Centrists Don’t Buy Into Ideology Hoax
Nick Goebel, on over at The Pragmatic Center, writes one of the blogs I watch the most closely, but today I have to disagree with him. In a recent post, he illustrates one of the fundamental problems I see in American politics… what I’ll call the ideology hoax.
One of the most eye opening books I’ve read in the last year has been “Escape from Freedom“. Written by renowned psychologist & sociologist Eric Fromm back in the early 40′s, it discusses how people often shrink in the face of chaotic times, looking to hand over their freedom to those who would protect them. This may lead to a more stable world, but I don’t think I need to explain to you the dangers of totalitarianism, which was the main boogyman of the time that this book was written.
As I read through the book though, I found myself seeing that the very same logic applies to ideological zealots of today.
Our world is a complicated one. Our economy isn’t providing the income security that it used to. We’re involved with military conflicts with forces that are not easy to define, who pose existential threats that media outlets, politicians and political organizations are only too happy to inflate. You can argue over whether these, and other, threats are more real, serious or imagined, but most of us feel the threat… this is very real.
People instinctually fall back on things they see as being solid when they feel threatened. The stereotypical example is when people “find religion” when their life takes a turn for the worse, but another is falling back on ideology, which really is just like religion in a number of ways.
Like fundamentalist religions, some strains of political ideology work to simplify the world they attempt to explain, to a point where the likeness to reality is tenuous at best. Like the Catholic church’s mistaken view that the universe revolved around the Earth, many on the more extreme fringes not only disagree with the majority on political principle, but see a radically different world, where conspiracy theories make sense and hidden meanings that they somehow surmise by reading between the lines of what is going on around the world become more than just a guess… they become reality to them.
This is the stuff of Birther, or Truther madness, what John Avlon so aptly calls Bush or Obama Derangement Syndrome in his fantastic book Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America.
We don’t need an ideology for the center… we’ve come to our conclusions just fine without any damn political dogma telling us how we should arrive at our political beliefs, thank you very much. Many of us shrink from the two major parties largly because of this, as we saw that old political dogma wasn’t giving us workable answers to the problems of today.
I don’t need an ideology to think that I don’t want to pass on such an insane level of debt to any children I may have. I don’t need an ideology to think that we should work on developing ways to generate the energy we need for our economy to keep churning, without destroying out environment. Nor do I need an ideology to look at that situation and come to the conclusion that a tax on carbon, or significant raises in the gas tax (or any regressive tax) makes any sense. I don’t need an ideology to think that my gay friends should be able to visit their long time lover on their death bed, even if their family doesn’t want them to, and that they should be able to get some kind of legal status for their relationship, whether you call it marriage or something else.
I’ve come to these conclusions by looking at them, thinking about them, talking to others about them, and coming to my own conclusions. Most don’t put a fraction of the amount of time I have, but many people, a majority on nearly every issue, agree with my stances nonetheless. These issues may be complex, but often the underlying issues are not.
Regular people don’t need to know the details of trade agreements with certain countries to know that we screw ourselves over by letting foreign goods come into our ports relatively unhindered. Ross Perot was right, opening our border to Mexico was a massive mistake. People got that then, with his silly but effective charts, and they get it now, as our trade deficit continues to mirror Perot’s “giant sucking sound”.
The center does not need an ideology, what we need is to collectively fight against the ideological hoax… this insane idea that somehow, because we haven’t come to our conclusions through ideological dogma, that our positions are somehow less relevant, strong or are somehow wishy washy. On the contrary, it makes much more sense to come to your conclusions by looking at each issue.
Its garbage, and its time we started working on fighting back against this hoax.
About Solomon Kleinsmith
I started this site in the summer of 2010, really just as a hobby at first. But I'm pretty ambitious, and between being able to recruit some great bloggers to join the team here, putting a ton of work into the site and attracting a lot of traffic through Twitter, we've grown very fast for a young blog with next to no budget.
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You make a very good point. The Left and Right will together tell the Centrist that he/she is a dead armadillo in the middle of the highway. Perhaps that's true, but that's their fault isn't it?? God knows political ideologies only support the self interested. Our representatives in the different levels of govt. need to treat problems on their own terms– not those of the special interests.
I've never really thought directly about my "ideology", but I guess that's your point. I don't really have one. And I'm open and willing to change my mind about things of which I may have earlier held a different opinion.
I think there are plenty of people (in my experience) of every persuasion that have, in fact, actually came to their conclusions through putting thought into their positions, but those that subscribe to an ideology, rather than identify with the left or right merely because thats where their conclusions put them on an ideological map, are less likely to look at each issue on its own merits.
The problem I'm having with those whose ideologies come from the "right" (I honestly don't know a lot of leftist idealogues) is that those with whom I try to discuss issues are getting their information from a very few, concentric sources (Fox News, Hannity, et al) and they are almost unanimously unlikely to challenge anything they hear. For me it's become second nature, when I hear ANYone say ANYthing (left or right) to check sources, look for alternative opinions and see if there is some factual basis to disagree with what I've heard.
I have a super Christian conservative friend who, when confronted with irrefutable facts to counter something he's said, just shifts the argument a few degrees to completely sidestep that he's been out-debated.
Jeremy, it seems you've been listening to old Rush…"If you choose not to decide you still have made a choice".
Sorry, I should have specified. Rush the BAND, not Rush the tool.
"No great political movement ever got anywhere, must less to the reins of power, without an ideology."
Not true. Plenty of movements were single issue, or merely in opposition to a common foe.
"Centrists have their loose, informal ideologies, but they’re at war with other centrists who have theirs, and other centrists who have theirs, ad nauseam."
I pay very close attention to what is going on among centrists, moderates and non fringe independent groups, and I can assure you that there is no such war.
And as I said above, we do not have an ideology. There is no system of thought that gets us there. A list of beliefs that were come to without the aid of a system of thought connectin them, does not an ideology make… a systematized "body of beliefs" (quote from the definition) is what makes an ideology.
You are seeing a pattern, where you could not possibly know whether there was one or not. I know for a fact that my going after one side, both sides, or siding with one side or the other, does not come from a system of thought, but on a case by case basis of what I personally think. Even if you don't believe me, it makes as much sense to assume that a pattern that you see exists, to think that the universe revolves around the sun in modern times. I've told you, flatly, how I come to my conclusions, yet you insist on still injecting hidden meaning.
My position on gay rights is not avoiding THE fight, its avoiding a fight that I don't care about. I could care less what the thing is called. In my opinion the government should ONLY do civil unions, recognizing the contract between two adults that choose the other as their significant other, and let the churches decide what to label these unions.
YOU don't get to decide what fight *I* want to get in, or think it important. *I* choose MY fights.
Of course, you assume I mean something entirely different. Sorry to say there Jeremy… your psychic powers aren't very keen.
"At least I know where I stand, and its not a contrived middle ground built on flimsy precepts of being too good for dirty ideology or an unwillingness to fight because it might piss some people off."
More religious fanaticism! I am perfectly aware of where I stand. I think ideology is bullshit mental laziness, and if you think I'm unwilling to fight, you're crazier than you seem to even me right now.
Political affiliation has become a viable alternative to Religion in America. You don't need some god to tell you what's right and wrong, we have political parties for that.
That way we don't have to think and Howard Dean and Michael Steele can tell us what our opinion on things should be. And anyone who disagrees with us is a socialist liberal democrat who hates America or a greedy, racist, Republican.
All you moderates and centrists are just a bunch of idiots who are too spineless to pick a side or just too stupid to make up your minds on where you stand. ;)
I think there's one thing we need to keep in mind in answer to Paul. I am 'left of center', just as many others are, or are 'right of center'. I don't know how that fits with this blog, but we must not mistake centrist sympathizers and many moderates as 'idiots'.
But seriously, I do listen to Rush sometimes because the one thing he actually is good at occasionally is pointing out the hypocrisy of the left. Yeah, Rush is crazy about alot of stuff but its not all crazy. You just have to be smart enough to parse the garbage from the actual content.
He's also great to listen to if you just want to know what the Republican base is thinking about matters. It gives you a good perspective. If I want to know what the left's base is thinking I just turn on CNN or watch maddow or Obermann on MSNBC. Once again, they spout some garbage but you can also glean some facts that the right won't discuss.
Personally, I think anyone who has bought into watching just one news channel or tricked themselves into believing that one cable news network is unbiased needs to wake up a little.
I didn't used to watch FOX, and I could never understand why they had the best ratings since they were so obviously biased at times. Once i started watching I realized that even if you disagreed with the viewpoints they espoused, they actually do more hard news than say CNN. CNN does news but they do alot of fluffy news and specials that are too specific to a particular target audience to have widespread national appeal.
@David
The winking smiley face after my previous post denotes sarcasm. Meaning, I was joking about centrists and moderates being idiots.
Why so serious? :)
I fear without a solid core of values, backed by logic and historical experience, it is too easy to fall for things that SOUND good, but are horrendous in practice…like "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs."
"There is always a well-known solution to every human problem–neat, plausible, and wrong. "
–H. L. Mencken
@Paul
Just reading what you had to say.. cheezy emoticons aside; don't take me so hard! Centrists *are* serious!
Thats a communist adage… communism is an extreme ideology if there ever was one. It take a gigantic amount of ideologial wrangling and brainwashing to convince people that they should give up their private property to the state.
Its the exact opposite… we don't need ideology to see basic things, for instance not attacking people who are no danger to us is a stupid idea… it was the neocon ideology that sold the public on attacking Iraq, while we were easy pickings while scared from the 9/11 attacks.
Daniel, where you go wrong is assuming that you need an ideology to stand for something. This is clearly not the case. I don't buy into any ideology, and yet I stand for a number of things.
A political party is a whole other animal, but while perhaps this is a radical idea (radical centrist?), why not make it the platform of this theoretical centrist party that we are the party of the American people. We're going to say that our goal is to represent those who aren't represented by the more extreme parties out there now, and that we're not going to be nazis about it, excluding those that aren't centrist enough… we'll let our people at the local level decide that.
Radical idea… actually creating a party that is designed to represent the will of THE people, not these people, or those people.
Like many people, I trust in the common sense of regular people a hell of a lot more than the shitty track record of the two major parties and their special interests.
I wasn't claiming any agreement with "methodology over ideology". I frankly have no idea what that means. I'm saying, instead of an ideology telling us what to think, perhaps a political organization should just listen to the people and make that their foundation.
Now people are going to say that I'm talking simple majoritarianism… in a way I am. I'm not saying that we should make every poll that comes out a point on this organization's platform, but for things that the nation agrees on with large and sustainable majorities, then yes, if you actually believe in Democracy, as I do, that is what I believe should be the focus of a centrist political party… not the views of a small group of people who fancy themselves smarter than the collective wisdom of the country.
@Daniel & Sol
Confucious say,
You are both right. All movements do need a uniting ideology or philosophy, but what if the philosophy of the Independent movement is not adhering to an ideology at all?
- An Asian gong rings in the background as the master bows to the students….
For a nominally-centrist political party such as the Modern Whig Party (or any other that may ever arise over the decades or centuries), isn’t the purpose of that party to motivate the electorate to actually vote for that party’s candidates to actually hold office to accomplish something? Even if that “something” is not a radical fringe single-issue rallying cry, there must always be a clear *something* that keeps the millions of voters coming back to that party.
Voters know that they can dependably turn to the post-1960s Democratic Party for statism at the federal level. Voters know that they can dependably turn to the post-Reagan Republican Party for anti-statism (and perhaps ironically a little theocractic-statism intermixed into their anti-statism). If the middle is not to be a confused independent muddle, i.e., if the centrists are to have their own party from which to cherry-pick from the current 2 major parties, then that centrist party must have some umbrella under which to unify its message.
If not “ideology”, then what is that umbrella? No matter what we call that umbrella, then someone else will relabel that umbrella an ideology. Without an umbrella, not only would be be a muddled middle as a party, but the hundred million American voters would be quite confused who or what we are. I am quite certain that Rush Limbaugh or Al Sharpton or the like would gladly fill that messaging void for us, in ways that we would not find flattering.
Hence, I claim that the unifying centrist umbrella must 1) exist! and 2) be something that *already* demonstrably unifies America and has been shown to unify America in the past. In addition to motherhood & apple pie and God & guts & glory, I claim that unifying umbrella to gather the vast majority of Americans who are not kooky ardent ideologues is: THE STRENGTHENING OF AMERICA TO COMPETE WITH OTHER NATIONS OF THE WORLD.
Now, really, who can be against that rallying cry?
Please consider the muddled alternative: a fringe party that has messaging problems that makes America, at best, scratch its head or, at worst, cringe. Take for example the Libertarian Party’s desire to A) legalize (all?) hard & addictive drugs and B) sell of numerous federal-government assets, as shown in the quotations from their website below.
http://www.lp.org/issues/crime-and-violence
“Drug prohibition does more to make Americans unsafe than any other factor.” and “nearly one half of all police resources are devoted to stopping drug trafficking, instead of preventing violent crime.”
http://www.lp.org/issues/social-security
“The federal government owns assets worth trillions of dollars—assets that it simply doesn’t need to perform its Constitutional functions. By selling those assets over time, …”
Regarding the former: The commonperson looks at the meth house and drug addict and says “You know if we just made hard addictive drugs legal like alcohol, their use would dwindle to the level alcohol is used, especially among the young who rarely, if ever, use alcohol, because we have made it so legally available to every adult. I want the Libertarian Party to make it legal for my kids to use meth or crack or any other hard addictive drug.”
Regarding the latter: The commonperson is driving down the toll-free interstate highway cross-country and says “You know, honey, what really burns me to the core of my soul? It is that this road is free of charge. I am not taxed enough! I don’t pay enough user fees at the bank. I want to pay another kind of new tax. I want this road to nickel & dime me with various user-fees, just like at the bank. I want the Libertarian Party to sell this interstate highway to the highest for-profit bidder who borrowed too many billions of dollars bankers, so that I can pay one dollar per mile.”
This is why the Libertarian Party has a muddled message that keeps them in the single-digit percentages at the polls. Some would say that this is because they have an excessive amount of ideology. I claim it is because they have insufficient *purpose* to their message. (Their only purpose is impeccably-comprehensive application of their ideology, as if awards are handed out at the county fair for ideological purity—and they won the blue-ribbon First Prize.)
The Libertarian Party stands for some policies & messages that (independent of flowing from a cohesive ideology) the bulk of the American people do not identify with nor want. From these kooky few policies & messages flow suspicion that the entire program might be on disastrous foundations. But the Democrats & Republicans also stand for policies & messages that increasingly irk a greater & greater percentage of the American people, if not on election day, then within a few months afterward.
The Modern Whig Party (or any other attempt to ever form a centrist party) must avoid this muddled perception problem by focusing on uniting America via the CENTRIST NATIONALISM of making America strong.
Quite honestly, the Modern Whig Party’s “methodology over ideology” basis might be a great technique for brainstorming new policies at party meetings, but it is quite a bewildering advertising message with the public, not unlike the Libertarian examples presented above, leaving people wondering “What the (heck)?”
The key to any successful political movement (or any commercial product’s successful advertising campaign, for that matter) is picking a practically-attainable dream in which people can identify with & believe. It could be an ideology, but perhaps better it is an already widely-held positive belief or principle, where people naturally say “Well, finally! I’ve been waiting all my life for *you* to come along!”.
Solomon,
As you know I've retracted my statement that centrists need an "ideology." What I should have said is that centrists need a coherent message. Whether that message is an ideology, set of principles or policy proposals does not matter. But a big reason we are so marganalized and unorganized is because we have no coherent message to push. We need a message to differentiate us and unite us.
My proposal is that we should promote pragmatism as our "message." But what does that mean? Well, conservative intellectuals asked the same thing about conservatism in the 1950s. Were they to be just a reactionary force as we are now? No. They decided to create a coherent message of small government, lower taxes, and free trade. This allowed the unorganized and marganalized conservative movement to "fuse" into one powerful political movement. But before they promoted those three principles conservatism was not necessarily associated with them. Now that's the first thing we think of when speaking about conservatism. I want us to do the same. What we need to do is to promote pragmatism and brand it with the principles of smart government, equal opportunity, and innovation. At least that's what I believe.
For more info on this topic:
http://www.thepragmaticcenter.com/essay/obama%E2%…
No, centrists don't need an ideology, but we do need a set of collective values, which isn't the same thing. Off the top of my head, those values have been fiscal responsibility, social libertarianism, procedural equality, respect to the rule of law, refusal to engage in counterproductive tactics when desiring to change the law, policy-oriented debate, a thought process independent of movement or party influence, innovative governance, the ability to accept when any of the above are not viable under certain circumstances, and the will of the electorate. In short, yes, it's pragmatism.