Is "compromise" a dirty word?

Over at Centerfield, Rick Heller quoted Carla from Preemptive Karma. She has several "beefs" with centrism, among them being:

My biggest personal beef with "Centrism" is that it tries to push people to give up their passionate and strongly held beliefs in the name of compromise.

Rick makes an excellent point in his post that I want to expand on.

I do think that liberals need to compromise. But that does NOT mean they have to give up their beliefs. It means that in politics, one has to make deals.

I believe that democracy is about compromise. Politics and making deals have an unsavory aspect to them, especially compared to "standing up for one's principles." Everyone is entitled to their beliefs, but there can only be one set of laws, and they can't possibly accommodate all beliefs. I also believe in the law of large numbers. The average belief of all people is probably closer to the truth than the specific belief of any single person chosen at random.

Bravo Rick! This is a critical point; a foundation "belief" in my idea of centrism. I have my beliefs just like Carla or Rick of anyone else participating in this democracy, but I do not expect that my individual views should decide the laws and the direction of the country, nor even do I wish it. What I wish for is the continued peaceful operation of this great democracy. Of course I believe that my political views are correct, I would change them if I felt otherwise, but I recognize that in a nation of close to 300 million people, the only "best" policy is distilled from the thinking of many people. The ideas of a single individual, or even a small group of individuals, can never guide the country towards its ideal direction, unless they are first accepted and endorsed by the majority of citizens.

The vital first step in this process is that all participants recognize the existence of opposing viewpoints, and accept their legitimacy. The process of compromise, as Rick points out, does not require participants to give up their positions (in fact that would somewhat defeat the purpose of the exercise.) Rather it's a process by which competing positions can find a "balance point" about which they can reach agreement. This point of agreement, this "compromise position", will probably please none of the participants completely, representing no one's "ideal" solution. But national laws and policies are not directed at individuals, they concern all of us together, and our political process is designed to find a solution that is "ideal" for the collective citizenry.

When we compromise with one another in a democracy, we are not "giving up our beliefs", we only give up our hopes of dictating a solution. We are "giving in" to the democratic process, accepting a solution to which we contributed, but which includes the contribution of other citizens as well. The people who founded this democracy had experienced the politics of power, where the individuals or groups with control dictated they are policies and laws. I do not believe that the founders intended to merely substitute dictatorship of the majority for dictatorship of the monarchy. They recognized that systems without compromise inevitably lead to tyranny of one sort or another.

The centrism that I support, the "beliefs", if you will, to which I am holding, is a rejection of politics by "'ism". I recognize that political opinions will range on any issue, both left and right and often along other unrecognized dimensions as well. I neither expect nor desire that individuals give up those positions. I only hope that we will commit ourselves as a group to explore the full range of those opinions and find solutions that reflect that full range. I also expect our elected leadership to embrace their roles as representatives of the whole electorate, and resist efforts to pull government policy and law towards the extremes. Even when I happen to hold one of the more extreme opinions on an issue (and I do at times) I recognize that the best law for the country is one that the whole country can accept. I can use my weblog to express my opinions and try to bring others to my way of thinking, but to impose law on the country, even if I personally think it the "best", weakens trust in our democracy and will ultimately hurt the country.

Before I close, I'd like to address this idea of "beliefs." It would help if we began to distinguish between foundation beliefs and the more common (and hopefully more malleable) opinions and positions that are generally discussed in political conversation. We all take "positions" on issues, and are encouraged to express our political "opinions." We should be ready and willing to change these as a part of the political conversation. Many professional politicians, it sometimes seems, are careful to limit themselves to political "postures", which can be dropped and altered at the first hint of a change in the prevailing winds. True beliefs ought to be the foundation upon which one's political opinions grow and develop, and ought to change very slowly, if at all. No one, at least no one whose priorities are in order, should have beliefs about Social Security Reform or the makeup of the Supreme Court. These are "opinions"; perfectly valid and vital in a democracy, but not something to which we need to cling with white-knuckled grip. The word "beliefs", like the word "rights", gets tossed around too much and too easily.