[underwater]

The differentiator between conservatism and progressivism is whether you seek societal change. If you believe that change should happens incrementally then you're a progressive. The examples you've given just sound like branding.

[ravel-bar-foo]

I think the point of GP is that one can seek change, but seek it slowly and carefully. Presumably GP would take a position in favor of "reform the system" over the platform of "abolish the system", which is popular among Progressives today.

Whether this is actually what Conservatives believe (or rather, what percentage of them believe it) is debatable, but I could see this sentiment actually being widespread enough to be the main source of resistence to Progressive political movements.

After all, isn't the whole goal of Progressivism to create a society so good that one wants to Conserve it?

[underwater]

My point was that the definition of progressivism is, literally "support for or advocacy of social reform", while conservatism is "seeks to promote and to preserve traditional social institutions." If you want to see social change, then you're progressive. How you think that should happen -- whether it is measured or radical -- is secondary.

[ravel-bar-foo]

Under that definition, a self-proclaimed libertarian would be a progressive, as would someone who wants to replace public schools with religious institutions. A neocon, who wants to forcefully bring democracy to a foreign country, would be a progressive in that country. Perhaps different terms are more useful.

[jjoonathan]

A terminology zoo is helpful when you want to encode additional information about political context, but if you're trying to draw parallels then less is more. In this case, "keep the status quo it might be important" and "ditch the status quo it might be the cause of our problems" are battle lines that get drawn again and again and again over many different issues under many different circumstances. It makes sense to draw the parallel.

[rootusrootus]

> I think the point of GP is that one can seek change, but seek it slowly and carefully.

This sounds like a position that a conservative would take, because it paints them as eminently reasonable (and progressives, by comparison, must be unreasonable).

[mensetmanusman]

Politics is simply preference, some people prefer to speed, some would rather drive below the limit.

They are both right for their own reasons, but they both appear insane to the other at first glance.

[monodeldiablo]

That characterization doesn't match my experience at all. You presume we all want to go in the same direction, but that our main disagreement is about speed.

In my experience, the main source of political conflict is direction, not speed.

[mensetmanusman]

I should have said velocity to clarify that people aren’t trying to go to the same place, again due to the diversity of preference.