Talk:Progressivism

A better heuristic?

Reading through discussion points, it's clear the term "progressive" needs a better heuristic for readers. The section comparing progressivism to liberalism, conservativism, and socialism provides a poor typological structure for conveying meaning. Now, I would need to read more about the early progressive movement, but most of the cited sources above fit within a framework that views progressivism as an ORIENTATION to the foundational political philosophies of liberalism and communitarianism.

This heuristic comes from Stiles (2006) who did an analysis of current environmental education policies/philosophies in the United States. Stiles supports his framework with a number of sources, and it makes a lot more sense with cited sources above and in the main article. The heuristic is as follows:

progressive / liberalism (e.g. liberal democracy ala Rawls,1971)
conservative / liberalism (e.g. libertarianism, neoliberalism)
progressive / communitarianism (e.g. socialism)
conservative / communitarinism (e.g. communism, social conservative movement in the united states)

Liberals and Communitarians by Stephen Mulhall and Adam Swift (1996) is a must read as well.

Citation:
Stiles, T. (2006). Place stories: (Re)locating the interests of youth in environmental education. Dissertation at Arizona State University.

R33f3rman (talk) 07:23, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

The comparison section is confusing because the terms progressive, liberal, conservative and socialist are used ambiguously. However I cannot see how your use of the term progressive fits in with any of its uses in the article. Basically the article lists how the term has been used in reference to different political groups: parties called "progressive", American politics in the Progressive, New Deal and Great Society era, and modern liberalism. The article itself needs to be re-written. The Four Deuces (talk) 18:30, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Canada

I removed this wording: "...although the PCs also contained a progressive wing for the rest of its history. Most of these people were opposed to the PCs merger with the more socially conservative Canadian Alliance in 2003." Progressives who joined or re-joined the Conservatives did not form a separate wing and were not "progressive" in a modern sense. Also I added "former" (and capitalized the reference) to "progressives" who supported the Progressive Conservative Party, because the Progressive Party had ceased to exist. The Four Deuces (talk) 18:55, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Organize data better

Add tag:

Article would exist better-presented with more subsections and subtopics, for increased clarity, objectivity, and ease of reading.

Neutrality violated by libertarian framing.

The first sentence of the first paragraph is a blatant violation of wikipedia neutrality. Probably also a case of original research (ie. fantasy) since it is unsourced.

"[...] usually in a statist or egalitarian direction for economic policies (government management) and liberal direction for social policies (personal choice)."

Statist is a libertarian term of derision, and that is the dominant usage people encounter. A brief google search for statism will show that.

A division into economic and social is also typical of libertarian viewpoints alone, as exemplified by their quiz, and has no academic standing.

The introduction ought to be based on statements of progressivism by progressives. Not framed in libertarian ideology.

Mhuben (talk) 11:12, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Liberals support conservatives?

"Finally, liberals are more likely to support the Democratic Party in America and a Labour party or Liberal Party in Europe and Australia, while progressives tend to feel disillusioned with any two-party system, and vote more often for third-party candidates". This seems confusing. Very few European countries have a Liberal Party as one of their big two, so the natural interpretation of the sentence is to look at Australia, where the Liberal Party is a rightwing conservative party despite its name. Besides, relatively few European countries have a two-party system, unless you mean two-party in the weak sense of two-party-dominant. In Germany for example, the third-party and fourth-party scene is about a million times more vibrant than the third-party scene in the USA. And only a small minority of Europe's mainstream social democratic parties are called Labour. 86.176.49.109 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 06:58, 18 August 2009 (UTC).

The basis for this no longer appears to be in the article but what is there now, identifying American Liberalism with "left conservatism" is pretty near the mark. "Liberal" in the universe of mainstream US political discourse equivocally refers to that and what from the in-universe view is considered to be the left end of the entire spectrum of discourse with voices like Chomsky and so forth being side show attractions. Presumably, this, the near total lack of a politically effective left is one of those contradictions in American politics overripe for resolution. So the distinction between "liberal" and "progressive" is overdetermined here, "liberal" doesn't mean what it does globally, and in as much as it's a central pillar of the "centre right nation" cant doesn't mean progressive at all. 72.228.177.92 (talk) 01:55, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Ireland

The section on Progressivism in Ireland shows the Progressive Democrats as being Progressive, eventhough they are not Progressive, just because their name says Progressive dosnt make it true, we could also make the same argument about the Progressive Conservatives of Canada, they are not Progressive even though their name says so, I think we should remove the Ireland section from this page considering that the party is not even close to being Progressive, they are Conservative. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 206.116.10.54 (talk) 21:17, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Good point. I removed them. They and the Progressive Conservatives are already mentioned in the lead as parties use progressive in their names, although not belonging to that tradition. (The Irish party is actually liberal.) The Four Deuces (talk) 22:09, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

as a eupemism for general "liberals"

the last section debunked this , however many individuals and sources disagree. 79.176.49.28 (talk) 09:08, 20 March 2010 (UTC)