??? “Progressive” re-entered our political vocabulary as a term of self-identification for the anti-war left in 2003. It existed to both distinguish them from pro-war democrats and as a re-branding of what had/has become an incredibly unpopular label: “liberal”. I know because I was part of that group. Because it has so many more positive connotations it is increasingly used by high-information left-of-center Americans to describe themselves. And that’s why the senate and house don’t have “liberal” caucuses—they have “progressive caucuses.”
In that case I apologize for the misunderstanding (when I encounter the term in Less Wrong circles, it’s generally being used in Reactionary terms, which are to the best of my understanding rather broader,) but I would say that this is still overgeneralizing the outlook of a minority of liberals.
when I encounter the term in Less Wrong circles, it’s generally being used in Reactionary terms, which are to the best of my understanding rather broader,
My understanding—I’m quite confident but a reactionary might correct me—is that they use the term “progressive” because that is probably the most popular term among the left’s in crowd (certainly 5-6 years ago it was, people seem to care less about branding after winning the White House).
I would say that this is still overgeneralizing the outlook of a minority of liberals.
This isn’t really in the form of evidence I can incorporate. I am/was pretty strongly embedded in left of center political culture, so single instances of disagreement don’t really tip the scales at all. If you want to analyze mainstream left-wing political discourse in a way that distinguishes it from what you call the Social Justice movement—that might help me see where you’re coming from.
I don’t think there’s a single, easily expressed lens that sums up either mainstream liberalism or conservatism, so I don’t think it’s easy to draw a contrast between the social justice movement and mainstream liberalism which holds across every issue. But I think that on many issues where a person involved in the Social Justice Movement would see a case of oppression by one group against another as a moral wrong to address, a more mainstream liberal might see as a case of harms caused by self perpetuating forces which should be corrected by deliberate intervention. In the specific case of racial inequality, for example, where a Social Justice Movement advocate might see a case of wrongful oppression of black people by white people, the view I understand as being more mainstream would be something like “historical circumstances put black people in a disadvantaged position, and the Matthew Effect ensures that things will continue to stay shitty for black people unless society makes a concerted effort to rectify this.”
I can’t say with any confidence that I have representative enough experience to describe the ideological demographics of progressives in general, but most people under the broad “liberal” umbrella aren’t involved in the social justice movement, and while some people certainly have more ideological investment in certain political issues than others, most people have a substantial cluster of political values that they care strongly enough about that, whether or not it has much bearing on their daily activities, they can still get mindkilled over them when matters touching on them are raised. So I think in a meaningful sense very few people are “not ideological.”
In that case I apologize for the misunderstanding (when I encounter the term in Less Wrong circles, it’s generally being used in Reactionary terms, which are to the best of my understanding rather broader,) but I would say that this is still overgeneralizing the outlook of a minority of liberals.
My understanding—I’m quite confident but a reactionary might correct me—is that they use the term “progressive” because that is probably the most popular term among the left’s in crowd (certainly 5-6 years ago it was, people seem to care less about branding after winning the White House).
This isn’t really in the form of evidence I can incorporate. I am/was pretty strongly embedded in left of center political culture, so single instances of disagreement don’t really tip the scales at all. If you want to analyze mainstream left-wing political discourse in a way that distinguishes it from what you call the Social Justice movement—that might help me see where you’re coming from.
I don’t think there’s a single, easily expressed lens that sums up either mainstream liberalism or conservatism, so I don’t think it’s easy to draw a contrast between the social justice movement and mainstream liberalism which holds across every issue. But I think that on many issues where a person involved in the Social Justice Movement would see a case of oppression by one group against another as a moral wrong to address, a more mainstream liberal might see as a case of harms caused by self perpetuating forces which should be corrected by deliberate intervention. In the specific case of racial inequality, for example, where a Social Justice Movement advocate might see a case of wrongful oppression of black people by white people, the view I understand as being more mainstream would be something like “historical circumstances put black people in a disadvantaged position, and the Matthew Effect ensures that things will continue to stay shitty for black people unless society makes a concerted effort to rectify this.”
I can’t say with any confidence that I have representative enough experience to describe the ideological demographics of progressives in general, but most people under the broad “liberal” umbrella aren’t involved in the social justice movement, and while some people certainly have more ideological investment in certain political issues than others, most people have a substantial cluster of political values that they care strongly enough about that, whether or not it has much bearing on their daily activities, they can still get mindkilled over them when matters touching on them are raised. So I think in a meaningful sense very few people are “not ideological.”