Conservative Progressivism

Connecticut blogger Genghis Conn asked Ned Lamont, a prospective Democratic candidate for US Senate, six questions in January. The answers this new star of the Progressive Movement gave are quite lame, but a comment by Conn says it all:

Y’know, I’ve heard the argument that Democrats never seem to be for anything these days, and to a certain extent that may be true. Many Democrats find themselves in the role of conservatives—not in the ideological sense, but in the sense that they are trying to protect the major social and political gains their party made over the last 75 years. They see the right, as personified by George Bush and his ilk, as trying to destroy that. Which, admittedly, they are.

So when you see a particular party or group coming out against a lot of things (like conservative Christians come out against gay marriage and abortion, for example) instead of promoting new ideas, they are trying to protect something. So now the question in the minds of Democrats is: Should the America created over the past 75 years be protected, or should it be allowed to fall?

Maybe I was wrong when I wrote that Swedish netroots are more conservative than their American namesakes are. Because it seems like the American Left faces the same problem as the Swedish Left—how will they be able to uphold their progressive image when all they really want is to protect the status quo?