That's a reframing that rises to the level of the Big Lie. "Progressive" describes the mainstream of American politics since our very beginning, a banner that's been carried by various political parties, with the exception of Republican. America is a progressive nation, and Republican attempts to turn "progressive" into an epithet means applying that epithet to America itself. When Republicans hate progressives, they're hating America.

Radical conservatism is about redefining America in a novel way, and abandoning two centuries of progress. It's about redefining "freedom" in a distinctly Orwellian way, as the freedom to die if you don't have wealth, and the freedom to shut up if you don't approve of government policies and actions. It's the freedom to say anything you want on the phone or in email that you'd also say to the NSA (we're supposed to have a government that listens, but that's not quite what the Founders had in mind). It's freedom from the burdens of democracy, and freedom to let the RNC make all the tiresome decisions. It's freedom from doubt and from thinking, through the comfort of the certainties of fundamentalist Christianity.

To equate progressivism with collectivism is to call two centuries of American tradition collectivist. It's to repudiate a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people"; a government charged with promoting the general welfare. It means denying that two centuries of infrastructure improvements and public services paid for out of the common wealth created any wealth, and that those who profited most aren't obligated to repay their debt to the commonwealth through taxes. Whining about government regulation means denying that enforcement of contracts and protecting businesses from unfair practices and guarding its property aren't money in the pocket of business. It means denying the role of government in creating and sustaining that holy of holies, private property.

The American government has always played a central role in American prosperity and well-being. Today's radical conservatives are engaged in nothing less than a repudiation of America's founding mission statement:

We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Tom, please tell me: Which of those principles is not under attack by the radical Right?