And the Hi, I'm Bill Crystal.

Welcome back to Conversations.

I'm very pleased to have with me today again.

My friend Jim Caesar, a distinguished professor of political science of American politics at the University of Virginia,

author of many important books and articles, and most recently in the cause for this conversation really was your cover story in the weekly

standard one of the longest pieces we've published but needless to say one of the

best on the return of progressivism what's next for the left and I thought it was one of the best just analyses

of the left today and also over the last century and what would be coming next for the left.

So I thought we could discuss that and hopefully get a better understanding of this

at least of this moment at least the progressive side of this moment.

So progressivism, that's progressive, that's what the left calls itself today, which is not the case I think when we were in school, they were liberals.

Progressivism was something you studied from the early 20th century.

What do you make of the return of the term before we go into its constituent parts?

Well, as you mentioned, we did use the word liberalism, and if you use the various words for

the left, you have communism

socialism

progressivism and liberalism that's where we came in roughly in that order in

American politics and now we're going backwards

uh... we're going back to progressivism and who knows from the recent

polls socialism is now fully acceptable as a term among the millennials. I hope

we don't reach communism. But liberalism was the dominant term, but in the 70s, 60s and 70s it began to become unpopular.

I think it had a lot to do with the anti-American stand that

...