When August and Mihkel Kuuskvere created the Facebook page that now bears the name of our 501c4 non-profit, I doubt there was much debate about the term. Though I wasn’t sitting with them at that moment, I bet it went something like this. August: “Hey dad—we ought to make a Facebook Group for our coffee get-togethers. MIhkel: “Sure. Sounds good.” August: “What should we call it?” Mihkel: “How about El Dorado Progressives… is that taken?” August: “Nope.” And, with little more debate than that, we are forever tagged with the progressive brand.
So, what is that brand--what is a progressive? What does it mean to BE progressive? Though it’s tempting to take the coward’s way out and say, “I don’t know, but I know it when I see it”, I’ll instead attempt to provide some definition to the term, and provide some links to other opinions on the topic. In the end, maybe we’ll all be a little closer to having a definition of this mercurial political term.
If you Google the term progressive, you’ll get this: “Progressivism is the support for or advocacy of social reform. As a philosophy, it is based on the Idea of Progress, which asserts that advancements in science, technology, economic development, and social organization are vital to the improvement of the human condition.” And really, that’s not too bad a definition, as far as it goes. I think our group could agree that we believe in progress, and we assert that advancements in science, technology, economic development and social organization are vital to the improvement of the human condition, but it seems to lack some essential elements that might separate us from Libertarians or people in an entry level position at a tech company. Some very important things seem to be missing from that definition.
American Progressivism has its roots in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Not surprisingly, the excesses of the Gilded Age were fertile ground for a new political movement that rejected Social Darwinism and believed that the social ills of the time could be handled by a government dedicated to good education, a clean environment, and by organized labor acting as a check on the power of corporations. If that sounds familiar, it should—largely because we are living in a second Gilded Age. If Progressivism made sense then, it definitely makes sense now!
So now we have some good working definitions of the term Progressive, but there is still something missing—and I believe what’s missing is a set of values that sit at the core of Progressivism. To give El Dorado Progressives a center and a place of agreement, we sought out a set of values that encompassed what we stand for. Our search led us to What it Means to be Progressive: A Manifesto on ThinkProgress. This document gave us exactly what we were looking for—values and definitions. It proposed that Progressives believe in Freedom, Opportunity, Responsibility and Cooperation, and then defined what each of those mean. Freedom—remaining free from undue government encroachment into our personal lives and relationships. Opportunity—the belief that society should be organized to provide an equal opportunity for all and that opportunity requires things like education, health care, and a clean environment because they are the foundation upon which the potential of each citizen rests. Responsibility—the notion that if we have freedom and opportunity, we must have responsibility to be good stewards of those values, and that we must be responsible to ensure fairness in their application. Cooperation—the notion that we ARE the keepers of our fellow humans and that we can only have community and civilization by working together.
And there it is. Progressives fundamentally believe in progress, we cherish the historical precedent for our movement and the relevance it has to this day, and we share common values. For this to be a movement, what we need is action and people. Do these definitions, the history and values sound like they fit you? If so, join us. Make El Dorado Progressive.