{"id":74684,"date":"2026-07-26T01:00:59","date_gmt":"2026-07-26T05:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=74684"},"modified":"2026-07-25T09:40:27","modified_gmt":"2026-07-25T13:40:27","slug":"qotd-progressives-know-theyre-on-the-right-side-of-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2026\/07\/26\/qotd-progressives-know-theyre-on-the-right-side-of-history\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Progressives know<\/em> they’re on the “right side of history”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>You want to know why the Left is so awful? They have no sense of history. Total ignorance would be sufficient, but the Left, as always, really goes the extra mile (so long as “going the extra mile” entails “patting yourself on the back”) \u2014 they think they have an exquisite knowledge of history. This is partly a holdover from Karl Marx, who thought his sub-Hegelian junk philosophy was not just a<\/em> science, but THE<\/em> Science \u2014 The Science of History. More than that, they’re certain that History is moral<\/em>, that it has “sides”, and they’re on The Right Side of History.<\/p>\n

Whatever happens, then, happens either exactly as they foretold \u2014 even if they never bothered to actually prophesy, or to even think about it at all until just this second \u2014 or is a temporary victory by the forces of evil, a temporarily successful holding action against the inevitable Triumph of Progress.<\/p>\n

It’s a fascinating chicken-and-egg conundrum: Did the Left take to Marxism because they’re so invincibly self-righteous, or does their sanctimoniousness come from their dedication to Marxism? It doesn’t really matter, because the practical effect is the same either way: Their consciences are completely short-circuited. They can do the most awful stuff with a smile on their faces, because “awful” is relative, comrade \u2013 as you’d know if you had the proper proletarian consciousness; if you understood things from History’s perspective, as they do.<\/p>\n

Severian, “Escriva Ch.8: Examination of Conscience”, Founding Questions<\/em><\/a>, 2022-06-26.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You want to know why the Left is so awful? They have no sense of history. Total ignorance would be sufficient, but the Left, as always, really goes the extra mile (so long as “going the extra mile” entails “patting yourself on the back”) \u2014 they think they have an exquisite knowledge of history. This […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7,53,41,13],"tags":[1076,424,1020,1462],"class_list":["post-74684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","category-politics","category-quotations","category-usa","tag-karlmarx","tag-morality","tag-progressives","tag-severian"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-jqA","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74684"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74684\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":103854,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74684\/revisions\/103854"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}