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The Two Kinds of Moderate

paulgraham.com

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Re: The Two Kinds of Moderate

#41

Post by sornaensis »

Eh this essay is a bit off to me. The issue with modern US politics, or our politics in general I guess, is the tendency for two groups to emerge, one of which everyone generally has to belong to somehow.

Most people are pretty rational about most issues when you discuss them individually, but you end up with a few ''foundational''-- and unquestionable --ideas that people have to fall exactly on one side or the other. I won't name any specifically but I think everyone knows some of these immediately. So you have individually rational persons who have to congregate on either one side or the other, and these issues end up being the deciding factor of which group you must join, dividing many people who otherwise agree on a lot of stuff, perhaps without even realizing it..

It's pretty similar to religious fracturing to me now that I think about it. Groups who agree on everything except one or two ideas and that makes all the difference.

Very rare are the persons who fall heavily to one side of everything.

Re: The Two Kinds of Moderate

#42

Post by remarkEon »

pjc50 wrote: post #33
war1025 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can see this with the Republicans who turned into Democrats once the Republicans shifted far enough right that there were no more Rockefeller Republicans and Bill Clinton ran as a Democrat. If you're an accidental moderate, you run the risk of involuntarily changing party affiliation. I think this is interesting because it's been exactly the opposite for me and many of the people I know. At some point over the…

In what way do you think the Democrats have switched focus?

The white working class part of their coalition, which tends to more socially conservative, are not a focus of the party anymore. It used to be a bedrock part of their strategy in the Midwest. At least that is the perception - forget for a moment if a) it’s actually true, that they’ve dropped focus, or b) that voting block was ever a permanent part of that party’s coalition or merely on borrowed time.

Re: The Two Kinds of Moderate

#43

Post by tomlockwood »

randallsquared wrote: post #39
tomlockwood wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it possible that by posing a question that supposes the post you're questioning redefines something, you've created a case of the negative type of redefinition you're implying is happening?

In case you didn't read the top comment, the redefining was in the text and quite literal, not something that had to be supposed or inferred: > You can just map “impressive” to “rich” and “accidental moderate” to “uninterested in increased taxation or regulation in their own life despite their otherwise disparate political views” and the whole thing comes into focus pretty clearly.

If there's no difference between interpreting or critically analysing what someone says, and redefinition, I can see where you're coming from.

Re: The Two Kinds of Moderate

#44

Post by pjc50 »

The famous MLK speech on moderates: http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.h...

> First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

This is the problem with the "intentional" moderates: their position isn't a coherent one, it's instead pure unwillingness to engage. I understand people being conflict-averse, but it can lead to being backed into a corner by the people who are not afraid of conflict.

Re: The Two Kinds of Moderate

#45

Post by jaspax »

pjc50 wrote: post #33
war1025 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can see this with the Republicans who turned into Democrats once the Republicans shifted far enough right that there were no more Rockefeller Republicans and Bill Clinton ran as a Democrat. If you're an accidental moderate, you run the risk of involuntarily changing party affiliation. I think this is interesting because it's been exactly the opposite for me and many of the people I know. At some point over the…

In what way do you think the Democrats have switched focus?

Increased focus on racial and sexual minorities to the exclusion of working-class interests (which has been going on for decades), spilling over into outright contempt of lower- and middle- class whites (which has mostly become prominent in the past 10-15 years).

Re: The Two Kinds of Moderate

#47

Post by whyoh »

pjc50 wrote: post #38
whyoh wrote: post #35

>the far right and far left are roughly equally wrong. I don't think you can reduce political arguments to who is "right" and who is "wrong". Politics and moral questions are not mathematical problems. We fundamentally don't all agree on what the final outcome (of a society, of life) should be. Maybe 99% of us can agree with something like "happiness" or "peace", but those are way too vague and the devil's in the det…

Eventually this ends up with a million people dead and everyone saying "well that was probably bad, maybe we should have tried to prevent that". Just because we cannot guarantee certainty or outcomes doesn't absolve us from the moral responsibility to try.

Ok, but this is not what I was getting at.

When PG says that the left and right are equally "wrong", he's suggesting that they are both trying to arrive at THE solution, but just taking different paths. I don't think this is fundamentally true and if you view political struggle from this perspective you're going to miss the full picture.

Re: The Two Kinds of Moderate

#48

Post by NeedMoreTea »

spamizbad wrote: post #37
simonh wrote: post #16

As a British moderate conservative, the differences between US and UK (arguably European) politics are fascinating. What moderate means is so different. For reference I’m a lifelong conservative voter that grew up under Maggie Thatcher. We do have a middle of the road Liberal Democrat party, but to my mind they maintain their position in the middle ground by dodging the hard issues. They are intentional moderates in…

IMO, in the US the "coservative" movement is misnamed. It seeks not to conserve, but make radical change to both government (shrink it significantly) and culture (change mainstream values, cultural output). They're trying to push for extraordinary change and are willing to take extraordinary measures to get there. Ironically, the closest thing we have to "true" conservatives here are self-fashioned centrists, who gen…

That's the Reagan/Thatcher monetarism/neoliberal transition. Prior to that the conservative parties generally were small c conservative, seeking to preserve the status quo, make small adjustments with evidence, and make no change for change's sake.

It's a view that has almost completely ceased to exist among the conservative parties of the world.

Re: The Two Kinds of Moderate

#49

Post by zozbot234 »

remarkEon wrote: post #42
pjc50 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what way do you think the Democrats have switched focus?

The white working class part of their coalition, which tends to more socially conservative, are not a focus of the party anymore. It used to be a bedrock part of their strategy in the Midwest. At least that is the perception - forget for a moment if a) it’s actually true, that they’ve dropped focus, or b) that voting block was ever a permanent part of that party’s coalition or merely on borrowed time.

This is part of a generalized development in Western politics though - it even explains why Brexit and Boris Johnson won in the UK. The "left" is now explicitly the party of managerial, globalizing crony capitalism, pushing for maximum openness and free mobility for all factors of production - not of the working classes with their petty, localized concerns, or of traditional "business" classes with their long-time appreciation for economic diversification and the value of free markets. Some people might want to map this to ethnic stereotypes of some sort, or posit that it's the outcome of some kind of intentional conspiracy, and of course this would be quite incorrect. Nonetheless the shift was very real.

Re: The Two Kinds of Moderate

#50

Post by emiliobumachar »

SamReidHughes wrote: post #31

> Intentional moderates are similar to those on the far left and the far right in that their opinions are, in a sense, not their own. The defining quality of an ideologue, whether on the left or the right, is to acquire one's opinions in bulk. Well, no, not at all. People on the left and on the right tend to have a worldview and attitude that is the foundation of their stances on issues. It is not a coincidence that…

Why do the policy packages vary so much from country to country?
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