Next Update: Understanding the Progressive Movement
Oh, I really can't wait for this! Say what you want about politics, and I don't care where you fall on the spectrum ... the idea that "conservative" ALWAYS means favoring traditional policies/opposing change and "progressive" always means advancing society forward/abolishing age-old intolerance is disgustingly story-book and doesn't jive with history. The progressive movement of the early Twentieth Century, for example, had more than its fair share of racist thought.
What do you think the terms "conservative" and "progressive", in the sense of a dichotomy, mean, then?
And Mechaman won't be writing in the sense of a dichotomy, FYI (to my knowledge). Rather, he'll likely pose that progressivism was merely a softer and more proactive form of conservatism designed to curb more radical movements. And for Mechaman, paternalism is a big part of the right. Thus, racist progressives in his eyes will be no better than out-and-out conservatives in their placement on any sort of political matrix.
Just my guess, anyway. If Mech feels any impetus to post here again, he's free to contradict my musings.
I don't have these concrete definitions of them, but I do distinguish between CULTURAL conservatism (which I would consider favoring traditional institutions, being more resistant to social progress, etc.), SOCIAL conservatism (I mean, honestly, does this term really mean anything other than "social policies of the modern Republican Party"? What is so inherently more "conservative" about wanting to overturn Roe v. Wade, for example, a ruling that has been on the books for decades?) and FISCAL conservatism (less regulation, cuts in spending, lower taxes, etc.). My main issue with this idea of progressive vs. conservative being an eternal battle that is applicable to all eras is it allows modern progressives to pretty much adopt any "good" politician/movement/accomplishment in history as their ancestors of sorts, haha. (See: many modern Democrats who think Lincoln was a "liberal" for his day because he issued the Emancipation Proclamation, assuming that opposing the enslavement of human beings is an inherently "liberal" thing).
