Just Don't Call Me a Moderate...

I am not nor have I ever been a moderate. On my eighteenth birthday I went out and registered to vote as a Democrat. It wasn’t an easy choice at the time but I felt making a choice was better than not.

I’ve never had a lot of patience for people who complain about how they’re left out by the party system or how partisanship doesn’t work; coincidentally these people tend to be apathetic, uninformed, and generally looking to rationalize their laziness. What’s worse is the registered independent that has pretensions of being the Jeffersonian ideal, sitting back at the plantation, sipping some vintage, and carefully considering the candidates and the issues. In reality they’re probably the most misinformed and least likely to use any form of reason in making their decision-making. And beware the college student who decries that their views are too complex to fit fully with one party or the other. Our republic has stood for over 200 years; you didn’t learn that much in your Intro to American Government class. You’re not the first person to face this problem but the rest of us didn’t shirk our responsibility. Being a moderate in this sense is all about one thing, moderation. While most things are good in moderation, politics is the exception that proves the rule; doing things halfway will get nowhere.

Then there are the centrists, to quote R. J. Vincent, “In criticizing the excesses of left and right, it marks out no position of principle between them, but shirks merely to what happens to be the mid-point in the current debate. Therefore, to be in the centre is not to be apolitical, but to have one’s political position determined by others.” These are the even lower form of life. Worse than having some pitiful convictions as a moderate, they have no conviction and simply place themselves where opportune at the time, and what’s worse try to tell us that they’re ‘above politics’. This is the type of political centrist I fear is the ruin of public discourse in our society.

The problem is not being in the middle, the problem is that one fails to “mark out a position of principle”, and it is not just limited to the center. I don’t really like moderates or centrists as I’ve described them, that’s not to say anyone who isn’t at the extreme is as I described them.

In the end the principle position is what’s important to me. Not doing some political calculus to figure out the biggest tent I can. If anything Grover Norquist’s quote about Heath Shuler encapsulates the preposterousness of the current Republican Party better than I could ever hope to. On the one hand he suggests fiscal conservatism as the true test of being a conservative; meanwhile the current Republican President has expanded the Government more than President Johnson and racked up record deficits. At the same time he demonstrates eloquently the superficiality and irrationality of the supposed ‘social conservatives’ upon which said President’s ‘success’ has depended. To his credit, Norquist does not even pretend he has anything in common with, much less have any respect for, the social conservatives upon which his party depends.

I try not to mistake people who try to emulate the end point as having the same starting point. At the end of the day it’s about who shares my core principles. Principles like but not limited to; the right to due process regardless of how heinous the accused crime, the importance of separation of powers, that men and women are endowed with inalienable rights, that no one will have all the answers all the time and there is a need for discourse, and that great power should be used both responsibly and with caution. Most importantly the principle that having principles matters, that’s what ultimately makes me a Democrat. Time and again the current crop of Republicans have shown that none of those principles, amongst others, matter to them. I’ll vote for Heath Shuler not because of his positions on Guns, Gays, Babies, War, Healthcare, Unions or OLF or even because it will make Nancy Pelosi Speaker, but because I know our fundamental principles that lead to those positions are ultimately the same or similar enough. Principles not issue checklists are ultimately what makes partisan politics work for me.