Why I consider myself a Progressive..

…And not a liberal…

And I have touched on this before…

Many times through the year(s) now.

Here, Here, Here, Here, Here, Here, Here, Here, and Here.

You could say I have discussed this topic with myself and others to ad nauseam.

Before I go into a more in depth answer however, I have to define tribalism.

“Definition of tribalism
1: tribal consciousness and loyalty
especially : exaltation of the tribe above other groups
2: strong in-group loyalty”

And whether or not we know it, that is something we still do. A person just has to look at the friends that they have, and see the tendencies that they have in common. Now not everyone does it, some actively try to get to know people outside of their comfort level.

Now I wanted to bring that up in regards to…

“Herd mentality, mob mentality and pack mentality, also lesser known as gang mentality, describes how people can be influenced by their peers to adopt certain behaviors on a largely emotional, rather than rational, basis. When individuals are affected by mob mentality, they may make different decisions than they would have individually.”

I am aware that the link that I shared is from wikipedia, but I have studied this, and this is a decent summery of Herd mentality. Wikipedia is just an online Encyclopedia, always check the sources or references on the bottom, it is a life hack for learning about a topic. Wikipedia has already done the researching for you. All you have to do is go through the references and find them. 

“Last year”, 2018 to 2019, I was part of Reading Corp, and this year I started actually teaching as a substitute teacher. And I bring these up in regards to the classes that they teach. They are classes on learning about empathy toward everyone. Basically diversity training. Which is interesting, and I have commented on before, but because I have gone through those classes I can say that liberals are not liberal anymore.

“Liberalism, political doctrine that takes protecting and enhancing the freedom of the individual to be the central problem of politics. Liberals typically believe that government is necessary to protect individuals from being harmed by others, but they also recognize that government itself can pose a threat to liberty. ”

Now individual freedom, is very, very tricky. What is individual freedom? Now in the United States, it’s Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. Or if it’s Locke, it’s Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Wealth. Or if you are the new government of the French people it’s…

”

Article I – Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions can be founded only on the common good.

Article II – The goal of any political association is the conservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man. These rights are liberty, property, safety and resistance against oppression.

Article III – The principle of any sovereignty resides essentially in the Nation. No body, no individual may exercise any authority which does not proceed directly from the nation

Article IV – Liberty consists of doing anything which does not harm others: thus, the exercise of the natural rights of each man has only those borders which assure other members of the society the fruition of these same rights. These borders can be determined only by the law.

Article V – The law has the right to forbid only actions harmful to society. Anything which is not forbidden by the law cannot be impeded, and no one can be constrained to do what it does not order.

Article VI – The law is the expression of the general will. All the citizens have the right of contributing personally or through their representatives to its formation. It must be the same for all, either that it protects, or that it punishes. All the citizens, being equal in its eyes, are equally admissible to all public dignities, places, and employments, according to their capacity and without distinction other than that of their virtues and of their talents.

Article VII – No man can be accused, arrested nor detained but in the cases determined by the law, and according to the forms which it has prescribed. Those who solicit, dispatch, carry out or cause to be carried out arbitrary orders, must be punished; but any citizen called or seized under the terms of the law must obey at once; he renders himself culpable by resistance.

Article VIII – The law should establish only penalties that are strictly and evidently necessary, and no one can be punished but under a law established and promulgated before the offense and legally applied.

Article IX – Any man being presumed innocent until he is declared culpable if it is judged indispensable to arrest him, any rigor which would not be necessary for the securing of his person must be severely reprimanded by the law.

Article X – No one may be disturbed for his opinions, even religious ones, provided that their manifestation does not trouble the public order established by the law.

Article XI – The free communication of thoughts and of opinions is one of the most precious rights of man: any citizen thus may speak, write, print freely, except to respond to the abuse of this liberty, in the cases determined by the law.

Article XII – The guarantee of the rights of man and of the citizen necessitates a public force: this force is thus instituted for the advantage of all and not for the particular utility of those in whom it is trusted.

Article XIII – For the maintenance of the public force and for the expenditures of administration, a common contribution is indispensable; it must be equally distributed to all the citizens, according to their ability to pay.

Article XIV – Each citizen has the right to ascertain, by himself or through his representatives, the need for a public tax, to consent to it freely, to know the uses to which it is put, and of determining the proportion, basis, collection, and duration.

Article XV – The society has the right of requesting an account from any public agent of its administration.

Article XVI – Any society in which the guarantee of rights is not assured, nor the separation of powers determined, has no Constitution.

Article XVII – Property being an inviolable and sacred right, no one can be deprived of private usage, if it is not when the public necessity, legally noted, evidently requires it, and under the condition of a just and prior indemnity.

”

But I think it can be summarized, that individual freedoms are treat others the way you wanted to be treated, and that the only time the state has a right to impede on you, is when it’s for the common good. And I will be fair, what is at the core of what modern liberals want, does align with this. But the way they want to achieve this is to take away the rights from others. And I do not state that lightly.

The only way a person could not see the social constraints that have been placed on minorities in this country, would be because they benefit from the system. Everyone deserves the right to life their lives with all the freedoms listed above. And the system that is currently in place favors first white males, and second white females. And I am not trying to say white women have it easy, but if you were to compare them to the other races we consider minorities, their is a difference. If this wasn’t the case,why are conservative states making it harder for poor, both minorities and white, to register and vote? They know almost a hundred percent that the poor and minorities would not be overly found of them. It’s conservatives trying to maintain power.

I could joke that wealthy landowners would love to undo what we have done in this country, letting everyone actually vote, and return to the time when only wealthy men who own property could vote, but it wouldn’t be a joke. And the sad part is they have convinced those who are more communitarist that they are their champions. There are a couple of articles for this sentiment as well. Here, Here, and Here. And again things are not black and white.

The problem is the world is not black and white. If I watch a video that highlights how whites and blacks are treated differently, from the nineties, and it’s a shame we are still dealing with this, and I have experiences that are more akin to the black man, it highlights how gray the world really is. And I am not trying to down play the message, I have commented my thoughts at the time here, I also tried to find it online, to no avail. I am pretty sure the video is from the 90s or late 80s however. And from ABC, all I know is that it played during Thanksgiving that year. But showcased how our society bullies minorities into submission.

Now I have brought up the right, but I feel I should now focus on the left communitarist. They use the label liberal, because that somehow now stands for the entire left. It’s not, liberalism is about individuals. Left communitarist wish to heavily censer, and to a degree remove the freedom of speech in the name of community. Among other things that they want to remove for the good of the whole. Both social democrats and left communitarist are left, but there is a difference in what they want and believe. In a lot of ways, when I talk about the extreme left, the left communitarist are who I have disagreements with. They are also the ones who are pulling the Democrats toward their ideology. That is the struggle that is happening in the Democrat party right now. Centrist Democrats have been Social Democrats, but were close to the line.

You could argue that is what made them so efficient, before now, at holding the two left groups together. And I say two, but there is a whole spectrum when it comes to politics. Both the left and the right. I am also subscribing to the idea that if you were to put these four ideologies on an XY axis, Left Communitarist (Neoliberals), Right Communitarist (Republican Christians, but they are not the only ones), Left Liberals (Social Democrats), and Right Liberals (Libertarians).

For more reading on the subject, it’s located Here, Here, Here, and Here.

Politics, like life are not black and white, but a big grey blob. However I think it would be better if we start to think in the XY Axis terms, instead of just Left and Right. I have many beliefs and opinions that Libertarians share, and I do believe we are the ones being left behind and lack a party. If the Liberals joined into a new party, say a more familiar extint party, like Progressive party, they’d have a more solid party than the Communitarist. I honestly think Left Communitarist (Modern Democrats) and Right Communitarist (Moral Republicans) would loose power to a united Left and Right Liberal Party. There are conflicting opinions, however, the value of individualism, and the government actually working, ie having programs that don’t hemorrhage money or stronger than the debate on how much authority the government should actually have.

Keep in mind there are Centrist, both Left, Right, and Middle. But I would agree with CpgGreythat they are the voters each of the four are trying to win over to their side.

But getting back to why, though I have touched upon it above, the major issue stems from Tribalism. Which I defined and touched on above. And I understand and don’t necessarily view tribalism as bad.

“But tribal identity was changeable and fluctuated throughout human history. For example, birth as a marker of tribal identity was joined by religion as a powerful way to identify with others. Class grew into a tribal identity. Today there are numerous tribal identities; some are strong, and some are weak. Our racial and ethnic identities tie us to groups in a deep way, while our allegiance to sports teams may be more fluid and less consequential. I have met rabid sports fans, but most know that deep connection is not really a tribal/survival connection, while being among people who are ethnically connected to you may seem like a survival need. So, too, with other parts of our identities. In times or places of great hostility towards your group, being connected to others like you can very much feel like the only way to survive. During the early years of social movements, people bond together to fight for their rights in ways that make them feel like a tribe fighting for their survival. These connections can feel as deep as our ancestors’ bonds to each other in order to survive harsh elements and other competing tribes. ”

Actually I am going to quote the article quite a bit here, because it is my feelings on Liberals, and more specifically what I am going to call NeoLiberals now, Left Communitarist.

“We are built to be tribal. But sometimes that tribalism goes too far. The worst type of tribalism is groups aligned to destroy other groups, such as through ethnic cleansing and genocide. We have heard the word tribalism used a lot today in reference to our politics. Today in our political world, we have “bad tribalism.” Bad tribalism is a group identity that fosters the bullying and scapegoating of others not like you. Bad tribalism joins people out of anger, jealousy, and spite, not for collective well-being. The unfortunate irony is that bad tribalism is easy to provoke, but not healthy to maintain. Staying angry is stressful, and large doses of stress are bad for our health. At the same time, good tribalism is difficult to build, but healthy to maintain. When we connect with others to ensure safety and good health, we lower our own stress.”

Which in the articles that I have linked to, of my writing, is something that I have covered. And I can now be more specific with. I am seeing bad tribalism, out of actually both Liberals and NeoLiberals. And also Moral Republicans and Libertarians.

I equate it to how I felt growing up. I was bullied, from multiple sources, and when I was younger I wanted to punish those who bullied me. And I am not unique in that regard from my personal experience with friends and what people say online. However as I grew up, I became less angry, and more concerned with solving bullying so others don’t have to go through what I did. At first I thought violence was the answer, but that thought was still lacking empathy, and I wasn’t placing myself in those that wronged shoes. And I understand, why some cannot do that, but when I hear “no one can understand me.” And I apply what I was like when I was younger to those types of statements. I had a lot of pain, and depression, and anger. And I would say that when people were trying to help and empathize with me.

Now keep in mind that I am aware that the issues that I am alluding to here, are larger and more complex than simply my experiences. However remember that through my experiences I was able to sympathize with the black man more than the white man in that TV special. I know what it is like to feel cut off from a community, to feel like the Other. Can I relate to all his experiences, no, but I can use the context of my life to try and understand. Humans, individuals, are more alike than we are different.

We can all be angry.

We can all be racist.

And we can all be influenced by the herd mentality. And be effected by “bad tribalism.”

And I found it was easier to forgive and forget, than harbor those negative thoughts inside. It’s easier to try to understand why a child may bully or act out, than it is to punish them. Because if you know, you can work on helping the bully grow as well. My two worse bullies, were on the bus, themselves were being bullied in school.

We can also choose to be better.

We can all choose to break the chains.

When I was growing up, I was inspired by a group of kids that were trying to stop the hate between both Israel and Pakistan. It’s been a while, I believe I was in Middle or Highschool when we watched the special. But if I am remembering correctly the founders had both lost family to the conflict, and they were from both sides. Instead of being consumed by their negative emotions, they tried to do something positive. Whether they succeeded, I have no idea. Whether this is something that my mind made up, and I just believe I saw this on the news, our minds do that. Especially the further away something is. I don’t believe this is, because if I am remembering it correctly it was an Israel girl and Pakistan boy. Or maybe it was a movie. What I can say, is that this should be taken with a grain of salt.

Honestly that should be done with anything you read or hear, including this, because these are my opinions. Even if they have been shaped by articles, youtubers, history. My opinions are still shaped by my experiences.

And every criticism that I have lumped toward liberals, and Neoliberal could rightly be doubled for those who are more Moral Republicans.

Because both Stalin and Hitler were authoritarian. Both of them massacred millions.

And both of them were on opposite sides of the spectrum. Left Communitarianism and Right Communitarianism. Which is ironic in someways, and highlights what I wrote above, that how strong a united Liberal party could be. Communist arose, and Fascist rose to counter them. Stalin and Hitler hated each other. If you are wondering on the third ideology from the WW1 and 2 eras, Capitalism, is? I think true Capitalism, not what our Right Communitarist and Right Centerist are claiming is Capitalism, but true Capitalism is more of a Liberal Centralist sort of ideology. At it’s heart Capitalism is about  individuals having the right to choose, and their choice will effect the market. It may be more Right Liberalism, but if you listen to what Social Democrats care about, the economy and how to ensure that Capitalism functions. It’s more overall Liberal.

It’s one of the mysteries about why Libertarians stay with the Moral Republicans. Moral Republicans believe that the market should be controlled by a select few. More of an Authoritarian Capitalism if you will. While NeoLiberals want to burn Capitalism to the ground. Well maybe that is why, they are worried by how NeoLiberal the Democrat party is becoming.

I keep saying, the Progressive party needs to come back. We wouldn’t be smeared with the racism that is on full display within the two major parties, and we’d have more cohesion. But I don’t think that will happen. Us “Liberals” will just get left behind in this new America that is on the horizon.