Progressives = Regressives

As readers of this blog know, I detest the use of the phony term "progressives" to describe--antiseptically--proponents of state-sanctioned Marxism/Socialism. It's quite simply a trick of language, the quite-successful use of a positive sounding word to describe an approach to government that has always turned out quite badly. Apparently, I'm finally getting some company. This from Samizdata:

...the word "progressive" is just as wrong as the word "liberal". The statists who argue for the destruction of the dollar and for bank bail-outs (again) and for nationalised derangement of medical care and for green-inspired economic sabotage aren't "liberals". They do not believe in liberty; they believe in curtailing liberty. But neither do they believe in anything which it makes sense to anybody except them to call "progress". Progress is the exact thing these statists are now trying and have always tried to destroy, and just lately have been doing a pretty damn good job of destroying. Progress means things getting better. These self styled "progressives" are only making things worse.

 But wait! There's more:

Underneath these unsatisfactory labels, which the statist (a better word for these people in my opinion) enemies of liberty and progress have chosen for themselves and have been using for decades, is an assumption, both by the statists and by those who really do believe in liberty and in progress, that the statists are the people who will inevitably continue to decide about such labels....comments to the effect that there are much better words than "statist" out there, just waiting to step up or which already have stepped up to verbal stardom, so to speak, which I hadn't thought of or which I have temporarily forgotten about, would be very welcome. Dirigiste? Centralist? Governmentalist? Despotist?

Why make it difficult dude? The right answer: REGRESSIVES.

These people are actually the ultimate Conservatives. They want every bit of today's state-sponsored socialism and more. And they want to run it all the time. They are not "progressives." They are "regressives." They want less freedom, not more.

You heard it first here on HaZzZmat.