Limitless Misrule

When it comes to progressive ambitions, nothing is off the table. 

 

William Voegeli  April 4, 2021 

Many thinkers and activists on the American Left call their philosophy progressivism, but no one uses the term changeism. The belief that change is necessary does not mean that all change is progress.

Progressives have done little to explicate which goals they want to progress to. By making a process its central idea, progressivism alerts us that we can neither hope nor expect to reach a state of affairs where progress would no longer be necessary, possible, or desirable. At the same time, it insists that moral flexibility is the defining characteristic of moral sanity. Philosopher Richard Rorty, highly influential within the American Left, wrote in 1999 that “no sharp break divides the unjust from the imprudent, the evil from the inexpedient.”...........

This elevation of group identity and group rights leads to the denigration of individual rights. Imagining the world after a century of progressive advances, Rorty anticipates that the prevention of “gross economic and social inequality” will take precedence over guaranteeing equal protection under the law. Similarly, “talk of fraternity and unselfishness” will displace an older, inexpedient seriousness about rights............To Read More.....