I wondered a few days ago what they meant by it. I still don't know, really. But when all else fails, and you've had a certain kind of education, you look at the history of the word.
Progressive. Sounds good, doesn't it? Sounds positive. Who's against progress, other than maybe the Pope?
But for those of us who take the long view, "progress" in a positive sense is kind of a new thing. What it used to mean was just putting one foot in front of the other -- just walking around. The old kings and queens would every so often venture out of the palace and make a "royal progress." This didn't mean that they were adapting the institution of monarchy to changed conditions. On the contrary, it meant that the monarch was roaming around the country freeloading off an earl here and a duke there.
In the 18th century you get the word "progressive" used of a disease -- meaning one that just gets worse and worse. This sense of "progressive," as applied to the Democratic Party, would be right on target of course, but probably isn't what the Fromniks and the Deanites mean.
In the late 19th century, we encounter the idea of social progress as an intrinsically good thing. Progress comes to mean not just movement as such, but specifically movement from worse to better.
In the American political context, "progressive" was actually regressive. The "progressive" movement in our history is what happened when Populism got replaced by what one writer has called the "programmatic liberalism of the modern administrative state." Bryan, that lovable off-the-reservation nut, was essentially a Populist; the coldly rational LaFollette, with his fondness for public commissions and technical adjustments of the electoral machinery, a managerial-elite Progressive par excellence.
Few modern "progressives" have ever heard of Herbert D. Croly, but they are nonetheless his heirs. Fascinating how they have revealed their real ancestry, all unwitting, in their choice of words.
We have the Progressive Democrats of America, a wistful ragbag of former Deanites, whose "vision" it is to "work within the general framework of the Democratic Party ... to create a new, democratic, grassroots-based, nationally federated organization. .... Mindful of the continuing important differences between Republican and Democratic political values, ... we dedicate ourselves to beginning the long, patriotic, nonviolent, and ultimately unstoppable process of transforming the Democratic Party."
Where do you start with this stuff? I guess my favorite is that line about the "important differences between Republican and Democratic political values." Huh? It's like climbing onto a bar stool next to some clean, well-dressed, apparently sane guy who starts talking to you about Venusians -- not only as if Venusians were real, but as if you were -- of course! -- just as au courant with Vensusians and their doings as he is. How 'bout those Venusians? Can you believe this latest thing with the sunspots?
"Unstoppable" is pretty good too. And it's telling that "patriotic" and "nonviolent" had to be thrown in; these guys are on the defensive even in their own manifesto. I could go on and on, but deconstructing this sad twaddle is a little too much like conducting an autopsy on a week-old drowning victim: depressing, unsalubrious, and unlikely to tell you anything you didn't already know.
The refined Eloi of PDA probably consider themselves worlds removed from the squalid Morlocks of the Fromsphere -- the "what-do-you-want-me-to-say-today" careerists at the Democratic Leadership Council and Third Way and the like. And no doubt the Morlocks feel the same way. But then why do they both put this word "progressive" all over their Web sites? What do they mean by it? What do they expect us to understand by it?
More on this topic anon.
Isn't it kind of uncanny how John Bolton and Tom Friedman have the same mustache?
Maybe they're not really mustaches at all, but some alien life form distantly related to the terrestrial centipede, which takes up residence on the upper lips of individuals with a genetic vulnerability to mind control. The creature takes over its host's nervous system ... I bet Friedman and Bolton both have a basement full of incubating Mustache Aliens. I suspect a lot of cops are hosting them too.
All these efforts to resuscitate the poor dead Democratic party... it's a grimly fascinating spectacle. The medics stand around the bed, whaling away with fibrillator paddles, horse syringes, and sinister-looking metal objects of unknown purpose. Discarded vials of medicine, sterile wrappings, tubes, bandages, pile higher and higher on the floor. One by one the exhausted sawbones straighten up, mop their sweating brows, then shrug and walk away. The remaining faithful redouble their frantic efforts. Will they keep it up until the corpse actually begins to smell? Have a heart, guys. Bury the poor thing.
The WashPost headline cruelly captures the story's essence: "Soros-backed activist group disbands as interest fades" -- although the term "activist" is stretching a point.
The dream, says the Post, was "to build a liberal voter-mobilization organization that would be independent of the Democratic Party, labor unions or other traditional interest groups." In other words, to build support for the Democrats on... what? Thin air?
Well, anyway, it's good to see the last of these luftmenschen. Now if only the same thing would happen to MoveOn.org.
This must have been more fun to assemble for the young sparks at Third Way than the dreary stuff about troop recruitment; the porn report lists six authors and contributors. One imagines them in their boxy, ill-cut, middle-aged suits, as the shades of evening fall over the Potomac, their flushed young faces garishly lit by the screenglow, as they plumb the depths of net.smut in the service of the Republic.
Traces of excitement can occasionally be felt even in the leaden prose, with its feverish references to the porn industry's "deep and broad market penetration." One suspects that this phrase occurred to one of the lucky six after a particularly extensive and fruitful session of research. Uh, pass the Kleenex, there, dude?
Unlike some of Third Way's other lucubrations, this one actually makes some recommendations. "Pornography sites" -- and who determines, by the way, what constitutes a pornography site, now that the Supremes have lost their interest in examining the stuff? -- porn sites, the Thirdies say, "should be required to make use of existing age-verification software." (Hmmm. Let's look at that contributor list again....) "Additional resources should be provided to law enforcement." More money for cops? I think I liked the criminal-coddling old Democrats a lot better. And finally, the porn biz should be taxed. The Tit Tax! IRS Form 69! Multiply the number of penises (line 77) by the Boner Ratio (Schedule WD-D) and the Excess Size Quotient (Schedule 11-1/2) and enter, er write, in box, er space 78.
Lots of fun new jobs at IRS. Clearly, whatever else the New Democrats may have jettisoned, the love of bureaucracy still burns fierce in their breasts.
Er, souls.
