"Regressive" is a good term for (much of) the American right.

[Sims2789]

Progressivism seeks to solve problems and improve America with current ideas and is not limited by what's already been tried. Regressivism seeks to restore a glorified past and looks to old strategies and beliefs to solve the day's problems.

Because they look to the past, I think that regressive is a more descriptive and more accurate term for today's right than conservative since conservative means many things. For example, being fiscally conservative could mean that you support a balanced budget and reduced spending, or it could mean that you support tax cuts coupled with spending increases. Being socially conservative could be synonymous with social libertarianism, but it could also mean that you want to expand government power into people's personal lives.

So, I don't think all members of the American right are regressives. Reagan, for example, focused on both the future and the past and wanted to move America forward through less government. If he were a regressive, he would have wanted to move us backward to when there was less government, like Ron Paul.

 

[Sims2789]

I'm going to start using this term more to describe conservatives. I hope other people who like it start using it too. Maybe we could contribute a word to the lexicon, like how George W. Bush supposedly popularized "punditry."

 

[The Yankee]

If he were a regressive, he would have wanted to move us backward to when there was less government, like Ron Paul.

Is that necessarily a bad thing (sans Ron Paul)? I'm not quite sure what you're trying to get at.

 

[Berzerker]

cancer regresses

 

[Sims2789]

Is that necessarily a bad thing (sans Ron Paul)? I'm not quite sure what you're trying to get at.

Regressives look toward the past (usually a specific era) for answers and try to revert America back to that past.

Progressives try to improve America with new ideas and methods and think that what worked in the past isn't necessarily prudent for the present.

And being a regressive, in my opinion, isn't always a bad thing. I don't consider myself 100% progressive; sometimes we got things right in the past and what we did is still applicable to the present. However, I think that usually it's a bigger risk to try outdated ideas that we know won't work in the present than it is to try something new that may or may not work.

 

[woody60707]

LOL, I don't mean this to be rude, but how old are you?

Your whole post can be summed with "progressive is good, and regressive is bad".

With you deciding whats good, what means anything else is bad. The world isn't black or white. The people that uses terms like Progressive and Regressive are the same people as when the Right saids things like "If your not with us, your against us.

Sure they have different beliefs, but it's the same thinking.

TLDR: faceplam.

 

[Fugitive Sisyphus]

For example, being fiscally conservative could mean that you support a balanced budget and reduced spending, or it could mean that you support tax cuts coupled with spending increases.

What is this world coming to?


Anyway, the only well known politician I would describe as regressive is Ron Paul.

 

[Integral]

Regressives look toward the past (usually a specific era) for answers and try to revert America back to that past.

Progressives try to improve America with new ideas and methods and think that what worked in the past isn't necessarily prudent for the present.

The problem with that dichotomy is that you are implicitly assuming that the past was wrong or misguided. "Regressive", as you are using it, does not contrast the past with the future; it contrasts the past with, quote, "new ideas and methods" that will "improve America". That's not a fair comparison.

The way you use "regressive" is perhaps even more of a loaded term than the use of the term "conservative".

 

[Bill3000]

Regressive is a worthless term. Whatever negative connotations it has already has a good definition in Reactionary.

As well, it gets a bit silly. You would define someone who supports Keynesian economics a regressive. The only way "progressive and regressive" work at all is when it comes to social issues, and we already have the term traditionalist.

 

[FriendlyFire]

There are people like that on both side but for the last seven years we've had plenty from the right

 

[bhsup]

Regressive might make sense if these "new ideas" were truly progressive, regressive being the opposite of progressive and all. But since so many of these "new ideas" are really just bathorsehockey insane, I don't know what the opposite of that would be.

 

[LightFang]

What a troll thread. I think he was trying to fish for some bait.

Too bad. How old are you again? "Regressive"? Sheesh.

And tax cuts + spending increases are excellent in periods of inflation.

 

[FriendlyFire]

And tax cuts + spending increases are excellent in periods of inflation.

That was a sarcastic comment right ?

 

[Bill3000]

And tax cuts + spending increases are excellent in periods of inflation.

I think you got it in reverse.

 

[Sims2789]

The problem with that dichotomy is that you are implicitly assuming that the past was wrong or misguided. "Regressive", as you are using it, does not contrast the past with the future; it contrasts the past with, quote, "new ideas and methods" that will "improve America". That's not a fair comparison.

The way you use "regressive" is perhaps even more of a loaded term than the use of the term "conservative".

From progressives' viewpoint, the past is often inapplicable to the present and we should try new things to improve America. Regressives view modernity as less glorious, less moral, etc. than the past try to revert to it.

I do admit that part of why I like regressive is that it isn't a nice-sounding word. And of course the progressive viewpoint sounds better. They're generally right.

 

[amadeus]

Being socially conservative could be synonymous with social libertarianism, but it could also mean that you want to expand government power into people's personal lives.

Like smoking bans and tax increases?

 

[The Yankee]

What do we call all of the things in the New Deal?

 

[.Shane.]

I've been using this term for a long while now.

 

[Sims2789]

Look, all I'm saying is that much of the right, especially the religious right, wants to go back to some perceived glorious past, like before the pill.

 

[CurtSibling]

The right-wingers are not alone in their desire for a rose-tinted return to imagined 'better times.'

Many in the left-wing wish to regress back to the 1960s, to a glorified liberal utopia they imagine
was close but never was. Which is not any different from conservative fantasies along the same
lines - These groups find the past comforting...They are both kidding themselves on...

...