Bill O’Reilly’s rhetoric is reaching incendiary levels in the wake of Barack Obama’s reelection. “Traditionalism” might have won, O’Reilly argues, if Romney had organized his campaign in opposition to Secular Progress, defined for his critically astute viewers as a movement of pot smoking moocher libertines and baby killers who are dooming the country to a culture of dependency and poverty.

Fortunately, the Republicans were defeated this time around, which means a major setback for their party’s recently-adopted traditions of science-denying supernaturalism, increasingly profound inequality, and outright war mongering.

I’m not so sure the outcome of the election could really be called a victory for Secular Progress. There’s been no serious discussion about what that means. O’Reilly’s mischaracterizations only confuse the issue. But I do think it’s fair to say that the voters rejected a return to the policy of reckless wars, reckless tax cuts, and reckless deregulation that wrecked the economy. Romney appeared eager to pick up where Bush left off, and risked driving our economy back into the rocks. That’s a tradition we should deliberately abandon.