Dan's Webpage: Because everyone loves a farce: Of atheists and dogs

So the New York Review of Books has a review of Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, a new book by Daniel Dennett, one of the main spokesmen behind the insufferable (and, thankfully, still marginal) "bright" movement.

Yes, that's just what atheists need, a label that makes us seem even more smug. Forget Orwell and talk of "mindshunts" – ultimately it's this same smugness that I find abrasive in coinages like "progressive" and "compassionate conservative."

I wouldn't recommend the magazine, the article, or the book being reviewed, but I was struck by an anecdote offered up by the author, Freeman Dyson (of Dyson sphere fame):

To be workable, a solution does not need to be scientifically or philosophically consistent. When I was a boy in England long ago, people who traveled on trains with dogs had to pay for a dog ticket. The question arose whether I needed to buy a dog ticket when I was traveling with a tortoise. The conductor on the train gave me the answer: "Cats is dogs and rabbits is dogs but tortoises is insects and travel free according."

Language is a wonderful thing.

What the fuck is wrong with progressive? At least it's not a bald-faced lie like "compassionate conservative". How is it smug?

Hell, the name progressive is mostly an attempt to avoid the negative label of 'liberal' forced on us by right wing nuts who, appropriately enough this week are keeping down a vote on raising the minimum wage while repealing the estate tax.

I think it's entirely appropriate, the word progressive. It implies, correctly, that we want to move society forward to a better age while conservatives want to move it back to some sort of mythical 50s golden age.

As usual you make a very energetic argument, but I think that last sentence of yours prettymuch proves my point.

"Liberal" wasn't forced on so-called progressives, it was a label that (among other mutations) the right managed to perjorate so much that very few liberals (with rare exceptions like Wellstone) were comfortable with it. I'll be much more comfortable with it when "progressive" has settled in and become another shifting signifier.

"Conservative" has likewise become a negative term in certain circles, and I'd expect that process to continue much as it did for "liberal," with the lefty blogosphere standing in for the Republican-dominated talk radio circuit.

The real question is when and if the perjoration becomes so bad that conservatives attempt a similar rebranding. If that happens I'm sure the term they pick will be, on its face, as difficult to disagree with as "progressive."