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re: Utopian dreams
Robert — (archived)

And one man's utopia is another's dystopia. Democracy is the Cuisinart of compromise that mixes it all up to produce...optopia? A made-up word, but I think (hope) it means the optimum that satisfies nobody but dissatisfies fewer.

Hmmm...the "Coalition of the Sensible"? Only if you want the partisans to label us the "Axis of Weasels" for our failure to take a stand, however irrational. Part of the psychology of polarization is the belief that there's virtue in stubbornness, and that compromise is weakness.

Such a thing would be like civics class. I wouldn't really call it a novel idea, though. The League of Women Voters, for example, endeavored to promote civic responsibility in a nonpartisan way. Sad that the parties grew powerful enough to steamroller them, and dictate the terms of Presidential debates. That the parties saw nonpartisan civics education and open debate as a threat says a lot about the bankruptcy of modern political parties.

It would be risky to highlight "centrist heroes", because all of them currently have a nominal party affiliation. Oh the partisans would howl if there were more centrists identified in one party than the other...and then what would we do? Establish a quota? Slippery slope, because then the Parties could slip in ringers to meet the quota. I'd say that this organization would have to retain the independence to declare that nobody is a centrist, if that's truly the case.

People who cherrypick the Founders' writings (and be clear that I'm not accusing you of that) support that tactic by implying that they were all of one mind. Yet, I think one of the basic lessons to be learned from studying them is that they fought like cats and dogs, and that it was only through compromise that they were able to craft the Constitution. We revere the result; why should we spurn compromise among ourselves? Those men were strong and strong-willed; they demonstrated that compromise is not weakness, but in fact the strength of a democracy. We bend so that we never break.

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