Jonah Goldberg

Well, the Wahhabis want to kill all the gays and Jews. The Sufis don’t want to kill any gays or Jews. So the moderate, sensible position must be to kill just the gays, but not the Jews. Or maybe the other way around? Or half of all the gays and Jews? Or maybe all the gay Jews? Or maybe we can have a complicated compromise along the lines of last year’s debt- ceiling negotiations, where a small percentage of Jews are killed now and we kill a larger number of gays in the out years?

The point is that sometimes the extreme is 100 percent correct while the centrist position is 100 percent wrong. But there’s something about being not as wrong as one of the other extremes that some people just find so fascinating and seductive. I just don’t get it.

The extremists have a serious disagreement about what to do. The independent who splits the difference has no idea what to do and doesn’t want to bother figuring it out.

And yet we hear constantly how independents who borrow a little from this side and borrow a little from that side are somehow more politically sophisticated and mature than the straight line thinkers of the left and the right. But here’s the thing: The straight line thinkers tend to think in a straight line not because they are hidebound and close-minded and clinging to an ideological agenda. They tend to think in a reasonable straight line because they’ve worked out a reasonably consistent way of seeing the world. The independents and moderates who just grab stuff from this shelf, then from that shelf, like a panicked survivor of the dawn of the dead grabbing what he or she can from the supermarket shelf before the zombies spot her, do not value consistency at all.

From The Tyrrany of Cliches by Jonah Goldberg

HKO comment:

Jonah writes on a serious subject in a light hearted and entertaining manner. I agree that the middle lacks the consistent thought of a principled position. This is one of the reason I avoid political labels in this blog. It is not because I am an independent or seek a middle position; it is because the position often becomes irrelevant to the idea.

There are two considerations. Many of us are committed to the free market principles held by one party but the social tolerance of the another. If economic issues are central then we will weight that issue larger and ignore other objectionable agendas in choosing the party for the election in question.

Secondly we have long past the point where socialism is a part of the American landscape. Most do not consider a total rejection of our corrupted social programs a reality however much we may lean in that direction in theory. In order to function we must find a point where a safety net is available for the unable but not the unwilling.

We understand that taxes may be a part of the social contract, and few deny the need for revenue; but there is another side of the social contract that must also be upheld. The government has a responsibility to prudently spend our money.

Compromise is not antithetical to political principle, but if it takes a 100 foot bridge to cross a ravine a compromise of 50 foot will only waste money. It would be wiser to build no bridge at all. The bridge analogy used by Goldberg is suitable for some examples, but it is not a suitable metaphor for most of the problems facing Congress.

His point, however, of people taking an independent route because they have just not thought the problem is well taken.

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