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Why I Am a Progressive

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And I am deeply grateful.











Dear Democratic Leadership: Here’s How You Win

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Dear Democratic leadership,











You are talking to yourselves.



THAT’S how you win.


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—The Pledge of Allegiance, 1954–present
—The Pledge of Allegiance, 1923–1954
—The Pledge of Allegiance, 1892–1923















Does the flag symbolize a love of the American people?







Are we pledging allegiance to this great land we call America?




We are destroying our own country.


How can anyone love America and not care about this land?

What about our shared history?

This is a hard one.















Courage in a Time of Fear: Martin Luther King and the Vietnam War

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Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. knew he was taking a big gamble in making this speech. The year was 1967. April 4 was a damp and dreary Tuesday evening in New York City. Dr. King was to speak before a large and receptive crowd at New York’s famed Riverside Church on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Though no one knew it at the time, Dr. King would have exactly one year left to live; in 365 days he would be struck down by an assassin in Memphis, Tennessee. It was frightening and uncertain time.

Dr. King speaking at his Birmingham’s Sixteenth St. Baptist Church in 1963. An Atlanta native, Dr. King would come to be a thorn in the side of populist and racist Alabama Governor George C. Wallace. In fact, in the early stages of the investigation, the FBI looked into whether Governor Wallace played a part in King’s assassination.

For Dr. King this had been a time of severe uncertainty too. He was adrift, without rudder or compass, in search of a new direction for his efforts to speak for the dispossessed. His time of wandering in the wilderness had begun at the climax of his success, the signing of the 1965 Voting Rights Act by then-President Lyndon Johnson (D-TX).

The Act, passed by a southern politician no less, signified the capstone of the Civil Rights Movement. For the first time since reconstruction, racial bias and voter suppression would face serious and sustained judicial action and review through the federal courts. The federal government now had the legal as well as moral tools to prosecute any person, business, or government for racial prejudice and discrimination.

President Johnson perhaps spoke more than he knew when he was said to have uttered sullenly after signing the historic Act: “I have just lost the South for a generation.” But that all lay ahead in the future.

Dr. King busily making last-minute corrections to his remarks on his way to the podium at Riverside Church, April 4, 1967. A consummate writer, King would later claim this speech was the most difficult he ever wrote—even more than his “I Have a Dream” speech that he is remembered for today.

For Dr. King the struggle now shifted gears from the blatant racism and bigotry that existed in the Jim Crow South to the fight for equality and rights in the urban cities of the North. Dr. King would soon find, however, that the last three years of his life would be years of surprising failure and disappointment, as cities, officials, and allies once sympathetic to him and his cause now slowly abandoned him—and the movement altogether. The great marches and rallies that had marked the movement’s highpoints from 1961 to 1964 had slowly eroded away in the face of the two new factors King now had to contend with.

The first was the rise of a new, young, and militant group of civil rights activists such as Mohammed Ali, Stokely Carmichael, and Malcolm X. They represented a growing and ever more vocal group of black Americans who no longer supported the nonviolent, gradual, and organized methods preached by men such as Ralph Abernathy, A. Philip Randolph, and Bayard Rustin, of whom King counted himself an ally.

These men of the old guard faced a growing discontent and resentment from fellow African Americans for the suffering and indignities they continued to endure despite the tremendous gains from recent legislation. As for the young militants, their views would soon come to have a creed and image associated with their calls for black separatism and power, in the famed (or infamous) Black Panther Party.

Dr. King (left) and Stokely Carmichael (right) when both were on better terms with each other. The two were a study in contrasts: they diverged on where the next steps of the movement should go. Carmichael believed in militant activism in the streets with no quarter to those in power, whereas King believed in conciliation and continued outreach to all disaffected communities.

The other factor was Vietnam. By now over 450,000 American servicemen were in that tiny corner of Southeast Asia, well on its way to having more bombs dropped on it (roughly 2.5 million tons of explosive munitions) than in the entire European theater of World War II. It is estimated that over 1.3 million casualties (those killed, injured, captured, or missing) would be sustained in America’s longest armed conflict up to that time (the War in Afghanistan/War on Terror now bears that dubious distinction). But all that still lay in the future. On this day King would speak for the first time on Vietnam.

For a man who had been so outspoken throughout his short and remarkable life, up to now King been glaringly reticent about the war. His reasons for silence were understandable, as explained through the age-old maxim “Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.” Dr. King knew that these great bills, acts, and laws of the Civil Rights Movement would have been relegated to the obscurity and death of some Washington committee had it not been for the towering force and strength of President Johnson. King, out of deference and respect for the president and his commitment to civil rights, had held his tongue.

Initially Dr. King had even once been a strong supporter of the war. Like many Americans of the late 1950s, it was patriotic to support a nation fighting against communist invasion. The stance also lent King and his early followers an air of respectability that made up for the constant and persistent rumors that they themselves represented a Communist fifth column in the United States.

Slowly, however, King began to learn of the real cost of mounting such a war—both in dollars and in lives. Precious tax-payer funds that would have gone to desegregate schools and housing were instead spent to sustain massive armies and bomb enemy sanctuaries. The draft that sent many a young man to Vietnam tended to send more African Americans and poor boys of all colors, young men who could not seek or win deferment from their service. Even the justification for increased hostility, the infamous Gulf of Tonkin incident, gave Dr. King cause for concern.

President Johnson (left) in a closed-door meeting with Dr. King (right). Although the two had been on friendly terms throughout the early 1960s, their relationship would turn cold as King became less willing to back the president’s agenda and more strident in his opposition to Vietnam.

Still Dr. King felt he knew his place and did not wish to tarnish his reputation or that of the greater struggle by speaking out against the growing controversy of the war. As draft boards began taking middle- and upper-class college students, resistance to the war inexorably moved higher and higher up the social ladder. By the time 1967 rolled around Dr. King knew he faced a choice: he could sidestep no longer. The title of his address went to the heart of his new thinking on the conflict: “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence.”

It would come to be known as King’s most controversial speech as well as the one he toiled the most to perfect and craft. Although his “I Have a Dream” speech carries with it the timelessness and beauty of his style and prose, “Beyond Vietnam” would show a different side of his oratory skills. He began by addressing his need to speak out by posing a series of questions asked of him:


For King, being outspoken was a matter of moral principle and courage, not of political calculation or strategy. He continued by highlighting the vulnerability that antipoverty programs felt under the constraints of a major military action in the federal budget, saying,


Dr. King speaking at Riverside Church, April 4, 1967. With the exception of sympathetic religious clergymen, most of King’s major and powerful allies would withdraw their support after his comments on Vietnam. Although it made the final year of his life that much more difficult, it freed him from the burden of having to tailor his remarks; he could now speak candidly from his heart.

From here Dr. King highlighted six more reasons, from the glaring racial and economic bias in draft rolls, to dissonance in fighting enemies abroad while failing to protect the vulnerable here at home, to his advocacy for peace in all fields, and to America’s ambiguous role in helping the Vietnamese people achieve self-determination. He culminated his reasons by citing the terrible consequences that total war had brought upon the women, children, and aged of that poor beleaguered nation with poisoned rivers, killed crops, great deforestation, and mass famine.


From a man of such deep compassion and conviction, such statements as these could be expected from a Nobel Peace Prize winner. But given the restraint he had previously had on the subject, saying such things must have been a welcome liberation for him as well as a true shock and surprise to many of his allies. Dr. King knew he would pay for his remarks—his complimentary visits to the White House and his favorable coverage by the press would be over. Still, he could now speak his mind freely, uninhibited by his fears of reprisals.

For President Johnson the real and hard break with his administration by the “voice of black America” would be a blow he knew would be hard to recover from. Within the year more and more people would re-examine their own views of the conflict, and opposition to the war would only intensify. President Johnson would recuse himself from re-election on March 31, 1968, four days before King’s death.

In many ways the Vietnam War would serve as a prism from which to view so many other causes, such as the war on poverty, women’s liberation, civil rights (much to King’s regret), and many others. It would be a war that would divide a nation more than any bombing raid, political season, or social movement. And it would take generations to heal.

Despite his specific address toward the Vietnam War specifically, Dr. King addressed history itself when he spoke of the need for a revolution of minds rather than a revolution of guns by saying,






This was the real Martin Luther King Jr. No matter how much we may learn and remember of his life, no matter how we may recite his “I Have a Dream” speech, no matter what we may know about his life, his triumphs, his failures, his joys, his pains, his family, his passions, even his prejudices, this we do know: His compassion knew no bounds. He saw his struggle as the essence of the American dogma—that no person should be deprived of their dignity and no price was too small to secure it.

This Black History Month and in future Martin Luther King Jr. Days ahead, remember the King of his last year. Remember his struggle, and remind yourself that it is the struggle of America itself. Dr. King could take comfort should he have lived that he stands in good company today. History has a way of doing that.

No, Progressives Aren’t Afraid of the Word “Liberal”

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I’ve recently heard it said and many blindly accept that people who call themselves “progressive” do so because they have become afraid of the term “liberal” ever since conservatives led a “liberal” smear campaign.

This claim implies that:

  1. people who call themselves “liberal” and people who call themselves “progressive” are fundamentally the same, hold about the same values, and seek very similar policy reforms. The only difference, according to this claim, is that…
  2. progressives are afraid of owning the word “liberal” or, more to the point, that people who call themselves “progressive” are afraid, which in turn implies that people who call themselves “liberal” are courageous.

First, it should be pointed out that the term “progressive” historically precedes “liberal” as these words are currently used in America. When West Wing’s Matt Santos says that it was liberals who have always fought on the right side of history, he is being anachronistic: the term liberal was not applied in that way at many of his historic examples; indeed, it was progressives who fought for policies that changed the face of America. The Progressive Era (1890s–1920s) helped enact many standards of our nation today—the 40-hour work week, the weekend, that child labor is illegal and considered wrong, and so on. And progressives laid the groundwork for now-integral programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

The government programs and regulations that have kept America from degrading into a brutal, inhumane, and depraved society have come into being through the actions of people who proudly called themselves “progressive.”

And yet people still claim that liberals and progressives are fundamentally the same. This claim is difficult to disprove simply because there is not one, universally accepted definition for either term, though you can find several articles online attempting to parse the difference. David Sirota argues that today’s liberals want to help people through government subsidies but are unwilling to impose impactful government regulations or create game-changing programs; instead, liberals want to throw tax-payer money at a problem to temporarily ease the discomfort, whereas progressives want to solve the problem at its root.

The Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) is one example of liberal vs. progressive approaches. The ACA’s original proposed legislation was a hybrid of liberal and progressive solutions to the problem of the dysfunctional US healthcare system that leaves millions unable to access affordable care. In addition to the reforms and programs we are all familiar with, including Medicaid subsidies, the original bill also included strong government regulation of insurer premiums as well as a government-run insurer that would compete with the private insurers (the public option) and, likely, bring private rates down as a result.

But insurance company lobbyists had a talk with the liberals who run our Democratic Party, and the progressive elements of the legislation were the first to be scrapped. We were sold the promise that Medicaid with subsidies, along with toothless and spotty regulation, would be enough to create universal healthcare for all Americans.

But today 30 million Americans remain uninsured, and an estimated 32 million are underinsured—that’s 62 million Americans who can’t afford to get sick.

The liberal vision for creating universal health coverage in the United States, divorced from progressive oversight, regulation, and policy, has failed.

And when we compare the positions and policy proposals of self-proclaimed progressives to those of self-proclaimed liberals, the difference that emerges is indeed one of courage—but not on the part of liberals.

Progressives are fighting to make our national minimum wage a living wage to pull millions of people out of poverty—and, incidentally, off of government-assistance programs, which would mean saving billions of tax-payer dollars every year, money that is now essentially subsidizing the labor costs of very profitable corporations.

Liberals, however, have meekly and reluctantly been pulled and pressured to state that they would support—not propose or fight for—a $12 minimum wage, which would help people in some areas of the United States but would still leave many, many others struggling to survive below the poverty line.[1]

And while both progressives and liberals accept the science of climate change, it is progressives who are fighting hard to do something about it—seeking to aggressively transform our energy system (which, incidentally, would also make energy cheaper and more accessible to everyday people as well as create millions of jobs that cannot be shipped overseas), halt the increasingly dangerous extraction and transport of fossil fuels, and help those communities that will be impacted the most by the oncoming devastation of climate change.

Liberals, meanwhile, make a few symbolic and largely surface protections and regulations but are unwilling to meaningfully take on the entrenched fossil fuel corporate interests.

In fact, when Native Americans stood their ground (literally, they stood on THEIR ground—the land is theirs, and it is sacred) to stop the construction of an oil pipeline from being run through their water supply—and, by the way, the water supply of 17 million other Americans—progressives fought alongside them. It was progressives who took a moral stand and stated clearly and unequivocally that it is WRONG to support corporate oil interests over the rights of Native Americans and despite our critical need to start aggressively addressing climate change and protecting our world for future generations.

And during the months-long Dakota Access Pipeline standoff, liberal Democrats and, in particular, Hillary Clinton—then the Democratic nominee for president and the person liberals proudly hold up as their standard-bearer—stayed silent. They equivocated and said “no comment” amid pleas from the water protectors that they take a moral stand, that they do what they had previously said they would do: protect Native American rights and act to address climate change. But instead, Clinton and other liberals were morally spineless.

And it is here, when we compare progressives with liberals, that we see the myth break down.

No, progressives and liberals are not the same.

No, progressives are not afraid.

We are not afraid to call out, clearly and emphatically, what is right and what is wrong. We are not afraid to be put in conservatives’ rhetorical crosshairs.

We are not afraid to be radical—because that is not only who we are; it is what we do.

The word “radical” means to “get to the roots.” Progressives seek to solve our society’s greatest problems and challenges not through moral equivocation, not through back-room corporate compromise, not by clipping gingerly at the edges, but by diving in, getting our hands dirty, and fixing what’s broken.

We seek intelligent, meaningful change. Progressives truly fight for people, for our world, for our future.


Moral strength.


That is the difference between progressives and liberals.


[1] The living wage varies by geographic location. You can find your area’s living wage here. Although it is the general progressive position that the national minimum wage should be changed to a flat $15/hour, I disagree with this approach. I believe we should create legislation that mandates that the minimum wage be tied to the living wage, to be determined by a handful of independent agencies, and it should vary by locality. This not only would help ensure that the living wage is appropriate for each local economy but would also incentivize local businesses and chambers of commerce to look more closely at their fellow businesses’ practices—and how those practices may inflate an area’s living wage in a way that benefits only themselves while hurting the greater community.

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