Confessions of a Moderate Meat-Eater
Now that the eminent young litterateur Jonathan Safran Foer has published a high-profile denunciation of the carnivorous life, meat-eating is suddenly a hot topic. Should we or shouldn’t we? How can we love our dogs and still love hamburgers? Aren’t animals human, too? Will our descendants look back in horror at our history of zoological mass-murder, the way we now shudder at the depredations of Hitler, Stalin or Pol Pot?
The New York Times just printed a lengthy op-ed piece by Gary Steiner, a vegan with a zero-tolerance attitude toward anyone who consumes animal products. As Mr. Steiner admits, it takes an almost obsessively scrupulous sleuth to isolate all the products made in whole or in part from animals. (I knew about Jell-O, but who would have guessed that beer, refined sugar and even Band-Aids are culprits in our ongoing vendetta against the animal world?)
Mr. Steiner reports that some 53 billion land animals march to their doom each year to feed our gluttonous gullets. That was a shocker. If you add fish, shrimp and other sea creatures devoured for our gustatory needs and pleasures, we’re looking at a biological holocaust of unimaginable proportions.
I love animals (mosquitos, investment bankers and other parasites excepted), and yet I continue to eat meat. Granted, my conscience troubles me when I stare at a medium-rare slice of cow carcass on my plate. I eat substantially less flesh than I did in ages past: I’ve reduced my intake of mammal meat to a bare minimum, and I no longer admit veal or other baby critters to my plate. (Well, I close my eyes and eat lamb once or twice a year because I’m of Armenian heritage and lamb is our National Meat.) I’ll find it more difficult to banish bacon or ham entirely from my diet, despite the reputedly high IQs of the porcine population. And I’ll continue to gobble seafood with a relatively clear conscience. Most fish and crustaceans are carnivores, anyway; they understand the rules of the game, as much as cold-blooded sea creatures can understand anything.
As valiantly as I try to give our animal friends a break, my efforts wouldn’t please an uncompromising vegan like Mr. Steiner. He didn’t translate his tract into political terms, but he clearly has no use for moderates on the subject of meat-eating… the way most of us would have no tolerance for moderate murderers or moderate burglars.
I argue that moderate carnivores like me — those of us who have scaled back our flesh-eating propensities out of sympathy for our fellow creatures — help reduce the number of lives lost annually in the meat markets of the world. True, we’re not eliminating the problem, but neither is Mr. Steiner. He neglected to observe that humans aren’t the only consumers of meat; the planet abounds with bloodthirsty carnivores in all shapes, sizes and biological affiliations: lions, tigers, bears, poodles, hawks, owls and even woodpeckers (they prey on bugs and grubs) contribute to the carnage. Most of them devour their victims alive. Big fish gobble little fish, and no amount of vegan hectoring is going to stop them.
I admit it: meat-eating is undeniably cruel, and I sometimes wonder why it was necessary in the scheme of things. (What was our Intelligent Designer thinking?) But for better or worse, predation is nature’s way.
What does meat have to do with politics? Simply this: one can be a moderate meat-eater but not a moderate vegan. By nature, a vegan is an extremist — someone who fights natural appetites and instincts with a righteous (and often intolerant) fervor. As with extremists on the right or left, their missionary zeal is both narrow and futile. You simply can’t impose rigid controls over anything as messy as nature (especially human nature), which is a fact that the extremists have yet to learn.
Meat-eaters, on the other hand, can temper their appetites. We can eat substantially less meat than we used to, thereby sparing countless animals the indignity of the slaughterhouse. We can skew our carnivorous leanings toward relatively witless creatures like fish, crustaceans or bivalves, leaving the more sensitive cows and sheep to graze contentedly in their meadows. (Of course, if it weren’t for meat-eaters, most of those cows and sheep wouldn’t have been bred in the first place.)
The point is that moderates are naturally more supple and tolerant than extremists. Not because we detach ourselves from rock-solid principles (after all, moderate meat-eaters like me are still concerned about the mass slaughter of animals and want to reduce it). It’s just that, as moderates, we’re flexible enough to realize that we can’t remake the world in our image. All we can do tip the balance away from evil. If we can accomplish that much, we shouldn’t have to hang our heads when we order the occasional anise-encrusted tuna.
Muslim Briefs: a Maniac, a Trial, a Moderate Movement
The New Moderate couldn’t let these stories pass through the pipeline without a few words of commentary…
Dr. Nidal Hasan, the Fort Hood Maniac
Was he a radical Islamist terrorist or simply a tortured loner who finally toppled off the beam? The correct answer is both. Tortured loner, definitely: he couldn’t find a wife and he agonized about heading off to help Americans fight his fellow Muslims in the Afghan War. (As an Armenian-American, I’d probably pop an artery if the U.S. ever made war on my beleaguered tribe… so I can feel his pain.)
But was he also a terrorist? Yes again. His connection to radical clergyman Anwar al-Awlaki is more than faintly incriminating. (We’re talking about an Islamist fanatic who managed to land himself on the “most wanted” list in YEMEN.) You could call Dr. Hasan a freelance terrorist: an enterprising self-starter on a deadly mission from Allah. But we’re also looking at an unfortunate man with a fatally fevered mind. The New Moderate’s personal, nonbinding verdict: guilty but insane. But only as insane as any Muslim who has been suckered by the teachings of fanatical imams.
It’s time for more of us to acknowledge that radical Islam is nothing more or less than a homicidal cult, and that its gullible adherents need to be deprogrammed. Pronto.
Much Ado Over 9/11 Terrorist Trial
Call me a lunatic-fringe moderate, but I’m elated that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four of his accomplices are slated for an epic public trial just a stone’s throw from the site of their crimes. The Sheikh is one of foulest evildoers of our time; he masterminded not only the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, but an attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II during a trip to the Philippines. His Wikipedia article lists an astounding 29 confessions, including the initial 1993 World Trade Center truck bombing, the Bali nightclub massacre, assassination plots against presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, and the personal beheading of journalist Daniel Pearl. Quoth Sheikh Mohammed: “I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew, Daniel Pearl, in the city of Karachi, Pakistan. For those who would like to confirm, there are pictures of me on the Internet holding his head.”
So why are so many Democrats (and New Yorkers, which almost amounts to the same thing) fretting over the upcoming legal proceedings? Let the trial begin! Let the world come to know the full extent of radical Islamist evil in general, and the crimes of these five demons in particular.
The New Moderate’s personal (and once again, nonbinding) verdict: Guilty as hell for Sheikh Mohammed, guilty as accessories for the four henchmen of the apocalypse. I’m sure these five gentlemen would love nothing more than to die as glorious martyrs, so I’d love to sentence them to a lifetime of being stacked into naked pyramids and taunted by female American soldiers. But in the words of the late President Nixon, ” it would be wrong.” So let the law take its course and do what it will.
Then let the world’s Muslims do what they will. Is more terrorism a possibility? Of course, but we’ve been living with the possibility of Muslim terror for half a century now. Maybe the evils exposed at this trial will finally inflame the Silent Muslim Majority with the courage and conviction to confront their fanatical brethren and reform their religion from within. At the very least, it should open a permanent rift between the moderates and the extremists. And that’s a good thing.
Could It Be? YES! Moderate Muslims on the Web!
During my recent adventures in Web-gazing, I discovered a plucky (and desperately needed) site constructed by Islamic moderates. Laced with irreverent humor and more than a dollop of nerve, Muslims Against Sharia openly denounces “honoricide” (the horrific “honor killings” of Muslim women who have disgraced their familes by being raped, for example), includes a chart contrasting moderate Islamic beliefs with those of the fanatics, and displays a series of mischievous “awards” (my favorite: the “Mad Mullah Award” — though bigoted priests and rabbis get equal billing). There’s also a lively message board for anyone who wants to dive in.
If The New Moderate gave out awards, I’d present the first one to this brave little site. I hope and trust that Allah (and eventually the entire Islamic world) is on its side.
Take Our New Poll: Biggest Challenges Facing Moderates Today
It’s that time again: I’m curious to discover what our readers see as the main challenges for American moderates in 2009 and beyond. Find the poll in the column at far right, click on the question to open it, and add your own votes. (You can select up to three choices this time.) Then find out how you compare to your fellow moderates. I’ll let the votes collect for a month or so before I report the results to you. (But you can sneak a peek simply by reopening the poll link.)
Now for the results from our first poll: “What are the most dangerous influences in the U.S. today?”
Well, we seemed to conclude that, on the whole, the right poses more of a threat than the left. The biggest single vote-getter was “The Religious Right,” with 26% of the votes. “Big corporations” accounted for another 16%, and “Wall Street” garnered 11%. That’s a total of 53% for combined right-wing threats.
On the left, “Big Government/Big Spending” nabbed a healthy 21% of the vote (second only to the Religious Right), and the “Far Left” trailed behind with 11%. That adds up to 32% for left-wing threats.
Politically indeterminate choices like “The Internet,” “Lobbyists” and “Other” accounted for the remaining votes. Shockingly, not a single poll respondent voted for “Texting While Driving.”
The Moderate’s Utopia
We’ve arrived at last! Let me tell you about that happy land where the middle finds itself on top, where even the extremists speak softly and carry no sticks. Would a Moderate’s Utopia be a dreary bastion of complacent minds and mediocre achievements, as its opponents warn us? Would everyone just melt into a single lukewarm pot? Not in the New Moderate’s Utopia. Not if I have anything to do with it. See for yourself.
The Moderate’s Utopia.
The first thing you notice is that your world has been depolarized. Sure, we still have leftists and conservatives, blacks and whites, rich and poor, believers and infidels, elitists and populists, intellectuals and philistines, and those who disagree about whether toilet paper should be pulled over or under the roll. But they’re not going at it like cats and dogs. They’re comfortable in each other’s presence, debate their differences happily, listen with sympathy and carry no grudges.
Why? Because outspoken moderates have risen up and filled the vast opinion vacuum in the middle. That vacuum was dangerous. It meant that left-leaning and right-leaning individuals had no choice but to speak from the extremes, and to intensify their extremism as they bandied insults and invective. Everyone seemed to follow the “either/or” script: “either you’re with us or you’re against us.” It was a bunker mentality.
Now that the middle has a powerful voice, everyone is starting to see those wonderful shades of gray. (Not only gray, but intriguing variants of red, blue, purple and a whole Crayola box of other fine colors.) They’re beginning to see that disagreement isn’t necessarily cause for inflicting nasty bites. They’re even relying on moderates to mediate solutions to prickly problems like abortion, affirmative action, public healthcare, gay marriage, gun control and recreational drug use.
Moderates have their own magazines these days, and of course The New Moderate is practically required reading on the Web. (Now that I’ve ignited a fire under the silent middle, my job is essentially done; I’ve turned my creation over to moderate activists who care more about the nuts and bolts of political policy than I do.)
The Moderate Party now runs successful candidates for public office; it’s the first viable addition to the American two-party system since before the Civil War. Moderate-leaning Democrats and Republicans don’t have to feel like outcasts within their own parties; they simply defect to the middle. Now the Democrats and Republicans can cater to their own extremist bases instead of scrambling for moderate votes. We’ve made honest parties out of them.
Those skeptics who expected us to be safe, sober, middle-of-the-road compromisers often find themselves surprised by the intensity of our beliefs. For example, we moderates spearheaded the successful drive to criminalize the flow of money from lobbyists to Congressmen. This cause wasn’t especially popular with either lobbyists or their elected puppets, and it was definitely a radical departure from the status quo, but Moderate Party operatives helped push the bill through the House and Senate. Now our elected representatives are actually obligated to represent the people who elected them. What a concept. As we “new moderates” like to proclaim, “extremism in the cause of moderation is no vice.”
Outside the political sphere, life is good for most of us. We’re more neighborly to our neighbors, because we no longer identify exclusively with the various special-interest “communities” that once polarized our society. Our community is where we live; nothing more or less. We make friends with people older and younger, richer and poorer, blacker and whiter, more liberal and conservative, smarter and dumber than ourselves. We’re like a good baseball club: individual players striving for individual excellence but also playing their hearts out for the team.
At work, talent and dedication are amply rewarded. CEO compensation packages no longer make a mockery of the average worker’s efforts, because average workers now sit on the boards and shape company policy. In the financial arena, the Crash of 2008 has thoroughly discredited naked greed as an investment strategy; as in the distant past, investors once again buy shares of a company because they like its prospects and want to see it succeed.
The Second Gilded Age is history, and bright young college graduates now aspire to be doctors and scientists instead of investment bankers. (It finally dawned on the big banks that employees whose whims nearly toppled the entire Western economy don’t really merit $20,000,000 bonuses. Today they earn approximately as much as tax accountants.) Liberal yuppies no longer have to feel guilty about their extravagant lifestyles, because their lifestyles are no longer so extravagant. Families can once again afford a night out at the movies or the ballpark, because top stars have stopped commanding $20,ooo,000 salaries. (Decent folks that they are, they’re embarrassed to have been earning so much more than their fans.)
We’re not a “nanny state” (after all, our government trusts grown-ups to make grown-up choices). But everyone, at long last, has access to affordable health insurance, and nobody has to live in fear of being bankrupted by illness. Medical costs have fallen sharply because doctors no longer have to live in fear of being bankrupted by malpractice lawsuits. (Funny, isn’t it, how the volume of lawsuits has dwindled in a more moderate, less vituperative society.)
Our best colleges and universities are once again centers of learning and inspired mirth; they’ve been liberated from the stern rule of the leftist ideologues who once made life difficult for dissenters. Sure, the ideologues are still around (where else would they find employment?), but students and faculty — even the moderates and conservatives who had been forced to slink around in the shadows — are free to express their own opinions now without fear of retribution. The various liberal arts departments are no longer propaganda mills catering to leftist prejudices. Because they promote pure learning and scholarship, their courses are once again overflowing with inquisitive students who want to expand their minds.
Under the wise and beneficent rule of the moderates, we no longer worship surly, degenerate rock stars, rappers and talk-show hosts. We’ve tired of their unfriendliness. But it’s not the 1950s, either. Since moderates don’t believe in coercion, genuine nonconformity is flourishing. Nobody is under any obligation to be cool or edgy in the same relentlessly snarky manner. Nobody is obligated to be extroverted, energetic, fit, upbeat or productive, either. Nobody is even obligated to be a moderate.
Well, some of us moderates believe in traditional virtues like character, kindness and decency, love of history and good-humored tolerance. We don’t impose our values on anyone, but we’re glad to see them making a comeback in the aftermath of the culture wars. For example, personal essayists are big now; readers appreciate their wisdom and whimsy. Our poets now write eloquent, memorable verse that actually makes sense to the average reader of English. Some of it even rhymes. Best of all, people find it inspiring, and they’ve once again started committing it to memory. All the better to impress their dates.
Should moderates aspire to such a perfect society or just let it go where it will? Is my utopia your utopia? Even it it’s not, you have to admit it’s a start.
The Libertarian’s Utopia
Onward, now, to the third of our ideological dream-worlds. (We’ve already visited The Leftist’s Utopia and The Conservative’s Utopia.) Libertarians are fond of liberty, of course, but they’re even fonder of celebrating their own superiority to the huddled masses. Let’s see what their Utopia would look like (with a little poetic license for satirical exaggeration at their expense)…
The Libertarian’s Utopia.
Let’s suppose we took the notion of individual liberty to its reasonable limit. Everyone in this experimental society is free to adopt healthy habits or indulge potentially fatal ones, free to thrive or stumble, free to succeed mightily or fail miserably. In fact, there seems to be hardly any middle ground. It’s strictly a winner-take-all world now, because the libertarians are in charge.
The Libertarian’s Utopia imposes no limits on the upside and provides no safety nets on the downside: you create your own fortune, for good or ill. You’ll have a head start on success if you’re smart, energetic, driven, practical, well-connected and more than a little crafty. But you’ll be in the minority — a minuscule minority — and you like it that way.
You relish your success, all the more because so many of your countrymen are hopelessly poor and clueless. You almost consider them a separate and inferior species, those lumpy Darwinian rejects. It didn’t take a village to help you rise and prosper; you did it all by yourself. (Well, of course you had dozens of those lumpy Darwinian rejects supporting your efforts at coolie wages… but the vision was YOURS and yours alone; they just did the actual work.)
In the Libertarian’s Utopia, the winners enjoy having more choices than the losers. They fear no deity, government or manmade law. They’re free to carouse and couple at will, without those silly antiquated moral restrictions on lust. They’re free to take recreational drugs without fear of incarceration. They’re free to be obnoxious to their inferiors without fear of recrimination. They enjoy owning things: real estate, trendy art, Internet domains, exotic pets, human slaves.
They especially enjoy their freedom from the need to replicate themselves. After all, raising children is absurdly labor-intensive and a tiresome imposition on personal liberty. Those few libertarians who feel an overwhelming need to reproduce simply pay a surrogate mother to deliver the goods and a nanny to manage them.
Because they hesitate to procreate, libertarians are an even more minuscule minority than their top-of-the-pyramid status would indicate. To protect themselves from the needy and envious rabble, they live in gated enclaves and socialize exclusively with their peers. They enjoy frequent mate-swapping, hoard prestigious wines in their thermostatically controlled cellars, dress unconventionally but expensively, and frequently own vacation villas in Third World outposts like Costa Rica and Michigan. (All the better to lord it over the locals.) Devout libertarians love to rack up success points as proof of their favored genes.
Ayn Rand is the author of choice; most libertarians can quote chapter and verse. The more mischievous among them prefer H. L. Mencken; those too lazy to read gravitate toward Bill Maher, who has his own cable channel (all Maher, all the time). If any of them could penetrate the writings of Nietzsche, they’d be quoting him, too. After all, the superman is their deity. Unfettered, unabashed free-market capitalism is their one true religion and the unbridled ego is their ticket to salvation.
But here’s the rub: these self-styled mavericks share a surprisingly dogmatic body of beliefs. Minimal government. Capitalism as the means to power. Unlimited self-fulfillment for the superior. Inevitable floundering for the “sheep.”
But don’t ever tell those libertarians that their ideas might be elitist or, worse yet, unoriginal. Safe inside their guarded communities, immune from fears of a watchful and wrathful God, secure in their position atop the squirming masses of humanity, they’re proud embodiments of the Darwinian Dream: the most absurdly successful representatives of the most absurdly successful species ever to inhabit the planet Earth. They’re the fit, the elect, the fortunate, the saved. At least until the peasants find a way to spill through the gates.
The Conservative’s Utopia
Come with me now, while we step into the right-wing version of earthly paradise. The elite right and the populist right will dream slightly different dreams, naturally, but their Utopia is still unmistakable. As with The Leftist’s Utopia, you’ll encounter some deliberate exaggerations here for the sake of our amusement.
The Conservative’s Utopia.
Everyone is white, except for those amiable minority folk who smile broadly and help with the chores. Everyone is Christian, except for those funny, kind-hearted Jews who teach your children, measure you for a suit or own the corner drugstore. There are no Muslims. Everyone believes in God, reads the Bible and worships together on the Sabbath. All movies are G-rated and the museums actually feature pretty art. Mom stays home with her 2.4 kids, nobody is gay and everyone is happy.
Children grow up respecting their elders, using clean language and living clean lives, dressing neatly, drinking nothing stronger than Cherry Coke and avoiding sex until marriage. They learn optimism and discipline at an early age, all the better to equip them for the competititve challenges of our glorious free-enterprise system.
Everyone here has the opportunity to succeed handsomely through education and hard work. Granted, some schools are a lot more prestigious than others… and the prestigious ones generally cost a lot more. And granted, some careers pay a few hundred times more than others even though they’re not especially difficult or honorable. But success in one’s chosen field is all that matters. If you have to exploit underpaid employees and beat down the competition to succeed, well… that’s the American way.
America is a melting pot, of course: the hardworking immigrants who arrive on these shores quickly learn English and adopt American customs. Eventually they’re indistinguishable from the “real” Americans who first settled this great land (we mean the Pilgrims, not the Indians). All of them, regardless of race, creed or football team preference, can aspire to the American Dream: success, wealth and a surplus of material possessions.
America! Golden land of opportunity! The sight of marching veterans and the stirring sound of a Sousa march still bring tears to the starry eyes of patriots who watch the local Fourth of July parade on Main Street. America, always victorious in war and generous in peace, is the envy of the world: a land of boundless wealth, freedom and potential, a democratic republic that has always honored the egalitarian ideals of its Founding Fathers. In short, everyone here feels fortunate to be living in the greatest nation ever designed by the hand of man. Yep, we’re better than France.
The Leftist’s Utopia
At some point during our bumpy journeys along the road of life, most of us have daydreamed about an ideal world. What would yours look like? I have a vague idea what sort of world our friends on the left might conjure up in their feverishly dogmatic imaginations. Here’s my best guess, with apologies in advance for any mischievous exaggerations on my part…
The Leftist’s Utopia
Thirty-foot high public posters greet you at every turn: “Diversity Is Unity”… “Equality for All, Except Conservative White Christian Males”… and of couse, that old standard, “No Smoking. Anywhere.”
Rahm Emanuel, an uncompromising lefty unlike his more nuanced predecessor, is now president of the United States. As a point of fact, there are no more states in the United States. The Union is now organized by group affinity: you belong to the Black, Latino, Environmentalist, Gay/Transgendered, Feminist, Artistic or Reactionary communities, each with its own governor and representatives. (When representatives are apportioned, each Reactionary counts as 2/5 of a person. Reactionaries over 50 are counted as 1/5 of a person.)
Education includes mandatory racial and gender sensitivity training, self-esteem and entitlement workshops, special-interest identity group studies and at least two semesters of world herstory. University students can take a year abroad in the service of oppressed indigenous peoples or as liaisons for the Angelina Jolie Third World Adoption Agency.
After graduation, the more enterprising young people take up careers as community organizers or corporate communitarians. (It was just a short hop from the defunct capitalist corporate system to the new communitarian system of production; as before, the interests of the individual are subordinated to those of the “team.”) The employees now own shares of their companies, in keeping with the new ideology of equality, but of course some employees are more equal than others. Incomes have been capped so that nobody earns more than five times as much as anybody else — with a special exemption for politically active, non-reactionary media celebrities like Angelina Jolie.
The great stone faces of Mt. Rushmore have been demolished. (“Too noninclusive of minorities, women and the LGBT community, as well as a cultural affront to the Native Americans who revered it as a holy place.”) Washington and Jefferson have been demoted from the pantheon of heroes (“self-entitled aristocrats and owners of enslaved Africans”), as have Theodore Roosevelt (“a warmongering imperialist and systematic proponent of white Christian hegemony”) and Abraham Lincoln (“a covert racist who used emancipation to oppress people of color for another 100 years”).
The Scandinavian “cradle to grave” welfare system has been universally adopted: daycare, schools, universities, healthcare, fitness clubs, subscriptions to Mother Jones, and nursing homes are all “free” (i.e., funded by tax rates of 75%). At least everyone is entitled to a month of paid vacation, including a week for Winter Solstice. (Christmas was abolished for contributing to the persistence of reactionary and divisive comfort mythologies as well as obsessive bourgeois consumerism.”)
Nobody is especially rich or poor, although differences in individual skill and initiative still contribute to an embarrassing gap between achievers and nonachievers. The remedy: habitual achievers are required to take jobs as manual laborers and collective farm workers at least four months out of the year. (Politically active media celebrities like Angelina Jolie are exempt from this requirement.) A recent survey indicated that 100% of chronic achievers were “happy” with the new arrangement.
Coming soon: The Conservative’s Utopia
Moderate, Centrist, Middle-of-the-Road: What’s in a Name?
Yesterday, as I was exploring the website of a fellow moderate (Stephen Erickson, executive director of the newly launched CenterMovement.org) who had the good grace to link with me, I noticed that he prefers to be known as a centrist. Mr. Erickson writes:
By “center” we don’t necessarily mean “moderate.” Yes, we hope to maintain a moderate tone and reasoned approach to politics and public policy. And yes, we will often find ourselves between the right and the left on the political spectrum, and we will look for common ground. But in the end political movements are not built on lukewarm positions. “We demand everything the extremists do, only less of it!” isn’t much of a rallying cry.
Nor is moderation necessarily where we are philosophically. Instead of looking for compromises in every scrap of legislation churning its way through Congress, we seek out the broad center of the American political tradition. We are not afraid of radical structural change when such change promises to restore the spirit of American democracy. When it comes to the currently dysfunctional areas of healthcare, education, and the election system, for examples, we think drastic change is required. Moderate temperament need not lead to timid measures.
Well said, especially the last line. This Mr. Erickson is my kind of moderate: one who isn’t afraid to take radical positions in defense of the common good. Because, as he knows, sometimes compromise isn’t enough. Sometimes you need to break a bone to reset it properly. We denizens of the political center sometimes need to take radical positions (like my own immoderate tirades against Wall Street and lobbyists) if we want to offset the power and interests of the extremists who dominate the political debate.
But what do we call ourselves: moderates or centrists? Does it matter? I’ve always used the labels interchangeably, so the distinction piqued my interest. Wikipedia defines “centrist” in these terms:
In politics, centrism is the ideal or the practice of promoting moderate policies which lie between different political extremes.
So, according to the sages at Wikipedia, a centrist would be someone who espouses moderate ideas. Does that help? You could just as easily add that a moderate is someone who espouses centrist ideas. And there we are, back at square one.
I’m inclined to think that the distinction between “centrist” and “moderate” boils down to the whiff of nuance surrounding both words. “Centrist” comes across as more strictly political and crisply defined than “moderate.” A centrist would wear a suit, live in Washington and organize grassroots campaigns to prevail over the extremists.
“Moderate” comes closer to defining an attitude, a philosophy — even a way of life — than describing an organized political party. It’s a gentler and more contemplative word, which explains the tendency of so many commentators to dismiss moderates (unfairly, of course) as spineless compromisers.
I’m sticking to my guns as a moderate, though I wholeheartedly support the centrists. I don’t think any reasonable reader of The New Moderate could call me timid. (They might call me a lot of other things, and that’s fine.)
As I always like to point out (in fact, I think I did in my previous post), a moderate can become a revolutionary if pushed hard enough. I like to think I’m that kind of moderate. I hope you are, too. A radical moderate, not a middle-of-the-road moderate. We aim to stir the pot, battle the extremists and promote “the greatest good for the greatest number.” Maybe we should call ourselves “majoritarians.” What do you think?
Regardless of what we call ourselves, my role here is to generate passion for our cause. When my job is done, the party organizers can take over and I’ll retire happily to my library. I still need to finish Moby-Dick, read Don Quixote and raise my son before I’m whisked away to the compost heap.
The New Moderate Q&A
Q. What on earth possessed you to start a blog for moderates, anyway?
A. Nature abhors a vacuum, and so do I. The vast mid-range of the political spectrum lacked a galvanizing voice, so I decided to clear my throat and start galvanizing.
Q. But there are already numerous moderate blogs out there for the reading. Why yours?
A. Can you name any of them off the top of your head? Didn’t think so. Our mission (and I’ve chosen to accept it) is to light a fire under the moderate majority — at least the minority of moderates who actually take an interest in public affairs and ideas. The New Moderate wants them to lose their inhibitions and make noise; otherwise the political debate in the U.S. will continue to be controlled by ideologues on the right and the left.
Q. Don’t the extremists contribute to the vital push-and-pull of ideas in a free society?
A. Yes. They’re responsible for quite a lot of pushing and pulling.
Q. You don’t want to silence them, do you?
A. No, and I couldn’t even if I wanted to. I just don’t believe that two erroneous ideas in opposition will necessarily lead to a good idea. A donklephant (with apologies to Donklephant.com) is still a grotesque creature. Believe it or not, moderate ideas don’t always take the form of a compromise.
Q. An example, please?
A. Take lobbying, a dubious institution favored by lefties and righties alike. Both camps use lobbying to push their one-sided agendas, generally by stealth and thinly veiled bribery. A thinking moderate would conclude that lobbyists are hazardous to our public health, and would denounce them in no uncertain terms. A radical moderate would push to criminalize any flow of money from lobbyists to representatives.
Q. Sounds pretty vehement. Are you sure you’re a moderate?
A. Absolutely. I’m just not your traditional, excessively polite, garden-variety, namby-pamby moderate. That’s why I call my creation The NEW Moderate. I’d like to be known as a moderate firebrand.
Q. Moderate firebrand? Isn’t that sort of an oxymoron?
A. Not anymore. The New Moderate intends to kick butt — righteously, of course. I’d like to make it safe for moderates to espouse radical ideas when radical ideas are justified. After all, moderates can be revolutionaries, and vice versa. Look at George Washington and Ben Franklin, to name just a few moderate revolutionaries.
Q. But doesn’t a radical stance on any issue automatically make you a leftist?
A. No, that’s the big misconception about us: that moderates are locked into bland, middle-of-the-road solutions… that we can’t demand change and still be moderates. A true moderate believes in balance for the good of society: the greatest good for the greatest number. It disturbs us (and it should) when special-interest groups upset that balance to remake society in their own image. Whether the great scale is tipped toward the insatiable plutocrats of Wall Street or “progressives” who ban conservatives from campus, we moderates want to tip it back toward the center. Sometimes this act requires a lot of forceful tipping.
Q. But wouldn’t it be pretty boring if everyone were a sensible moderate?
A. It probably would, and I’d be the first to admit it. But I don’t expect everyone to be a moderate. I wouldn’t even want everyone to be a moderate. (We need extremist ideas for comic relief, if nothing else.) Believe it or not, I actually enjoy the push-and-pull of conflicting ideas. But politics is like a see-saw. If one side carries too much weight, the see-saw will thump to the ground. We need a strong moderate presence to keep the see-saw in motion.
Q. Does that mean you have to sit in the middle of the see-saw, shifting your balance when one side weighs it down?
A. You’ve got it. And the tricky part is that we have several see-saws going at once: for example, right now the economic see-saw has been tilting toward the right while the cultural see-saw tilts toward the left. That keeps us pretty busy, and it’s why we need a strong middle now more than ever.
Q. How’s your traffic by the way?
A. Don’t ask.
Q. Too late; we already did.
A. All right, since you asked: fairly dismal, but that’s to be expected for a moderate blog, and a relatively new one at that. Most moderates have a tendency toward apathy, but we aim to change all that. The recent flurry of comments has been encouraging, at least. We’re building an audience, one moderate at a time.
Q. Good luck.
A. Thanks. I’ll need it. So will the U.S. if moderate voices don’t prevail.
When Do the Peasants Have Permission to Revolt?
This past week, as the Dow briefly topped 10,000, you could hear a few feeble cheers emanating from America’s shell-shocked investors. The experts were less optimistic.
“Not out of the woods.” “Bubble-like atmosphere.” “No organic economic growth.” And, as more than one jaded observer pointed out, the Dow first crossed the 10,000 barrier back in 1999. You do the math: ten years, zero growth. In fact, given the decline of the dollar since 1999, we’re looking at negative growth.
As for the NASDAQ, don’t ask. In its glory days before the dotcom bubble popped back in March 2000, the tech-heavy index topped out at 5132. Today, nearly a decade later, the NASDAQ struggles to hold its battered noggin above the 2000 mark. Technology might represent the future, but apparently it makes a lousy long-term investment.
In short, the new millennium has been a bust for the average investor. All those starry visions of endlessly expanding net worth and plush retirements have gone dark. We should have known better than to expect that the system would work for us.
The Great Recession has been even deadlier for folks who can’t afford stocks. The U.S. economy continues to shed jobs at the rate of a quarter of a million a month, and the official unemployment rate is flirting with ten percent. That figure doesn’t even account for the legions of workers who have simply dropped off the map: the downsized, outplaced, terminally frazzled souls who have given up on the business establishment and prefer to live by their wits. They peddle their possessions on eBay, await bankruptcy and watch in disbelief as the authorities grab the keys to their homes.
But you might be happy to know that not everyone is losing out. Goldman Sachs, home to some of Wall Street’s savviest and most sinister money manipulators (including CEO & Master of the Universe Lloyd Blankfein, who currently dwells in a $27,000,000 apartment overlooking Central Park), has hocus-pocused its way to record quarterly earnings — and the firm will be handing out record bonuses, of course — just a year after the financial collapse its employees helped orchestrate. A.I.G., now 90% owned by the American people, has repeatedly expressed a need to enrich its “financial products” traders with staggering bonuses for fear that they’ll jump ship otherwise. (I say let them jump, and let the waters be full of sharks.) Meanwhile, Andrew Hall, a top energy trader for Citigroup and proud owner of a thousand-year-old castle in Germany, is still looking forward to his annual $100,000,000 Christmas bonus.
Clearly $100,000,000 is a lot of pocket change, but numbers in that exalted range can appear abstract and vague. Let me attempt to put $100,000,000 into real terms for you.
Let’s say that Joe Average earns $50,000 a year toiling at his day job. It’s not a terrible salary or an especially generous one; it’s about average. Just how long would Joe have to work if he aspired to Andrew Hall’s $100,000,000 single-year earnings?
Well, he’d have reported to his job sometime around 9 A.D. He could have hired a youthful Jesus to mow his lawn on weekends. A few centuries later, he might have chatted with Attila the Hun at a local bar. Midway through his efforts, he’d have been taking his lunch break as Vikings pillaged the coastal towns of Northern Europe. Later in his career, he might have seen Joan of Arc go up in smoke and attended Shakespeare’s first play. After helping George Washington cross the Delaware, he’d have only another paltry 233 years to go before he reached the $100,000,000 mark.
Of course, Andrew Hall did it in a year… and he did it not by producing things, but simply by betting on things. We can thank him for driving up the price of gasoline to $4 a gallon in 2008, and now we’re expected to reward him with a pay package that would take Joe Average two thousand years to earn.
The more conventional moderates would undoubtedly scold me for stirring up populist resentments. What am I, some kind of militant socialist? No, I’m a diehard moderate.
As a moderate, I believe in balance. And wherever I see an imbalance, my first instinct is to correct it. When leftist academics continually rant about the destructive influence of White European Males (dead or alive), I’m inclined to see the imbalance and oppose it. Ditto when it comes to lobbyists who use our elected representatives to push their agendas at the expense of the people’s interests. And when I see a tiny, self-appointed economic elite “game” the system so that only the elite can prosper, I have to cry “TILT!”
An outrageous sense of entitlement has crept into American culture, rivaling the excesses of the Gilded Age and even Bourbon France. How much longer can the peasants (and that covers pretty much all of us who don’t work on Wall Street or in Congress) stand to watch a corrupt elite prosper at their expense? How long do we tolerate a rigged game before we overturn the board and let the pieces go flying?
It’s starting to look like 1789 all over again, but this time we shouldn’t need to storm the Bastille or lop off any aristocratic heads in the aftermath. We don’t even need to redistribute the wealth by force, though the wayward thought has flitted across my mind more than once.
We simply need to pursue a radical moderate course: where the balance has tipped, tip it back to the center. Reform Wall Street so that it no longer resembles a mad gambling casino; we need to be investing in companies, not lusting after short-term capital gains. Outlaw short-selling and other nefarious financial practices. Reform Congress so that it becomes illegal for money to flow from lobbyists to representatives. Expand Congressional terms to six years or more, so that our representatives aren’t constantly in campaign mode, hungering for money. Outlaw campaign advertising and other costly expenditures so you don’t need a fortune or a political machine to propel you to office.
And yes, establish a moderate political party to check the excesses of the right and left… and to give moderate Republicans and Democrats a place to call home.
Thinking moderates need to start acting. If we moderates ever unified and found our voice, we’d have the power to restore some needed balance between the elites and the rest of society. It’s a big “if,” given our lamentable tendency toward apathy and detachment. But we have to start now.
As much as I revile those investment bankers for their evil ways, I really don’t want to see their heads rolling in the streets.
THE NEW MODERATE 