Doing sociology and philosophy in real time by looking at developments in contemporary Western politics and culture, from a Moral Libertarian perspective. My mission is to stop the cultural systemist left and the authoritarian right from destroying the West's Enlightenment traditions.
Is Beto O'Rourke 'Progressive'? IT DOESN'T MATTER!
Beto O'Rourke announced his candidacy for the 2020 Democratic primaries last week, and he is already facing attacks from both the left and the right. I mean, I personally haven't seen enough of Beto to say whether I like him or not, but I want to focus in particular on the attacks on him coming from the 'left'. Many leftist outlets have rushed to show how Beto isn't 'progressive', whatever that means. They present us with evidence that Beto voted more conservatively than 70% of Democrats in the House, and that he voted in line with Trump more often than other House Democrats, even if that was only 30% or so.
But if you think critically about it, what does 'progressive' and 'conservative' mean anyway? Aren't they subjective terms? I mean, is Donald Trump 'progressive' or 'conservative'? I seriously don't know. I'd say he is unclassifiable. In fact, you cannot neatly place people on a conservative-to-progressive spectrum. People have their right to form beliefs individually on each issue, based on their conscience and values. I guess it's valid to complain that Beto hasn't talked a lot about his policies yet, but it's simply pointless to say someone is 'progressive' or not. From my perspective, the only thing I care about is increasing individual freedom, returning the power from the elites to the everyday individuals, and unfortunately I don't know if Beto would be good on that front yet. But I certainly don't have any reason to care if leftist media outlets consider him a 'progressive' or not.
Another thing is, some of those who are out to say how Beto is 'not progressive' include an identity politics angle in their analysis. As if, by virtue of being women or minority, candidates like Elizabeth Warren or Kamala Harris would be better. Besides the fact that identity-first candidates will almost certainly lose in a landslide to Trump, I actually don't have any time for their identity politics, and I have explained the reasons elsewhere. Going forward, I vow to defend every candidate who is being smeared or slighted on identity grounds. I know this means I will be defending a lot of straight white men, but so be it, because I don't care how the identity politics diversity police thinks. I only care about advancing individual freedom, remember.
