William / USA / areligious / apolitical -- October 27th, 2011
I enjoyed your website, it's not saying anything that I don't already know, but its nice to know that self-identified progressives can step out of the box that has been defined for them by their brethren far enough to recognize an existential threat to their own existence as an ideology and a civilization. Keep up the good work.
My suggestion, from a non-muslim perspective, on how to be more effective in countering radical jihadism, [as well as a great many other problems this world faces] - have children, you vote for your vision of the future with you children. As a kind of evolutionary dead end myself, I make that suggestion with a certain soberness that only foreseeing one's own eventual extinction brings.
I read you "Progressive Bona Fides", you seem to have a pretty good core set of values - don't stop updating and refining them. I'm particularly intrigued by your stance on pacifism. I wonder though why you are so insecure as to have to publish them as if you need an excuse to your fellow progressives, "I hope the foregoing is proof enough that I really am a progressive after all, and not a wolf in sheep's clothing." There is something somehow wrong with an ideology where one feels as if one has to apologize for saying anything that smacks of incorrectness in order to retain one's creds with the in-group.