Authors like words. Authors need words. They are the means by which we communicate thoughts and ideas, inform, encourage, motivate, comfort, admonish, teach.
Most people need words. All God’s creatures can communicate to a limited degree without words. A facial expression. A sound. A scent. A motion. But only people can communicate with the precision, the efficiency, and the completeness that words make possible.
For effective and clear communication to happen through words, however, we are dependent on the premise: Words mean things. What words mean, furthermore, and how they are properly to be used together with other words, must be generally known and accepted. Otherwise, the result is not clear communication but confusion. And if words are deliberately used in ways other than their commonly known usage and meaning, the result is obsfucation and deliberate deception.
Honest authors, who are concerned about clearly communicating truth for the benefit of their readers, get upset when people misuse words. It’s frustrating when that happens through ignorance. It’s irritating when it’s done by design. The former can be innocent; the latter is not.
As you can deduce from the title, the misuse of a word that prompted this missive is the misuse of the word “progressive” in the field of politics.
The word is an amplification of the word “progress”, which by its roots pro (forward) and gress (step) means to go forward, to advance, often with reference to working toward a goal or desired outcome. “Progressive” is the adjective that is applied to ideas and actions that go forward, that build up, and that move toward completion or a desired condition. The antonym is “regressive,” things that go backward, that digress from the goal or anticipated outcome.
Because of its frequent association with desired goals, “progressive” often carries a positive or favorable connotation. Progress in knowledge builds upon that gained in the past. Progress in building a structure brings people closer to being able to use the structure. Progress in maturity enables people to make more beneficial decisions for themselves and for others.
“Progressive” is misused, however, when it is used as a synonym for “good” or “favorable,” especially when it is applied to changes over time. Whatever is new or whatever replaces what has been before is not necessarily better. Progressing in knowledge is good, but a progressing illness is not.
Many in politics have taken this misuse of “progressive” a step further. They not only use “progressive” to describe themselves and their ideas as good, but also condemn anything that does not agree with them and their ideas as bad and evil. To be sure, if things promote and move toward their goals and desired outcomes, they can accurately be described as “progressive” for them; but that does not mean that they are “progressive” for everyone. Yet this is the word they have adopted (or usurped) to represent their political ideology.
This offense to language is seen even more when one examines the goals toward which these self-proclaimed “progressives” aspire. They wish to replace “freedom of religion” with “freedom from religion”. They wish to dismantle the right to keep and bear arms, the means the people have to resist tyranny. Not content to murder babies during the first trimester of development in the womb, they want to justify murdering them after birth following a failed attempt at abortion. They want completely to open our nation’s borders and welcome masses of people who openly break the law. They want to destroy the definition of marriage that both science and millennia of human history, to say nothing of the Bible, have shown to be best for the raising and training of children. They want equal outcome for all, regardless the work, talents, and efforts individuals put into improving their lives and conditions. Instead of reforming the free market, they want to destroy it and put government in charge of everything. And they expect to be that government, as if in the place of God, to decide what’s best for everyone else. This is not progress, but a regurgitation of repeatedly failed socialist and communist Utopian dreams, a return to dark ages of totalitarian government, and will result in a return to barbarism and civil war.
So, I suggest, when you hear the word “progressive”, pay attention to who is using it. You may find that it might means oppressive.