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What liberals and progressives share…
Looking for common ground to bring us all together to win the 2020 election, the most important election as we shall see in a lifetime.
This essay is about what values liberals and progressives share…and thus could use as a uniting facto to pull our duelling factions together so we can have a big conservative-crushing election.
We need to run those vermin out of town on a rail. And THEN we can talk about where we differ without beating each other over the head with the words we’ve been shouting at each other way too long.
So many times we’ve had liberals and progressives fighting about which ideology or perspective is better: liberal or progressive; and which has the better answers for solving problems…always thinking about what makes us different. I decided to write a piece on the common ground we all hold.
Now, if anyone strongly believes that one or the other of my points doesn’t fit one or the other category, let me know. If I agree with you, I will revise. However, you may also want to put a comment down to explain how your group differs from the other, or anything you think I’ve missed about what we share. Together we can create a document that can serve us all as we try to work together with what we hope will be the Biden Administration.
From my point of view, liberalism and progressivism come down to these 11 core values:
1. Basic human decency, honesty, and caring for others besides oneself or one’s immediate family/circle of friends.
This means also caring about the environment, because that is caring that not only affects the current generation, but generations to come.
This also means putting people’s needs ahead of profits. Not that profits are bad in and of themselves — you have to stay afloat to stay in business. But those profits should not be made by cheaply paid, exploited workers; nor through the exploitation (and destruction) of the environment; nor through dishonest manipulation of the markets; nor through predatory business practices.
