This term has become synonymous with failure. For the last 25 years I've watched the "progressives" move the leftist parties and movements a place that fits right into the right's agenda.

Capital has been conducting an almost unchecked assault on the middle class, the working class and the third world and the "progressives" have reduced opposition to less than a whimper.

The whacky Libertarians are a more effective opposition than the wimpy progressives who continue to get framed in the right's narrative.

Let's lose the term.

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It doesn't matter whether the White House is occupied by Rethuglicans or Polemicrats, they both bow to mammon. At least I give the Dems credit for more of a heart, they are more of a people party, though they are still subservient to (and partly responsible for) the corporatist state that has emerged, although the Repugs brought it to a ....hole 'nutha level....K Street Project was a crime against the Constitution, Tom DeLay not being behind bars is a travesty.
The Dems should bring out their A-game, a full court press, and develop a spine. Their 'doing it for the children' is a good start, and now they should hold vote after vote to put the pugs on the defensive of showing just how heartless and mammon-centric their policies are. I've voted Independent and protest vote all my life.....I've never seen this country so ripe for a third party. Maybe there's hope for the 'crats yet, but not with the slate they're presenting.
Draft Evan Bayh! He couldn't be any worse bthan what's out there. I'd rather have a pig-in-a-poke, what's behind door #3, than what I see before me. I'll even take Gary Hart at this point.

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Great Britain vowed to reduce the number of its children being reared in poverty. They are succeeding. At the same time, the US numbers of kids in poverty families increase. So, it can be done, and we aren't doing it.

I have come to believe that one reason our American kids are falling behind the rest of the world in education is because a better education doesn't seem to matter--our future has become dark. "Take the money and run" is the rule of the American system as it comes clearer that we are on the road to our own extinction.

The extinction of polar bears, penguins, gorillas, etc. are simply harbingers of the direction we are also headed. I rarely hear anyone referring to "Collapse" and its analysis of several early civilizations that self-destructed. More's the pity.

Sure we can continue to run around in circles trying to hide from what is going on around us. We are not likely to become extinct soon. But what is life all about if we lose our will to endure.

It's the difference between power and strength. Power is what we worship now. It gives us control. We can use it to make demands. Strength is what lasts, what strews its seeds on fertile ground to keep life alive.

It's a shame that Bush and his (I love the term "regressives;" progressives learn from their mistakes; regressives keep making the same mistakes over and over again) regressives have given religion a bad name. Because religion has taught us the difference between power and strength, the difference between being movers and lovers. Religion is about appreciation. So is politics that is good for children.

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People used to live in poverty for one generation and their children had a chance at something better. It worked. Now being poor goes on from one generation to the next. The list of reasons is endless. The real reason is because we now have too many people who want it that way. They like their superior social standing and intend to preserve it. Of course they are creating a population of criminals and that's what/who will come back to haunt them. Thanks, ANNA

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It's sad that I repeatedly have to clarify this: when you say that progressives are ignoring an issue, chances are that you are wrong. You see, today's progressives are not represented by their chosen political party (Democrats, for the most part.) Progressives call their party's bluffs on various issues, but they are largely doing so via the internet or telephones.

I am a progressive, and I can testify under oath that I have been working tirelessly to help America's children as well as helping all of the other worthy causes that I support.

I just want to make that clear; progressives are the people who belong to the party, not the party itself (we haven't gone independent, yet.)

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As a Canadian, I would like to say that we would welcome you progressives with open arms. Our political parties on the left are actually leftwing. The practical policies of the Democratic party are often to the right of our Conservative party! Whereas only the far-left wing of the Dems even consider universal healthcare like what exists in Canada, only the far-right wing of the Conservatives want to make a parallel private system.

Now, I understand if you don't want to come. You love your country, and don't want to abandon it for someplace colder. Then stop voting for the mainstream Democratic candidates! Don't waste a vote on Obama or Clinton, vote for Kucinich or Gravel! If you live in a red state, vote Green (or whatever the left independent party is)!

The mainstream Democratic party is not leftwing.

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Barney Frank once said for Republicans, "Life begins at conception and ends at birth." Riane Eisler correctly notes that the Bush Administration has opposed school lunches, after-school programs for families of working mothers, preschool programs, and college loans. Bush even threatened to veto an expansion of the SCHIP program.

Ms. Eisler considers children "The Ignored Issue That Can Get Progressives Elected." I don't believe the issue is "ignored" by progressives: Hillary Clinton has long championed the rights of children.

Progressives should support not just the rights of children, but the rights of animals! Regardless of where one stands on abortion, we can all agree cruelty to children is wrong--and this is true of cruelty to animals.

A rational case exists for the rights of preborn humans. The case for animal rights is stronger and more readily apparent.

Dr. Tom Regan, the foremost intellectual leader of the animal rights movement and author of The Case for Animal Rights, notes that animals "have beliefs and desires; perception, memory, and a sense of the future, including their own future; and emotional life together with feelings of pleasure and pain; preference and welfare interests; the ability to initiate action in pursuit of their desires and goals; a psychophysical identity over time; and an individual welfare in the sense that their experiential life fares well or ill for them, logically independent of their utility for others and logically independent of their being the object of anyone else's interests."

John Stuart Mill observed, "The reason for legal intervention in favor of children apply not less strongly to the case of those unfortunate slaves— the animals."

In his book, Christianity and the Rights of Animals, Reverend Andrew Linzey, an Anglican priest, writes, "In some ways, Christian thinking is already oriented in this direction. What is it that so appalls us about cruelty to children or oppression of the vulnerable, but that these things are betrayals of relationships of special care and special trust? Likewise, and even more so, in the case of animals who are mostly defenseless before us."

Christians have found themselves unable to agree upon many pressing moral issues—including abortion. Exodus 21:22-24 says if two men are fighting and one injures a pregnant woman and the child is killed, he shall repay her according to the degree of injury inflicted upon her, and not the fetus. On the other hand, the Didache (Apostolic Church teaching) forbade abortion.

“There has to be a frank recognition that the Christian church is divided on every moral issue under the sun: nuclear weapons, divorce, homosexuality, capital punishment, animals, etc.,” says Reverend Linzey. “I don’t think it’s desirable or possible for Christians to agree upon every moral issue. And, therefore, I think within the church we have no alternative but to work within diversity.”

In secular circles, the animal rights movement is taken more seriously than the right-to-life movement. In an article on animal rights entitled "Just Like Us?" appearing in the August 1988 issue of Harper’s, bioethicist Art Caplan was willing to seriously discuss the rights of animals, but warned:

"...if you cheapen the currency of rights language, you’ve got to worry that rights may not be taken seriously. Soon you will have people arguing that trees have rights and that embryos have rights..."

Peter Singer writes that "by ceasing to rear and kill animals for food, we can make extra food available for humans that, properly distributed, it would eliminate starvation and malnutrition from this planet. Animal Liberation is Human Liberation, too."

Again, progressives should support the rights of children AND animals.

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Such policies would rock, and over time, spill over into what we adults need, such as cleaner skies, water, less cat-5 hurricanes and the like. If a child can eat properly, study well and do well, trust me, that will also affect we adults as well.

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It is time to create the change we all want to see and we do that through all our efforts to change the discussion from the dominator/money value to the 'caring' economy that will once again include our children, our planet--LIFE

Check out www.seachangetoday.com At this blog we discuss, share real life examples of people putting into practice many of the things Eisler discusses in this article! It is based on the ideas in Eisler's Real Wealth of Nations book. It is time to build a caring economy

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We can't reduce poverty until we get past the years of anti-welfare propaganda to which we've been subjected. Poverty is NOT a lifestyle choice. It hurts, and it kills. With the exception of a brief period during the 1970's, welfare remained well below the poverty line (the amount necessary to cover the costs of the most basic needs). People turned to welfare when they had no viable alternatives.
There are many reasons for poverty that can't be addressed with the simplistic "get a job". Some 80% of AFDC recipients used aid for under 5 years, voluntarily quitting when health and circumstances allowed. Specific life events---job loss and abandonment by the father, homelessness (and trying to secure emergency housing, child care and work all at the same time, without money even for bus fare, etc.) ---can leave families in a desperate situation. Severe depression, normal under conditions for the poor today, can incapacitate the poor as surely as it can the rich.
Just as daunting is trying to cope with the "reformed" welfare when ill/disabled. The application process for SSI/SSDI is stunningly complex. Initial applications are routinely denied, and many don't know that they must re-apply. It can take a year or more from the date of application to receipt of the first check. Because they are ill/disabled, they can't meet the workfare requirements to obtain what little welfare aid does still exist. These are the people we are turning our backs on.
Even the progressive community ignores this issue,
afraid of being called "bleeding heart liberals" if they show any compassion for our poor. Until Americans can grasp just how hellish poverty in the US can be, they won't understand that being unemployed isn't a mere preference, or that
it can't be resolved with sound-bite solutions.
We provide billions in welfare to our rich, most commonly in the form of using public dollars to pay most/all of the taxes on their wealth (i.e., "tax relief"). Why won't we help our poor?

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