" 

 == Populism vs Progressivism, pertinent essay by law professor Jack Balkin == 

 http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/jbalkin/articles/popprog1.htm 

  
 ... 
 I want to talk about constitutional theory's relationship to popular attitudes and popular culture in terms of two opposed positions  one I shall call populist and the other progressivist.(23) The distinction between populism and progressivism is orthogonal to the more familiar distinction between ""left"" and ""right."" An opposition between progressivism and populism exists wholly within left-liberal discourse, just as one exists within the discourse of conservatives; we might say that the two sets of oppositions form a box of four.(24) However, for purposes of this essay I want to focus primarily on the discourse of left-liberals, because it is the ideological community in which both Sunstein and I (and a great many other legal academics) are located.(25) 
 ... 

 Lots of good stuff in there. "