Paul asserted (and Carl echoed) that we live in an era of progressive ascendancy. What does that mean?
Michael Zuckert recently pointed out that today’s progressives (and anti-progressives) are like Zombies. Everyone thought that the brand “progressive” had been killed by history or at least inconvenient events. But the progressives and their enemies are walking the earth again. The perennial Zombie issue: How do you kill folks who are already dead?
FDR engineered the Democratic move from progressive to “liberal” to secure the party’s brand more firmly in American political discourse.
And of course “progressive” was further discredited by its connection, for a while, with being a “fellow traveler” with the Communists.
Bringing it back was begun, it seems to me, by certain conservatives: They wanted to out liberals as really progressives. They wanted to restore the Founders good/History bad distinction by connecting today’s Democrats with Wilsonian anti-Founderism and socialist/communist/fascist Historicism.
But, instead of running away from this branding, Democrats–such as our president–embraced it. It’s really working for them.
Consider two facts: They’ve turned progressive into the defense of entitlements against reactionaries who view the whole welfare state as unconstitutional. They’ve also turned progressive into a defense of reasonable sophistication against anti-science fundamentalism.
Progressivism, in the president’s clever Second Inaugural, isn’t anti-Founderism at all. It’s become a version of the aspirational theory of the Declaration/Constitution, the achieving of its truthful principles over time. It’s the movement from Seneca Falls to Selma to Stonewall, and it’s the claim that conservatives do everything they can to dig in against that movement.
We’re clearly having our clocks cleaned on the branding front. Our guys clearly screwed up. There’s more to say, but I want to hear from you.
Meanwhile, consider the subtext of THIS.
January 22nd, 2013 | 8:41 am
Alas it is anti-Founderism, which is the point of the conservative scholarship on progressivism. Just because Obama embraces a phony version of the Declaration that is all history, no nature doesn’t change anything. Compare and contrast Obama’s second inaugural with another famous one to understand proper constitutional aspiration.
January 22nd, 2013 | 8:50 am
This is silly. Romney wins the election handily with 1980s demographics. You and Drehrer should just write your Pessicon book and be done with it. Obama didn’t run on protecting entitlements he ran of gutting progressive, Old America’s welfare state to create a welfare state for New America. They elected a new people this was never about changing minds.
January 22nd, 2013 | 9:01 am
The point, fellas, is to think about why Obama embraced “progressive” as his brand. I’m at the sub-scholarship level here, it goes withotu saying.
January 22nd, 2013 | 9:02 am
Peter channeling his inner John Lewis! Who says there’s nothing new under the sun?
Peter’s position on contemporary progressives (don’t use the big “P”!) and progressivism are pretty well known. Today’s have lost the grand — grandiose, world-and-Humanity altering — faith and hopes of their forebears; their pragmatism is, well, pragmatic, not a real “ism” (with a big “P); demographics have killed their fondest hopes, both for national community and the State; they’ve become defensive, stubbornly holding on to old achievements, not Progressive about ever-new ones.
To these he adds: they don’t bash the Declaration (they just misread and abuse it, I wish he would say). Barnie Frank and Richmond Flowers (in the Prologue to James Davison Hunter’s The Culture War) display contemporary progressives’ tactical reading: it’s aspirational, not permanent truths, it is the venerable mantle we can wrap proposals (endless proposals) for the expansion of freedom and the moral opprobrium of the excluded and marginalized.
Two retorts, prefaced by a quick rejoinder: 1) the aspirational reading of the Declaration is also found in Progressivism; Woodrow Wilson’s dismissal wasn’t the only Progressive reading of the Declaration; read FDR’s more cunning ones. 2) Progressives continue to call themselves “Progressives,” so I suppose we need to acknowledge that fact. 3) And, more importantly, I regularly find that the earlier form, or forms, of Progressivism contiinue to illumine the implicit vision, strategy, and rhetorical tactics of contemporary ones. To take a few examples: the hypostatization of “the People” and an attendant demonization of “special interests” and “reactionaries” is coeval with Progressivism and Obama’s two campaigns perfectly illustrated this duality-of-Progressive rhetoric and thought (read FDR’s 1936 nomination speech); the distinction between formal and real rights or liberties (with the latter trumping the latter); equality become egalitarianism &, tendentially, indiscriminateness. And Peter, isn’t an admittedly decayed philosophy of Progress at work in the narrative that Obama intimated yesterday (“Seneca Falls, Selma, Stonehill”)?
I think your points about the contemporary deflation of Progressivism are true, but I also think that implicit in today’s are central elements of yesterday’s, starting with an egalitarian Humanitarianism and a Providential State.
By “Progressive ascendancy” I pretty much meant: Obama’s won two elections and he’s dictating the terms of the debates these days.
Best I can do right now, gotta get back to work.
January 22nd, 2013 | 9:09 am
[...] Paul asserted (and Carl echoed) that we live in an era of progressive ascendancy. What does that mean? Michael Zuckert recently pointed out that today’s progressives (and anti-progressives) are like Zombies. Source: Postmodern Conservative [...]
January 22nd, 2013 | 9:17 am
As for the vicissitudes of the term “Progressive” and “liberal”: You’re right about FDR’s tactical switch. Much later, after Reagan’s conservative revolution, Bush I cleaned Dukakis’s clock by labeling him as a “liberal”; subsequently, Democrats (including Hillary Clinton) readopted the “Progressive” tag. (Later, of course, she said she’s a “proud liberal”.)
January 22nd, 2013 | 9:19 am
But, to begin with: We conservatives, after all, affirm Seneca Falls and Selma as progress in accord with the spirit of the original Constituton. We wouldn’t raise Stonewall to the same level, of course. But the police busting up “gay bars” for no reason is a violation of rights, after all. We conservatives see new births of freedom in accord with dedication to the proposition that all men are created equal too.
I agree with about 82% of what Paul says on some level, but to return to the level of branding… I appreciate, of course, all the issues at many levels he’s brought to the thread. More later, lots of something closer to real work today.
January 22nd, 2013 | 9:51 am
Obama’s Founderism proposes to effect by force of liberal technocratic prowess an equality of outcome where the Founders principles were merely articulating an equality of opportunity grounded in principles of natural rights.
The fact that Obama’s proposition is so appealing shouldn’t be surprising. Who wouldn’t want to benefit from a state that guarantees prosperity and equality? And if you give the patina of endorsement by America’s founders then you have the best of both worlds.
Such a ‘brand’ appeals to that part of all of us that wants our bread to be guaranteed to us and calls it human rights. That Obama’s is winning on such an uneven playing field doesn’t surprise me. The fact that America has managed to resist the siren song to the extent that it has is what should be surprising.
However, the problem with effective ‘branding’ is that it isn’t so powerful that it can change the laws of physics and economics. Let Obama guarantee all he likes, if American’s buy into it, the bill will come due, and reality will once again clarify the collective mind.
January 22nd, 2013 | 10:05 am
Pseudo may be exaggerating a bit, but his last par. is on the mark.
January 22nd, 2013 | 10:17 am
glad to see Paul weighing in. Maybe more later when I’ve time, but for now color me very sceptical. First, my “echo” of Paul’s progressive ascendancy assertion contained a question-mark. Second, this floated Peter theory of Claremonsters trying to peg 80s/90s liberals as anti-founder Progressives and this somehow backfiring by provoking them to then adopt the label and philosophy themselves is…totally unsupported and highly unlikely. Stanley Kurtz’s Obama as Dem-socialist book tells you way more about the substance-shift behind the name shift, which again remains largely superficial for most of those who adopted it. Most of the label shifters just got sick of the word “liberal,” of the way conservatives got so much mileage out of it, and couldn’t help remembering all the bad things their 60s heroes said about liberals. They don’t know the first thing about Wilson and Croly, let alone Rorty.
Third, anyone who brands their discussion of political labels and public philosophies with the brand of “branding” gets branded in my prejudiced mind as not worth listening to. Sorry, Peter, John Lewis, and Valerie Jarrett, I can’t stand the brand brand.
January 22nd, 2013 | 10:42 am
To pick up on the point in Paul’s second post, how could it be true that the Progressive name was brought back “by certain conservatives” who “wanted to out liberals as really progressives”? Isn’t that mistaking the cause with the effect?
At least to my mind, most of the Claremont and popular Republican rhetoric against Progressivism got going in earnest AFTER democrats abandoned the liberal label and reembraced the Progressive label themselves. RJ Pestritto and commenter above Brad Watson only started publishing books on the subject in the mid-2000s, and Glen Beck invited them onto his TV show (which helped popularize the critique of Progressivism with Tea Partiers) even more recently than that. I would say most conservatives didn’t even KNOW about progressivism until recently thanks to those efforts, which I think have been good in making people aware of a key element within the Democratic party. Whether it goes by the term “Progressivism” or “Liberalism,” there have been several turns within the Democratic party away from labor and local patronage toward ideology, and we’re experiencing one of them right now
January 22nd, 2013 | 10:48 am
The Founders good/progressives bad–natural right(s) good/progressives bad has been around for decades. It took on a new urgency with Beck etc. and the highly-funded attempt at popularization. But the problem with the popularization is that it morphed into thinking of the whole New Deal as unconstitutional. That kind of intensity was missed from Kristol the elder neoconservatism and first-generation and even secon-genderation Straussianism. That intensity made possible the progressive defense I describe in the post after that one.
January 22nd, 2013 | 11:36 am
I don’t quite understand then, Peter. Which conservatives encouraged the Democrats to embrace the Progressive label by attempting to pin it on them?
January 22nd, 2013 | 12:14 pm
If you’d watch Mr. Beck during his ascendancy (as I made the mistake of doing twice), it’d be pretty much Wilson and FDR were twin evildoing fascist collectivist progressives. (Zuckert’s recent chapter is about TONING THAT DOWN by explaining that Wilson was a kind of liberal–hardly a collectivist–who disagreed with the Founders on the separation of powers.) So the intensified anti-progressive tone made it easy to make progressive seem conservative in a way. It’s not encouragement so much as facilitation through the creation of a rhetorical or branding opportunity.
January 22nd, 2013 | 12:47 pm
[...] Progressive Ascendancy as Branding Error? – Peter Lawler, PoMoCon [...]
January 22nd, 2013 | 1:24 pm
I think Peter’s analysis works. I would suggest that what helped to set the stage for the progressive ascendence was the Bushification of the Reagan Revolution. Once W. Bush was effectively turned into an SNL caricature, he was made the personification of what remained of the Reaganite conservativism.
The subtext of Obama’s entrance onto the national stage was that he was the anti-Bush: articulate, intellectual, with an Ivy-League pedigree acquired through means other than his last name, and politically from the opposite side of the spectrum. He was the cold drink of water that helped cleanse the bad taste left by his predecessor.
So looking back from where we are now, Obama can and is arguing that we already know where all that Bush/Reagan/Tea Party stream of conservatism leads us – to unecessary wars, a catastrophic recession and global warming.
The trap for conservatives is that the more we bind ourselves to Reaganite conservative slogans, the easier it is for Obama to further alienate those slogans/arguments as just more of the same.
Hence the relevance of Prof Lawler’s question. How to rebrand the Republican Party? To which my answer is by continuing to force the public to see the consequences of the fiscal math of what the President is trying to do. Eventually fiscal reality will present itself in a way that will refuse to be ignored and the Republican’s will then have established the political credibility it needs to appeal to the voting public.
January 22nd, 2013 | 2:20 pm
Maybe an easygoing kind of progressivism depicted by Rorty’s Achieving Our Country (where principles are reduced to doing no harm and social solidarity of our own contingency) is enough. That book from the 90s doesn’t use the term progressive in my memory, but maybe it was enough to give “substance” to the new brand. It was the first account I had ever heard of to speak of an open ended march of things “we” consider to be good from Seneca Falls to Selma to Stonewall–to quote Buzz Lightyear, “to infinity and beyond.”
When Hilary used progressive, it was to put old wine in a new bottle against the old bottle liberal. Many Americans didn’t like liberalism and didn’t remember progressivism as anything other than a term indicating a good thing, i.e., progress.
So Obama is all about progress. If it is liberalism or progressivism, Obama might reply that he is pragmatically beyond such narrow labels. He is simply using policy to prod along the arc of the moral universe. He is redescribing American history and politics–providing a new narrative–standing for what all rational people recognize as true–etc.
January 22nd, 2013 | 2:28 pm
Mr. Obama let me introduce you to Mr. Hegel.
January 22nd, 2013 | 3:20 pm
Which minds were changed? It is possible that the new leftist-shill media hegemony might end the historical tendency of people to grow conservative as they age, but Romney got the majority of whites under 25. When is the last time that many young minds were persuaded to vote Republican. This entire post is prefaced on explaining an act of rebranding/ persuasion that never occurred. Does this simply reflect a fear of facing the reality of the coming racial politics, or is the writer honestly not aware that demographics and demographics alone explain Obama’s victory.
January 22nd, 2013 | 7:15 pm
[...] agree with Paul Seaton in this thread. The move from “liberal” to “progressive” was mostly a [...]
January 22nd, 2013 | 7:19 pm
John’s got it right. About what we can know.
As for blaming Claremont for Beck-ism and “New Deal is unconstitutional,” hmm….
January 22nd, 2013 | 7:35 pm
John is right about Rorty’s and Achieving Our Country’s probable impact on Obama’s rhetoric. Especially about the need for a successful left-politics to also be a politics of national self-respect instead of left-wing national self-hatred and self-marginalization.
Beck could turn anything into crazy for a buck.
January 22nd, 2013 | 8:29 pm
“Beck could turn anything into crazy for a buck.”
I don’t think Beck believes in fiat currency anymore … gold coins perhaps.
January 22nd, 2013 | 8:37 pm
I think he believes fiat currency enough to accept it and spend it. He seems to have moved on to scamming libertarians now.
January 22nd, 2013 | 10:26 pm
So I just got back from Carrollton (which was fine) and I’m too far behind. I still you guys ain’t getting my drift and are too defensive about the origins of defensive progressivism.
January 23rd, 2013 | 12:54 pm
I think Mr. PsuedoP’s analysis is spot on with the addition of one point, e.g. the Bush’s were not ‘conservatives’ rather RINO’s, Neo’s, and EMI fellas. Further it was the reactionary Tea Partiers (grassroots elders) who sought to recapture republican principles for the GOP and further it was the TPers who failed to come out for the Rino/Neo/EMI Romney. Consquently, the GOP is divided (torn asunder) and dying a Whiggish death,… slow and painful. The good news is nature abhors a vacuum and whatever rises, Prometheus like, outta these ashes will surely sweep away the detritus and excrement left by the current crop of clowns.
Links
Blogs
Find Us
Contact