Reactionary Progressives

George Will argues that those who ruined the respectability of the appellation "liberal" will do the same for the term "progressive" by, for example, promoting the reactionary positions of the teachers unions. Regarding an attempt to defeat school choice in Utah by means of a referendum, he writes:

Intellectually bankrupt but flush with cash, the teachers unions continue to push their threadbare arguments, undeterred by the fact that Utah's vouchers will increase per-pupil spending and will lower class sizes in public schools. Why the perverse perseverance? There are two large, banal reasons -- fear of competition and desire for the maximum number of dues-paying public school teachers.