Ideologies neither form a spectrum, nor a grid, nor even a circle. Instead the reality is more complicated, with ideologies agreeing on different issues, often for different reasons in some very odd ways.
Progressivism (as I understand it, I would not call myself a progressive) is fundamentally and first about domestic issues. If someone is willing to sacrifice liberty and economic progress for war then they aren’t a progressive. Likewise, Ron Paul, for example is not a progressive because he disagrees on key domestic issues (even as he agrees on other domestic issues and many issues surrounding war.)
The paleocon right, the libertarian right and the “hard” (what passes for hard in America) left agree substantially on some specific foreign policy issues (the end of empire). They also agree on many economic issues and liberty issues. They disagree on redistributionism and they disagree on positive liberty (making sure that people actually have an even break), as opposed to negative liberty (making sure the government isn’t actively stopping them from having an even break).
Agreement on some issues doesn’t mean libertarianism, progressivism and paleconsevervatism are the same thing, it just means their ideologies agree at various points.
It is fairly commonplace to note that the liberal left lost the working class to social issues when they stopped properly protecting them on economic issues and when the corporate right threw aside actual fiscal conservatism (we’ll promise them services and give them tax cuts!) Again, that doesn’t mean that segment of the population doesn’t agree with the left on a large number of issues, the question is what they prioritize. They regularly say they want liberal policies then vote against them. Priorities, priorities (and they will get what they’re asking for, I’m afraid.)
“Progressives” who support the current wars have decided to sacrifice domestic prosperity and progress for war. That’s the calculation they’ve made, whether they’re willing to admit it or not. And yes, I can say that means they aren’t progressive. I mean, Barack Obama keeps saying he’s a progressive and if you believe that…. Words don’t just mean whatever people want them to mean, in that case I could say I’m a Neocon, because neoconservatism means believing in prosperity and freedom, right?
Bullshit.
Ron Paul’s economic policies, if actually followed, would cause economic armageddon. Don’t get me wrong, I like him, but he’s racist and his policies are largely moronic. He may not work for the rich, but he’s like a doctor saying “well yes, the patient is anemic, so let’s bleed him!”
A lot of people are focusing lately on another pair of ideologies: populism vs. aristocracy/oligarchy. We don’t use the word aristocracy any more, but that’s what the US has and is developing even further.
Americans and most others don’t recognize the ideology of aristocracy any more, because after WWII it pretty much died out in its classical form, but the rent-seekers are pure aristocrats/oligarchs who want to create an economy which is entirely risk free for them and in which every relationship is reduced to revenue streams. (What used to be called “income”).
But to say that’s the “real” fight is to miss the point, because what the solution is to aristocracy matters. “No bailouts” + “drown the government in a bathtub”, ie. Tea Partyism, leads absolutely nowhere good. Right wing solutions, basically, don’t work. The attempt to do them in an even “purer” form won’t work this time either, should it occur. So it’s not enough to say “populism first” and ignore the content of the solutions proposed by various populists. The varieties of right wing and left wing populism are not equal and which one you get matters a lot.