As someone who considers myself center-right and independent, I go back and forth on whether there's value in rebranding moderates/centrists.
The branding challenge is significant. I have a draft piece called "Purple Tribe" in my essay queue, from when I realized I like living in purple spaces around purple people. But it's hard to chart this stuff out without getting too cringe or fluffy. Maybe it's healthy to keep this bloc more fluid and less tribal.
I also started to write up an "American reform initiative" as a bipartisan initiative to give American democracy a "software upgrade." My sense is that this kind of initiative-based approach focused on solving a discrete sets of challenges is a better approach to galvanizing moderate/centrists. It gives us the best of both worlds: a way to tackle challenges with teeth and the agility to adapt as political circumstances evolve.
We have the same issue in the UK though from over here the US does appear to be significantly more partisan, and aggressively so. I agree a new - or rather Recalibrated - common / centre ground is needed. And in the UK, it hopefully still exists. BUT the Recalibration is needed because the new common / centre ground has moved and, first and foremost, should be based on clear values and principles that underpin western liberal democracy. And these come from the left and right. We have lost sight of these in important regards - both from a left and right direction. These need clarifying - which require us to make some collective value judgements. Something, unfortunately, we have become less able to do, along with having difficult collective conversations without these immediately dissolving into partisan shouting - face to face and, ever more, on social media.
Thanks for this cogent post. Indeed, the labels seem to have run their course. In the United States, Left means you vote for Democrats and Right means you vote for Republicans, which means we might as well substitute Democrats for Leftists and Republicans for Rightists. So, we should stop using the terms Left and Right at all because they are meaningless. And so are terms like centrist and moderate…blah, blah, blah. Basically, we have a Big Government party composed of people who derive their power and incomes directly/indirectly from the government (bureaucrats, politicians, academics, union officials, administrators, diplomats, NGO employees, lawyers and judges, and a Private Sector Party (small business owners and all others who don’t get paid directly by the taxpayers). The Big Government Party wants everything about the government to be big and to get bigger…staffing, budgets, deficits, taxes, regulations, programs, agencies, initiatives, oversight, prosecutions, and policy directives. The PSP, on the other hand, wants government to let private citizens live free from government interference.
I think this is almost exactly right Frank, with one major exception-- left and right clearly do exist at least under circumstances of Western high modernity (and thus in non-western countries, especially in East Asia, that have modernized under Western conditions. I don't consider Israel to be Western but its modernized Westernly, and definitely has left and right tendencies.)
But left and right are basically aesthetic/philosophical with social and political implications. So they don't drive politics but they do emerge from politics as interpretation and commentary, and then further influence politics, etc etc etc.
They also keep changing their definitions as political and social circumstances change, and I think are basically relational to existing conditions, and 'right' and 'conservative' are slightly distinct just as 'left' and 'liberal' are slightly distinct. A conservative in our own time is conservative for neoliberalism, a liberal in our own time is for neoliberalism's general reform and advance, etc. (David Brooks or Yascha Mounk.) Someone on the right in our time has this can't-fundamentally-change thing about human nature, everyone from Bronze Age Pervert to Ross Douthat to David Brooks, someone on the left in our time has this always-advance-social-progress thing about society's effect on human nature, everyone from Ta-Nehisi Coates to AOC to Bill Galston. Obviously there are smart and stupid and moderate and extremists versions of this but it is temperamental with political and social implications, not the other way around. Most importantly for your framework (which again, is correct on the politics of this) many or maybe most people are not really fully in either of these and have schizo or spider-web tendencies in these subconsciously, not as mark of pride but just as normies who don't really try to systemetize their views, or as intellectuals who have tried to find order and simply given up (hi lol, tho i identify as conservative and keep failing.)
Most saliently tho, all this has essentially NO RELATION to practical political coalitions except for very useless and self-righteous deservedly small magazines and principled political clubs who have forsaken actually acquiring power, whether consciously or not. And, most political coalitions-- even most practical ideologues--- have tendencies of both; and most general social visions contain elements of both, and as you say cannot be reduced down to either, for they exist in the real world. Whiggery-- right or left? It could border on utopian; it was also highly focused on intrinsic, traditional, patrician moral order. Jacksonian Democracy? It was almost radically against any idea of self-mastery in favor of a popular romanticism for human passions unleashed; but almost all of its adherents were essentially habitual traditionalists. Ditto for Federalists and Jeffersonians before, and Progressives and Populists after (and note that in the P/P case, there were versions of each in BOTH parties and those partisan sects had distinct flavors as well.)
It is the combination, decombination, recombination, transmutation, and transformation of these over time-- again, contingent upon and emergent from existing social and political circumstances, which are arguably developed by mixes of conscious action, accidental contingency, unconscious and unstoppable social trends, perhaps a little push of divine providence as Lincoln would have it-- that form the basis of the social hearths of political ideology, which are then developed for strategic or aggressive or federative purposes by combinations of scribblers and hacks, Wang Hunings and Xi Jinpings, prophets and high priests, ideologues and revolutionaries, whatever you will dichotomize, which in turn will create intellectually nonsensical but politically astute moral orders that are the ideologies you study well.
And in all this the traces of Yuval Levin's Thomas Paine vs Edmund Burke dichotomy of modern left and right can be traced, just more complexly than he or others usually give credit for. As soon as a conservatism in the Democratic Party becomes viable, many genuine conservatives in the Republican Party will hop over, as those neocons trying to preserve internationalism have; just as liberalism in the Republican Party over the Democratic Party, as a lot of HeTeRoDoX people and former leftists have. And I think this dynamic does exactly what you say it does; I just don't think it disproves left and right; and I think at least for the Wang Hunings among us, consciousness of this intellectual reality is important for intellectual discipline amid ideological innovation and construction whether we approve of it or not. "We must take human nature as we find it..."
Thanks! There's a lot to unpack here, so I'll just say I'd love to read this in an essay. Although I think at the end of the day it ends up in a similar place as to the definitions--left and right are ever-changing labels that shift with the most pressing public issues. We need to make distinctions between "sides" on those issues and for convenience call one left and the other right.
I would go one step farther. The horseshoe recognizes that in a two entity system, the people on the ends often share beliefs because the two-party division was always contingent and somewhat arbitrary. At the edges are people who join a coalition for convenience, but actually care just as much about other ideas. But in the multipolar system of reality, there are actually lots of little islands we don't see and many of them have overlaps.
The problems with centrism are that (1) it rarely leads to a coherent philosophy, excusing lazy and inconsistent thinking, and (2) most often just serves as personal soothing because everyone else is “so mean” in politics.
My experience of a lot of people who are guilty of (2) is that they get uncomfortable when someone else knows more about a topic than they do, and process it as that person being “mean” or “divisive”.
My experience has been that most so-called centrists are people with a coherent philosophy that doesn't have a name. People don't know how to categorize themselves because there's no common name for what they are, or list of of positions they're supposed to take. They feel alone and insecure about whether their beliefs even make sense. Give them a label and suddenly they get more confidence, kind their allies, and everything starts to make more sense.
While it’s certainly possible that many centrists don’t have a common name for their philosophy, let me ask you: How many centrists have you talked to who have ever bothered to GIVE a name to their philosophy, let alone examined it on a deep enough level to deserve such a name?
In my experience, mostly they just prattle on about how everything they believe is “common sense”.
Well laid out and well argued, Republic. I've been arguing this for years. We need a new political road map more than ever. The left-right dichotomy hides far more than it illuminates.
I wrote a piece on this too. I won't link it as I don't like to be forward, but I can if you're interested.
"To call someone an independent makes it sound like anyone who refuses to fall into line with one of the dominant tribes is a weirdo outsider with fringe beliefs." I agree but it also can make it sound like I'm the kind of person who *wouldn't* take part in a party/movement. I would, if I believed in an active party.
Same with me. I just don't like independent because it sounds like the dominant parties are more legitimate, and the rest of us are the minor little guys. I would prefer a name that stand on its own.
Yeah but "stands on its own" is basically the definition of independent.
I don't agree with you that it implies legitimacy of the main parties or the left-right spectrum. It's about as explicit as one can get about not aligning with anything beyond one's personal unique opinions and values. I think this is the word you're looking for.
I’m a pragmatist. I want government to do the things it can do well and spend that money wisely. I want the private sector to do the things it does well without become rent-seekers. And I want the kind of regulations to protect our overall health but recognizes that difficult choices need to be made, and that are focused on results, not process.
By all means, raise my taxes, but spend it efficiently, which means that projects can’t get bogged down for years and cost a fortune due to environmental studies and lawsuits. It also mean entitlement programs that spend more money on means testing and bureaucracy that little of the money makes it to the people it should be helping.
I agree. The way I say this is the system ought to actually work.
Institutions ought to actually accomplish whatever purpose we created them to do. Outcomes ought to be what we claim we're trying to achieve. People's opportunities and lifepaths should follow the stories we tell about how things work. Essentially, the American Dream ought to be reality again.
I find far too many states privatise essential and very important functions to their own detriment and the detriment of their own people. And then there many bloated and inefficient public sectors too.
There are also a lot of a priori ideological presumptions one way and the other. Lefties presume private to be mostly bad; righties presume public to be mostly bad. There are some things that public and private will generally do better, but a lot is, as you say, about the quality of policy, decision-making and implementation rather than some inherent quality.
I haven’t had an idea of what to call it but you are saying exactly what I have been trying to articulate so much better than I have been able to. Yes. We need a new party. Absolutely. Exactly for all the reasons you say. Thank you.
Back in the 70's -early 80's no one really talked about politics. We all just got along for the most part and trusted that those elected would do good for ALL the American people. My Dem parents were leery of Ronald Reagan, but he wasn't the "monster" that people portrayed him to be.....even though he gave us Trickle Down Economics that opened the flood gates for rich people. I think Billary Clinton killed the American dream when he signed NAFTA and sent the already hollowed out manufacturing industries over seas to China. That seemed to be the inflection point IMO.
I think the middle twentieth century status quo was mostly working for most people and roughly producing what it promised, a version of the American Dream. Politics therefore was just about the detail. The problem now is the system itself is broken, and people aren't getting what they were promised, putting up for grabs fundamental questions about what the future is going to look like. So I'm not surprised there's more anger and bile.
The only place normies can help pick the policy list is in the primaries, so all you independents with strongly held beliefs better suck it up and register for the party that's most likely to win your district and vote for the candidate that disgusts you the least. Our first best hope is a normie takeover of at least one of the major parties. Anything else will be even harder.
The model is to form a political identity outside the existing system. Work together and unite around actual good ideas. Then the mechanics to take over a party and the system take care of themselves. Maybe you seize a party machine in a primary. Maybe you're a new upstart party. It doesn't matter. The names and institutional identities are irrelevant, only the ideas.
This isn't a pipe dream. It's exactly how political reform movements across American history have always won, and how the system always reforms. But the first step is to get the right people working together as a new tribe on the same time, instead of propping up a dead status quo neither they nor anyone else likes.
Doesn't sound like making a movement outside the institutions is that easy, if the problem is people who want one from column A and two from column B. Maybe a big name like Trump or Reagan could do it. I'd just like to dilute the wacko vote that dominates parties right now.
I think we end up defaulting into Team A or Team B even if we are not all in with either. We had Protestants v Catholics then Royalists v Republicans and then Communists v Capitalists and so on. We have been lucky that for some time our divides have been simpler, in a perfect world we might argue over rates of tax and speed limits on highways. I expect those days are behind us in a less prosperous and more divided world. I suppose the best we can do is work out what we believe for ourselves and then see which team best aligns with what we believe or at does least damage to what we believe. Maybe we know the centre cannot hold and we are we are one side or the other of today’s divide.
I agree except for the end goal. The goal shouldn't be to find out which side we like best and join them. The goal should be to unite and become our own side, so they have to join us.
I wish you were right and we could define a better and kinder polity. But power dynamics seem to become binary and we need to decide if we are on one side, or the other side.
I would say the system is always going to trend toward two big coalitions, and thus two sides, because of the realities of democracy. What those sides are, what they believe, and what they do is always in flux. The goal is to form a block that can take over one of the sides. Maybe it ends up being called Republican or Democrat or something else entirely. The name doesn't matter. The ideas do. The model I look at is the historical progressive movement, which didn't try to be a party but to form a coherent ideological block that ended up taking over both parties and reformed the entire system.
Are we not just seeing the old two sides in different guises. Team A wants progress and sees the existing social and moral order as an obstacle; Team B wants slow progress, if at all and conserve the existing social and moral order. Usually they muddle along, pulling a bit one way and then a bit the other, Whigs and Tories who won’t go too far because the other might be in charge next and they both need to keep the people and/or monarch happy. But every so often one side, usually the one that wants to change things the most, sees the chance of victory and therefore the need to destroy the other side.
How about the Third Way? Well I don’t know that that movement, promoted by moderate democrats like Joe manchin was the right answer for voters that are not comfortable with the more extreme views on the left. But I think that if the democrats want to win in red states, they need to consider running as independents although people like that do not have a very solid track record, like Kirsten synema or that independent who ran in Nebraska. But this is a very thoughtful piece and I think a lot of people are frustrated by the “packaging “ of both parties. With the democratic you seem to get defund the police, climate alarmism , and extreme views on transgender issues. It’s smart to question these views and that does not imply no views of your own. The are all these so called 80-20 issues where only 20% of the voters will support the extreme positions.
My take on Third Way is that it ended up being not a policy and change vehicle, but a messaging one. It sought to co-opt Republican ideas at a time in which Democrats were very unpopular and discredited after the failures of New Left in the 1960s and 1970s and Republicans used to win elections by just repeating the world "liberal" in ads. (The Arthur Finkelstein formula). So the idea wasn't to change what the party actually did, but moderate the message. Bill Clinton in a nutshell. Which is why it helped elect Clinton, but the base of the party always hated it and fought it, and ultimately nothing changed and it didn't stick.
Agree with everything in this post Frank. I think that it is especially interesting to think about the evolution of center/right/middle over the past 40-50 years as the American system of government and society have become so broken/unmoored/etc.
One of the main things that has been broken in America is the middle class (as you referenced in the article). Yeats talked about this in his poem (The Second Coming) when he said "the center cannot hold." Having a big, strong, stable middle class is the key to having a strong, stable America. As elements of the Republican and Democratic Party have become more fringe, they have continued to alienate more and more eligible voters. In 2024, 90 million eligible voters did not vote in the Presidential Election (that number was 100 million in 2020 and 90 million in 2016). That 90-100 million adults in America will not participate in the biggest election in our system is an indictment of the system. It is broken. 80% of Americans regularly polled say the country is going in the wrong direction.
I totally agree that the status quo of the 20th century model no longer works. Honestly, I've looked at every potential solution out there (elect better leaders?, third-party?) and none of them will work. America is too divided for a one-size fits all solution. The federal government (of $6 Trillion is outlays vs. $4 Trillion in revenue) hasn't worked in decades. Electing another "Republican" will alienate/incite more than half of the population and the same goes for electing another "Democrat" President. There is no way a third-party candidate will win in our system. And in addition, the both parties have major sub-parties (Socialists, Progressives, Libertarians, etc.) that it has become impossible for one President/Administration to effectively govern a fractured Republic/Empire.
The Article V Movement (Convention of States) has the only workable solution out there. The Constitution clearly gives the State Legislatures the authority to call for a limited, national Constitutional Convention to rebalance the relationship between the federal government and the states. If we are able to rebalance and allow states to take on more of the roles that were given to them in the 10th Amendment (but ignored by the Federal Government) I believe we can become a less fractured, less divisive country. We can also avoid the massive contention of the presidential election every four years. The President/Executive can't solve everything. Let the states fulfill their role of experimenters and innovators. DC can't solve our current morass.
Sorry for the long post- thanks again for this great forum of great minds Frank!
Thanks Patrick! My view is less around a third party than a new identity and movement. A party is just a machine to coordinate action, but you can't build one until you have a new identity. You can't get people who don't see themselves as part of a common enterprise to support a new political vehicle, particularly around some rich and famous guy running at the top. The key is to build the movement and identity first, and then the implementation takes care of itself. I think a lot about how the nineteenth-century progressive movement started as a movement around ideas for change instead of as a political faction or party, and managed to end up taking over both major parties getting its entire reform agenda enacted.
As for a constitutional convention, I'm always hot and cold. I think there are big changes we could make to make our system function better (particularly I would reform Congress so it actually did its job). But I worry a lot about opening up the Constitution at this crazy political moment, recognizing that the people who would be making the changes wouldn't be me. It would be the people on cable news. Given our present moment, I don't trust the changes they would make, and so fear it would break things worse.
Thanks for your feedback Frank! In general I am in alignment with your thoughts around a new identity and movement rather than a new party. I guess the nuance I would add to the new identity and movement hypothesis is that I think the new identity and movement should be New Federalism rather than a reworked version of nationalism. I totally agree with you that we need to have a common enterprise rather than some rich and famous guy at the top. I also look back at the Progressives and what they accomplished. I guess where I diverge from looking back at the late 19th/early 20th century approach is that I don't believe a "one-size-fits-all" approach to American politics will work in our fragmented country. I think the dramatic societal changes since the '60s (Bowling Alone/major reduction in societal/institutional/religious/family belonging plus the dramatic decrease in trust in America) have created more individualistic/materialistic society which I think would respond much better to a federalist rather than nationalist governmental structure.
As far as the constitutional convention risk, I totally hear you. That's one of the reasons I'm a big fan of the Convention of States approach. They have a limited proposal based on 3 new amendments (balanced federal budget, congressional term limits and making the 10th Amendment more explicit/less vague). All of these ideas are centered around federalist principles: rebalance power between DC and the states, and let the states innovate and experiment on major policy issues that the feds are too big/bureaucratic to solve. I think each of these proposals will also go a long way towards reforming Congress and constraining the Executive branch. I also totally agree that we need to be careful about who would be making the changes (definitely not the talking heads!!). Sorry to hype Convention of States again, but I think their approach is quite pragmatic - the changes would be debated by delegates from the States (mostly likely these would be the State Legislators I think are more responsive/pragmatic than our federal congressional representatives with 95% re-election rates and 20% approval rates).
I'm for anything that will turn us back into a Republic instead of an Empire which is what we are today. I heart federalism. Have a great day!
The 63% stat is striking. That is the number of Americans whose view of justice, economic order, social and legal legislation overlaps so little with either of the two main parties that they want another party.
I can certainly relate to voting against the party that I think is most destructive.
The one thing I disagree with in this very well written piece is the idea that technological and social change needs a deep discussion, a government plan, a council of experts, study in research institutions, etc. I assume you are referring mostly to AI (I guess the decreasing birthrate and the anomie felt among younger people are also big challenging changes). I do worry about an alignment problem with AI, but I am not sure some switch mandated by government to turn off the rogue (or hyper rational) AI would help. I do worry about mass job loss as AI takes both blue collar and white-collar jobs, but I tend to have faith that many jobs like service and marketing and medicine will actually end up as strong human employing sectors because the most desired good in the eye of the customers will be human warmth. What do you think Govt. should be doing to foster community and lessen suicide and depression? What do you think the feds should do to protect workers from AI replacement? UBI? I did not like Andrew Yang overall. Seems smart, but very bureacratic and willing to kick down many fences contra Chesterton.
AI is a big part of it, although not even all of it. Add to it the end of the Cold War order and Pax America, and rise of China. Add all these new cultural belief and movements. Simply consider the new power of data and technology to monitor and control individuals. Consider the change in employment with the trends to bigness, and the rise of shareholder value as the only metric leaving employees more like disposable cogs. The entire 20th century system is falling down. It's no longer producing the results it used to and we're standing by the highway watching change speed by and doing nothing. I think we need to step back and think from first principle about what sort of society we want to live in and start engineering institutions to ensure they produce it in the new circumstances of this world.
I agree. Some of that comes down to breaking up monopolies and changing regulations so small businesses can afford to comply. I know I want the first principles of life to be both modern infrastructure and natural beauty- those are tough to combine. We have to redesign old cities and help local businesses. Or build new cities which are structured for families to live in them at low cost
It is the political press and professional political consultants that force rigid categories onto people as if politics was the same thing as sports and people are just pawns on a chess board. Partisan political identities are necessary for abstract strategizing, but are insufficient for an effective, democratic government. You cannot govern divorced from the messy realities of peoples' lives. Only when the people are involved and engaged in directing their representatives do the complicated and inchoate needs of real people get enacted into law.
I agree that we are much too invested in forcing identities on voters that do not fit. We should never have elevated generalities to the point that humans become irrelevant. Rhetoric is not useful as a governing idea. The political press and consultants live in a world devoid of the practical aspects of their academic theories. Somehow, people-powered politics went 'poof' and vanished into the ether, carried away by corporate marketing theories used online to indoctrinate rather than represent people.
In a way, the solution is both simple and complex.The author defines the political direction people need and long to go. It is time for a political solution that meets people where they are rather than searches for people who will further an ideology for it. Politicians must be free to articulate universal values regardless of whether it violates the existing party orthodoxy. All we need are leaders who can articulate and motivate people to organize and say to the parties 'a pox on both your houses'! We will just save ourselves.
I say this new party should be called the Pogo Party. If you are not old enough to catch this reference, Wikipedia has a good overview of this Walt Kelley creation.
I think the core problem is simply majoritarian democracy. You need 50% to win elections and wield power, so society trends toward two big coalitions. Then everyone feels compelled to fit into those coalitions. The problem is when people start to think that they're not simply a temporary faction but own loyalty to whatever the coalition decides. And then when in times of transition when the coalition is failing that they can simply leave, forming their own parade.
As someone who considers myself center-right and independent, I go back and forth on whether there's value in rebranding moderates/centrists.
The branding challenge is significant. I have a draft piece called "Purple Tribe" in my essay queue, from when I realized I like living in purple spaces around purple people. But it's hard to chart this stuff out without getting too cringe or fluffy. Maybe it's healthy to keep this bloc more fluid and less tribal.
I also started to write up an "American reform initiative" as a bipartisan initiative to give American democracy a "software upgrade." My sense is that this kind of initiative-based approach focused on solving a discrete sets of challenges is a better approach to galvanizing moderate/centrists. It gives us the best of both worlds: a way to tackle challenges with teeth and the agility to adapt as political circumstances evolve.
We have the same issue in the UK though from over here the US does appear to be significantly more partisan, and aggressively so. I agree a new - or rather Recalibrated - common / centre ground is needed. And in the UK, it hopefully still exists. BUT the Recalibration is needed because the new common / centre ground has moved and, first and foremost, should be based on clear values and principles that underpin western liberal democracy. And these come from the left and right. We have lost sight of these in important regards - both from a left and right direction. These need clarifying - which require us to make some collective value judgements. Something, unfortunately, we have become less able to do, along with having difficult collective conversations without these immediately dissolving into partisan shouting - face to face and, ever more, on social media.
Thanks for this cogent post. Indeed, the labels seem to have run their course. In the United States, Left means you vote for Democrats and Right means you vote for Republicans, which means we might as well substitute Democrats for Leftists and Republicans for Rightists. So, we should stop using the terms Left and Right at all because they are meaningless. And so are terms like centrist and moderate…blah, blah, blah. Basically, we have a Big Government party composed of people who derive their power and incomes directly/indirectly from the government (bureaucrats, politicians, academics, union officials, administrators, diplomats, NGO employees, lawyers and judges, and a Private Sector Party (small business owners and all others who don’t get paid directly by the taxpayers). The Big Government Party wants everything about the government to be big and to get bigger…staffing, budgets, deficits, taxes, regulations, programs, agencies, initiatives, oversight, prosecutions, and policy directives. The PSP, on the other hand, wants government to let private citizens live free from government interference.
I think this is almost exactly right Frank, with one major exception-- left and right clearly do exist at least under circumstances of Western high modernity (and thus in non-western countries, especially in East Asia, that have modernized under Western conditions. I don't consider Israel to be Western but its modernized Westernly, and definitely has left and right tendencies.)
But left and right are basically aesthetic/philosophical with social and political implications. So they don't drive politics but they do emerge from politics as interpretation and commentary, and then further influence politics, etc etc etc.
They also keep changing their definitions as political and social circumstances change, and I think are basically relational to existing conditions, and 'right' and 'conservative' are slightly distinct just as 'left' and 'liberal' are slightly distinct. A conservative in our own time is conservative for neoliberalism, a liberal in our own time is for neoliberalism's general reform and advance, etc. (David Brooks or Yascha Mounk.) Someone on the right in our time has this can't-fundamentally-change thing about human nature, everyone from Bronze Age Pervert to Ross Douthat to David Brooks, someone on the left in our time has this always-advance-social-progress thing about society's effect on human nature, everyone from Ta-Nehisi Coates to AOC to Bill Galston. Obviously there are smart and stupid and moderate and extremists versions of this but it is temperamental with political and social implications, not the other way around. Most importantly for your framework (which again, is correct on the politics of this) many or maybe most people are not really fully in either of these and have schizo or spider-web tendencies in these subconsciously, not as mark of pride but just as normies who don't really try to systemetize their views, or as intellectuals who have tried to find order and simply given up (hi lol, tho i identify as conservative and keep failing.)
Most saliently tho, all this has essentially NO RELATION to practical political coalitions except for very useless and self-righteous deservedly small magazines and principled political clubs who have forsaken actually acquiring power, whether consciously or not. And, most political coalitions-- even most practical ideologues--- have tendencies of both; and most general social visions contain elements of both, and as you say cannot be reduced down to either, for they exist in the real world. Whiggery-- right or left? It could border on utopian; it was also highly focused on intrinsic, traditional, patrician moral order. Jacksonian Democracy? It was almost radically against any idea of self-mastery in favor of a popular romanticism for human passions unleashed; but almost all of its adherents were essentially habitual traditionalists. Ditto for Federalists and Jeffersonians before, and Progressives and Populists after (and note that in the P/P case, there were versions of each in BOTH parties and those partisan sects had distinct flavors as well.)
It is the combination, decombination, recombination, transmutation, and transformation of these over time-- again, contingent upon and emergent from existing social and political circumstances, which are arguably developed by mixes of conscious action, accidental contingency, unconscious and unstoppable social trends, perhaps a little push of divine providence as Lincoln would have it-- that form the basis of the social hearths of political ideology, which are then developed for strategic or aggressive or federative purposes by combinations of scribblers and hacks, Wang Hunings and Xi Jinpings, prophets and high priests, ideologues and revolutionaries, whatever you will dichotomize, which in turn will create intellectually nonsensical but politically astute moral orders that are the ideologies you study well.
And in all this the traces of Yuval Levin's Thomas Paine vs Edmund Burke dichotomy of modern left and right can be traced, just more complexly than he or others usually give credit for. As soon as a conservatism in the Democratic Party becomes viable, many genuine conservatives in the Republican Party will hop over, as those neocons trying to preserve internationalism have; just as liberalism in the Republican Party over the Democratic Party, as a lot of HeTeRoDoX people and former leftists have. And I think this dynamic does exactly what you say it does; I just don't think it disproves left and right; and I think at least for the Wang Hunings among us, consciousness of this intellectual reality is important for intellectual discipline amid ideological innovation and construction whether we approve of it or not. "We must take human nature as we find it..."
Keep up this work and thanks for all you do.
LNP
Thanks! There's a lot to unpack here, so I'll just say I'd love to read this in an essay. Although I think at the end of the day it ends up in a similar place as to the definitions--left and right are ever-changing labels that shift with the most pressing public issues. We need to make distinctions between "sides" on those issues and for convenience call one left and the other right.
Good comment but the political spectrum really is better thought about as a horseshoe where extremists on the end adopting surprisingly similar views.
I would go one step farther. The horseshoe recognizes that in a two entity system, the people on the ends often share beliefs because the two-party division was always contingent and somewhat arbitrary. At the edges are people who join a coalition for convenience, but actually care just as much about other ideas. But in the multipolar system of reality, there are actually lots of little islands we don't see and many of them have overlaps.
The problems with centrism are that (1) it rarely leads to a coherent philosophy, excusing lazy and inconsistent thinking, and (2) most often just serves as personal soothing because everyone else is “so mean” in politics.
My experience of a lot of people who are guilty of (2) is that they get uncomfortable when someone else knows more about a topic than they do, and process it as that person being “mean” or “divisive”.
My experience has been that most so-called centrists are people with a coherent philosophy that doesn't have a name. People don't know how to categorize themselves because there's no common name for what they are, or list of of positions they're supposed to take. They feel alone and insecure about whether their beliefs even make sense. Give them a label and suddenly they get more confidence, kind their allies, and everything starts to make more sense.
While it’s certainly possible that many centrists don’t have a common name for their philosophy, let me ask you: How many centrists have you talked to who have ever bothered to GIVE a name to their philosophy, let alone examined it on a deep enough level to deserve such a name?
In my experience, mostly they just prattle on about how everything they believe is “common sense”.
Well said David.
Thanks! TBH on that last bit, people who know a lot and are right about shit tend to be dicks about it… yours truly is no exception.
People can definitely be like that, reacting badly to anyone who seems to know more.
And people who know more can be dicks.
I still much favour dialectics over eristics though. It's tempting to be a dick sometimes but in the long run I think you only add to the cesspool.
Well laid out and well argued, Republic. I've been arguing this for years. We need a new political road map more than ever. The left-right dichotomy hides far more than it illuminates.
I wrote a piece on this too. I won't link it as I don't like to be forward, but I can if you're interested.
Shane, I would absolutely be interested in reading your piece if you want to send a link.
Thanks Andrew. Appreciate your being interesting to check it out))
Here's my article.
https://truthandbalance22.substack.com/p/the-dead-end-of-left-and-right-politics
"To call someone an independent makes it sound like anyone who refuses to fall into line with one of the dominant tribes is a weirdo outsider with fringe beliefs." I agree but it also can make it sound like I'm the kind of person who *wouldn't* take part in a party/movement. I would, if I believed in an active party.
Same with me. I just don't like independent because it sounds like the dominant parties are more legitimate, and the rest of us are the minor little guys. I would prefer a name that stand on its own.
Yeah but "stands on its own" is basically the definition of independent.
I don't agree with you that it implies legitimacy of the main parties or the left-right spectrum. It's about as explicit as one can get about not aligning with anything beyond one's personal unique opinions and values. I think this is the word you're looking for.
I’m a pragmatist. I want government to do the things it can do well and spend that money wisely. I want the private sector to do the things it does well without become rent-seekers. And I want the kind of regulations to protect our overall health but recognizes that difficult choices need to be made, and that are focused on results, not process.
By all means, raise my taxes, but spend it efficiently, which means that projects can’t get bogged down for years and cost a fortune due to environmental studies and lawsuits. It also mean entitlement programs that spend more money on means testing and bureaucracy that little of the money makes it to the people it should be helping.
I agree. The way I say this is the system ought to actually work.
Institutions ought to actually accomplish whatever purpose we created them to do. Outcomes ought to be what we claim we're trying to achieve. People's opportunities and lifepaths should follow the stories we tell about how things work. Essentially, the American Dream ought to be reality again.
For sure Joe.
I find far too many states privatise essential and very important functions to their own detriment and the detriment of their own people. And then there many bloated and inefficient public sectors too.
There are also a lot of a priori ideological presumptions one way and the other. Lefties presume private to be mostly bad; righties presume public to be mostly bad. There are some things that public and private will generally do better, but a lot is, as you say, about the quality of policy, decision-making and implementation rather than some inherent quality.
I haven’t had an idea of what to call it but you are saying exactly what I have been trying to articulate so much better than I have been able to. Yes. We need a new party. Absolutely. Exactly for all the reasons you say. Thank you.
Back in the 70's -early 80's no one really talked about politics. We all just got along for the most part and trusted that those elected would do good for ALL the American people. My Dem parents were leery of Ronald Reagan, but he wasn't the "monster" that people portrayed him to be.....even though he gave us Trickle Down Economics that opened the flood gates for rich people. I think Billary Clinton killed the American dream when he signed NAFTA and sent the already hollowed out manufacturing industries over seas to China. That seemed to be the inflection point IMO.
I think the middle twentieth century status quo was mostly working for most people and roughly producing what it promised, a version of the American Dream. Politics therefore was just about the detail. The problem now is the system itself is broken, and people aren't getting what they were promised, putting up for grabs fundamental questions about what the future is going to look like. So I'm not surprised there's more anger and bile.
The only place normies can help pick the policy list is in the primaries, so all you independents with strongly held beliefs better suck it up and register for the party that's most likely to win your district and vote for the candidate that disgusts you the least. Our first best hope is a normie takeover of at least one of the major parties. Anything else will be even harder.
The model is to form a political identity outside the existing system. Work together and unite around actual good ideas. Then the mechanics to take over a party and the system take care of themselves. Maybe you seize a party machine in a primary. Maybe you're a new upstart party. It doesn't matter. The names and institutional identities are irrelevant, only the ideas.
This isn't a pipe dream. It's exactly how political reform movements across American history have always won, and how the system always reforms. But the first step is to get the right people working together as a new tribe on the same time, instead of propping up a dead status quo neither they nor anyone else likes.
Doesn't sound like making a movement outside the institutions is that easy, if the problem is people who want one from column A and two from column B. Maybe a big name like Trump or Reagan could do it. I'd just like to dilute the wacko vote that dominates parties right now.
I think we end up defaulting into Team A or Team B even if we are not all in with either. We had Protestants v Catholics then Royalists v Republicans and then Communists v Capitalists and so on. We have been lucky that for some time our divides have been simpler, in a perfect world we might argue over rates of tax and speed limits on highways. I expect those days are behind us in a less prosperous and more divided world. I suppose the best we can do is work out what we believe for ourselves and then see which team best aligns with what we believe or at does least damage to what we believe. Maybe we know the centre cannot hold and we are we are one side or the other of today’s divide.
I agree except for the end goal. The goal shouldn't be to find out which side we like best and join them. The goal should be to unite and become our own side, so they have to join us.
I wish you were right and we could define a better and kinder polity. But power dynamics seem to become binary and we need to decide if we are on one side, or the other side.
I would say the system is always going to trend toward two big coalitions, and thus two sides, because of the realities of democracy. What those sides are, what they believe, and what they do is always in flux. The goal is to form a block that can take over one of the sides. Maybe it ends up being called Republican or Democrat or something else entirely. The name doesn't matter. The ideas do. The model I look at is the historical progressive movement, which didn't try to be a party but to form a coherent ideological block that ended up taking over both parties and reformed the entire system.
Are we not just seeing the old two sides in different guises. Team A wants progress and sees the existing social and moral order as an obstacle; Team B wants slow progress, if at all and conserve the existing social and moral order. Usually they muddle along, pulling a bit one way and then a bit the other, Whigs and Tories who won’t go too far because the other might be in charge next and they both need to keep the people and/or monarch happy. But every so often one side, usually the one that wants to change things the most, sees the chance of victory and therefore the need to destroy the other side.
How about the Third Way? Well I don’t know that that movement, promoted by moderate democrats like Joe manchin was the right answer for voters that are not comfortable with the more extreme views on the left. But I think that if the democrats want to win in red states, they need to consider running as independents although people like that do not have a very solid track record, like Kirsten synema or that independent who ran in Nebraska. But this is a very thoughtful piece and I think a lot of people are frustrated by the “packaging “ of both parties. With the democratic you seem to get defund the police, climate alarmism , and extreme views on transgender issues. It’s smart to question these views and that does not imply no views of your own. The are all these so called 80-20 issues where only 20% of the voters will support the extreme positions.
My take on Third Way is that it ended up being not a policy and change vehicle, but a messaging one. It sought to co-opt Republican ideas at a time in which Democrats were very unpopular and discredited after the failures of New Left in the 1960s and 1970s and Republicans used to win elections by just repeating the world "liberal" in ads. (The Arthur Finkelstein formula). So the idea wasn't to change what the party actually did, but moderate the message. Bill Clinton in a nutshell. Which is why it helped elect Clinton, but the base of the party always hated it and fought it, and ultimately nothing changed and it didn't stick.
Agree with everything in this post Frank. I think that it is especially interesting to think about the evolution of center/right/middle over the past 40-50 years as the American system of government and society have become so broken/unmoored/etc.
One of the main things that has been broken in America is the middle class (as you referenced in the article). Yeats talked about this in his poem (The Second Coming) when he said "the center cannot hold." Having a big, strong, stable middle class is the key to having a strong, stable America. As elements of the Republican and Democratic Party have become more fringe, they have continued to alienate more and more eligible voters. In 2024, 90 million eligible voters did not vote in the Presidential Election (that number was 100 million in 2020 and 90 million in 2016). That 90-100 million adults in America will not participate in the biggest election in our system is an indictment of the system. It is broken. 80% of Americans regularly polled say the country is going in the wrong direction.
I totally agree that the status quo of the 20th century model no longer works. Honestly, I've looked at every potential solution out there (elect better leaders?, third-party?) and none of them will work. America is too divided for a one-size fits all solution. The federal government (of $6 Trillion is outlays vs. $4 Trillion in revenue) hasn't worked in decades. Electing another "Republican" will alienate/incite more than half of the population and the same goes for electing another "Democrat" President. There is no way a third-party candidate will win in our system. And in addition, the both parties have major sub-parties (Socialists, Progressives, Libertarians, etc.) that it has become impossible for one President/Administration to effectively govern a fractured Republic/Empire.
The Article V Movement (Convention of States) has the only workable solution out there. The Constitution clearly gives the State Legislatures the authority to call for a limited, national Constitutional Convention to rebalance the relationship between the federal government and the states. If we are able to rebalance and allow states to take on more of the roles that were given to them in the 10th Amendment (but ignored by the Federal Government) I believe we can become a less fractured, less divisive country. We can also avoid the massive contention of the presidential election every four years. The President/Executive can't solve everything. Let the states fulfill their role of experimenters and innovators. DC can't solve our current morass.
Sorry for the long post- thanks again for this great forum of great minds Frank!
Thanks Patrick! My view is less around a third party than a new identity and movement. A party is just a machine to coordinate action, but you can't build one until you have a new identity. You can't get people who don't see themselves as part of a common enterprise to support a new political vehicle, particularly around some rich and famous guy running at the top. The key is to build the movement and identity first, and then the implementation takes care of itself. I think a lot about how the nineteenth-century progressive movement started as a movement around ideas for change instead of as a political faction or party, and managed to end up taking over both major parties getting its entire reform agenda enacted.
As for a constitutional convention, I'm always hot and cold. I think there are big changes we could make to make our system function better (particularly I would reform Congress so it actually did its job). But I worry a lot about opening up the Constitution at this crazy political moment, recognizing that the people who would be making the changes wouldn't be me. It would be the people on cable news. Given our present moment, I don't trust the changes they would make, and so fear it would break things worse.
Thanks for your feedback Frank! In general I am in alignment with your thoughts around a new identity and movement rather than a new party. I guess the nuance I would add to the new identity and movement hypothesis is that I think the new identity and movement should be New Federalism rather than a reworked version of nationalism. I totally agree with you that we need to have a common enterprise rather than some rich and famous guy at the top. I also look back at the Progressives and what they accomplished. I guess where I diverge from looking back at the late 19th/early 20th century approach is that I don't believe a "one-size-fits-all" approach to American politics will work in our fragmented country. I think the dramatic societal changes since the '60s (Bowling Alone/major reduction in societal/institutional/religious/family belonging plus the dramatic decrease in trust in America) have created more individualistic/materialistic society which I think would respond much better to a federalist rather than nationalist governmental structure.
As far as the constitutional convention risk, I totally hear you. That's one of the reasons I'm a big fan of the Convention of States approach. They have a limited proposal based on 3 new amendments (balanced federal budget, congressional term limits and making the 10th Amendment more explicit/less vague). All of these ideas are centered around federalist principles: rebalance power between DC and the states, and let the states innovate and experiment on major policy issues that the feds are too big/bureaucratic to solve. I think each of these proposals will also go a long way towards reforming Congress and constraining the Executive branch. I also totally agree that we need to be careful about who would be making the changes (definitely not the talking heads!!). Sorry to hype Convention of States again, but I think their approach is quite pragmatic - the changes would be debated by delegates from the States (mostly likely these would be the State Legislators I think are more responsive/pragmatic than our federal congressional representatives with 95% re-election rates and 20% approval rates).
I'm for anything that will turn us back into a Republic instead of an Empire which is what we are today. I heart federalism. Have a great day!
The 63% stat is striking. That is the number of Americans whose view of justice, economic order, social and legal legislation overlaps so little with either of the two main parties that they want another party.
I can certainly relate to voting against the party that I think is most destructive.
The one thing I disagree with in this very well written piece is the idea that technological and social change needs a deep discussion, a government plan, a council of experts, study in research institutions, etc. I assume you are referring mostly to AI (I guess the decreasing birthrate and the anomie felt among younger people are also big challenging changes). I do worry about an alignment problem with AI, but I am not sure some switch mandated by government to turn off the rogue (or hyper rational) AI would help. I do worry about mass job loss as AI takes both blue collar and white-collar jobs, but I tend to have faith that many jobs like service and marketing and medicine will actually end up as strong human employing sectors because the most desired good in the eye of the customers will be human warmth. What do you think Govt. should be doing to foster community and lessen suicide and depression? What do you think the feds should do to protect workers from AI replacement? UBI? I did not like Andrew Yang overall. Seems smart, but very bureacratic and willing to kick down many fences contra Chesterton.
AI is a big part of it, although not even all of it. Add to it the end of the Cold War order and Pax America, and rise of China. Add all these new cultural belief and movements. Simply consider the new power of data and technology to monitor and control individuals. Consider the change in employment with the trends to bigness, and the rise of shareholder value as the only metric leaving employees more like disposable cogs. The entire 20th century system is falling down. It's no longer producing the results it used to and we're standing by the highway watching change speed by and doing nothing. I think we need to step back and think from first principle about what sort of society we want to live in and start engineering institutions to ensure they produce it in the new circumstances of this world.
I agree. Some of that comes down to breaking up monopolies and changing regulations so small businesses can afford to comply. I know I want the first principles of life to be both modern infrastructure and natural beauty- those are tough to combine. We have to redesign old cities and help local businesses. Or build new cities which are structured for families to live in them at low cost
It is the political press and professional political consultants that force rigid categories onto people as if politics was the same thing as sports and people are just pawns on a chess board. Partisan political identities are necessary for abstract strategizing, but are insufficient for an effective, democratic government. You cannot govern divorced from the messy realities of peoples' lives. Only when the people are involved and engaged in directing their representatives do the complicated and inchoate needs of real people get enacted into law.
I agree that we are much too invested in forcing identities on voters that do not fit. We should never have elevated generalities to the point that humans become irrelevant. Rhetoric is not useful as a governing idea. The political press and consultants live in a world devoid of the practical aspects of their academic theories. Somehow, people-powered politics went 'poof' and vanished into the ether, carried away by corporate marketing theories used online to indoctrinate rather than represent people.
In a way, the solution is both simple and complex.The author defines the political direction people need and long to go. It is time for a political solution that meets people where they are rather than searches for people who will further an ideology for it. Politicians must be free to articulate universal values regardless of whether it violates the existing party orthodoxy. All we need are leaders who can articulate and motivate people to organize and say to the parties 'a pox on both your houses'! We will just save ourselves.
I say this new party should be called the Pogo Party. If you are not old enough to catch this reference, Wikipedia has a good overview of this Walt Kelley creation.
I think the core problem is simply majoritarian democracy. You need 50% to win elections and wield power, so society trends toward two big coalitions. Then everyone feels compelled to fit into those coalitions. The problem is when people start to think that they're not simply a temporary faction but own loyalty to whatever the coalition decides. And then when in times of transition when the coalition is failing that they can simply leave, forming their own parade.