http://theweek.com/articles/632380/how-brexit-shattered-progressives-dearest-illusions

Progressives believe in all of that, too, but they add something else: a quasi-eschatological faith in historical progress that gives the movement its name. This belief has many sources, and it takes many forms. One stream flows from liberal Protestant theology on down through Woodrow Wilson’s hopes for moral advances at home and an end to armed conflict abroad — with both of them realized by an elite class of public-spirited experts. The same theologically infused faith informs Barack Obama’s frequent invocation of an “arc of history” that “bends toward justice.”