Jonah Goldberg?s latest contribution to National Review tackles the argument that progressives are losing the ?branding? war:
Progressives do have a branding problem. But it stems from the nature of progressivism. What progressivism stands for is having progressives be in charge. Period. Progressivism, stripped of all its pretensions and its many good intentions (and it does have many good intentions), is at its core the dogmatic belief that the familiar band of technocratic, egalitarian statists should be calling the shots.
This is the upshot of liberalism?s much vaunted ?empiricism? and hostility to ?labels,? ?ideology,? etc. When liberals claim they don?t believe in labels, what they are saying is that they don?t want to be locked into a view, an idea, a principle, that will constrain them later.
