Progressiveism v. Progressivism.

Nate Silver gets philosophical. By and large, I think there's some very good stuff in this post (as there typically is over at 538.

Of particular interest is the breakdown between rational (pragmatic?) progressivism and radical (annoying) progressivism. In the 'Rational Progressive' column, note the inclusion of the term 'elitist' along with words like 'empirical' and 'conversational.' I can very much see where the accusation is levied from. Being cooly descriptive of someone else oftentimes implies some kind of almost clinical distance. For the person being described, this often brings with it a feeling of uneasiness. No one likes the sensation of being put under the microscope; that is, the sensation one gets when overhearing friends talk about them in the next room.

What I find to be a more vicious habit, however, is the kind of populism that I often find associated with ideologues. To describe a person, or set of people based upon what one has observed or considered can often rightly be called elitism, or at least carry with it a feeling of elitism if the care is not taken to frame ideas carefully and thoughtfully. To describe a person, or set of people based upon what one ideologically demands to be true, however, is a different thing entirely. It implicitly robs the entity being described of agency and, ultimately humanity. It's also really fucking insufferable. Consider obnoxious college sophomores who incessantly pontificate about how "[T]he unspoken plight of 'the poor.'" (full disclosure: at one point in my life I had walked more than a few steps down this path). Oftentimes in these worldviews, points of argument are not questions to be answered so much as they are soapboxes to stand on. It has taken the individual or group of individuals being described, and not put them under the microscope but made them pawns in the narrative of the storyteller.

Or maybe not. I don't mean to sound so definitive, but it's a way of thinking that I find ultimately counterproductive. That being said, there's a really sweet blog coming down the pipeline about the French invasion of Russia in 1812. --Watch out!