting them to a given curriculum,
is first recorded in 1839
but was not widely used until popularized by writers
discussing the educational philosophy of the American educator John Dewey and others in the 1920's.

- n. 1865, one who favors or advocates progress or reform,
especially in political and social matters, from the adjective.

There is nothing about SOCIALISTS or FASCIST in this.
To use the word "PROGRESSIVE" is

to try to HIDE the ugliness of the word "COMMUNIST," FASCIST," SOCIALIST," or MARXIST."

I loathe today's abuse of the word "Progressive".

There's nothing progressive about their use of the word "Progressive"

[HiTech RedNeck]

Funny that “progressive” is an empty puff term like “hope and change”. It leaves totally to the imagination what is being progressed toward. Yesterday it was white supremacy, today it is some self contradictory goal of combined racial equality and black exaltation. Almost everywhere it’s used, it seems to turn out to be “hell in a handcart.”

[Rockingham]

In fairness to the progressives of the 19th and early 20th Century, they came before the rise of Marxists, communists, and fascists and were instead native grown reformers.

In that era, the US was prospering and developing at a rapid pace, but corruption was rampant at all levels, effective sanitation and health and safety measures virtually absent, and public education and municipal services in their infancy. Progressives sought to attack those problems.

Much of progressive doctrine was wrong and later went in dangerous directions, but there is a lot to be said for having reliable water and sewer services, honest police, and public officials and bureaucrats who are not on the take. If only progressives had stopped there!

[Rockingham]

Urban progressives began as reformers who sought to use government to remedy many obvious ills of the late 19th and early 20th century: corrupt public officials, police, and bureaucrats; rigged elections; squalid tenements; lack of sanitation and public health and safety measures; and a lack of municipal utility services.

Progressives also had the view that people themselves should be reformed through public education founded on progressive principles and measures against corruptions of race and national identity.

Initially, this led to urban public school systems that educated and Americanized immigrants and their children. But the result today is the profoundly dysfunctional American K-12 school system.

In keeping with what passed for scientific theory in that era, Progressives regarded Blacks and most immigrant whites as inherently inferior. Progressives therefore supported racial and eugenics measures that had demonstrably evil consequences.

Moreover, the general Progressive belief in the power of government was (and is) at odds with the traditional American suspicion and fear of government as a source of oppression and a danger to liberty. Add a heavy dose of Marxist economic and social theory to the progressive belief in the reformative and redemptive power of government and one has the ideology of the modern Democratic party.

[cashless]

Please don't forget that Southern DEMOCRATS (not Republicans) were opposed to desegregation and if memory serves me correctly were filibustering to keep it from happening and the Republicans joined with the remaining Democrats to break the filibuster. Sorry. I can't recall which act it was. I also seem to remember the name of an Arkansas senator (leading the charge) that was Bill Clinton's mentor was Fulbright(?). I guess if we really want to know the history we could ask Sen. Robert “KKK Grand Wizard” Byrd. He surely would know. (SARC)

[greeneyes]

Are you talking about the civil rights act? Passed in 1965 I think.

[fieldmarshaldj]

CRA of ‘64. Albert Gore, Sr. filibustered the bill, if only to make a truly cynical appeal to Segregationists in TN (since he was up for reelection). He won, carried across by the LBJ tide, but he then just as cynically switched to being pro-Civil Rights (and anti-Vietnam) by 1970, by which time he was equally hated on the right and by Blacks, and almost lost renomination, but was finished off in the general election. You’re also correct that the liberal Fulbright was anti-Civil Rights (as was Byrd).