June 27, 2006

Speak Progressive, But Win Conservative Reforms

By Christopher Chantrill
Whether we like it or not, "we live in a progressive world," writes Jonah Goldberg in National Review.  He means that when conservatives go into the public square they must use the language of progressivism. In debates on public policy, "The good is measured in material terms — greater health, greater prosperity, greater comfort — and the social sciences are the disciplines that allow us to engineer society in ways that will maximize the good." This materialist public policy is based upon the SSSM, John Derbyshire writes, "the egalitarian, "blank slate," Standard Social Science Model of human nature cherished by the modern Western intelligentsia." In the United States today, you must speak the lingua franca of the public square, the materialism of progressivism and the egalitarian, blank slate of the SSSM in order to get a hearing.  If your thoughts fly above the flatland of gray, materialist slate, you must still translate it into everyday speech. Back in the...(Read Full Article)