When my autistic son Hunter was very young, he sometimes had explosive public meltdowns. Like many bright children, he also learned quickly that those meltdowns got him attention and could be used as leverage.
One afternoon, we were leaving a shopping center after a long day. Hunter wanted to go into a toy store he spotted. I said no. There was no money, and everyone was worn out. So he threw himself onto the sidewalk.
I turned away, deliberately cutting off the attention that fed the behavior. But behind me, I heard his stepfather say, calmly but firmly, "You know what? You have a cool name — Hunter. When you act like this, you don’t deserve that cool name. Until you calm down and behave, your name is Zelbert.”
Hunter stopped immediately. He stood up, sniffed, and reached for his stepdad’s hand.
No force. No indulgence. No shaming. Just a withdrawal of unearned status. From that point forward, all it took was a look, and Hunter shaped up rather than risk being called Zelbert.
The lesson was simple and profound: Identity comes with expectations. A name is not a costume you wear while refusing the obligations it implies.
That principle applies far beyond parenting.
A name is a form of moral shorthand. It contains meaning that is, in general, universally understood. It communicates expectations before a single word is spoken. "Rose is a rose is a rose, yet a rose by another name would smell as sweet." But if you rename "rose" to, say, "pig poo," you will inevitably look at it differently. That's human nature. The name shapes our perception of things. And of course, names change over time. That's natural language evolution.
When a person, or an ideology, demands the privileges of a name while rejecting the standards that name implies, the name becomes a lie. Keeping or even tolerating that change is not linguistic evolution. It is fraud.
For centuries, liberal held a set of specific meanings: belief in individual moral agency, equal treatment under law, freedom of conscience and speech, especially dissenting speech, and responsibility paired with liberty. Liberalism assumed adulthood, and it required self-restraint. It accepted that freedom without discipline decays.
The thing that now wears the term "liberalism" like a skin suit rejects most of this while insisting on the prestige of the label. This new "liberalism" asserts that outcomes on paper, no matter the quality of measurement used, matter more than individual agency. Standards are recast as cruelty, while responsibility, the other half of liberty, is reframed as oppression. New liberals insist on managed speech, and dissent is pathologized. Individuals are reduced to group membership and treated accordingly.
This is not liberalism. It is something else wearing that name.
If “liberal” no longer fits, what does?
Despite its modern reputation, progressive is actually the more accurate term, and not as a compliment.
Progressivism has always had two faces. One was technocratic and managerial: experts directing society toward approved outcomes. The other was maternal and moral: reformers seeking to protect, uplift, purify, and supervise. Prohibitionists framed alcohol as a threat to women and children and demanded state intervention as moral housekeeping. Settlement-house reformers assumed the poor and immigrants required guidance in proper living. Women’s voting leagues argued not merely for equality, but for moral authority (which they defined, though in the early days it was in Christian terms) to civilize politics and restrain vice.
This was not liberalism, but rather custodial governance. It treated all of society as a household, with the elites as Mom and Dad and citizens as dependents.
Modern progressivism did not abandon this impulse. It refined it. Where earlier progressives used law and compulsion openly, today’s progressives use therapeutic language, emotional validation, subsidies, speech norms, and “safety.” The tone is gentler. The posture is the same. Authority without consent. Control without adulthood.
This is the left-wing Zelbert: an ideology that wants the authority of maturity while insisting on the indulgences of childhood. One that removes expectations and replaces them with supervision. One that treats standards as harm and excuses as compassion. When it does not get its way, it melts down.
There are racial consequences of this worldview, and contemporary progressivism is as bigoted as its ancestor.
Modern progressivism treats race as destiny rather than description. It predicts beliefs, competence, and needs based on skin color. It polices dissent as betrayal. Most damaging of all, it quietly lowers expectations for black Americans while insisting this is justice.
That is not respect. It is infantilization beyond even the generalized infantilization of the elites/proles paradigm inherent in the belief system. A society that refuses to expect adulthood will never produce it. High expectations are not cruelty; they are a form of honor and respect. Excuses signal low belief. Standards are how societies transmit trust.
The cruel irony is that the people most harmed by progressive paternalism are the very people it claims to protect. Permanent supervision does not empower. It arrests development.
Treating individuals as symbols, wards, or dependents is not compassion. It is a quiet vote of no confidence in their ability to grow.
Let's go back to names.
A name binds identity to behavior. It means something only if it carries expectations. When those expectations are abandoned, the name must be withdrawn. Modern progressives do not meet the conditions of liberalism. They have rejected its standards while clinging to its moral authority. They have embraced management over agency, care over consent, and supervision over adulthood.
Like a child demanding the privileges of a name without the responsibilities it implies, they want the status without the discipline. Names don’t work that way.
If you want the name back, live up to it.
But for now, I'm naming them all progressives, not liberals. They are Zelberts. I would appreciate y'all holding me to that standard.
Also for our VIPs: The Rule of Least Harm: Moral Limits in an Unjust World
