Two Kinds of Progressives

I continue to be impressed with Nate Silver, and not just because of his number-crunching skills. His post on the “two progressivisms” speaks to why some progressives find other progressives annoying. Go take a look.

Of the two types I’m clearly more rational than radical. I’m not nearly as credulous as I was, um, eight years ago (wonder why?) and I’m also much less of an incrementalist, but I identify more with the rational side.

Rational progressives sometimes regard radical progressives as impractical, self-righteous, shrill, demagogic, naïve and/or anti-intellectual. Radical progressives, in turn, regard rational progressives as impure, corrupt (or corruptible), selfish, complacent, elitist, and too quick to compromise.

I don’t think I identify the radicals as anti-intellectual. It’s more the case that they seem to have an emotional need to stay in attack mode. One wonders if events arranged themselves to give them every policy change they wanted, would they still find something to attack? I suspect so.

In my case, my ultimate goal is not so much to enact progressive policies (although that would be nice) as it is to create a nation in which the people received factual information and could have rational, substantive debates about issues. And then if well-informed voters, after a thorough airing of a problem, express a preference for conservative solutions, so be it. I am just damn tired of living in a nation in which it’s a near-impossible task to lift facts over all the bullshit and demagoguery.

I Bet They Have Secret Handshakes, Too

Lest you think this is an exaggeration,

Four Tennessee state representatives, all Republicans, have signed up to be plaintiffs in a lawsuit against President Barack Obama, aimed at forcing him to prove he is a United States citizen by coughing up his birth certificate.

After the November elections, the rightie blogosphere smugly declared that, yeah, maybe they lost, but at least they weren’t going to get crazy like loony liberals and their Bush Derangement Syndrome. So all this weekend the righties were in a state of hysterical meltdown because President Obama chose to return a bust of Winston Churchill on loan from Britain.

Update: This is, of course, not the least bit deranged.