PROGRESSIVE (not the insurance company)

Philosophy does not mean much in today’s youth oriented culture. In fact, I doubt you can get one in ten high school students to even define the word. It was, however, important in my educational process back when dinosaurs ruled the earth.

FRIEDRICH HAYEK (no relation to the luscious Salma) wrote The Road to Serfdom in the early 1940s. It reached a wide audience, considering it was a "philosophy" book, because it was serialized in the popular Reader’s Digest. Hayek was a frequent guest of Ronald Reagan at the White House and was considered influential to the President’s political thought. He also helped turn Chile (South America) into a free market economy by taking an official position under Pinochet. His writings also profoundly influenced Margaret Thatcher of Great Britain, also known as England, on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, for all you current high school students. Though he was against “Conservatism” in it’s old stuffy definition, and was a classical free market liberal (with a little "L") he approved of modern day conservatism though he preferred the word liberal. And when he used the word liberal it was the real liberal not that socialist (BIG “L”) liberalism that is not liberal but believes in formulaic big government tax and spend . The Big L liberal is what we see today self described as "Progressives." He earned (unlike our President , the PEACE Laureate who got the prize 15 minutes after he took office never having done a damn thing to earn it) the Nobel Prize in Economics. His influence remains after his death, particularly at the London School of Economics, and The University of Chicago. His theories are integral to modern day liberal Conservatism so long as it is not of the stodgy “old school” rigid persuasion Reactionary "lets keep everything as it is" Conservatism. Liberalism today (progressives) are not liberal at all and have an official dogma. If you are a non believer in the party line, you are, in their view, either stupid, or a racist. Or a stupid racist. It is amusing to watch Liberalism in action. They went back to their old early 20th century term, Progressive, and re-branded because people wised up and were getting tired of hearing the same old Liberal redistribution welfare state crap and could not help but notice it's complete intolerance or anything they disagree with, hence "anything but LIBERAL.".

I know this is all confusing but all you have to remember is that Liberals, with a big "L" are not liberal at all nor are they progressive unless you think rehashing old soviet ideas of wealth redistribution is progress. Conservatives are liberal in their thought unless they get mired in the "no change" trap. SO that's it, Conservatives are liberal, but Liberals are not progressive even though that's the name they have given themselves...again.