It’s Orwellian newspeak. By stealing that term, they set up in the mind of the listener/reader that their ideas are for progress, all others are for regress. It not only eliminates the argument of what is the “best” change to make, it eliminates the argument of whether any change is necessary. If the clock isn’t broken, don’t fix it. But Leftists constantly take apart a good clock until it doesn’t work, then blame the designer (the Founding Fathers), the engineers (business), the manufacturer (working/middle class), and the consumer (the free-market system) for the broken clock.
They then try to convince them that they can build a better clock and call that “progressive.”
That is what has always made liberalism so empty for me. I always asked the next question “what is best or correct”. Now we have them pushing hard to promote sexually progressive policies in schools that not only expose children to greater risk of STDS and death from aids but leave them with a greater difficulty producing faithful marriages and strong families. The left seems only to care that the children feel good in their debauchery not the least concerned about the real outcomes of the policies and ideas they promote.
One can go down the list of every issue that the left holds dear and perform the same analysis showing how disconnected their intentions are from the reality of result. They claim to promote the rights of individuals and then work their best to remove the economic means through taxation by which people earn their freedom.