Intellectual fashion

"It's going down very well with the more progressive customers."

Matthew laughed. "You flatter me, Lou. Progressive. Very nice."

Big Lou had not intended it as a compliment. "Progressive actually means conformist, Matthew. A follower of intellectual fashion."

Alexander McCall Smith, A Promise of Ankles

Alexander McCall Smith

Alexander McCall Smith's gentle novels rarely stray into anything controversial or political, but the small exchange quoted above dips a toe into the social-political controversy that is altering, perhaps forever, the entire western world, including Scotland, where his novel A Promise of Ankles is set.

Look up the word progressive in any dictionary and you will be unlikely to find any mention of conformity. Definitions suggest just the opposite, in fact. Used as an adjective, according to one online dictionary, the word means, among other things, "making use of, or interested in, new ideas, findings, or opportunities." As a noun, it is said to be "one believing in moderate political change and especially social improvement by government action."

Yet Big Lou's definition actually seems much more accurate in today's world. How else to explain how quickly "progressive" ideas are accepted by so much of culture? If a man puts on a dress and calls himself a woman, then he is a woman? Five years ago that would have been considered a preposterous idea by just about everybody. Today a significant number of people actually believe it, and a great many others pretend to believe it in order to conform with, as Big Lou puts it, intellectual fashion.

This helps explain why Democrats in the United States, the more progressive party, tend to act like sheep, easily herded to vote however their shepherds tell them to vote and believe whatever their shepherds tell them to believe. Meanwhile Republicans behave more like cats, each straying off in their own direction. It also helps explain why Democrats win most of the votes. Who doesn't want to fit in with one's fellows?