"The most bullying argument in politics"

Michael Brendan Dougherty, "The most bullying argument in politics" (The Week, February 19, 2014):

There is no more bullying or empty piece of rhetoric in political conversation today than to accuse someone of being on the wrong side of history....

... We invoke the future's verdict of guilt precisely because we'd like to smuggle back into our politics the moral force of Divine judgment. But our appeals to progress are a pathetic substitute for the concept of Providence. The former stifles critical reflection about the past. The latter is at least flexible enough to account for the sudden flowering of great evil, even in an age as advanced as ours.

[Hat tip to JM]