What does the word 'progressive' mean? Line up to tell me, take a ticket!

This term did not exist back then with the meaning it does now.

You've got to be kidding.

If 1900 is non-modern to you, then "progressive" is not a modern political term. It's a term with a history. But if your point is that the history is irrelevant because people reinvent the meaning of the term ad lib, I suppose that's my point in different words. I rest my case.

Robert Gentel wrote:

Are the reforms toward a conservative political position or toward a progressive political position?

Let's say the year is 1900, and the Progressive movement is about to go all-in on eugenics. And because is 1900, eugenics is indeed "progressive" to those who approve of it because it's future-oriented rather than history-oriented. But you oppose eugenics. So you say to your them: "Don't fall for eugenics, it's _____ !"

What adjective do you use to fill in the blank? Obviously you wouldn't use "progressive" because you oppose the sterilization of handicapped people. You also wouldn't use "conservative" because a policy of sterilizing handicapped people hasn't been pursued before. So what's a similarly-generic adjective that expresses your opinion of the policy?

I might point out Oliver that just as in Israel it was the Europeans who stole the Indians land and killed them off so they could steal it.

I agree that little will change but don't ascribe it to the 1% having dictated this. It owes to the nature of the plurality voting systems that Duverger's political science law predicts will lead to two-party rule and in two-party rule the parties move toward the center and away from extremes thusly closely resembling each other.

There are plenty of reasons to resent the 1% influence on politics but the lack of change does not really have anything to do with them and has everything to do with the political system we have that favors stability over change due to the two-party system.

Progressive, liberal, conservative, are just words to fool the voters into believing that they have a choice between two candidates who have already been chosen by the one percent who have already purchased the loyality of the candidates with their billions. I will vote as I have always voted knowing it wont change a damn thing. The very rich have always controlled government and always will. The same rich families are still controlling government. Yes I know that 1% of the 1%changes over 30 or 40 years which means that 99% of the 1% still control government.

That's the first thing you ever said that I happily thumbed up. So, my question: If you actually have a chance to stick it to the assholes running the country, what would keep you from doing it?

MANIFESTO OF FUTURISM

1. We want to sing the love of danger, the habit of energy and rashness.
2. The essential elements of our poetry will be courage, audacity and revolt.
3. Literature has up to now magnified pensive immobility, ecstasy and slumber. We want to exalt movements of aggression, feverish sleeplessness, the double march, the perilous leap, the slap and the blow with the fist.
4. We declare that the splendor of the world has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed. A racing automobile with its bonnet adorned with great tubes like serpents with explosive breath ... a roaring motor car which seems to run on machine-gun fire, is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace.
5. We want to sing the man at the wheel, the ideal axis of which crosses the earth, itself hurled along its orbit.
6. The poet must spend himself with warmth, glamour and prodigality to increase the enthusiastic fervor of the primordial elements.
7. Beauty exists only in struggle. There is no masterpiece that has not an aggressive character. Poetry must be a violent assault on the forces of the unknown, to force them to bow before man.
8. We are on the extreme promontory of the centuries! What is the use of looking behind at the moment when we must open the mysterious shutters of the impossible? Time and Space died yesterday. We are already living in the absolute, since we have already created eternal, omnipresent speed.
9. We want to glorify war — the only cure for the world — militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of the anarchists, the beautiful ideas which kill, and contempt for woman.
10. We want to demolish museums and libraries, fight morality, feminism and all opportunist and utilitarian cowardice.
11. We will sing of the great crowds agitated by work, pleasure and revolt; the multi-colored and polyphonic surf of revolutions in modern capitals: the nocturnal vibration of the arsenals and the workshops beneath their violent electric moons: the gluttonous railway stations devouring smoking serpents; factories suspended from the clouds by the thread of their smoke; bridges with the leap of gymnasts flung across the diabolic cutlery of sunny rivers: adventurous steamers sniffing the horizon; great-breasted locomotives, puffing on the rails like enormous steel horses with long tubes for bridle, and the gliding flight of aeroplanes whose propeller sounds like the flapping of a flag and the applause of enthusiastic crowds.

It is in Italy that we are issuing this manifesto of ruinous and incendiary violence, by which we today are founding Futurism, because we want to deliver Italy from its gangrene of professors, archaeologists, tourist guides and antiquaries.

say why

Frank, this might surprise you but I have been the mayor of the little town in which I live and am today a board member so I know all about the citizens bitching about the job being done by government. I also know that government even a little town is mostly run by money people. I was never impressed by them but many on the board were. I found a good way to take care of the bitchers, I just invited them to run for office so they could make the changes they wanted in our government. They werent interested in the extra work involved and would usually disappear. It was ok for me to put in 30 hrs of work a week for $600 a year in a town of 400 but not them. But it did give me some realief from the bitchers.

Not all Frank, the usual minority. Just the other day I had one of my citizens tell me "for a dumb wop you dident do as bad as I thought you would". My heart just melted!