Do we really know what politicians are speaking about?

I bring this up because recently I heard a political leader state something to the effect of ‘I am not giving up on the progressive vision of progress.’

This statement brings up a number of questions for me, namely;

• What is a progressive vision?
• What is progress?
• Where is the progress leading to?

Let’s look at these deeper.

What is a progressive vision?

When I Googled this question the search results were all based on progressive lenses for helping you see. This just reinforced my concern over what politicians speak about. So I decided to look up the word progressivism, and according to Wikipedia; “Progressivism is a political philosophy and movement that seeks to advance the human condition through social reform – primarily based on purported advancements in social organization, science, and technology.” And this brings up more questions; for example; ‘What does it mean to advance the human condition through social reform? What does it purported advancements mean?

Let’s start first with ‘purported advancements.’ According to my Thesaurus purported means supposed, claimed or alleged. So, with progressivism these advancements are alleged or another word unproven. Interesting when you did deeper isn’t it? So, what I am understanding is that progressivism wants to advance the human condition with unproven social reform. Wow!

Now, let’s look at progress?

According to Wikipedia; progress is movement towards a refined, improved, or otherwise desired state. When you look at the unproven advancements of progressivism, how is this progress supposed to refine or improve the desired state?

The key question for me is; where is this progress leading to?

According to a blogger called Jason Crawford, progress depends on axiology; which is the study of the nature of value of the kinds of things that are valuable. In other words, what is the value of the progress. He stated in his blog he stated; “True progress is advancement toward the good, toward ultimate values.” Sadly, he didn’t define what he meant by good or ultimate values.

While it may seem like I am ridiculing Jason, I am just using him as an example of how poorly he and others use words without telling us what they mean.

Is it that they are afraid that we might not buy into their idea?

Is it because they don’t know where their idea will lead us to?

I believe that you and I need to first become resilient to the slogans dumped on us, and secondly start a revolution in calling out people and especially politician’s that use words that they don’t define for us.

What is one small step that you can take today to start your part of this revolution?