If you're interested in politics...

...a critique and discussion of the conservative critique of the progressive utopian agenda, from one of my favorite sites (thanks to Dave for pointing out the blog to me). I especially like this description of the slippery slope. Of course I always knew us nanny-staters would be first ones up against the wall:

As you’ve probably noticed, conservatives tend to argue against liberalism/ progressivism by asserting (plausibly) that Robespierre, or Stalin, or Hitler did bad things; then asserting (considerably less plausibly) that liberalism/ progressivism somehow equals, or naturally tends to slide into, bad authoritarianism of a distinctively modern sort. Ever since Burke wrote his book about the French Revolution, some such slippery slope argument is the Ur-argument of conservatism as political philosophy.

Suppose we sketch out that thing that it is feared liberalism/ progressivism will slipperily slide into. See if you don’t agree that the one thing every conservative swears up and down that he hates in all its many works and deeds, is anything resembling the following:

Intellectuals cook up some abstract, scientistic, rationalistic System. Blinded by the light of Enlightenment hubris, they conclude that a very great transformation of society can be happily effected in relatively short order. A political revolution shall ascend atop some alleged social science breakthrough which, we are assured, is a sold extension of more fundamental advances in the natural sciences. Mostly, the engine of change is the force of changed minds themselves. First, some activist elite manages to get their heads on straight. Then the people will eventually be dragged (if necessary) into the light. It’s Politics of Meaning as the Rule of Reason. The job of government is to understand what the right values are, and make sure those values permeate the lives of the (potentially false-consciousness afflicted) masses. For their own good.

The elite summon the New Man onto the stage of history, by cramming ‘enlightened’ values down the throat of the Old Man. Which never works. And that’s if he’s lucky. (If he is unlucky, his head has been cut off.)