The Patriot Post® · In Brief: Why Leftists Shouldn't Be Called 'Progressives'
People of the Left love redefining words, so it’s no wonder what they call themselves — progressives — is misleading. Political analyst Robert Spencer argues that no one should go along with their “misleading and dangerous” game.
One of the most important aspects of combating the Left’s assault on freedom and rationality itself is to counter its manipulation of language. “Gender-affirming care” isn’t gender-affirming care, it’s the mutilation of healthy people in the pursuit of delusions. “Book-banning” isn’t a resurgence of fascist thought control, it’s the cleansing of our libraries and schools from the pornography and propaganda with which Leftists have filled them. Abortion isn’t “women’s healthcare,” it’s the murder of a child. And behind all of the Left’s language-bending is the fundamental lie that Leftists are “progressives.”
This one has become so generally accepted in American culture today that the likes of AOC and Bernie are regularly called “progressives” even by their opponents. This is not simply the benign name of a political faction. It implies that those who bear the name are on the right side of a grand progression of history. Human experience, the “progressives” contend, is moving inexorably toward an inevitable outcome. History, they say, is a science, and that science demonstrates that the world is moving toward a messianic age of earthly justice, in which everyone gives according to his or her or xis ability, and receives according to his or her or xis needs.
Does that sound familiar? It should. It’s Marxism.
It is not inevitable that human history is marching toward the Left’s idea of utopia, yet that is what leftists claim with the “progressive” label, and Spencer says if Patriots call them such, “they’re unwittingly endorsing the entire world view of an inexorable progression of history. We must throw off this usage and refuse to accept the Leftist mindset.” Indeed, he says, “if we stop calling them ‘progressives,’ we will stop tacitly acknowledging the inevitability of their victory.” Besides, “There will be no earthly paradise.” Leftist “solutions” will only make our problems worse.
He concludes:
Instead of calling them “progressives,” then, patriots should call them what they are: statists, enemies of freedom, believers in all-encompassing government control, foes of the freedom of speech, foes of the freedom of religion, advocates of government coercion, and the like. Calling things by their right names, after decades of Leftists twisting words in order to fool people into supporting them, will go a long way toward restoring our nation to societal health.