just a note on the language and labels, and this is one of the things i have to repost every so often because people forget, or it never sunk in. there's so many terms that are synonymous on the left.

if you look up, you can see where i am in the political compass, which is but one test, but nonetheless provides a physical co-ordinate. this is where i exist in space. and, what are the correct adjectives?

to begin with, i thoroughly reject the term progressive. i almost never use it, and when i do it's in a limited context, or out of laziness or irony. that is one hint at detecting my own irony, which is sometimes pretty thick. but, if you look at the issues, i don't align well with progressivism: i am not in favour of christian temperance, i reject sterilization and eugenics, i oppose the premise of retributive justice, i reject manifest destiny and the monroe doctrine and i don't think that encouraging competition throughout antitrust laws is the proper role of the federal government. i certainly have some kind of overlap with progressives, but i also have some kind of overlap with conservatives, and i might suggest these labels are in truth closer to each other in space-time than i am to either one of them.

i prefer the term liberal, but only in the historical sense, and in a contemporary way that is almost directly contrary to the way it is so often used today. marx, paine, bakunin, proudhon - these people would have all identified as liberals in their time, even if most contemporary self-identified liberals would refuse to identify with them, at this time. if i use this term, and i will, it is usually in reference to some sweeping idea, or some specific aspect of history.

i would really prefer the term socialist, but i do not use the same adverb that you see so often today. democracy has always been a blurry idea, in the sense that it is really so difficult to define the authority of a democratic structure to enforce it's will on those of others. in context, this is extremely important.

i'd rather use the adverb libertarian than democratic. it's a subtle difference in some ways, but it flips the situation over on it's head; it's a difference between positive and negative freedom, in a sense. the democratic socialist is still a statist and hence defers to the state as a tool of authority to impose it's will on others; democracy, in context, means justifying that use of force by pointing to the democratic will as legitimizing. the libertarian socialist sees some approximation of statism, in the form of councils and collectives, as existing for the purpose of helping the individual achieve it's own goals, without any bias or guidance. so, the democratic socialist is into negative freedom, whereas the libertarian socialist is into positive freedom.

and, a libertarian socialist is also called an anarchist.

if we can get the thing straight once and for all, please.