"History Isn't an Arc Slowly Bending Toward Justice"

"It's a battlefield on which a skirmish line shifts back and forth in an unending contest between ideological combatants. The agonistic character of politics becomes concealed during eras defined by consensus, when the skirmish line stays in much the same place, shifting only slightly or fairly slowly from year to year and decade to decade. But such eras are the exception in history—or at least never more than a temporary interlude between periods of more rapid or intense struggle.
"Since Donald Trump's election to the presidency, we've entered a period of renewed political combat after several decades of comparative placidity—a time when the string of victories enjoyed by progressives on social issues since the middle decades of the last century faces potent, organized opposition. In such a situation, the best response to an outrageous right-wing argument is not to insist that the person defending it should be denied an opportunity to make his case, or to lament that more people don't treat the progressive position as a given, or to follow the lead of Barack Obama in issuing watery proclamations about how 'that's not who we are.' The best response is to mount the most rhetorically and logically formidable counterargument against the right-wing provocation."

Damon Linker at The Week warns liberals against believing that "politics can be settled."