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Centrism is only good if the center is good. A centrist was pro-Hitler, pro-Stalin, pro-Mao, pro-FDR, pro-Reagan, pro-war on drugs, pro-mass incarceration, pro-Iraq War, pro-KKK, extremely racists, extremely reverse racism. They were likely pro a lot of things I would consider good too.
It’s an intellectually lazy philosophy of not taking the time to think thru an issue and form an opinion. A lot of the time you are not able to form a wise opinion so it gets tough. Being pro-Iraq war seems reasonable then because Cheney did some so CIA games and laundered false intel to the American people that you couldn’t verify.
Centrism is just assuming the current Overton window is correct. But the Overton window moves and thus makes a centrists opinion incompatible with views a centrist would have had just a few short years ago.
I'm not defining 'centrism' here as 'the axiomatic assumption that the correct position is always in the centre of the Overton window'. I don't think that's unfairly redefining it on the fly? We probably wouldn't define leftism or rightism as the axiomatic belief that the correct position is always the furthest left or furthest right idea. Rather, we understand these words to refer to general tendencies or ideological leans. We also tend to associate them with specific embodied tribes (e.g. Democrats, Republicans), or with specific ideologies, which are often more complex than can be expressed with a binary spectrum (e.g. socialism, liberalism, conservatism).
So let me say what I mean when I say that I consider myself a centrist or moderate. (I don't feel it's particularly worth hair-splitting between those two terms. I think they both successfully communicate the idea of someone who is skeptical of both the left and the right, but willing to listen to and adopt ideas from either.)
Firstly, and this is what I think I alluded to most clearly in the above, I mean a dispositional skepticism towards enthusiasm or radicalism. I adopt a posture that is skeptical of passion in politics, or people who are deeply invested in an organised political vision. It is a posture that favours pragmatic, incremental reforms, and tends to regard big intellectual theories or visions as inherently suspect. There is a sense in which this is just small-c conservatism, and I'll wear that, but I think that as in practice the word 'conservative' in politics means something different, it's reasonable to avoid it.
Secondly, I mean in terms of practical allegiance and identification, sitting somewhere in between the two dominant tribes. American politics are radically polarised, and for most people adopting positions has more to do with team loyalty than anything else. Feelings of affection for one team and hostility to the other are therefore the dominant force in American politics. By identifying as centrist or moderate, what I want to communicate is that that's not what I want to do. Rather, I am trying to signal openness to a range of perspectives, and an attitude of noncommittal friendliness to people in either tribe.
Thirdly, to the extent that there is an ideology of moderation, I think it's the conscious knowledge that passion tends to outrun reason; that human judgement is fallible and that my internal sense of my own correctness is probably flawed; that good decision-making often requires input from different perspectives, even adversaries, and collaboration; that personal restraint and humility are virtues; and that no idea or proposal should be allowed to pass without a proper attempt to criticise it.
This piece makes a lot of the same case. Irrespective of any particular issue (some of which I do skew more conservative on than that guy), there is a case for moderation as political practice as well as moderation is ideological or attitudinal stance.
“ I adopt a posture that is skeptical of passion in politics, or people who are deeply invested in an organised political vision.”
This just feels like how I described centrism. Apolitical. Lack of vision. Just taking center of Overton window.
I know Trump is described as a radical rightist. His political views though are largely to the left of Bill Clinton. He favors less mass incarceration. He’s pro-choice (though aligned with Pro-Life judges), he’s pro gay marriage. He’s largely anti-market - trade protectionism. The current right largely backs ‘90s style race relations.
Politics is a real thing. It effects people’s lives. It’s very important to national and personal success. I just played basketball with a few Venezuelans. It matters. They are living in a foreign land because politics were bad at home.
The thing about centrists is they actually encourage Overton window pushing. If 60% of voters are just going to vote for the middle of the Overton window then the correct strategy is to push the Overton window wide. And then the median view comes closer to where you want it.
Take abortion as an issue. Right now the Overton window has one it’s right ban abortion. On its left abortion till 9 months. The centrist position is basically 16 weeks and then banned. If my goal is to ban abortion I need to get discussing the negatives of birth control into the public conscience as a respectable position. Then the centrist position becomes ban abortion.
The left did this with gay marriage. They made pronouns and gender surgery for kids into the Overton window. Now nobody questions gay marriage when in 2005 it was not passable as legislation.
If you had a hard view of abortion after 16 months is bad then if my side pushed to ban birth control then the right would lose elections. Instead centrism makes polarization beneficial because moving the Overton window moves the centrist position.
I... at no point said that I default to the centre of the Overton Window on any issue, or that centrists should do that? Dynomight actually made a case for moderation as the best way to achieve change - he makes the argument, I think correctly, that gay marriage won via moderation, not via radicalism.
As it happens, I oppose gay marriage, which the last I checked puts me way outside the Overton Window. Moderation or centrism in the sense in which I am identifying with it is not a list of policy positions, or a reflexive determination to always adopt the position exactly halfway between the Republican and Democratic platforms. It is a dispositional skepticism of passion politics and radicalism, a deliberate openness to the possibility of being persuaded by people on either team, and an attitude of caution and intellectual humility.
What does it mean to be a moderate and oppose gay marriage? It means that I think it's bad policy, but also that I think that, say, the postliberal Caesarist types are dangerous rogues. Or to pick something coded the other side of politics, it's the same way I can support, say, universal health care, but think that the democratic socialists are a bunch of ineffective muppets high on their own supply. It means a distinction between the policies I envision happening in an ideal world, and the practical ways in which I approach doing politics.
I will be honest I then have no idea what you mean by moderate.
The post liberal caeser types by your definition of moderate I believe they are moderate. Vance has said he wouldn’t have counted the 2020 vote and wants to dismantle the beaucracy. You know from his background that he’s well thought out both camps. It is in his lived experience from where he grew up to having had very leftist friends at Yale. Which is far different that some who grew up on the UES and went to Yale law. He has clearly been a card carrying member of both tribes.
The fact you used the Caeserist types those are probably the most moderate because those tend to be some of the most well read people on the political map. Who have read and thought about everything.
I don’t think the conventional definition of radical versus moderate is unrelated to political positions.
I feel like most people would consider Peter Thiel, Yarvin, Hanania as radical right, but they all feel like moderates to me by the way you define moderate. I use the word grey tribe for these types.
Without more knowledge on your beliefs you sound like a radical right grey triber based on being anti-gay marriage.
Well, as I've commented before, I understand myself to be Blue Tribe in the original sense of the term - recall that per the original 'Outgroup' post, there were explicitly Blue Tribe Republicans and Red Tribe Democrats. (Though I am not American.) I tend to think of the colour tribes as being about manner or about social milieu more than they are about explicit religious beliefs. I know I'm not Red Tribe because I grew up thinking of the kinds of people who owned guns and drove pick-up trucks and did blue-collar work and lacked university degrees and went to evangelical churches as gross low-status people that would be embarrassed to be confused with. I'm pretty sure I'm not Grey Tribe because I think the whole Silicon Valley technologist/rationalist mentality is gross. I may be a political defector from the Blue Tribe, but they're my native tongue, as it were.
Anyway, maybe it would help if I say that I think of moderation as something more procedural, rather than a substantive political position? Defined purely in terms of substance, the centre or moderate position is, as you say, a constantly shifting target which it would be absurd to invest in. Procedurally, however, I would say moderation is characterised by a willingness to listen and make deals with any of the major camps in the political landscape, while being reluctant to fully identify with any of those camps.
By the Caesarists, I'm thinking of people like the self-identified postliberals - they tend to be big fans of Orban, and supportive of some kind of strongman politics, where a visionary leader is necessary to reorder the state and effect a top-down transformation of society along more virtuous lines. Think of Patrick Deneen's aristopopulism ("Aristotelian ends by Machiavellian means"), or Vermeule's authoritarianism, or the "We need our own Putin" sentiment that was heard in 2016. Wolfean yearning for a 'Christian prince' is another version of the same idea, with the main difference being presenting itself as Protestant rather than Catholic. As a moderate, I am dispositionally skeptical of any political project that starts with the idea that we just need to get our guy into power and then crush our enemies. This is as true for the right-authoritarian-populists as it is for the left-authoritarian-populists.
Personally, my preferred politics is more the idea that virtue, community-building, pro-social behaviour, etc., are embedded in customs and the unspoken, unwritten rules of local community life more than they are in legal codes, and there's something inherently dangerous in the yearning for a powerful centralised authority that will authoritatively enforce our moral vision on all. I think we need is closer to the project Deneen sketches at the end of Why Liberalism Failed (i.e. small, local self-governing communities, rooted in the concrete realities of their lives), rather than the strongman fantasies of Regime Change. To that end what I favour is a limited, constrained central government that focuses, rather than on setting the conditions for the good life itself, making possible (but not mandatory) the kind of organic civic renewal that I hope for. Think more distributist-libertarian, on the political spectrum.
I think this probably sits well with a kind of old-fashioned liberal ethic, but it means that I take liberalism per se to be necessary but not sufficient for a healthy polity.
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What would you consider a moderate vs a centrist? A moderate being someone temporarily in the political middle, while a centrist is someone who chooses to be there? Vocabulary might matter here more than usual. I'm not sure I quite agree with your characterization of the philosophy, such that it is, as intellectually lazy, and think it describes some sort of mythical centrist that does not actually exist.
Like, isn't he just describing a regular person who calls balls as he sees them without bandwagoning too much? Someone cautious of getting too over-engaged in partisan passion? Additionally, merely being in the center of two extremes does not imply inaction, though some degree of approval of the status quo might be implied. Both extremes want action, so at least in some cases if you average the two, don't you still get action of some kind? Of course some political positions are a simple tug-of-war, but I feel like most are more like you're traveling on the freeway, and trying to decide which exit to take, or maybe that you're deciding where to eat and someone says Chinese and someone else says Burgers and you end up at a Japanese fusion place that isn't quite what either pictured but still tastes good. IDK, I'm bad with analogies but you get the picture. The idea is, a centrist option can still be an actual blended action, not just inaction due to indecision.
I think one can distinguish between centrist (ie someone who believes the truth is between two alleged poles as a truism) and Burkean conservatism (change slowly as you might break things). One can be a progressive Burkean, liberal Burkean, libertarian Burkean, nationalist Burkean, etc.
That is, the first is about identifying the two poles and plopping yourself in the middle. The second has a vision about the world they want but argues going very slowly towards that goal.
Both tend to favor status quo but have different failure modes.
I'm happy to grant that Burkean conservatism is one of the things I'm describing when I praise centrism or moderation, yes.
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I think moderate and centrists are roughly the same and synonyms.
I have nothing against a centrists. You can live a happy life in country with bad government. You show up to work everyday, marry the cute girl, impregnate your wife a few times, and raise a few good kids. It’s a fine noble life.
But it does not give them some moral high ground on politics or an enlightened view. It’s hoping politics works out in a way that doesn’t ruin their life.
Not everyone needs to be airplane engineers. And know every intricate detail. You can still ride the airplane, but you are hoping the dude at Boeing is a good engineer.
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