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Originally Posted by blankall
Is the language of what you call your party or yourself really all that important. The USSR stood for Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Nazi was short for "National Socialist".
I would disagree with our assessment though. The term "liberal" is a somewhat distinct concept from the divide between left and right, although typically liberal values coincide with "left win" values. Liberalism means putting human rights above other goals. This has changed over time, from individual to group rights.
Whereas progressive or reform, just mean any change to the existing status quo, which involves some kind of development, which can mean economic. A right wing party looking to replace an established left wing government, with a government that promotes economic development, would, therefore, fit the definition of progressive and reformist. There is no dichotomy in the term progressive conservative or reformist conservative.
If you go back to the origins of term "left wing", it meant people to the left of the King of France, or people who were anti-establishment. Theoretically, the left should always be pushing for social change against the establishment, and the right should be pushing to preserve or give powers back to the establishment. Unfortunately, the left wing in North American politics is often just as bogged down by the right in their establishments and who they owe favors to.
This a major problem with partisanship right now. Both the left and the right have put their ideologies ahead of people.
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The language is of utmost important. What you stated actually reaffirms what I was trying to say. Liberal is far from an extreme or a polarized viewpoint. Maybe it leans left, and is not quite balanced, but it is far from being purely left wing.
The Right have known the importance of language for decades.
Their language dominates discourse.
It isn't a coincidence that they have been able to demonize the way we collectively fund projects that would be impossible otherwise... ie "taxes" by labeling it "the tax burden" with zero mention of tax benefits or identifying any problems with taxation funding initiatives they agree with, while providing next to no feasible alternative.
But I do agree with the partisanship problem.
Each party seems to become more and more group thinking echo chambers viewing everything through an ideological lens rather than collective sharing of ideas to understand the best left/right course of action to navigate complex problems when their solutions that require it.
Both the left and the right need to exist, that is the point I find so many people fail to reconcile in their heads. I usually summarize it in my mind with the statement I use when I go into the back country.
"Hope for the best, prepare for the worst."
If we hope too much for a positive situation we become vulnerable to a negative situation. If we prepare too much we leave ourselves open to getting bogged down in waste. This requires both wavelengths of thinking.
Having one wavelength of thinking that knows the answer before they have heard the question is just stupid.