Weak Sauce

Roy over at Alicublog brought this to my attention with this post:
http://alicublog.blogspot.com/2014/05/more-conservatives-getting-straight.html

I'm going to be fair to Rod Dreher.  He doesn't deserve it, but here you go: http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/power-purity-pol-pot-left/
Properly sourced and linked and everything, just like I would for a column written by someone worthy of  respect.  In this column at The American Conservative, Rod tries to link the rejection of Condi Rice as a commencement speaker, with the killing fields of Cambodia.  That chain of, for lack of a better word. 'reasoning'  has a good chance of making it into the big book of logical fallacies as a textbook example of the slippery slope.  But in trying to prove his point he writes:

This is a fair enough description of the problem with American progressivism. They are never satisfied with the world as it is, and never think of the possibility that the world as it is might be the best we can hope for under the circumstances. Rather, they push and they push and they push for utopia, and consider themselves virtuous pilgrims on the Grand March.

(True, the problem with American conservatives is that we are too much enamored of the evils we have, and insufficiently motivated to imagine a better way to live and to work to achieve that end.)

This week, it is the dumbest thing ever written.  I'm sure that Jonah Goldberg will rise to the challenge and regain the crown soon, but damn.  That is the laziest excuse I had the misfortune to encounter.  What possible circumstance are we supposed to consider that would excuse, for example, lying to the American public to start a war that killed thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis?  Is there any situation at all that could be excused by his "it's a flawed world" line?  Let's try it out.

Scenario 1:

The world as it is: The Catholic Church has harbored priests who are rapists and child molestors, and has deliberately stymied efforts to prosecute offenders and compensate victims.  We should identify and punish the offenders through a combination of civil suits and criminal prosecution.

Rod's excuse:  Have you considered that this is the best of all possible worlds, that things are already the best we can hope for, considering the circumstances?

Helmut's reaction:  remind me again what circumstances excuse child rape?

Scenario 2:

The world as it is:  The drug war has imprisoned so many African Americans for non violent offenses that it is more common for an African American man to have been incarcerated than to have attended university.

Rod's excuse:  Have you considered that this is the best of all possible worlds, that things are already the best we can hope for, considering the circumstances?

Helmut's reaction:  What circumstances make this situation, unique among all of the nations of the world acceptable?

And so on, etc.  Pick a social ill, pick a flagrant abuse of power and Rod can hand wave it away in the laziest way possible.

The progressive movement isn't fighting the second law of thermodynamics, gravity or the speed of light in a vacuum.  Human rights are an achievable goal, and to suggest that they are unachievable or unimportant, is to choose to side knowingly with sloth and despair.