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Posted on 11/01/2026 7:01:17 AM PST by ProgressingAmerica
In an address in North Carolina, FDR said:
In those days, 1913 and 1914, the leadership of the Nation was in the hands of a great President who was seeking to recover for our social system ground that had been lost under his conservative predecessor, and to restore something of the fighting liberal spirit which the Nation had gained under Theodore Roosevelt. It seemed one of our great national tragedies that just when Woodrow Wilson was beginning to accomplish definite improvements in the living standards of America, the World War not only interrupted his course, but laid the foundation for twelve years of retrogression.
Yes, you read that paragraph correctly. Now does FDR actually believe Teddy was a "liberal" having a "fighting liberal spirit"? No probably not. But FDR was retcon-drunk trying to retroactively change progressivism's back story after the deathblow 1920 election. And in changing history as FDR was doing, it simply required calling Teddy Roosevelt a liberal too on account of consistency. FDR also did this to Wilson, BTW.
Now, the thing is, I do not believe Theodore Roosevelt was a "liberal". And neither do you.
But this is a litmus test. If you are the kind of person who trust progressives when they say that progressivism = liberalism, if you are the kind of person who agrees with progressives(and there are a lot of you who will see this) then you don't get to exempt yourself, you have to be consistent. You need to call Theodore Roosevelt a liberal as well, because Teddy was in fact a big time progressive, a big time statist, and he was not a fan of the kinds of things related to governmental limitations. Theodore Roosevelt wanted maximal government.
Like all other progressives, Theodore Roosevelt was a postliberal. He wanted to get past the Constitution. Get past government limitations. Get past John Locke. Get past natural law and natural rights. Get past anything and everything related to the idea that he, Teddy, could not do whatever the heck he wanted to do. There is a whole party platform from the 1912 Progressive Party, Teddy's Party, explaining what exactly they wanted the government to be able to do to us. To us, understand that - do to us. That's what progressives are about.
Note how the 1912 Progressive Party is not the Liberal Party. Progressivism is not liberalism.
Progressivism was the first postliberal ideology to be seen in the U.S. Good job on you for being consistent in your refusal to call Theodore Roosevelt a "liberal". Progressives are not liberals.
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Do you trust progressives? If you do, you might be willing to go along with the fact that progressives stole the word liberal, slapped a sticker on themselves, and have paraded it around exclaiming "look at my sticker!" because that little sticker, that seal of approval - I guess that's all that's needed to prove that they are liberals.
If that's all it takes, you might be a little too trusting to believe that a man is a woman no wait a progressive is a liberal.
That last sentence may be a little harsh but it is not wrong.
Do you trust progressives?
It is better to focus on what you want, goals can be measured.
Take the time to reflect on what conservatism is. Print this out and give to others. Conservatism is not an ideology, it is a philosophy, a way of thinking.
The Ten Conservative Principles
https://static.heritage.org/CPP/FP_PS38w.pdf
Relates to our recent discussion.
Progressives are just only wearing camo, nothing more. It was all a gimmick the whole time.
Words have actual meaning.
Relates to our recent discussion.
Progressives are just only wearing camo, nothing more. It was all a gimmick the whole time.
Words have actual meaning.
The founding fathers were liberal. The conservatives of the time were tories.
Progressives are marxists.
“Liberalisnm” doesn’t equal “Leftism”
Liberalism is clssicaly for individaul freedom whereas Leftism is for corecoin and lack of individual freedom.
Leftism is REGRESSIONISM not progressivism. Leftism regresses the indiviual, progresses the state.
“progressives” are little more than another hate-filled position on the destructive spectrum that is all collectivist polities.
FDR was a commie and Jew hater. His wife saved the European Jews, not him. Pi$$ on him and his memory — like TeddyKennedy.
Hillary once said she was not a liberal, she was a progressive. That is all I need to know about it.
“The founding fathers were liberal”
Yes and that really is the problem. The word liberal cannot mean both limited government individual liberty and also collectivism maximum government because then, the word means absolutely nothing at all.
Further it brings up a problem. The Founders were liberal which means then, that the Second Amendment is also liberal.
Does that mean modern self proclaimed postliberals are gun grabbers? I don’t care what anybody else would say. I, need an answer to that question.
Yep, that is a good point.
She said that at the 2008 debate.
Progressive Liberals are not liberals. They call themselves that as it sounds much better than “progressive Marxists.” The classic definition of liberal is close to what we call libertarian today.
I won’t do the concept justice, but a lot of this goes back to philosophical Nominalism (which became a thing in the Middle Ages). Basically, putting a label on a thing, makes that thing a part of Reality.
If I say I am a woman, then I am a woman.
If I say I am a man, then I am a man.
If my politics are 100% Progressive, and I say I am a Liberal, then Liberal politics are Progressive politics.
You can do a lot of damage by thinking that the Label is equal to Reality.
“Progressives are not liberals.”
Progressivism is a political philosophy and social reform movement focused on advancing the public good through government action and often calling for government to be used to meet popular social, political, economic, and environmental needs and demands and to advance rights and protections for marginalized groups. (Belief)
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/progressivism
Liberalism is a political doctrine that takes protecting and enhancing the freedom of the individual to be the central problem of politics. Liberals typically believe that government is necessary to protect individuals from being harmed by others, but they also recognize that government itself can pose a threat to liberty. As the American Revolutionary pamphleteer Thomas Paine expressed it in Common Sense (1776), government is at best “a necessary evil.” Laws, judges, and police are needed to secure the individual’s life and liberty, but their coercive power may also be turned against the individual. The problem, then, is to devise a system that gives government the power necessary to protect individual liberty but also prevents those who govern from abusing that power. (Actuality)
https://www.britannica.com/topic/liberalism
They are not the same but they are hand in hand to what is happening from their theory. The first above is the belief that it can work while the second identifies its failures. But with the existing efforts to use socialism as the piloting sourse for the US government they are crossing back into an impossible belief rather than a reality.
Since the term socialism entered English around 1830, it has consistently referred to a system of social organization in which the ownership of property and the distribution of income are subject to social rather than private control. The conception of that control, however, has varied, and socialism has been interpreted in widely diverging ways, ranging from statist to libertarian, from Marxist to liberal. In the modern era, “pure” socialism has been seen only rarely and usually briefly in a few Communist regimes.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/socialism
Countries like Cuba, Russia and North Korea fall into the socialist concept. Of course the nordic countries like Sweden, Denmark, and Norway are the models socialists cling to. They work under what is called the Nordic Model. These country’s leaders explicitly state they are not socialist; they operate vibrant, competitive, market-based capitalist economies. Rather than state ownership of business, they use high tax revenues to fund robust social safety nets, universal healthcare, and strong labor protections. But they do not fall under the socialist view of government ownership and devling...almost. They are a capitalist atmosphere that allows their constituents to cover the bills...i.e., heavy taxing thus financial conrol. This includes progressive personal income taxes and steep value-added taxes (VAT) of 20% to 25% that impact the middle and upper-middle classes, not just high earners. And that trickles down to the lower class as they won’t have incomes if the middle up has the bills to pay. This is where the US socialists separate. They are still selling the top tier giving more while they are actually paying more in reality. The top tier doesn’t care about social reform...just more worth. Wealthy people often want more money because accumulating wealth becomes a game of achievement, status, and power rather than a means to cover basic living expenses. Ask all the liberal congressional people who are fighting agqainst those with high worth like:
Nancy Pelosi worth $287 million
Mark Warner worth $214.1 million
Daniel Goldman worth $208.2 million
April McClain Delaney worth $199.1 million
Suzan DelBene worth $129.4 million
Donald Beyer Jr worth $121.8 million
Sara Jacobs worth $87.2 million
And that’s the short list in just the house. I guess socialism does work if you are in charge. As usual, those who make the rules don’t play the game.
So can socialism work? Ask the Seattle mayor who said the businesses can leave if they don’t want to pay the taxes and her rebuttal when the actuality of that cut the state bankroll. Socialism is the result of progressivism. No, you can’t call a catapillar a butterfly...yet.
wy69
Lewis Carroll brilliantly summed up the leftist ideology.
Words have become weapons—and today they mean whatever they leftists want them to mean.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LB_i3TyLmDg
And this one second one especially, at about/after 3:40.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yTGCuT4Aow
I think she means Margaret Sanger specifically, someone she has talked about glowingly for decades. But Hillary clearly has other 20th century progressives in mind.
I don't know, mostly because I don't fully understand the postliberal moniker.
What I do know is that the primary problem w/monikers is that people wind up spending more time arguing over the definition of the moniker than the issue at hand.
Specifically, when it comes to the second amendment, does it really matter what someone's moniker is vs what they are trying to do that particular regard? I think not.
There are a millions of "issues" out there to argue and not all choices are yes/no. Again, w/guns, maybe someone generally supports 2A but thinks background checks are necessary.
My opinion re guns is that since the good guys far outnumber the bad guys, we're better off if everyone carries. That also requires to not have the gov keep charging people for defending themselves.
In the 1920s, “progressivism” had lost its lustre. “Liberalism” was adopted as a label by young Democrats like FDR. They were mostly urban and saw themselves as “modern” and sophisticated and the left-over progressives as old fashioned.
The “liberals” had been progressives themselves but they wanted to seem up-to-date and of-the-moment in the Twenties. They wanted to break with “Victorian” and small town attitudes. Another 60-70 years later, “liberal” had become a dirty word, so the “progressive” label came back into use.
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