While it is difficult to tell nowadays what is meant by the terms “liberal” or “conservative,” it is especially difficult to understand what is meant by the term “progressive.” Anthony Esolen weighs in:
The term does not actually denominate anything. It is the obverse of reactionary, which is itself merely a term of abuse. That is, the reactionary reacts irrationally against something new and wonderful, and the progressive is the upholder of that novelty. About where we are going, nothing is said; the term is empty. Hitler thought he was progressive. Stalin thought he was progressive. And by their own lights, they were right about that; they were energetically progressing somewhere, “into the future,” as another empty platitude has it. Now I do not mean to say that contemporary self-styled progressives are like Hitler (whom the erstwhile progressive Margaret Sanger admired) or Stalin (whom Western progressives lionized for twenty years). All I mean to say is that the term’s purpose is self-approbation. Perhaps nowadays it is equivalent, practically, to “sexual libertarian with a statist vision of political life,” but in itself, the term implies no such thing. It implies only that the user thinks well of himself and not so well of other people, particularly his own forebears, whom he by definition wishes to leave behind.
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