A progressive is one who favors progress over the status quo or regress. Circular reasoning is the fastest way to reach the status quo or regress. Circular reasoning is often a self-fulfilling prophecy. Circular reasoning is for people who would rather feel helpless than feel responsible. An example of circular reasoning is saying "I'm not smart enough to study." It often leads to circular behavior like over eating because you are depressed, and then feeling depressed because you over eat.

Circular reasoning is what a programmer would call a loop. When a program is caught in a loop, it will either infinitely stay in the loop, or malfunction. Either way, it's the job of a progressive to recognize the loop, circular reasoning, and break out.

The status quo is the infinite loop. Things will not get worse, but things will not get better either. People who say "that's just the way the world is", are making sure that the world stays the way it is. People who believe it's a dog eat dog world are most likely proving it by eating dogs. Some people expect everyone else to change before they change. What if everyone else felt that way?

Circular reasoning that leads to regress is worse than the status quo. An example of this is the war in Iraq. We're fighting terrorists in Iraq, because we are in Iraq. Not because there were terrorists in Iraq before we chose to fight. Another example is media consolidation and dumbing down via television. Media consolidation is a problem because people accept it, not because there's no alternatives. People are controlled by television because skeptics refuse to use it.

It may seem obvious that these positions are circular or self-fulfilling. However, once there is debate on how to overcome these positions, progressives can easily fall into the circle. For example, the Iraq war creates as many terrorist as it kills. But when confronting coolaid-drinkers over this, they call it defeatist or cut an run to retreat. They talk about victory, but never give a clear realistic criteria for victory. Progressives start believing things will get worse if we leave. But things will get worse if we stay. Things are going to get worse before they get better either way.

This is where progressives need to understand what kind of a goal would be progress. If there is nothing to gain in Iraq, then it's not a progressive agenda. So it's not defeatist to leave Iraq at anytime. Such an argument is like challenging someone to a chess game and then claiming victory because they refuse the challenge.

As for media consolidation, as long as you can post on the internet, this medium is not consolidated. As for the dumbing down via television, don't blame the content on the medium. The content will stay dumb if only dumb people watch. Any medium can be used to educate or to dumb-down. If progressives don't bring progress to television, that only leaves the status quo and regress.

Progressives need to get out of these loops and start making progress.

Your thoughts?