They are not liberals and they are not progressives

So what are those who call themselves either liberal/progressive?

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.

But the statists no longer do. One of the biggest events to have happened in the entire world in the last two or three years is that the statist tendency has lost its monopoly control of the media in the USA. The statist media used to be "mainstream". No longer. Now, their bias is utterly clear and out in the open, because there is now a whole different torrent of different media outlets exposing this bias, every day, every hour, every minute. The statists no longer control the agenda. The statists no longer control the language.

Well, that's not quite right. Statists are still controlling the language, because they are still being allowed to.

But statist words will go on meaning what the statists want them to mean only if the real liberals and the real progressives allow such foolishness to continue. For the people who really do believe in liberty and in progress can now decide their own language. They can use their own preferred words amongst themselves and they can attach their own preferred words to their enemies, and when they do, there will not be a damn thing that the statists will be able to do to stop them.

I can see how calling them "liberals" could be seen as incorrect. I try to watch my use of the word by saying that in spite of my rather conservative views, I do consider myself a liberal in a classical sense. My term for "liberals/progressives" are to just refer to them as the Left. Most of them in general are to the Left as opposed to the conservatives/classical liberals/libertarian are considered largely to the right. Although I'm uncertain of the term "left libertarian". So now I have to be wary of even that.

Via Instapundit!