Moderation
From Zanecorpwiki
In the vulgar modern political parlance, "moderation" has become a bad word. The moderate is seen as either wishy-washy or triangulating. Either way, it's a kind of cowardice. We look at someone who changed their mind and think, "Well, he lacked conviction on that, so how can I know what he really believes? Who's to say he's not going to change his mind on some other issue."
To push it to an absurdity, we might ask, "If my representative changed his position on X, who's to say he won't change his position on Y?" Taken to an extreme, this makes every issue seem like a hot button issue and before you know it, our deepest held values might in jeopardy.
We essentially want to opposing things at the same time. We want all of our deeply held values safeguarded, and we want to move forward and make decisions and improve things. To the extent you focus on the latter, you would be conservative. To the extent you focus on the former, you would be liberal. This is a positive and non-antagonizing definition of the two camps.
You can also talk about absolute placement, relative placement, and multi-issue placement. Which is to say that in the real world, liberalism and conservatism are not a simple two dimensional gradient, but a complex tapestry of views on a host of issues that are all changing over time. Part of the point, however, is that our negative definition of moderate, and perhaps our negative definitions of so much in the space, has pushed us to a pessimistic view in which we feel that the only way to be heard at all is to focus our energy on a single label which defines "us" in totality. Without that sharp focus, we fear that we will have no effect at all.
This sharpening of ideological focus is entirely rational. If moderates like to think of themselves as pragmatists, then they should accept that this strategy of sharpening has been highly effective. If you put a high value on getting things done, then you have to respect the ideological sharp strategy.
In reality, though, everyone understands that's it's not "getting something done" but "getting my stuff done." I think that's a fair functional definition of our political reality.[notes 1] The choice between sharp ideology or moderation is both a reflection of what kind of stuff we want to get done and what's most effective. We all triangulate to some extent, and there's nothing wrong with that. Even if your goal is "saving souls", you try and figure out the best way you can do that. You'd feel bad if you realized there was a much better way to save souls than you had been doing. You'd want to switch to this new way of saving souls.
Say you went from door to door evangelism to launching an incredibly successful web site that brought more souls to Jesus in one your than your previous decade of door to door evangelism. That shift is a calculation. It's triangulating. It's a change of position.
That's because your "real" position was saving souls. "How to save souls" is just a question of opportunity, experience, etc. The absurdity with polarization is that it makes every issue a key issue. In the polarized world, you want to both save souls and do it with door to door evangelism and you're inflexible on both. Then an opportunity comes along to do a world-changing website and you're now forced to violate one of your tenants.
Instead, we should say, "Saving souls is my goal, how can I best do that?" You may know that you're terrible with the computer but love going door to door, so it may actually be that the method becomes the driver. We stand in the truth of what we're good at, and look for what good we can do with it. That is just as admirable, because it's the same motivation, as the person who has the wealth of opportunity and blessings to do something different. Both of these souls or humans or whatever are to be commended. No matter what else you may be, it is dedication we can respect.
The positive moderate is just as dedicated as her ideologically sharp cousins. What's wrong with saying, "I don't care whether taxes or lowered or raised, I just want more value for my money." In the short run, I would say that augers for cutting spending and stabilizing taxes. In the long run, I would be for a restructuring of taxes along certain lines. In general, I believe that all this will lead to lower taxes and if I had to guess, I'd say that for the next 10 years, the optimal total tax level will be at or below the current level (and that's with deficit reduction). I also think that over the very long term, it probably makes sense for taxes to rises gradually for over the next 50 years or so.
In other words, I believe we should be at a lower tax level currently, but I also believe that taxes should increase by something over the long run. Under a sharp ideological division, this view would put me at odds with everyone. My view that current taxes should fall significantly puts me at odds with the caricatured liberal, and my view that taxes should also rise over the next 50 years puts me at odds with the caricatured conservative.
But that's okay, because they say the same thing about each other. So the moderate shouldn't fear to have his own view, because no matter the position, a lot of people are going to think you're wrong (and a lot of people are going to think you're right too).
Notes
- ↑ If I may be so bold, this seems like a pretty good definition of life itself. Even if you stuff is "relaxing by the beach" then that works. You want to get as much relaxing by the beach done as you can, and that's great.
