There’s a smart essay in Atlantic about the overuse in politics of claims to march on the “right side of history.” The author mostly cites President Obama’s rhetoric but also critiques some conservative assumptions about democracy’s supposedly inevitable triumph, especially after the Cold War. Assertions about history moving inevitably in a moral, climactic direction are misguided and lazy, the author warns. He writes:
Theologians have wrestled with the problem of evil for centuries: How can a benevolent God allow terrible things to happen? There may be no single, satisfying answer to that question, but there are many suggested resolutions. The whig interpretation of history is, like religion, a faith-based system of belief, but it’s much less equipped to deal with misfortune. Perhaps ISIS’s barbarism proves that they are on the wrong side of history—but what if, terrifyingly, it’s evidence that they are on the right side of history, and Western civilization is on the wrong? Luckily, there’s an easy way to sidestep the dilemma: relegating the whig interpretation to the dustbin of history. Now that would be progress.
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