Being a progressive is almost as popular as being an independent these days. A year or two ago, nothing was hipper than being a progressive; in 2008, everyone not named “Sarah Palin” was a progressive. Or claimed to be. Given there is no agreed-upon definition of what a progressive actually is, the claim, once made, was hard to refute. Both Hillary and Obama were progressives, or so they said. And if you were a supporter of one, you pretty much had to accept the other was a progressive as well, given how similar they were on the policies. We lack agreement on what a progressive is, so right now anyone can claim the title and simply dare an opponent to say it ain’t so.

(The same thing, of course, goes for being an independent. But the a priori ridiculosity of claiming that title is so self-apparent, I won’t even bother. Anyone who can’t figure that out could start with a dictionary and a bucket of common sense. And a shovel to clean away the bullshit.)

Progressive, like all words, needs a definition people can agree on. Like they do with “conservative”, “responsible” and “patriotic”. Letting people claim the moniker without deciding what the hell it means renders the word useless. For most of those using the word, of course, what “progressive” really means is “for godsake do not call me a liberal!” In no way would I have ever called Hillary Clinton a progressive, especially given her virulent opposition to Howard Dean and his 50-state Strategy (despite its undeniable and unprecedented success in 2006 and 2008); she is a liberal, pure and simple. Unlike her and many other liberals, however, I refuse to run from that term anymore. Of course, I refuse to wear the term as if it were still the 90s. Or the Sixties, for that matter. Not only do we need a definition for “progressive”, we have to redefine “liberal”.

Just so folks are aware how simple things are.

I’ve been working on this problem for a couple of years now. I was making very little progress, my definitions tending to end up being tautological rather than meaningful. My “Ah ha!” moment came after Paul Krugman won the Nobel Price for Economics (aka Necromancer of the Year Award). A diarist at DailyKos wrote of Krugman advocating liberal policies via progressive means. This is critical for one simple reason: Liberalism is still the greatest, most liberating, most progressive political system the world has yet to see. Consider all that was accomplished in the 20th Century during the height of the Liberal Era: advances in education, labor rights, economic growth, civil rights, the vote, environment, justice and so on. Yes, most of these were incomplete and often poorly implemented. But the fact is that no period in human history saw the world change for the better, for more people, than in the middle of the last century.

But, as they say, what have you done for me lately?

We need to bring liberalism into the 21st Century, not run away from it. We don’t need top-down, bureaucratic government-led liberalism, but that was always just one way of implementing policy. There was nothing in the practice of American liberalism that was inherent in the theory of liberalism. Just because some implementations of liberal policy were done imperfectly does not invalidate the concept of liberalism, especially considering how many things we did right — and how good those things were for so many people. The failures of government are not a reason to end government’s role in moving society and politics forward. Government will always have a role to play, but we, as a polity, have to get that role right.

And that’s where progressivism enters.

The Progressive Movement of a century ago was really a variant of populism; it was also urban-oriented and disturbingly racist. It was not a liberal movement; if it were to reappear in the same form today, it would be rejected by most liberals and others of the left. Most of the issues progressives of that time faced have either been resolved or have morphed into forms that require contemporary solutions. Liberalism has changed, and what we called “progressivism” today is a new creature altogether. And here is the key to the New Progressive Movement, as sparked by the Krugman comment above:

Liberalism is the ends.

Progressivism is the means.

We still want, for example, full and equal civil rights — economic, voting, social, political — for all people of all ethnicities, genders, belief systems, sexual orientations. No one doubts this is a liberal goal; in fact, the promotion of “equal rights” is the heart and soul of liberalism for many people. Conservatives won’t come out and say they oppose equal rights, but they sure as hell fight most attempts to make the word “equal” meaningful. Many of the Tea Partiers are not even that subtle, promoting policies that are, on their face and at their core, racist and anti-egalitarian. 20th Century liberalism used the power of government to force changes in society. This was necessary in many ways, given the nature of Jim Crow and institutionalized racism. Government will continue to have a major role to play: changing laws, establishing regulations, enforcement, etc.

But for liberalism to work in the 21st Century, we can no longer defer the whole program to “big government”. In 2006 and 2008, we learned we could win against the odds if we — grassroots activists, ordinary citizens, non-professional noobie political activists — took up our responsibilities for getting the job done. That’s the politics Howard Dean made possible and what Barack Obama built on, and it worked. Now we need to take this beyond elections and into the permanent, daily program of governing — something both Dean and Obama warned their supporters would be necessary but too few took seriously.

Time to get serious. You want to call yourself a progressive? Ok, I can’t stop you. But I can call bullshit on your hiding-from-liberalism, and I can insist that a progressive is someone who gets off his or her butt and plays an active role in some effort to institute and promote changes that make our society better (ie, liberalism). That does not mean you have to canvass for candidates, or write letters to the editor, or become a citizen-lobbyist. But you have to do something other than piss-and-moan about the world. You have to find some way to be part of the positive changes. Yes, that means political activism of some sort, but there are so many options available to you. Send the Bus Project $20 a month and volunteer with an adult literacy program. That counts. Helping get good people elected — those who will push for liberal goals and who will work to create political partnerships with people in their communities, not the lobbyists or established powers — will be crucial, so opting out of that part of the political process entirely is not an option. However, with real electoral reform, things like voter-owned elections and instant-runoff voting, politics and elections can become less odiferous to more people. Elections should be causes for celebration, not hold-your-nose-and-hope-for-the-best. Progressives can make that a reality.

So, if you want to call yourself a progressive, please give some thought to what that means. “Making progress” means nothing; a cruel totalitarian government can feed everyone, provide health care to all, educate everyone, etc. A non-democratic tyranny can provide all people with a high standard of living; that does not make them progressive. And, as we’ve seen from the Tea Party movement, grassroots activism, in and off itself, isn’t progressive. True progressivism in the 21st Century is more than human “progress” and it’s about more than grassroots activism. When the great liberal goals of the last century unite with the political methodologies of this century, and the action is led and fueled by ordinary citizens working in partnership with electeds: that’s progressivism.