Posted on 12/31/2017 12:48:57 PM PST by Kaslin
When FDR stole the name of "liberalism" to disguise the fact that he was a Progressive, he succeeded in doing more than simply confusing America's voters in his day, many of whom had been made suspicious of Progressivism by Woodrow Wilson's policies. Taking for the Progressives the name that once belonged to the American founders was more than a brilliant election-winning tactical masterstroke. FDR's plan to sow confusion in the minds of the political opposition to Progressivism has become a war-winning strategy. We see the results all around us. While flying the flag of liberalism, the Progressives laid waste to the liberal Republic of the American founders.
The classical liberalism of the American founders focused on reining in the powers of government. The purpose of the founders' design of the government was protecting our unalienable rights from encroachment by people in the government. Taking their cue from the German thinker GWF Hegel by way of Woodrow Wilson, the Progressives instead put their faith in the state. They rejected the idea of the American Republic root and branch. But the original Progressives understood the American people well enough to know that overthrowing the Republic by force and violence was out of the question. So they set out to overthrow it little by little, progressively.
FDR's capture of the flag of his political opponents made it easier for the Progressives to advance their project. FDR left without a name the political opposition that wanted America to continue to live according to the Constitution. What should they call themselves? As Charles Kesler writes in his book I Am the Change, "FDR suggested, helpfully, that they ought to call themselves conservatives, a designation they were loath to accept because it sounded ...vaguely un-American[.] ...
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
The trouble with conservatism is that it takes self control to not want to loot the public purse for one’s personal benefit and leave the next generation cold and hungry and beggars.
Actually I am by definition a ‘liberal.’ Like the founders. We want liberty for all, reigned in by the lightest of tethers.
I hate defending the term ‘conservative.’ I don’t want things to be as of old. We learn, we improve, we (dare I use this verb) progress. In all of our gain, we must, in my opinion, fit our social infrastructure to our constitution and not the other way around. So we aren’t pure ‘progressives’ who have zero core and are thus easily fooled then ruled by smooth talking tyrants. We are ‘liberals’ because we are open to truly seeing what is going on and guarding our freedom for us and future generations. We can adapt but we don’t ‘fundamentally transform.’ We are called conservatives but we are more liberal than any leftist. The leftists and their Gullibles who follow them blindly can’t be open minded. They are shamed into only seeing one side of anything. Leftism is as far from freedom as you can get.
“Conservatism” as a brand is dead, imho. And rightfully so (pun intended.)
Those that like to criticize and correct the use of Liberal when referencing the Democrats in today’s politics, are a lost cause. They keep trying to correct folks in rescue of the word. Sorry, but there’s no rescuing the word after what the Left did to it.
Chalk it up as a rainbow, the term “gay”, or the use of the word progressive.
These are terms of avoidance.
Homosexuality can’t be minimized by associating it with Rainbows. Using the term gay can dismiss the sorrow and misery that came along with this lifestyle. Progressive is not an accurate word, when it comes to rolling back the cloc on over 100 million dead, to praise Communism/Socialism/and Marxism.
Vulgarity is the only accurate description of what was done to these words or entities, in the interest of hiding truth.
Yep, they want to control every aspect of our lives.
BTW, I think I have the best screen-name on FreeRepublic.
I try never to use the term “liberal” for RATS and their ilk.
I much prefer the more descriptive “leftist.”
Or, if I’m among very good friends, “communist.”
We are actually the liberals. Today’s conservatism is about three fourths the classical liberalism of Locke, Adam Smith, Montesquieu, and pretty much all of the Founding Fathers. Mix into this a healthy dollop of classical conservatism as expounded by Edmund Burke, which itself drew heavily from the classical liberal tradition.
Today’s left should never be referred to as “liberals” for the simple reason that they hate liberty — except for the liberty to lord it over regular folks and control every aspect of their lives.
That is, “liberty for me but not for thee.”
>>Actually I am by definition a ‘liberal.’ Like the founders. We want liberty for all, reigned in by the lightest of tethers.
>>I hate defending the term ‘conservative.’
I agree. Same here. I will never call a Progressive anything but that—or Communist. They do not deserve to be called “liberal” since they are anything but.
A perfect summary of this article would be “Make America Great Again.”
I think you argument makes a certain sort of sense, but when we allowed the Left to shed the word “Liberal” in search of a new identity, “Progressive”, we handed them a great big victory.
We should have shoved that word down their throats for all time.
Going back decades and centuries to reclaim old meanings is not victory. It’s simply submission.
They were getting literally pounded under the term Liberal, and we let them weasel out of it.
Make that:
“Democrats and liberals have turned into communists, and republicans are politically worthless so we need to make America great again.”
bump
Actually it makes sense, since it’s all relative. I do want to “conserve” what was America, the greatness of its principles. And it was working a good deal for a good while. So “conservative” in that sense is not bad at all.
As for progressive, they do not mean as opposed to regressive, though that is a nice deception they want you to think. It’s a double entendre wherein the key meaning is “gradual”. They want gradual change so you won’t mind too much or notice.
Progressives are to liberals as that white stuff in chicken shit is to chicken shit. Why differentiate at all?
Oh goody another thoughtful piece about how conservatism isn’t really
If the Claremont Institute with join with Fitton and Judicial Watch I might have some respect for them
If you read The Road to Serfdom (Reader’s Digest Condensed Version here), you will see that FA Hayek used the term “liberal” to denote people who today would be called “conservatives” in America. That is because Hayek, an Austrian, learned English in America before the meaning of “liberal” was essentially inverted, according to Safire's New Political Dictionary, in the 1920s. And the meaning of “liberal” was not changed in Britain, where Hayek wrote Serfdom during WWII.
Republicans used to be progressive- party of Lincoln. What the sam dog you think happened?
From Wikipedia”-
The Progressive Party of 1912 was an American third party. It was formed by former President Theodore Roosevelt after he lost the presidential nomination of the Republican Party to his former protégé, President William Howard Taft. The new party was known for taking advanced positions on progressive reforms and attracting some leading reformers. After the party’s defeat in the 1912 presidential election, it went into rapid decline, disappearing by 1918. The Progressive party was nicknamed the “Bull Moose Party” after journalists quoted Roosevelt saying that he felt “fit as a bull moose” following an assassination attempt on the campaign trail shortly after the new party was formed.[1]
As a member of the Republican Party, Roosevelt had served as president from 1901 to 1909, becoming increasingly progressive in the later years of his presidency. In the 1908 presidential election, Roosevelt helped ensure that he would be succeeded by Secretary of War Taft. After Taft took office, he hewed closer to the conservative wing of the party. This and other actions alienated Roosevelt from his former friend. Progressive Republican leader Robert La Follette had already announced a challenge to Taft for the 1912 Republican nomination, but many of his supporters shifted to Roosevelt after the former president decided to seek a third presidential term, which was permissible under the United States Constitution prior to the ratification of the Twenty-second Amendment. At the 1912 Republican National Convention, Taft narrowly defeated Roosevelt for the party’s presidential nomination. After the convention, Roosevelt, Frank Munsey, George Walbridge Perkins, and other progressive Republicans established the Progressive Party and nominated a ticket of Roosevelt and Hiram Johnson of California at the 1912 Progressive National Convention. The new party attracted several Republican officeholders, although nearly all of them remained loyal to the Republican Party; in California, Johnson and the Progressives took control of the Republican party.
The party’s platform built on Roosevelt’s Square Deal domestic program and called for several progressive reforms. The platform asserted that “to dissolve the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day.” Proposals on the platform included restrictions on campaign finance contributions, a reduction of the tariff, and the establishment of a social insurance system, an eight-hour workday, and women’s suffrage. The party was split on the regulation of large corporations, with some party members disappointed that the platform did not contain a stronger call for “trust-busting.” Party members also had different outlooks on foreign policy, with pacifists like Jane Addams opposing Roosevelt’s call for a naval build-up.
The platform’s main theme was reversing the domination of politics by business interests, which allegedly controlled the Republican and Democratic parties, alike. The platform asserted that:
To destroy this invisible Government, to dissolve the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day.[10]
To that end, the platform called for:
Strict limits and disclosure requirements on political campaign contributions
Registration of lobbyists
Recording and publication of Congressional committee proceedings
In the social sphere the platform called for:
A National Health Service to include all existing government medical agencies.
Social insurance, to provide for the elderly, the unemployed, and the disabled
Limited the ability of judges to order injunctions to limit labor strikes.
A minimum wage law for women
An eight-hour workday
A federal securities commission
Farm relief
Workers’ compensation for work-related injuries
An inheritance tax
The political reforms proposed included:
Women’s suffrage
Direct election of Senators
Primary elections for state and federal nominations
The platform also urged states to adopt measures for “direct democracy”, including:
The recall election (citizens may remove an elected official before the end of his term)
The referendum (citizens may decide on a law by popular vote)
The initiative (citizens may propose a law by petition and enact it by popular vote)
Judicial recall (when a court declares a law unconstitutional, the citizens may override that ruling by popular vote).[11]
I think you do have the best screen name. Probably PureHatredForLyingLeftistHypocrites was taken, anyway.
We shouldn’t call lefties libs because liberty is what OUR side is after. We need to take back the word.
Yes, we want to “conserve” our founding documents.
And your point about gradual progressiveness (is that a word?) is good. They want the Gullibles in that pot, slowly warming to a boil.
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