It's interesting to me how the right wing love to refer to progressives as if we were some monolithic, well organized, top-down bunch of brown-shirted thugs. Anyone who thinks this has never been to a meeting of progressives–when I was in a union we considered a good Local meeting to be any meeting in which there wasn't a fistfight.

Progressives do not think alike, and seldom agree. What unites us is a general consensus to a few, over-arching principles: that government is and should be an effective means of making life better for working people; that society should be governed from the bottom up, and not the top down; that the wealthy and powerful should contribute their fair share to the system that allowed them to attain wealth and power; that we should preserve and conserve (great word, in the right context) our natural environment for the benefit of generations to follow; that people should be free to associate with and even marry whomever their heart directs–stuff like that.

With regard to our current politics, one will find few more critical of Obama and the Democratic leadership in congress than progressives, which belies the whole concept of progressives as conformist “thugs” awaiting direction from Washington. Interesting thought experiment though: think things are bad now? Imagine if McCain-Palin-Boehner were running our government.

Yikes!

It's interesting to me how the right wing love to refer to progressives as if we were some monolithic, well organized, top-down bunch of brown-shirted thugs. Anyone who thinks this has never been to a meeting of progressives–when I was in a union we considered a good Local meeting to be any meeting in which there wasn't a fistfight.

Progressives do not think alike, and seldom agree. What unites us is a general consensus to a few, over-arching principles: that government is and should be an effective means of making life better for working people; that society should be governed from the bottom up, and not the top down; that the wealthy and powerful should contribute their fair share to the system that allowed them to attain wealth and power; that we should preserve and conserve (great word, in the right context) our natural environment for the benefit of generations to follow; that people should be free to associate with and even marry whomever their heart directs–stuff like that.

With regard to our current politics, one will find few more critical of Obama and the Democratic leadership in congress than progressives, which belies the whole concept of progressives as conformist “thugs” awaiting direction from Washington. Interesting thought experiment though: think things are bad now? Imagine if McCain-Palin-Boehner were running our government.

Yikes!

It's interesting to me how the right wing love to refer to progressives as if we were some monolithic, well organized, top-down bunch of brown-shirted thugs. Anyone who thinks this has never been to a meeting of progressives–when I was in a union we considered a good Local meeting to be any meeting in which there wasn't a fistfight.

Progressives do not think alike, and seldom agree. What unites us is a general consensus to a few, over-arching principles: that government is and should be an effective means of making life better for working people; that society should be governed from the bottom up, and not the top down; that the wealthy and powerful should contribute their fair share to the system that allowed them to attain wealth and power; that we should preserve and conserve (great word, in the right context) our natural environment for the benefit of generations to follow; that people should be free to associate with and even marry whomever their heart directs–stuff like that.

With regard to our current politics, one will find few more critical of Obama and the Democratic leadership in congress than progressives, which belies the whole concept of progressives as conformist “thugs” awaiting direction from Washington. Interesting thought experiment though: think things are bad now? Imagine if McCain-Palin-Boehner were running our government.

Yikes!