Hello America!
Welcome to Secular Progress.
For the first post, it’s appropriate to offer the brief story of how this blog got started:
There’s a Fox News journalist named Bill O’Reilly who is very skilled, very popular, and very controversial (as if you didn’t know). He wrote a book some time ago in which he set himself up as a noble “Culture Warrior,” defending Traditionalism against Secular Progress. Being generally liberal in politics, I recognized this as an attack on my belief system. I browsed through his book and decided I would read it more thoroughly someday. I still haven’t gotten around to that, but I have been watching Mr. O’Reilly’s “Talking Points” on the Internet fairly consistently for some time. Occasionally (very occasionally) he’ll say something that I agree with, but I generally find him unfair and manipulative. I watch because I think it’s important to keep up with the Zeitgeist, and also to understand the tools of rhetorical manipulation that he exploits so well.
Though there are lots of people out there doing a great job of illustrating how unfair and manipulative Mr. O’Reilly can be, as far as I can tell, no one took on the actual task defining or upholding secular progress in response to his attacks and mischaracterizations. When I learned the domain name was available, I saw an opportunity to step and have my say. Now I’ve got a place to play.