Sunday, January 29, 2006

The Centrist Canard

Roger Simon has a good post today yearning for a third party to pull us out of the partisan doldrums. There are some excellent comments, but I was especially struck by this comment by Kevin Peters, a long-time contributor on Roger Simon's blog.
...there is my sister Sue.... If she heard your call for a third party she would jump in the air and scream amen. She hates both parties, she hates the politics of personal destruction, she felt bad for the hounding of President Clinton over his zipper problems and the Roberts and Alito hearings turned her stomach too....

But hold on. She isn't for gay marriage. Civil unions are fine but nothing else. Not in a 'you can become a heterosexual' stance but she thinks the way we have it now is best. She was against the war in Iraq from day one. Not because of the WMD question but because she thought we should stay out of the area and that it would never work. She is a non-racist isolationist. And because of this her loathing of President Bush matches my other Mother Jones sister. She is disgusted with the Immigration stance of both parties and her solutions lean towards a strict crackdown on illegal aliens and the companies that hire them. She is generally for increased public spending but wants a complete reworking of the way the money is spent. she is not too keen on the union movement. And she is in love with Hillary. I mean non sexual lust. She doesn't agree with all of her political ideas but she has bought into HRC's whole spiel.
The center is hard to define sometimes.

It is frequently presumed that there is a "center" out there and that the speaker is in it and that anyone who disagrees with the speaker is an "extremist". We all want to believe that our own beliefs are reasonable and everyone else's are insane. They seem insane--how could any reasonable person disagree with my own well-thought-out beliefs?--but calling them "insane" or "Nazis" tends to lose us friends and alienate people, so we dub them "extremist" instead.

There are partisans--and plenty of them--who will always vehemently argue for their own party no matter how outrageous its positions. Yet when individual issues are considered the world looks rather different. My observation is that there are two distinct types of people who take an interest in politics, on the one hand those who completely buy into the party line and always parrot all of its talking points, and on the other hand those who, like Kevin's sister, hold a constellation of opinions, a different one for each issue, a situation which looks contradictory to the more partisan sorts. Those who want to buy a whole package, hook line and sinker, and those who want to consider each option separately. It is people like Kevin's sister who are usually meant by the word "centrist", i.e., people who will not necessarily vote for or against Hillary just because she's a Democrat. But Kevin's post makes vividly clear the fundamental contradiction inherent in trying to create a "centrist" political party, to wit, two "centrists" are liable to be in complete opposition. A "centrist" like Kevin's sister might be anti-Iraq War and in favor of a crackdown on illegal aliens; a "centrist" like Terrye might hold the exactly opposite opinions on these subjects.

I would feign look at the situation from a different angle entirely. We can obtain a 1-dimensional view of any single issue by asking whether we favor it or oppose it. But it is more informative to add a second dimension, let us call it the dimension of passion, by asking how much we care about the given issue. Take Wal-Mart, its palpable iniquity a given for many. Whether I consider it to be the Devil's spawn or not is one thing; whether I really care very much about Wal-Mart is another thing entirely.

One thing that occurred during the Sixties was a shift along this second dimension, the dimension of passion. Somehow the idea propagated that passionate adherence to one's political beliefs was ipso facto very important, was a Good Thing, was in fact the Very Meaning of Life Itself. The idea spread that The Angels Would Sing if one pursued politics--as opposed to, say, engineering, entertainment, or getting involved in one's church--because, so the story went, only through politics could this world of vast woe ever be fixed. Politics became the religion, in other words. And in the process it became filled with self-righteousness and the belief that anyone who disagrees cannot simply be wrong but must be evil.

I would call for a little moderation. Let's pull the throttle back a smidge. The people I would like to see winning the political game are those who are a little less involved, those who don't quite take the thing so seriously, those who realize that their own beliefs may be wrong after all and so they can show a little humor and a little disinterest and, most important of all, a little humanity toward the other side. And a little graciousness in losing.

Those are the best "centrists" of all.

23 comments:

chuck said...

I find the isolationist idea very appealing myself. If I were to list the attitudes that I absorbed by osmosis growing up, they would be:

1. Europe is morally degraded and given to fighting stupid wars.

2. The rest of the world doesn't really matter in a fundamental way, America is a world in itself.

3. However, we should donate to charitable causes and help the starving.

I can't say that my parents held all these views, so I don't quite know where they came from. And some of my relatives are missionaries and work overseas and receive visitors from New Guinea and such, but they are part of the international religious network, not the government.

Now as a practical matter I don't consider the views listed above as realistic, but they sit there below the surface anyway.

As to argument, that depends much on who I argue with. The easiest thing for me to do is simply let folks know where I stand but not argue at all. It isn't necessary to defend every view or to try convince others.

Agree on the lack of a true center. That is why it is tough to be a good politician and why politicians always look opportunistic. They have to be. When you come down to it, herding cats is like herding Americans.

Syl said...

There is a Center.

It's just bigger than most people think it is.

It contains everybody who has at least one position contrary to the platform of their favored party.

And in a two-party system, that means the center contains the majority of voters.

So, let's take that center and try to create a new party. What you end up with is two parties within Center1, then the center of the new party will contain everyone who disagrees with at least one position of either end of this new Center2.

See where I'm going? I agree with everyone who says a center party is a ridiculous notion. There's no coherence.

In the end the only thing that is important is the priorities of the individual voting at the time of the vote.

And, Knuck, I don't think there's any issue that the voter understands completely or even much at all. Even many (most?) of our politicians don't either. But we muddle through anyway.

Awareness and clarity takes time to evolve. The awareness of market forces and their importance in the general public has changed quite a bit since the sixties, say.

So I'm afraid it's true that perception is everything and framing rules.

I disagree with Roger on this. I've noted his reluctance to 'label' people as left and right because he thinks it's meaningless. I think that has more to do with his difficulty in self-identification since his change. He wants a group of people he can identify with that take the same positions on everything across the board that he has.

It's hard being socially liberal and identifying with conservatives...especially when the 'socially liberal' aspects of his former friends are THE most important issues for them and they thus consider Roger's 'conversion' to be horrifying.

And if you have any tendencies towards social liberalism the social conservatives give you no quarter whereas any other 'apostasy' is treated with at least a bit of respect.

So Roger is in a hard place and I understand his desire for a group to belong to. A center party, however, is not the solution.

BTW, I can't post at Roger's. Keeps telling me I have to register. I've sent two emails and still nothing.

Unknown said...

I think people should ease up a bit.

we all go overboard sometimes and i agree with MHA that what derives some people away from politics is what they see to be zealots. People who lack in pragmatism.

I like the idea of a third party, but I just don't think it will work. But those folks who straddle the parties are important when it comes to winning elections.

And immigration is a whole nother thing anyway.

flenser said...

Not to pull the thread off topic, but since Knucklehead brings up immigration, all the polls consistently indicate that better than 70% of Americans want to drastically reduce it. It's one of theose rare issues where Democrats and Republicans tend to agree.

So if that is not a "centerist" position, then we can honestly say that none exist.


Predictions of economic disaster if slavery was abolished proved to be false. I expect that if the current source of artifically cheap labor dissappears, the economy will make similar adjustments.

Unknown said...

flenser:

Yes but 70% also feel that people should be allowed to immigrate if they work, pay taxes, and learn the language.

I don't think the problem is immigration, but the kind of immigration. There is the divide. And it divides within parties, not just right and left.

I heard that two states have come up with ID for illegals to drive. They are Tenn and Utah. I can not imagine two less likely states. In fact it seems so unlikely that I wonder if the folks at Fox had it wrong when they reported it.

Syl said...

Here's my post meant for Roger's where the Gods don't allow me to post anymore:

Well, I think some of us who belonged to one party where we thought we agreed with everything they stood for and everyone else in the party agreed with us have come to the realization that that was a self-delusional myth.

Switching parties forces one to deal with specifics because you suddenly find yourself in a totally alien milieu. Then you discover that it's awfully hard to live with some of the platform but you have to in order support other planks.

Then you look back and see that what you thought you agreed with didn't really exist. It wasn't one big happy family after all.

In other words, in America, the norm is acceptance for everyone, in every election, that you don't get all you want--even if you win.

It is never ever winner take all.

I think it's a great, even though frustrating, system!

flenser said...

terrye

Not if they "immigrate" illegally. If you want to claim that 70% of people support illegal immigration then I want to see the studies.

David

No need for Republicans to take a chill pill. Just allow the issue to come to a vote. If people actually want the current setup then they can vote for it. If not they can vote to end it.

Objections?

flenser said...

A "guest worker" program solves the problem of illegal immigration by legalising it.

I don't think that idea is going to fly.

Unknown said...

flenser:

Yes of course they do mean legal. I think folks just want people to obey the rules.

truepeers said...

In my view, man was not first created a political animal, but rather a religious or constitutional one, and politics is a fight about, or sometimes for control of, the original religious/constitutional center.

In other words, the center comes before politics and it is what makes politics possible. Therefore, politics cannot be strictly centrist and still be politics. For a party to be strictly centrist, it would have to be a purely constitutionalist party, trying to (re)establish a constitution in the wake of some great political crisis. And it could have no other issue until it achieved this goal, which would be impracticable even in circumstances of a great crisis.

In any case, once the sacred terms of the constitution are settled - though their future meaning remains up for grabs - what's a party to do but explore new territory whose compatibility with the original center has to be fought over, and sides drawn. A political identity can only exist in relation to another political identity in the fight over the center. To identify purely with the center is simply to put your faith in the God who both guarantees, and is presently absent from, the worldly centers.

A strong centrist can exist in many intellectual, cultural, and academic settings and is indeed to be encouraged there. What is more pathetic than, say, privileged conformist university professors playing at radical politics rather than helping their young charges intellectually by explaining and defending the basic constitution of the nation and the human?

But if politics is ultimately about the control of the (re)distributive functions of the center, i.e. the division of always limited material resources, then it is only those fully devoted to God, those who can devote themselves fully to signs, and not to things, who can be pure centrists. Strictly speaking, no one can be fully devoted to God and still survive, so we can only be somewhat more centrist than the next guy. At some point, everyone has to take some kind of political stand on the best method to redistribute resources.

The more intellectual/godly centrist might then conclude that a two-party system is best since it creates the dynamic that allows for two big tents debating and refining the terms of redistribution in a way that insures that politics can keep itself relatively close to the intent of the original religious/constitutional center. Others will argue that it is systems in which there are many parties and a need to govern through coalititions that keep politics closer to the center.

In any case, the goal should be to avoid one party taking over the system. In a one party state the party can claim to be centrist; but of course it cannot be because politics is always about defining yourself against another. And if you don't do this like true peers, i.e. admitting to each other the need for honest politics, if you instead become devoted to one-party totalitarianism you just end up defining yourself against all the scapegoated victims of the state; and the need to keep on doing this in order to renew your identity just makes you a party of violence.

The sacred center is, in the first place, the place of violence deferred. It must assert a constitutional/ritual order before it can become a site of violent sacrifice and attempts to renew the original deferral of violence through a homeopathic use of violence to limit further violence.

If we could live completely non-violently, we could be pure centrists, but we can't. We can only aspire to be the least violent possible. And we are the least violent by having the most open and free politics that, through honest trial and error, avoids extremism and finds the best compromises.

A determined centrist in politics is like a pacifist in war - he simply avoids the hard reality, even when his family is under attack. But a centrist in religion helps keep the peace until he must sadly acknowledge the inevitability of conflict and seek out, like a good Calvinist, the side that seems (pre)destined to prove its superior ability to re-establish the original peace. I.e., he chooses sides in a way that will prove he was all along predestined to be re-united with God. Is Roger Simon a Calvinist at heart?

flenser said...

terrye

"Yes but 70% also feel that people should be allowed to (legally)immigrate if they work, pay taxes, and learn the language."

I don't think thats true. Any cites?

Do you, for example, think that anyone in the world who wants to come to America should be allowed to, as long as they work and pay taxes and learn English?

If a billion people show up on the doorstep tomorrow you would be cool with it?

Unknown said...

knucklehead:

Yes I agree.

It is strange how this issue plays. My brother is a Michael Moore fan. The man hates Dick Cheney...but he also keeps count of the number of Catholic Churches being built in my hometown. Let's just say he is not that liberal when it comes to the Mexicans. But his best friend is from ElSalvador. Go figure.

I think a guest worker program could work if the borders were closed. As long as people can come and go as they like they will have no incentive to be in any kind of program.

This is one of those things that really started years ago. My grandparents used to go to Mexico on vacation like people go to Florida today. It was no big deal.

But those days are gone and now we are trying to close a very long border that has been open forever. I wonder how many people living in cities like El Paso have relatives across the border?

Unknown said...

syl:

My sentiments exactly.

Unknown said...

truepeers:

Perhaps the true function of the center is to keep every one from going too far.

Balance.

flenser said...

Can anyone think of a country where guest worker programs have worked and been conducive to social harmony?

I think everyone understands quite well that a "guest worker" program in the US would be a fig leaf for an ammesty program. Once the "gueat workers" have lived here for a few years and have children (US citizens) then the pressure to naturalize them will be overwhelming.

flenser said...

Knucklehead

We either arrest, and presumably deport, them for the crime of being illegal, or we somehow devise an amnesty to convert them from illegal to legal under some list of conditions, or we continue to ignore the status and yell at one another.

Or, we crack down on employers and send some to jail for hiring illegals.

Once they stop hiring illegals, the illegals stop coming. Dry up the demand, and the supply will dry up also.


We are not going to run a multi-millions of people round up here in the good ol' USA. It ain't gonna happen.

I'm at a loss to know why not. I suspect that you would have a hard time constructing a solid argument to defend that point of view. But its not neccessary in any case.

truepeers said...

Perhaps the true function of the center is to keep every one from going too far.

Balance.


-Terrye, are you perhaps suggesting I'm getting a little too theoretical?

Anyway, what you say must be true. But can we say what exactly is being balanced? To just say "left and right" is not really to explain why we have a center, why we need balance.

The center is something sacred that we have to reproduce, like in a religious or national ritual. But if we simply reproduced it in the same form every time, if we only had strict conformity, we'd have no history, no change, no freedom.

So I'd say, what we are balancing is on the one hand the need to maintain order according to inherited forms, and on the other hand the freedom that, if used wisely, might not mean going "too far" (i.e. nowhere good), but rather recognizing a space for leaders to rediscover the transcendent *effect* of the original sacred form.

We cannot just remember the original word of god, as if mindlessly saying it over and over would save us. We have to also rediscover, in our time, the effect of first discovering the word of god, the effect that brings together novelty, mystery, truth, and being in the moment. Great political leaders can help us do this because they create new conditions or scenes on which new transcendent truths can emerge. This is what Bush is hoping will happen in the Middle East.

So it is a question of the need to balance leadership and convention. If i have one great beef against today's left it is that they believe in neither leadership (in great individuals or nations taking the lead to discover new things and powers, and thus risking a new inequality or assymetry that the victim-obsessed left wish to avoid at any cost) nor in convention (conservative common sense). And so the left are in consequence nihilists. They love nothing.

So you see, I love the center but it doesn't stop me getting political.

Unknown said...

knucklehead:

You know my Grandma hired a one armed Mexican named Raoul to do her yard work after my uncle died. This guy had a bunch of kids and he took care of all of them. He was so proud his oldest kid was going to go to college.

He lost his arm when he was a kid, working on some farm in the southwest somewhere.

I doubt very much if my Grandma had a clue as to whether that man was legal.

So to the list of folks we can arrest add old folks getting their yard work done.

Unknown said...

Knucklehead:

We might even have a new Civil Rights movement on our hands.

flenser said...

Yes, thats what we need, civil rights for non-Americans.

Tell me you are not that stupid, please.

Rick Ballard said...

Flenser,

Just on a practical basis, who fills the 20 mil jobs in a workforce of 128 mil with 7.5 mil unemployed the day after massive deportation is completed? What do you think the cost might be? What do you think the inflation rate might be two years afterwards?

Immigrants fill the demographic hole caused by the '73 decision fairly well. Without them we would be very close to a no growth situation wrt population. As far as I can tell the economic benefits derived illegal immigrants continue to exceed the costs that they cause to be incurred.

I would prefer some sort of regularization of status coupled with more stringent control on new entries.

truepeers said...

Has everyone stopped laughing now?

truepeers said...

Mark, the center has a sense of humour and irony but it is the kind of irony and humour that comes without a lust for power, without multimillion dollar salaries, and without an endless demonizing of the other side masking as the art of comedy. It comes from faith in the reality of the transcendent difference between words and things, and not from a cynical manipulation of culture for worldly ends. The rich and powerful, Rep. or Dem. are not funny unless they can forget their worldly lusts. If you want a good laugh, go find some Mexicans.