I believe that true progressives are the same as they were in the 1900’s because to be a true progressive is to focus on using government power to make large institutions play by a set of rules. The term progressivism, however, has now been somewhat blurred together with the term liberalism, and although they share in common the support for or advocacy of social reform, they do have major differences in resolutions for reform. Liberalism, unlike progressivism, advocates the use of tax dollars for reform, rather than government power. Modern day politicians tend to shy away from progressivism, perhaps because their campaigns are funded by big business. A modern day example of this was in the bailout of the automakers in 2008. The government used taxpayer dollars in order to eliminate the threat of our major automakers going bankrupt from bad decisions and creating a crisis of job loss to the American workers. Although, in the end it aided the workers by preserving the company that they worked for, this approach allowed large economic institutions to leverage their irresponsible behavior into government handouts. While this was using government as an instrument of reform, as the early progressives did, it did not seem to me to be the economic justice that was sought after in the early 20th century.
