A teenage son, the NCAA championship, and writing a fresh DJ just don’t go together, it turns out. Back tomorrow with something new. In the meantime, here’s a piece from April 2007 makes a timely point. Best wishes.
RALEIGH – I never thought much of Jim Hightower’s left-wing populist shtick. The former Texas agriculture commissioner has over the years cultivated a national following based on conspiracy-mongering, name-calling, and crypto-socialist economics. But I also thought the title of one of his books was clever: There’s Nothing in the Middle of the Road But Yellow Stripes and Dead Armadillos. If he’d been writing as a North Carolina instead of a Texan, he would have referred to dead possums. But you get the picture.
That’s not to say that I have anything against moderates, centrists, and middle-of-the-roaders. Some of my best friends are … [insert punchline here].
They play a critical role in determining electoral outcomes. They can help form productive coalitions across partisan and ideological lines to achieve important, common objectives. But I get rather tired of seeing or hearing the oft-used media script in which sensible centrists are the good guys in a given dispute, true-believing conservatives (or, to a lesser extent, liberals) are the bad guys, and progress is possible only when people stop being ideological and start “working together” to solve the nation’s problems, etc. etc. This is neither an accurate or helpful way to think about political disputes.
There are well-intentioned, conscientious people in just about every political camp you can name. And there are also self-centered, power-hungry scalawags in each camp. My experience, however, is that you find more bad faith and perfidy among self-proclaimed moderates and centrists than you do among “ideologues.” The latter – be they modern-day liberals, conservatives, libertarians, socialists, or whatever – typically get involved in public affairs because they care passionately about issues and seek to advance what they perceive as a reasoned, coherent philosophy for using government power in a manner likely to advance the public good. Many of those “in the middle,” on the other hand, tend to think of politics solely as a deal-making process in which various interests are identified, managed, placated, or pitted against others.
Compromise is an integral part of politics, naturally. But it’s better for the republic when a necessary legislative compromise follows a spirited debate among lawmakers and other policymakers with clearly articulated, contrasting views. Those who start out without a coherent philosophy of government – be it sensible or misguided – are the ones who get into the most trouble. They are the most susceptible to misinformation and corruption. They are the ones most likely to get carried away by notoriety, flattery, and the ability to wield government power. They lack a firm foundation to help them withstand the strong winds and heavy rains of politics.
I guess what I’m saying is that extremism in the defense of moderation is no virtue.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.