I'm old, my twenty year old thinks I fart dust. I used to view myself as a progressive, I still do but I don't know whether my views match up with the broader culture now.
I tend to view the political realm as being a circle, and the centre of that circle represents the ideal, something we'll likely never reach but something that we strive for. No matter where we are on the line of the circle, there's an angle and distance we must progress to reach that ideal. As a society we can be off by a few degrees, but we can still be moving in the right direction and can come close to that ideal. But if we keep moving in the same direction after coming close to that wonderful spot, then we'll move further and further away from that perfect point.
After JK Rowlings twitter musings on "people who menstruate" I was scratching my head. I'm old, for me menstruation is not a word that comes up in normal conversation, and certainly has never been used to identify people. Recently there was a Meghan Murphy's talk at a Toronto public library, and the protests that ensued. I didn't even know what TERF meant.
It struck me how human rights really is a zero sum game, that extending rights to one group means taking them away from another. When women were granted the right to vote it cost men the weight of their franchise. When slavery was abolished in the United States it removed the rights of slave owners. Both these are positives, women make up roughly 50% of the population, and nobody should have the right to own another human being.
But what do you do when it's the rights of some women to feel safe, versus the rights of transgender people to use the change rooms and facilities that line up with the gender they identify with? Grant rights to those who are transgender and you take away the rights of women who don't feel safe. This is all about feelings isn't it? As I understand the whole transgender issue is that there are people who don't identify with their biological sex, there are men who don't feel they are men, and women who don't feel they are men.
To my way of thinking this doesn't compare with issue like abolition or the suffrage movement, not even close. I don't wish to be unkind to anyone who is transgender, and I must admit I don't know anyone, although I have in the past, but not well.
It's been said that the adage: "May you live in interesting times" is a curse, and it seems to me that as I travel down the backside of the hill of middle age towards senility and everything that goes with it, that these are indeed interesting times.
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What does it mean to be progressive now? It means what it meant a century ago and even before that. It is not something that is the preserve of socialists, liberals or conservatives. Edmund Burke, the 'father' of modern conservatism had decidedly progressive views. Cousins Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt, one Republican the other Democrat, were the great progressive presidents of American history.
Progressivism, like the law of equity, is not an ideology but rather a body of principles that should be applied no matter the party in power albeit somewhat differently due to their different ideologies.
I was lucky to score what is the Dead Sea Scrolls of early progressive thought, the 1907 book, "The Meaning of Modern Life, a Course of Forty Lectures." It comprises essays/lectures in progressive thought by prominent thinkers of that time on such topics as "the Danger" (Theodore Roosevelt), "The Soul in Beasts, The Birth of Conscience, The Failure of Evolution, Patriotism and Politics, Universal Suffrage, How to Think, The Toilers, The Soil, War" and more written mainly by the presidents of major universities but also writers such as Tolstoy and H.G. Wells. It's a weighty tome. My original runs to well over 600 pages. It is still available from those 'print to order' book sites.
In law school and later, as a litigator, I was a devoted student of Equity, the unwritten law of fairness that tempered the excesses that could occur in Common Law. I once even used case law dredged up from the 15th century to win a case. Again it was a compendium of principles, very powerful but not to be wielded incautiously.
One excellent source of progressive thought is found in Theodore Roosevelt's 'Square Deal' speech delivered to a gathering of Kansas farmers in Osawatomie in the summer of 1910. It deals with the individual as the most important resource of democratic government, the destructive power of huge fortunes, and the need to ensure that the public interest prevail over powerful, narrow interests.
Today we define progressive by what it isn't. We have this conceit that being slightly left of the Conservatives is the hallmark of the progressive. That's not true. In our politics I think we broke with progressive thought when Thatcher, Reagan and Mulroney ushered in the age of neoliberalism and globalized free trade. That is certainly when posterity, as a fundamental factor in policy and planning, was extinguished. The last clearly progressive act I can think of was Pierre Trudeau's Charter of Rights and Freedoms. That act safeguarded posterity and repeatedly restrained the authoritarian instincts and excesses of Stephen Harper. It even slapped down Trudeau's spawn when he denied Canadians the fundamental right to death with dignity.
Progressive thought may be gone, for now, but its principles have lost none of their value or meaning. When I set up my blog in 2006 it was expressly dedicated to "the restoration of progressive democracy." Perhaps the hard times ahead will provide the spark for that to happen.
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