House of Eratosthenes

2) Because moderates tend to be much less ideological, less knowledgeable about politics, and less informed than liberals and conservatives, it’s entirely possible that even if our candidate’s views are closer to their views, they won’t be capable of figuring it out (That’s exactly how it worked with McCain and Obama, for example).
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4) Moderates may not know a lot about politics, but they do at least know that they can’t trust the press. So, how do they decide whom to vote for? I would suggest to you that many of them largely base their decisions on anecdotal evidence.

What do I mean by that? Let’s take the current election. What did a moderate voter hear from his liberal friends about Obama? “He’s the greatest hope for America! He’s wonderful! He’ll solve all our problems!” Now, what did that same moderate hear from his conservative friends about McCain? “He’d probably be a lousy President, but he’d still be better than Obama.”

In other words, if conservatives aren’t enthusiastic about their nominee, moderates are going to take cues from that and cast their votes accordingly. That’s one of the reasons why it’s so counter-productive to antagonize conservatives in an effort to draw in moderates.

As I pointed out lately, we suffer from a tragic loss of good judgment when we figure out how to use words like “centrist,” “moderate” and “extremist.” We don’t have a very good picture of what an “extremist conservative” is. Most of us, across all different kinds of ideological regions on the spectrum, think that has something to do with being mean. Lacking compassion. Unpleasant. Stingy. Reactionary. A bit of a dickhole. Exclusionary. You get the picture. A Grade-A1 USDA Prime piece of jackass.

Here’s how I see it:

Human history tells us something important about human nature, and what it tells us is altogether unflattering: The things that are most reliably demonstrated to be bad ideas, are the ones we try the most often. That’s just the way it is.

I mean, overall. Not across the board. Some things work quite well, and we do those things often too. Let’s make murder illegal. When people show they don’t care about breaking the law, let’s lock them up. On those, there really isn’t very much disagreement.

Let’s take money away from people who have it, and give it to those who don’t…

…that’s been tried so many times. It’s supposed to create some kind of wonderful society, one where no one is ever left wanting for anything. It’s had hundreds of years to work out that way. And it hasn’t yet. We’re still waiting on it. And our resolve to keep trying it again and again, has in recent generations become something of an obsession. We’re like the wolf licking at the razor blade, faster and faster as he gets more and more of a taste of blood.

Let’s show compassion to those who kill our wives and children, by letting them out of prison, and when they see our compassion they’ll stop killing. That’s another one.

You know, it really isn’t fair if you just come up with an idea, you get to copyright it and own it, as if you did some “real” work when all you did was think of an idea. Knowledge should belong to the world.

Stop asking her father for permission to marry her. Naive stupid young girls who just want a sexy appealing party-stud, and don’t care about a man’s financial stability, should have the final say in who’s going to knock ’em up.

Businesses lack compassion. Let’s force them to stop business-ing, and when we need the things those businesses make, let’s put the government in the business of doing that business-ing instead. Because anyone knows when it’s compassion you want you should make a bee-line straight to the nearest government bureaucrat who’s thirty seconds late for his lunch break, and there you’ll find all you can handle.

I could add to this list ALL day…don’t tempt me…

So here’s what an “extremist conservative” really is. An extremist conservative looks at all those bad ideas we’ve put into practice many times already, that have never worked out one single time, and does what common sense people do. He says “fuck it.” He dumps it all in an outhouse, then he moves the outhouse building so no one can ever find the dumbass idea he just dumped in, and pours cement in the hole so the dumbass idea can never be used again even if it’s somehow found. If he’s even more extreme than that, he decides to do it even sooner. And if he’s the most extreme conservative you’ll ever know and you’ll ever meet — he uses his intellectual gifts to figure out why this is a dumbass idea that’s never going to work.

What’s a liberal do? He says let’s give it another try.

A moderate liberal says let’s try just a little bit of it.

An extremist liberal says let’s never give up trying no matter what.

And the moderate conservative? Well, the sad, vicious truth of it is these people are just liars. Liars or dupes. History says “the dumbass idea never worked once” and the liberals say “don’t you dare believe that, it’s an ‘urban legend’.” And the moderate conservative says “Alright! You guys know best!”

Meanwhile, the dumbass idea never worked because it’s never gonna work.

And the guys who notice it hasn’t worked and can’t work…we call them “extremist conservatives” so we can give ourselves an excuse to keep trying it.

That’s the truth. Dress it up however you want, but that’s how it is.

Let me toss out a completely alternate thesis.
Read this.
Picture an X-Y graph.
X=time
Y=freedom, ranging from 0 (slavery) to 1(liberty)
At t0, in 1776, we’re somewhere between 0 and 1, and we have a positive slope as abolition moves south. By the time you Amendments 13-15 after the Civil War, we’re close to 1. You’ve got your Jim Crow and whatnot.
~100 years ago, you get the 16th & 17th Amendments and the Federal Reserve Act. FDR, LBJ. The slope of our trajectory tends negative, though you can argue an inflection around MLK.
Look at that Jacksonian incumbency graph.
We’ve let ourselves slip into a quasi-aristocracy.
It’s late, and I shouldn’t litter your blog with un-polished analysis, but there you have it.
- smitty1e | 09/08/2009 @ 20:46
But I didn’t ATFQ.
There are no moderates.
There are only people who are in the political class, and their media henchmen, and those of us wondering WTF.
- smitty1e | 09/08/2009 @ 20:47
Moderation in politics is ignorant, or it is imbecilic, just as to moderate liberty brings its loss.
- jamzw | 09/09/2009 @ 09:20
A dog trainer may break a puppy of chewing shoes by tieing the shoe into the puppies mouth for the day.
- jamzw | 09/09/2009 @ 09:23
Jesus of Nazareth, Gandi, Martin Luther King Jr, George Washington, Abe Lincoln, George Patton, Mother Teresa, Winston Churchill, and Ronald Reagan were all extremists.

Guess what? Every one of them got something important done. Moderates don’t. They stand around and equivocate, then tie on a blindfold and throw the dart. A person of action is by definition an extremist.

Yes, a lot of bad people were “extremists” too, but it isn’t fair that the word has taken on such a negative connotation over the years, while “moderation” has had an unfairly positive one.
- cylarz | 09/10/2009 @ 00:24

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Seven Reasons Why You Can’t Build a Political Party Around ModeratesTuesday, September 8th, 2009

Seven Reasons Why You Can’t Build a Political Party Around Moderates
Tuesday, September 8th, 2009