Progressive and Regressive, p.2

Political philosophy is the most material of all philosophies, it's the place where philosophy meets engineering, philosophy to politics as science to engineering. Just as with mathematics to reality, it is gross when the approximations take place, violating your pure theory with reality and error... especially if including a system of justice according to a theory of justice. I myself enjoy the knowledge that pure theory does not fit reality, and adopt an theory that it probably never can nor should, and that in the end reality is the instructor, not theory. It could be no other way.

The idea of progress is a basic idea regarding human types, some want to improve the situation, some maintain it. By and large there is nothing automatically to advocate that one or the other of these modes is superior. To live in a way that sustains a regular lifestyle is to celebrate life in its daily rhythm, to have found the tone for Epicurus' tuning fork for your particular life. To live for change is to learn and adventure, to improve conditions for all. Individually these philosophies coexist beautifully, the migratory and sedentary can coexist especially in a modern civilized setting where cultures are composed of both sorts and every hybrid.

But politically this becomes an issue, are you trying to use the political system to improve conditions? If so, you are a progressive in the natural language sense of "progressive". If you want to go back to some past date... you are regressive, but note, this is really just a handy type of term for a certain kind of progressive, because they are in fact so distinct although they want reform which they say will improve things. Firstly, all any progressive has going for them is the hope to improve things, and what makes this liberal is a tradition that improvement means for all, not just the point of reference individual, so that social progress is fundamental to progress in a political system.

Personally, I do not think there was any past time usually associated with most regressive movements. As with childhood, often the golden land was merely a matter of perspective and memory. Inspection of history show many golden ages, but never any not wrought with injustices which prohibit the theory that progress lies in regression to those states. Neither do I believe it likely that one can hope for things to stay the same, because all things change and become something else which is related to the last.