What is the progressive movement’s solution to poverty?
I’m not sure they have one, I don’t think anyone does. I think that what most Americans would like to see is equal opportunity, not necessarily equal results. How to get there is very contentious though.Traditionally the progressive movement advocates for minimum wage, welfare programs and better opportunities for education. In my opinion, those are all good things but I believe we could do them better. If it were up to me, I would focus mostly on education and training but it’s tough because there is a social component to all this that is hard to overcome. If you’ve read Hillbilly Elegy, it basically describes the same situation that has happened in inner cities.Children learn from the people around them and without any role models or encouragers in their lives, it’s very difficult to pull yourself up by the bootstraps so to speak. Imagine growing up in a situation where no one ever expected anything of you, nobody ever encouraged you to do better, no one ever treated you like you might be worth something. Then imagine how hard it would be to come up with that idea all by yourself having never heard it or seen it anywhere amongst “your people”.Barring some massive grassroots efforts in the form of volunteer tutors, older brother/sister programs, and revitalization of neighborhoods, this is going to be really tough. I say that as someone who does believe in a living wage (dependent on the state costs of living), and welfare for people who are struggling to make ends meet. Basically I believe that measures taken have to be holistic in order to work.I don’t think that most progressives believe that they can save everyone from poverty, more like we should make it easier to rise out from it while investing in the future generation so they don’t have to get stuck in the same old cycle. Also, in this land of so much wealth, there really shouldn’t be anyone hungry. We have enough food, enough to be throwing it away all the time, so why do I see people digging for half empty yogurt containers in the trash?
What are the main causes of the progressive movement?
Put at its simplest… the cause is that things are not good enough yet, and so we progress incrementally toward better things.A few xxamples would include…The fact that there are still billions of people living in deadly poverty, without access to clean water, basic facilities, reliable or qualitative food, opportunity to advance in life, et cetera.The fact that people are still assaulting and/or devaluing each other based on quibbles like the amount of melanin in their skin, the gender or sexual alignment they were born with, or the religion they were raised on.The fact that human consumption is destroying the paper-thin global ecosystem we cannot possibly live without, and that the ultra-rich are working particularly hard to undermine any organized cooperation around the world to curtail these practices and ensure our future survival.’The list gets vastly longer with increased nuance, but that should at least place in the the mental ballpark that progressives work from.
What was the progressive movement of 1897 to 1914?
Progressivism was the response of various groups to problems raised by the rapid industrialization and urbanization that followed the Civil War. These problems included the spread of slums and poverty; the exploitation of labour; the breakdown of democratic government in the cities and states caused by the emergence of political organizations, or machines, allied with business interests; and a rapid movement toward financial and industrial concentration. Many Americans feared that their historic traditions of responsible democratic government and free economic opportunity for all were being destroyed by gigantic combinations of economic and political power.
Are there major divisions in the group of people who currently call themselves progressive liberals?
Yes.Broadly speaking, progressive political beliefs and liberal political beliefs are neither similar, nor even related political outlooks.What can most easily be defined as liberalism is a direct outgrowth of early to mid-20th Century political reality, best expressed in the New Deal Era. Liberalism is an attempt to prevent a Communist revolution from occurring, by means of using the social sciences, as developed by Emile Durkheim, to ease class based struggle, and create shared prosperity through shared sacrifice. The main tool of choice in liberalism is a government program - Medicare or Social Security would be the best examples.Progressivism can most easily be defined as a direct outgrowth of the political shifts in America in the late 1960’s. It does not concern itself with the specter of Communism, and so, does not look to class based struggle or shared sacrifice and prosperity. Instead, it focuses on allowing all minorities to join into the prosperity experienced by the dominant culture (white, male and straight), through free market based initiatives. Favored initiatives would be for-profit, and would use tax dollars to subsidize existing industries - the Affordable Care Act would be the best example.
I heard once that Germany was going through a progressive era before the Nazi Reich? Or, alternatively, that the nationalism that fueled nazism was a backlash of cultural changes. Is this true?
There were some liberal and progressive cultural developments in Germany in the Weimar period. For developments in architecture and design have a look at Bauhaus - Wikipedia. For art and the cinema see also German Expressionism - Wikipedia (which had begun before WWI). Some of these developments were paralleled in the very early years of the Soviet Union, before being suppressed by Stalin. See Constructivist architecture - Wikipedia.As far as I know, the Weimar Republic was the first country to set up labour tribunals at which, among other things, employees could claim redress for unfair dismissal.The movement for decriminalizing homosexual acts between consenting adults gained some momentum, and The first Institute for Sexual Science (1919-1933) was established. Some magazines for lesbians, such as Die Freundin - Wikipedia, appeared.It was said that some of the big cities, especially Berlin, had sexually libertarian ‘sub-cultures’. A few homosexual and lesbian venues, such as cafés opened.All this set moustaches a-twitching with rage, and the Nazis put a stop to these developments. (The lesbian-friendly, left-wing Café der Lunte* in Berlin was trashed by the SA - Brownshirts - before the Nazis even came to power). However, it would be a mistake to see these ‘non-conformist’ developments as a significant cause of the Nazis’ rise to power.*Not to be confused with the present Berlin café bearing that name.