The Progressive Story Hits a Snag
5th November 2015
Richard Fernandez intrudes some reality into The Narrative.
According to adherents of historical materialism, the story of humanity can flow in only one direction. That makes progressive politics not only feasible but mandatory. The one-way nature of history means milestones once passed are in the rearview mirror forever. Barack Obama could think of no greater put-down than to accuse Mitt Romney of questioning the certainty of progress.
Gee, I’ve been saying that for years.
In this view, progress is like a ratchet, once it advances a tooth it can never go back.
Thus when “progress” actually retreats it causes no end of political embarrassment, not simply because it admits the possibility of fallibility, but it disproves the inevitability of “progress” itself. When China decided to reverse it’s “one child policy” to avoid a demographic catastrophe, as Bret Stephens explains, it did more than repeal a Politburo decision, it admitted that the most advanced idea of the day was a crock of s**t. It is such a disappointment to progressives.
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Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post writes: “The 2015 election is over. (You may not have known it was even happening.) And it proved one thing: Republicans have an absolute stranglehold on governorships and state legislatures all across the country.” But why? The Democrats were evicted not because of any superiority in Republican organization but because their program eventually went stale and fell apart.