The Progressive Schism
"Progressivism" classically referred to an orientation toward open-ended progress: the belief that knowledge, reason, and criticism drive improvement. Today, many progressives equate progress only with social or moral outcomes rather than with the process that creates them.
When moral certainty replaces open inquiry, progressivism becomes regressive by preserving ideology and dogma instead of expanding knowledge.
Consider these concrete examples where specific outcomes are treated as unquestionable progressive goods, while the process of criticism and knowledge-generation is sidelined:
Speech Restrictions: Many modern progressives openly defend restrictions on speech in the name of preventing "harm." University bias-response teams investigate protected speech that merely causes offense. Instead of treating ideas as hypotheses to be tested, they are treated as threats to be contained.
COVID School Closures: Many progressive jurisdictions kept schools closed long after evidence supported reopening. Criticism of lockdown policies was framed as a moral failure rather than a legitimate scientific disagreement. What should have been a contested empirical question became a test of ideological loyalty.
Urban Homelessness Policies: In cities like San Francisco and Portland, homelessness and addiction policies became moral imperatives insulated from criticism even as overdose deaths rose. Requests for data or policy revision were often dismissed as lacking compassion, replacing learning with moral signaling.
Environmental Regulations: Many environmental progressives now use regulations designed for fossil-fuel infrastructure to block clean-energy projects, particularly nuclear power and transmission lines. The identity of "environmental protection" overrides the experimentation needed for genuine progress toward net zero.
This, we believe, is the core pathology within the modern American progressive movement. In order to sustain true progress, we must defend the means of progress: free thought, criticism, and decentralized discovery.
Defining Liberty Progressivism
Liberty Progressivism descends from the Enlightenment tradition and critical rationalism, pioneered by philosopher Karl Popper and powerfully elaborated by physicist David Deutsch. Critical rationalism holds that progress is the growth of knowledge through conjecture, criticism, and error correction.
At its core, Liberty Progressivism holds that the means of progress are more fundamental than any particular progressive outcome.
If we protect the mechanisms of error correction, good outcomes can emerge from the iterative process of learning. If we suppress those mechanisms, even the most well-intentioned goals become brittle dogmas that decay over time.
Following Deutsch, a Liberty Progressive treats freedom not as an abstract moral entitlement, but as a functional requirement for problem-solving. Freedom is what allows errors to be revealed, alternative solutions to be tested, and new explanations to be generated. Liberty is inseparable from progress.
The Three Means of Error Correction
To sustain progress, society must preserve these essential mechanisms:
1. Free Speech and Free Thought
The freedom to conjecture, criticize, debate, and dissent is the bedrock of any knowledge-creating civilization. Without free speech, society loses its ability to detect errors and learning collapses into obedience. Free inquiry is not merely a constitutional right; it is the operating principle of progress itself.
2. Distributed Power and the Right to Resist Coercion
Knowledge creation thrives when no single institution, ideology, or authority can dominate the terms of inquiry. Distributed power, including checks and balances, local autonomy, competitive markets, and the right to resist, prevents coercive monopolies on truth.
3. Decentralized Experimentation
Transformative progress rarely emerges from top-down prescriptions. It arises when individuals and groups generate solutions that no central authority could have anticipated. Markets, federalism, and local autonomy enable parallel problem-solving at scale.
In summary, a Liberty Progressive sees human flourishing as an open-ended project, not a destination or static moral equilibrium, but a process with infinite potential. What matters most is protecting the conditions for progress to continue indefinitely.
The Two Principal Axes
We establish the framework along two key principal components that explain the majority of variance in contemporary progressive political philosophy. This two-axis framework helps understand how Liberty Progressivism distinguishes from other forms of progressivism.
Axis 1: Liberty ↔ Statist
Where do you locate problem-solving capacity?
Liberty
Trust distributed problem-solving where progress emerges from free individuals and institutions experimenting, criticizing, and learning from failure. Power should be contestable, plural, and exit-based.
Statist
Trust centralized coordination where progress is directed through organized expertise, planning, and coordinated policy. May see individual liberties as impediments to achieving collective goals.
Axis 2: Reformer ↔ Revolutionary
How should change occur?
Reformer
Society is improvable through iterative change: test, learn, adapt. Embrace fallibilism, reversibility, and tolerance of dissent. Existing institutions can be vehicles for progress.
Revolutionary
Society is fundamentally broken and requires deconstruction and redesign. Moral certainty justifies urgent action. Progress is achieved once justice is implemented.
The extremes illustrate the distinctions, but individuals hold complex belief systems. Most people are centered somewhere between the extreme poles, allowing for nuance.
The Four Quadrants
When we plot the two orthogonal axes together, we find quadrants that define four distinct spaces within the progressive political sphere:
Liberty + Revolutionary
Open System Radicals
Radical decentralizers who believe systems are broken but should be replaced with open, permissionless alternatives rather than centralized control.
Vitalik Buterin, crypto decentralists
Liberty + Reformer
Epistemic Reformers
Pragmatic, pro-freedom, pro-abundance. Trust distributed problem-solving and iterative error correction. See criticism as essential input.
Jared Polis, Ron Wyden, Dean Phillips
Statist + Revolutionary
Moral Centralizers
Moral crusaders who believe society requires fundamental transformation through centralized action. Prioritize outcomes over process.
Zohran Mamdani, democratic socialists
Statist + Reformer
Technocratic Pragmatists
Skilled managers who favor expert-driven policy and evidence-based reform through existing institutions. Accept tradeoffs and value process.
Gavin Newsom, JB Pritzker
Key Distinctions Between Quadrants
| Dimension | Liberty Reformer | Statist Revolutionary |
|---|---|---|
| Epistemic Stance | Humility: assumes problems are inevitable but soluble through open criticism and innovation | Certainty: assumes moral and social truths are largely known and must be enacted |
| View of Ignorance | All humans are equally ignorant; progress means correcting our shared errors | Ignorance is unevenly distributed; experts or enlightened groups must guide others |
| Philosophy of Change | Continuous error correction and adaptation | Planned moral improvement through managed outcomes |
| Emotional Posture | Fallibilism and curiosity | Righteousness and control |
Why Liberty, Not Libertarian?
Liberty Progressive emphasizes freedom as the mechanism of progress, not as an ideology of extreme individualism. Classical libertarianism fits this view, but the term "libertarian" has drifted, often reduced to a caricature of anti-government dogma or ideological anarchism.
By using "liberty," we appeal to the Enlightenment tradition where freedom, reason, and knowledge creation were inseparable. Liberty, in this framework, is not incompatible with collective good; it's what makes the collective capable of problem-solving and knowledge creation.
Liberty Progressivism treats liberty as a tool for knowledge growth and progress, whereas libertarianism treats liberty as the final moral principle.
Key Distinctions
| Dimension | Liberty Progressivism | Libertarianism |
|---|---|---|
| Goal | Preserve and expand the means of progress: free inquiry, distributed power, the right to criticism | Maximize individual freedom and minimize state involvement |
| Role of the State | Limited but essential: protect rights, maintain the spirit of the republic, preserve means of error correction | Minimize government as much as possible; focus on non-interference |
| Economic View | Markets as discovery engines; support intervention when necessary to restore competition and prevent monopolies | Markets as self-correcting systems; oppose most regulation and redistribution |
| Philosophical Root | Enlightenment fallibilism: freedom as the mechanism of error correction | Natural rights liberalism: freedom as a moral end in itself |
| View of Power | Concerned with all concentrations of power (state, corporate, algorithmic) | Primarily concerned with state power |
| Moral Posture | Fallibilist: problems are inevitable but solvable through open systems | Absolutist: coercion by the state is the primary moral evil |
Living the Framework
Liberty Progressivism is not merely a diagnostic tool but a practical orientation we can live out and share. Here's how to put the framework into action:
Personal Level
- Cultivate epistemic humility: Regularly seek out thoughtful disagreement. Treat policy debates as empirical questions and error-correction opportunities, not moral purity tests.
- Champion free expression: Defend others' right to speak, even when you disagree, and model good-faith criticism.
- Support decentralized discovery: Engage with the startup ecosystem, contribute to open-source projects, and champion local experiments rather than waiting for top-down solutions.
Communal and Cultural Level
- Push institutions toward openness: Advocate for universities, media platforms, and scientific bodies to prioritize real viewpoint diversity and error-correction over ideological conformity.
- Amplify Liberty Reformer voices: Highlight and support progressive leaders who combine ambitious goals with pragmatic, evidence-based, liberty-respecting methods.
Political Level
- Advocate for structural safeguards: Support reforms that distribute power and protect error-correction mechanisms: ranked-choice voting, federalism, independent redistricting, strong free-speech protections, and antitrust enforcement.
- Endorse compatible candidates: Prioritize those who reject censorship, moral policing, and centralized planning while pursuing ambitious aims.
- Engage in persuasion, not cancellation: Focus on evidence, experimentation, and voluntary cooperation rather than coercive mandates or shame.
The Beginning of Infinity
This book provides the philosophical foundation for much of the Liberty Progressive framework and inspires genuine optimism about what's possible when we protect the means of progress.
Liberty Progressivism succeeds through attraction and demonstration, not coercion. By living these principles, remaining open to criticism, defending the right to be wrong, and trusting distributed problem-solving, we can help progressivism reclaim its role as the champion of open-ended human advancement.