role of government
Modern Progressive Values: Realizing America's Potential
Defining the values that underlie and unite progressives became an urgent question in the early 21st Century. Progressives came to recognize that, to a great degree, our political choices emerge from our sense of cultural identity and our emotional responses to stories and images, not from ‘rational’ cost-benefit analyses.
What Do "Progressives" Believe?
In the early years of the 21st Century, the term “progressive” gained popularity in the media and among elites and voters, but there was little consensus as of 2008 regarding what progressive identification meant. Clarification of progressive values and political values is likely to become a matter of strategic importance to candidates and officeholders, particularly if the trend toward increasing progressive self-identification continues.
In Defense of Taxation
In his novel Pale Fire, Vladimir Nabokov describes an imaginary country where, under the guidance of a wise and benevolent king, "Taxation had become a thing of beauty. The poor were getting a little richer, and the rich a little poorer...."
Privatization
The political initiative at the moment lies with the conservatives, who, generally speaking, advocate shifting a variety of civic functions away from government to the private sector, or at least reducing government involvement in these functions. The list includes some of the most important issues of the day: education, prisons, social security, and land use. Listen to some of the more committed privatizers, and you begin to wonder whether they think there should even be a government.
