Since I’m on a Will Wilkinson kick, here’s a post of his (via Andrew) that I’m more dyspeptic about. A taste of what bugs me:

Indeed, over the past half-century, progress has been so rapid that perhaps with distance we might come to think of it as the Great Era of Moral Progress.

I get what he’s saying: Obama’s ascent to the presidency represents an important event in the civil rights struggle in this country. But am I being willfully difficult if I insist that I don’t count that as any kind of consolidated progress towards a better social arrangement, but rather a brief blip in the long and miserable history of humanity from which we will descend back to our natural barbaric state?

By all means, people, celebrate this day. Feel happy that we live in a relatively more just society than our parents did. But let’s not congratulate ourselves too much. We’re still all a bunch of venal, rutting animals who fight wars of conquest and domination out of hurt pride or fear or ignorance. We may occasionally reason our way out of repressing others, but we have short memories and base instincts. After all, the barbarisms of Auschwitz, the Killing Fields, Srebrenica—all events during Wilkinson’s Great Era of Moral Progress—were perpetrated by people just like us, not some exotic “other” we must struggle to comprehend. We are irredeemable, never beyond our worst potential.

No, you’re right, I am hopelessly cynical and contrarian. So much so that not only did I not take a few hours off of work to go hang out on the mall even though it’s a couple blocks from my house, I didn’t even attempt to watch the inauguration on TV—all out of some peevish desire to not be part of any “big moment”.

And though I’m generally more predisposed to like Obama than most of my more conservative friends, the national service theme which has gradually taken center stage in our new president’s rhetoric leaves my mouth tasting like I’ve been licking batteries. Will Wilkinson’s liveblogging (which I read after the fact, again to avoid being part of some moment) captures that taste just right:

12:22: The troops are awesome, because they “find meaning in something larger than themselves.” So we all need to be like troops in the war on badness. Was that a cellphone? 12:23: Here’s our theme, kids. New Era of Responsibility. Your empty meaningless life can be made whole by your obeisance to collective duty. That was a cellphone.

Not that Obama’s rhetoric is going to generate any new enthusiasm for libertarian ideas. People want to believe in things bigger than themselves, be it God or The Nation. Atheism and libertarianism—it’s the stuff for cranks like me.