On: Trump’s F.C.C. Pick Quickly Targets Net Neutrality Rules

[rotten]

I would have believed the original meaning of "conservative" was someone who wanted to keep things they way they are. Advocates for the status quo, which is good enough. Usually it means they are relatively risk averse. Changing the system is likely to make things worse, not better.

"Progressive", on the other hand, traditionally meant advocating for continuing change to the system with hopes we can get even better.

Since those original meanings, the terms have co-opted into meaning something else entirely. Conservative = Capitalist or Royalist. Progressive = Socialist or Populist.

[dragonwriter → rotten]

> I would have believed the original meaning of "conservative" was someone who wanted to keep things they way they are.

In a sense, this is correct, but it wasn't an orientation toward generic absence of, and failing that slow pace of, change, but instead defense of the hold on political and economic power by traditional elites based in privilege of birth justified appeal to religious tradition that was opposed by classical liberalism , to which political conservatism was defined in response.

And conservatism still largely stands for defense of established elites and privilege of birth justified by appeal to tradition, largely religious.

> "Progressive", on the other hand, traditionally meant advocating for continuing change to the system with hopes we can get even better.

No, it "progressive" as a political label originally meant "populist" (or, at least, a sepcific populist platform of a particular time), it was later, after being mostly unused for several decades, borrowed by American social liberals, mostly within the Democratic party and mostly in response to perceived devaluation of the "liberal" branding, to denote a different specific policy platform.