Vox organized a symposium on the question “What do we do now that will be considered unthinkable in 50 years?” — not as an exercise in speculative fiction and futurology but a way of letting people make claims about being on the “wrong side of history.”

When they asked me to take part, I said I really couldn’t, because I rejected the premise, and the only thing I could write would be a critique of the idea of history having, in that moralistic sense, sides. To my pleasant surprise, they asked me to write that, then. And I did.

If you enjoyed 600 words about that, maybe you’ll enjoy 11,000. (I’m an academic, after all.) See: Contra Politanism, European Journal of Political Theory.