I personally give the respect to people to refer them as they would like to be identified. If a Muslim jihadi says he is a jihadi, I respect his self identification and call him that. Similarly, I respect these people's self identification as liberal or progressive.
I think he's simply alleging that their revealed preferences do not line up with their stated preferences.
[Delete rest of comment, not relevant]
No, but claiming someone isn't truly in a category to defend the category from the hypocrisy of the individual is, because it ignores the possibility that the category lends itself to hypocrisy.
Huh? Why?
Seriously, I don't understand that kind of thinking. I don't think individuals necessarily deserve that kind of power others. Sometimes we should adjust to save other peoples feelings. But having that as the default seems crazy. What if they are full of shit? Or misuse that power? Or I simply disagree with them.. shouldn't I have the right to disagree with their self identification?
True
> so self identification is the only reliable way of applying labels in any sense
No, it's not. Self-identification is one of many ways of operationalizing a categorization, and it's useful for some purposes but not others. You can also operationalize by sets of concrete policies, which is useful for different purposes. And there are other options.
The relevant basis of categorization depends on the purpose of categorization.
To make no issue of someone calling themselves "progressive" while not supporting the policies considered "progressive" is perfectly possible, but it basically shifts the conversation away from the topics at hand and pushes them one level of abstraction into the slippery nature of the way we use language.
There is a substantive disagreement that could be addressed head on: What does the person calling themselves "progressive" believe that title mean? And why do they believe that the title applies to themselves?
Besides, powerful and wealthy people have often claimed to be "on the side of the poor and helpless", to "protect" their subjects and so on throughout history.
This applied to: emperors, kings, aristocrats & knights, shogun & samurai, military leaders... hence the hypocrisy that the pastor is pointing out.