Progress vs. Democracy
If the arc of history bends, but voters are blocking "history," what does one do?
In my inaugural post, I wrote that good things don’t necessarily go together. This is a problem for the idea of progress, which too easily encourages us to believe in things that could be true but probably aren’t. If the arc of history is perpetually bending towards some as of yet unspecified endpoint, then maybe good things do go together? At the very least, they should.
In this sense, progress as expressed by progressives can—if one is not careful—all too easily run contrary to the spirit of democracy. If you believe progress is sacrosanct and predetermined but there are a large number of voters blocking your entire sense of history's necessary arc, then do you prioritize those voters' right to be wrong or do you prioritize history?
