Good post...I continue to call myself "liberal"...only to be corrected by todays leftists proclaiming I'm not liberal...I'm a "classic liberal". Unfortunately the right in this country has allowed the left to obfuscate all language. In that sense, the political monikers Democrat and Republican are more accurate than the philosophical terms...and yes, Dubya is proving to be one of the most progressive Presidents in years.
Exactly. Now, the reason "progressive" was co-opted was simply that only one route of historical progress is permissible under the Marx/Hegel historical model. If it doesn't conform to that view of history as leading ineluctably through feudalism to capitalism to socialism then it doesn't count as "progress" but something else. For Marx it was "counterrevolutionary" and that is Marxism's dirtiest word.
This is one of the international left's core faiths, that they are the keepers of historical correctness and that deviation from that model is, well, "deviationist" and not to be tolerated. It explains an almost desperate defense of such things as the UN and world government, of NGO's directing national policies, of unelected and unaccountable elites centrally directing world affairs with an eye to "social justice," and of the subordination of national sovereignty to a mythical greater good. It is this part of "progressivism" that is essentially a religious faith, unencumbered by requirements to produce beneficial results in the real world.