Progressives How Many?

Not a fringe issue in USA.

Local laws may be an ass but they generally refect the fires and values of the culture.
Brother Naar, it's so obvious political spectrums are only relevant within countries, it's far more likely he simply doesn't like American prominence and looks for pretexts to go "lol usa" than that there is a serious objection to using the American political context in answering that question from an American.

Mischievously, I added that Australia is forgetful to Americans to rub it in a little.
 
Moderator Action: Stay on the topic please.
 
How do you even define progressive? It's a relative term.
I'm sure wikipedia has its own contrived answer so I won't even look.
For the purposes of discussion: Briefly, I'd say it's about moving dejected classes of Americans into what is defined as more of the middle class where socioeconomic conditions have otherwise barred them, and largely to be done by actions of the federal government. Historically this was tried with the likes of "trust busting", one of the more famous examples, followed a couple decades later by the New Deal. Culminating in the Civil and Voting Rights Acts. I would NOT define it as anything resembling the Greens/environmental movement.

To that end it's origin to me is largely American, so I will refer to it as such...though whether New Zealand politics really parallels that, I don't know.
 
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I'm sure wikipedia has its own contrived answer so I won't even look.
For the purposes of discussion: Briefly, I'd say it's about moving dejected classes of Americans into what is defined as more of the middle class where socioeconomic conditions have otherwise barred them, and largely to be done by actions of the federal government. Historically this was tried with the likes of "trust busting", one of the more famous examples, followed a couple decades later by the New Deal. Culminating in the Civil and Voting Rights Acts. I would NOT define it as anything resembling the Greens/environmental movement.

To that end it's origin to me is largely American, so I will refer to it as such...though whether New Zealand politics really parallels that, I don't know.
I'm not sure this even amounts to describing mildest form of social democrat. It's mostly just the sort of economic regulations liberals argued over in the 19th century, and ensuring the basic democratic franchise.
 
I think defining "progressivism" as just a program that would be recognisable to early 20th century social liberals is probably selling things fairly short of the tendencies people generally mean when they use the term these days.

That's ranging from, yes milquetoast liberals, but also to a lot of labour politics, social democrats, democratic socialists, the mainstream of modern global Green parties. You'll see it embraced as a label by plenty of groups with little but contempt for that sort of minimalist "voting rights and a bit of economic regulation" type liberalism. It's a term used by a number of somewhat populist left wing electoral alliances like Sumar in Spain and the student movement in Chile. On the other less populist hand, the Progressive Alliance is the international party affiliation of a lot of labourist and social democratic parties who broke with the old Socialist International.

Honestly it kinda just means (mostly) non communist left. That's grudgingly including the heavily scare quoted so-called "left" of the labour and social democratic parties of some countries (see: all anglo labour parties), who haven't done much meaningfully left wing in maybe decades.
 
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Well, I remember this fella wanting the government to shoot a bunch of trespassers he claimed were living on government largess and lighting fires where they shouldn't be. Which would seem applicable again, but a lot of the fringe weirdos seem to have really specific hardons for who they like to watch die.
You need to explain what in the world you are talking about. It is certainly not clear.
 
From memory I think he got super duper angry that I think starting bushfires is a fairly serious crime
 
If you don't regulate grazing, burning and changing watercourses you get range wars. Shrink the government and they'll come back, but it'll be corporations strong arming buying people out with a bad alternative offered.

I really don't think you can have successful anarchy with such predators about.
 
You need to explain what in the world you are talking about. It is certainly not clear.
Our Australian friend here conditionally supports summary execution for trespass. If you track back. I guess we should count ourselves fortunate he's not consistent enough to call for it here.
 
Moderator Action: Less bickering please.
 
I didn’t read any of the thread other than the first post. I’d gather that probably around 10-15% of the population would be somewhere classified as “progressive,” perhaps because the word “liberal” in the American lexicon has taken on negative connotations.

I’d say there are more Americans who would define as “conservative” but conservatism would be a somewhat bigger tent, so not reflective of voters’ opinions as much as the squishiness of the movement.
 
In a post where I touched upon responsible land management, government reduction and corporate benevolence you seized upon only this as being implausible?
Clinging to a pipe dream makes change more difficult.

Stateless societies are older than states.
And they haven't survived states.

Once there were storable resources that was the end.
 
I have watched this thread and concluded that it is impossible to meaningfully discuss how
many progressives there are without first having a working definition of who a progressive is.
 
I have watched this thread and concluded that it is impossible to meaningfully discuss how
many progressives there are without first having a working definition of who a progressive is.

Well that partly why I'm asking. What counts as a progressive would vary by country.
 
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