The Radical Centrist

Two smart people talking right past one another.

A couple of Christian Republicans take aim at one another and, despite their great proximity, manage to entirely miss.

Actually, I exaggerate, they each said what they wanted to say and made good points, but they are not really addressing one another. It starts with an OpEd from former Senator and current Episcopal priest John Danforth in the New York Times. This unfortunately times column, coming on the day that Terri Schiavo succumbs to dehydration, registers the Rev. Danforth's frustration at the way his political party has been dominated lately by what he describes as "an agenda of positions common to conservative Christians."

Danforth sees positions recently adopted by the party as evidence of an unhealthy level of control from a smaller element within the party. From the Schiavo case...

High-profile Republican efforts to prolong the life of Ms. Schiavo, including departures from Republican principles like approving Congressional involvement in private decisions and empowering a federal court to overrule a state court, can rightfully be interpreted as yielding to the pressure of religious power blocs.

...to the Stem Cells controversy.

It is not evident to many of us that cells in a petri dish are equivalent to identifiable people suffering from terrible diseases. I am and have always been pro-life. But the only explanation for legislators comparing cells in a petri dish to babies in the womb is the extension of religious doctrine into statutory law.

It's no secret that I disagree with my fellow Episcopalian over the Schiavo situation, and while I tend to agree with his political position on stem cells, I'm less sure that it can really be called a "religious doctrine." There are people of a common religious believe who also have adopted a particular political position, but I find no mention of stem cells in the bible and don't see where resistance to stem cell research promulgation of a particular religion. I think Danforth is over-reacting, or perhaps ascribing his reaction to the wrong things. He's frustrated with the positions his party is taking and he's frustrated with the way these positions are characterized as Christian. I sympathized with him there. I don't agree with all of these positions, and I am very much offended by the way some Christians portray our faith and attempt to drag it into a political discussion. As I said earlier, Stem Cell research is not a matter of Christian doctrine, and I too react angrily when some presume to tell us how Christ would vote on an issue. It is both politically offensive in a democracy and theologically offensive to many Christians. Even so, the real problem is not the policy position, which is their right to endorse. but in the attempt to attach it to Christian faith.

As Danforth says, conservative Christians have as much right to participate in politics as any citizen and their positions will naturally be influenced by the religion and moral sense. As moderates we can disagree with the parties positions but there is nothing illegitimate in it, that's politics. Of course, the religious conservatives are similarly bound to respect the legitimacy of opposing views, including differences within the party. This is really the more deserved knock against the religious conservatives, they have tended, as a group, to behave and speak in a fractious and divisive way that will hurt the party. An excellent example has appeared right on cue in the response to Danforth from Hugh Hewitt.

Hewitt, himself a conservative Catholic, I believe, responded with a column in the Daily Standard titled, Hating the "Religious Right". The title itself is the best place to start. I can find nothing in Danforth's OpEd about hatred of anybody, including the "religious right" (a term Danforth does not use). Danforth is very much both a Republican and a Christian, but he is also a moderate or centrist on both the religious and political spectrum. As Hewitt correctly points out, Danforth disagrees with some of the policy directions the party is taking and airs his complaints. In the same sentence, however, he extenders his point too far.

So Danforth's essay is really a poorly-camouflaged complaint that his positions on stem-cell research, gay marriage, and Terri Schiavo are not the positions of the Republican party. It is fair for him to try and persuade people to endorse his positions but it is wrong and demagogic to attempt to question the right of people of faith to participate in politics.

He goes on to associate Danforth with Maureen Dowd and Paul Krugman and asserts that Danforth's objective is to "encourage the Republican party to reject the efforts of religious people to influence the party's agenda." A strange thing for an ordained priest to do, don't you think?

There are people who hate the religious right. There are even people who hate the religious anything. Danforth is neither. Centrists complain that the folks out on the political wings can't tell the difference between friend and foe, attacking those that disagree only a bit with those that genuinely hate them. This is a dangerous way to behave in a political party, and it is the real "problem" with the conservative Christians who certainly do have an increased influence on the party these days. They have earned an increased influence, they may have even earned the right to be the dominant influence, but they have not earned the right to make the party entirely theirs. We need to share the "tent" and find a way to accommodate our differences and perhaps even work past them. Both Danforth and Hewitt are excellent resources for the party, as it tries to adjust to the new balance. Both are perfect examples of religious people who are deeply involved in politics, but neither could be described as "fundamentalists". They both need to calm themselves and calm their language. Different types of Republicans and different types of Christians are either going to learn to work together and respect one another, or we are going to turn our government over to those who genuinely hate us both.

Update: Hugh has more to say in his blog.

The "Genius of the People"

That term was a popular one among the framers of the Constitution of the United States (and others of that time.) It shows up in the Federalist Papers and in the minutes of the constitutional convention. Usually they were referring to what we might now call, "public opinion", but at times the idea expressed is a richer one, implying that the people as a whole have a peculiar capacity for knowing what's best for them, a shocking suggestion at the time.

The common thinking has always held that people become mindless and foolish in numbers. A very famous early work of economic theory is titled Extraordinary Popular Delusions And The Madness Of Crowds (Charles MacKay, 1841) convincingly made the case that there is madness in the mob. Much more recently, James Surowiecki pointed out that the "madness of crowds" is far from the rule. In his book, "The Wisdom of Crowds", Surowiecki demonstrates that under the right conditions many people are much smarter than any individual in the group, and that many important social institutions have long depended on this phenomenon.

In fact, he does more than that. The crowd, he tells us, is smarter than a small group of experts, or any elite, no matter how brilliant they may be. This is not how we think. We turn to elites whenever we can find them, and resort to more democratic methods of decision making out of a sense of fairness, rather than "rightness." It turns out, if the evidence Surowiecki presents is correct, that crowds have a strange capacity to cancel out error and converge on a best-case solution that would evade an individual or small panel. The conditions need to be carefully managed, however. The "herd madness" that MacKay described is a real phenomenon that is well documented. It too requires a particular set of circumstances. The key is the regulation of feedback into the group.

I won't try to recap Surowiecki's entire thesis. The important point is that groups of observers, making independent assessments, are very accurate in aggregate. This finding is important to me for the support it lends to my thinking about centrism. As I have described earlier, I don't define centrism as being moderate or in the middle in each issue. To me the key is a thriving democracy in which the full range of opinion is captured, the goal being to find the "center of gravity" of the electorate, the aggregate genius of the people. Apparently my faith in the intelligence of the people in total was well placed. As individuals we can be quite foolish, but as a large body we will center around the best solution. That's the key to my theory of centrism, "finding the center".

In truth, Surowiecki's findings are a stronger statement that I would have made, or than I believe is required. In a political context, "accuracy", or finding the best solution is not really the goal. The problem is defining a "best solution" in a public policy context. Who's to say what the objectives of our society should be? The highest standard of living? The longest life span? The most education? There would be advocates for each and some who would accept none of those. The only way do define it, the only moral way to determine our direction, is to let the people choose themselves. In the operation of a Democracy we are determining the societies goals, and priorities as well as the specific plans. Indeed the most important role for the voters is to set those priorities and high-level goals; we often leave the details to a small elite group of experts (in the Executive Branch).

On any one decision, many pundits and experts will announce that the people are making a great "mistake", but that is one of the more important rights the people retain, the right to make their own mistakes. Even if they come to regret their decision later, the people have a right to their decisions. When the question is "what to the people want?" no group of smart guys and policy wonks can do better. The People, in the maximum aggregate, are the best judge of their own interests. Anything that interferes with the fullest function of the democracy distorts the result and makes things worse. You can pick this argument apart on a case by case basis but I believe that over the long run the honest democracy will come out ahead; well ahead in fact. That's why I like a government that finds the center and reflects the full range of opinion in its thinking and governing.

Surowiecki is convinced that large groups can be "wiser" on the more objective questions as well, which is even better from my point of view. In my lifetime most governments seem work from a point out to either side of the general public center. Rather than a destabilizing mob the population has always been a moderating influence on the government. While chasing polls is a bad habit, a government that reflects the genius of the people and the tenor of the times is likely to give the people the best government they could ask for. But this is supposed to be a review of Surowiecki's fine book; do find a copy<\a> and learn to trust the wisdom of the people.

Geo or "Neo"-Greening

I normally would write about environmental issues over at Birds Eye View, but this seems like a good place to discuss the political alignment of environmental issues. The impetus is this column from Thomas Friedman on what he calls "Geo-Greening", a marriage of geopolitics and environmental thinking. I don't quite agree that the administrations focus on Social Security is a misplaced priority, but I am in full agreement that the Bush team has completely missed the boat on energy and environmental policy. Let's first take a look at Friedman's idea.

By doing nothing to lower U.S. oil consumption, we are financing both sides in the war on terrorism and strengthening the worst governments in the world. That is, we are financing the U.S. military with our tax dollars and we are financing the jihadists - and the Saudi, Sudanese and Iranian mosques and charities that support them - through our gasoline purchases. The oil boom is also entrenching the autocrats in Russia and Venezuela, which is becoming Castro's Cuba with oil. By doing nothing to reduce U.S. oil consumption we are also setting up a global competition with China for energy resources, including right on our doorstep in Canada and Venezuela. Don't kid yourself: China's foreign policy today is very simple - holding on to Taiwan and looking for oil.

Much like our seemingly insatiable demand for illegal drugs, America's thirst for oil is the root source of much trouble, and will be even more so in the coming decades. I'm not convinced that this country cannot change its ways without terrible disruption. Sooner or later we'll be forced to get our act together, and I predict we'll be surprised at how easily we will accomplish it. There are some folks out there who feel that the efficient and sustainable society will be achieved by moving aggressively forward into a future of new technologies. Hybrid automobiles are just the first step. The "Neo-Green" movement, if it can be described as a "movement" at this stage, has a different political mix than the old-line environmental efforts. Visualize fewer Birkenstocks and more cool tech. One of the better sites to check out is World Changing, which collects a lot of the news in this area.

In this essay from last week, Alan AtKisson reveals his vision for a new environmentalism, and this story comments on the Christian groups that are voicing environmental concerns. At some point soon we'll read the same of business groups. One nice benefit of the new sustainable vision is that it often cheaper by virtue of being highly efficient. New industries are going to bloom, and the smart entrepreneurs will be on board.

Here's a tidbit, a story that popped up on World Changing about a novel approach to finding a fusion energy source. "Sonofusion" is a long-shot horse that would return a phenomenal payoff it is comes through a winner, but there is a long way to go. As the author, Jamais Cascio, observes...

what this discovery does do right now is provide us with a friendly reminder that we can't assume that all the tools we'll have for fighting global problems have already been invented. New discoveries, new technological or social innovations add to our response capabilities. While we certainly shouldn't assume that a deus ex machina is going to save us all, neither should we despair that our current abilities are insufficient for the task at hand.

One final treat. The folks who are thinking about 21st Century economics and 21st Century Environmentalism are also thinking about 21st Century politics. This essay by Jon Lebkowsky from last month considers the "new technology-mediated politics" and where it goes from here. As bloggers and blog readers, you're a part of it.

Hewitt on the Judiciary

I've been away from this blog for a bit while I ranted on the Schiavo tragedy over at Birds Eye View. As this is my political megaphone I'm posting about the political implications of the Schiavo case over here.

Hugh Hewitt has been covering the Schiavo story daily. His column this week at The Daily Standard addresses the performance of the Judiciary this past week. Hugh (a legal professor) is not pleased.

But people do need to focus on an unintended consequence of the weekend legislation: the illumination--again--of the contempt of the federal courts for their coordinate branches, and the contempt of the left for people of faith.

Hewitt is dismayed by the disregard for the clear intention of the Congress. This is an old complaint; judges will either ignore the evident will of the people expressed though their elected representatives or take action to make law that was never requested or endorsed by the people. This is a significant issue in many states. In California, a recent court decision on gay marriage has upset many. An emailer to Hewitt puts it very nicely...

We are no longer a nation of laws. We are a nation of lawyers. It doesn't matter how carefully we frame a law. It doesn't matter what sort of initiative the voters pass. The elite judges do whatever they want. . . .

Lest you think I'm some sort of ignorant red-neck, I have a Ph.D. in History from the University of California. I am deeply troubled by the rise of the rogue courts. Unless there is radical change--revolutionary change--we are doomed.

A part of me want to see the Senate Republicans take steps to block filibusters of judicial nominees and get some judges up there who know how to do the job, but another part of me wonders if we can ever know how a judge is going to behave once seated. In California we can just amend the constitution that created the courts, we've done it hundreds of times before, but amendments to the federal constitution are much more difficult to pass (and thank goodness for that!) Will it come to that? Do we need to explore the power of Congress and the Federal courts to protect the civil rights of an individual who has been mistreated by state court? Not being trained in the law, I can't do much more than ask. I do know, as Hewitt's correspondent does, that what we have is badly broken.

The CA Senate does the right thing, now we wait for the Assembly

The California Senate approved the nomination of Bruce McPherson, a former member of that body, to replace Kevin Shelley as Secretary of State. There was no real debate nor should there have been any. McPherson is about as centrist as they come. He's a Republican from the very liberal area around Santa Cruz and is thought to have been one of the nicer guys n California politics (which isn't saying much, I admit, but its unusual to see Democrats saying such nice things about a Republican.)

"This is a solid appointment," said Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata, D-Oakland. "We all know Bruce and served with him and it's unnecessary to spend too much time praising him."

Both houses of the Legislature need to vote on this nomination, so now we wait on the Assembly. There are rumors that they will make things difficult, which would be a real shame. It is one thing to resist a nomination for which there are real concerns and complaints, but already the Assembly has shot down a Schwarzenegger nominee without legitimate cause, and to do it again would be to give up any pretense of actual deliberation up there at the Capitol.

They play a purely political game up there. Qualifications are meaningless, the needs of the state are ignored, its all about us vs. them and how do we score some damage on them. Arnold has bent over backwards to send them nominees who are non-controversial, highly-qualified people with strong bi-partisan support, and the Assembly just tosses them back. Or, threatens to toss them back. We still don't know how they'll act on the McPherson nomination. Let's hope that good sense prevails and they follow the lead of the Senate and move quickly to approve this olive-branch nomination from the Governor.

The Carnival of the Vanities is at Bird's Eye View

The Carnival of the Vanities is the oldest of the many blogosphere "Carnivals". I hosted it some months ago here at Radical Centrist and this week I'm doing the honors over at Birds Eye View. The number, quality and variety of the posts is really remarkable, a sign that the blogosphere is continuing to improve as it expands. There are 60 different blogs represented in this week's round-up, so do take a moment to check it out.

O'Rourke on Mass Transit

P.J. O'Rourke has some ideas about mass transit in todays Opinion Journal. P.J. says what sounds like a lot of nice things about the $58billion in mass transit funding included in the Transportation bill now in Congress. Things like...

Mass transit is a wonderful thing, all right-thinking people agree. It stops pollution "in its tracks" (a little ecology-conscious light-rail advocacy joke). Mass transit doesn't burn climate-warming, Iraq-war-causing hydrocarbons. Mass transit can operate with nonpolluting sustainable energy sources such as electricity. Electricity can be produced by solar panels, and geothermal generators. Electricity can be produced by right-thinking people themselves, if they talk about it enough near wind farms.

He notes that it a very expensive way to move people around, but has some ideas about ways to increase profits.

That's it! The children. The solution to the problems of mass transit is staring us in the face. Or, in the case of my rather short children, staring us in the sternum. All over America men and women, at the behest of their children, are getting on board various light-rail systems that don't even go anywhere. And these trips--if you factor in the price of cotton candy, snow cones and trademarked plush toys--cost considerably more than $19. Yet we're willing to stand in line for ages to utilize this type of mass transit. All we have to do is equip Hiawatha with a slow climb, a steep, sudden plunge, several sharply banked curves, and maybe a loop-the-loop over by St. Paul. ... A few reductions in Amtrak's already minimal maintenance budget would turn the evening Metroliner into a reeling, lurching journey through the pitch dark equal to anything Space Mountain has to offer. And here is a perfect opportunity for public/private partnership. The Disney Co. is looking for new profit centers. The New York subway can become a hair-raising thrill ride by means of a simple return to NYPD 1970s policing practices.

Wow, P.J. seems pretty excited about mass transit. But then again, he is known to be occasionally "less that entirely serious." Do you think P.J. might be kidding? Huh?

Despite my leaning towards environmental causes, I'm not a big fan of many mass transit projects. They are expensive as O'Rourke points out, and their perceived environmental benefits are not as great as they appear, especially is people don't ride them. i would rather see research into some creative ways to preserve the wonderful flexibility of the automobile while reducing crowding and pollution. More efficient cars are a natural, along with more exotic solutions that allow cars to become a part of the mass transit system (I'll find that link and post it)

The Blogosphere Boys Club

There's this new meme making its way through the 'sphere with some token participation from the MSM folks that watch the 'sphere. It's what James Taranto (white male) would call a "kerfuffle." Everyone has a point to make on the "Blogosphere Boy's Club". The assertion has been made that the 'sphere is dominated by white males. Others have asserted that this "domination" is in the eye of the beholder. MSM commentators have picked out a few bloggers and made them the "dominant" group, but that is not exactly how it works in the 'sphere, is it?

Jeff Jarvis (one of those dominant members of the boys club) has a nice response. I'll just defer to his rant rather than add my own. (Tip to another dominator, Instapundit.) I've mentioned that one of the reasons I turned to blogging was to allow my writing to be heard without being filtered through a credentials check. There is this powerful passion, however, to label everything, including a blog post, with the race, sex, age, and education of the writer. It as if we cannot talk about the words, so we talk about the speaker instead. This is more of the same. Ad hominem with a twist.

We've seen examples of bloggers pretending to be female when in fact, they were just boring white males. Could this be a trend? Might there be white males disguised as black females, or black males, for that matter, pretending to be white? That would shake things up a bit.

This really is a "kerfuffle", isn't it? Blogging is cheap, unfiltered, unpayed (for the most part) and very dynamic. It is a far more diverse discussion than I can find anywhere else. Go ahead and read blogs without immediately sorting them into racial and gender boxes, and link to whomever interests you. Let's not allow this sort of identity politics invade the 'sphere.

This is where constitutional amendments come from

I was worried this would happen. A California court has declared that the state's law defining marriage as a union between one man and one woman is unconstitutional. I'm not anti-gay (I'm an Episcopalian, for goodness sakes, we have gay Bishops!) but I have a sense this is not going to help things at all. The general population is clearly not ready to declare a same-sex marriage the full equivalent of a traditional marriage. The time may come when the people are ready to say that, but this move is likely to push things too fast for the public and when pushed, Californians have a history of taking things into their own hands. California has amended its constitution over 500 times since 1879, and will likely do so again this fall in a special election. You can expect that a constitutional definition of marriage will be appearing before the voters shortly, if not in 2005 then 2006. That's a shame. It's likely to pass, and give impetus to similar amendments elsewhere, a genuine setback for those championing gay marriage rights. Unfortunately for them, they have allowed (or encouraged) the courts to take control of the issue, and that submerges their issue into the much longer-running battle between voters and the courts in California. They have jumped aboard the wrong bandwagon.

Many items that would be handled as statutory law in other states are constitutional issues here. For generations, Californians have felt themselves forced to take matters into their own hands in the face of a an unresponsive legislature and activist courts. This is not how its supposed to be done, but that's what we have, No one wins, really.

The judge who ruled on this case had this to say:

"It appears that no rational purpose exists for limiting marriage in this state to opposite-sex partners," Kramer wrote.

Millennia of human tradition and the desires of California's voters are rather easily brushed aside, it seems to me. The judge had a specific answer to the "tradition" argument.

"The state's protracted denial of equal protection cannot be justified simply because such constitutional violation has become traditional," Kramer wrote.

I would dicker with his use of the words "protection" and 'became", but then I'm not a lawyer and am limited to the common sense interpretation of language. It still seems, however, that a great deal of the laws we hold so dear are based either on our belief in a law-giving deity (obviously not applicable here), or on the long endorsement of human (and legal) tradition. To describe the institution of marriage as something that has "become traditional" in California is a twist of the language. California is a bit over a century and a half old; I believe that the institution of marriage predates us somewhat.

Of course there are ancient traditions of racial hatred and tribalism that we are happy to be able to put behind us, and in time this may be one of them, but to make an equivalence between gay desire for a state recognized marriage and the struggle for basic civil rights is a stretch. The state has established criteria for recognition of marriage, and the case for the gays rests on their assertion that they cannot meet those requirements (as opposed to will not.) There are plenty of state programs and benefits that are not open to me as I am a white male, and these programs are intended for minorities and women. Clearly the state is allowed to offer benefits that some citizens are unable to claim. The key word seems to be "rational". The people must establish, apparently, that their laws are rational to the satisfaction of a judge.

This is a tenuous thread on which to hang the laws of the state, no? Laws which discriminate on the basis of race or national origin can be found rational, and recognition of traditional marriage is not. All manner of atrocities have been rationalized by those committing them. Read the southern defenses of slavery in the early 19th century. For that matter, a great many laws which we never question are not particularly rational if subjected to critical analysis. We allow parents broad latitude in raising their children; is this rational or merely traditional?

If there is a vote on gay marriage I will vote for in favor. I feel it is a step in the right direction for the gay community and I'm happy that anyone is committed to marriage these days. But I do not like seeing these questions determined in courts and eventually, in a constitutional amendment. The people ought to be able to shape their own community, within the clear limits of respect for basic civil rights, and use their elected representatives to do it. If we're going to amend our constitution, I would prefer to restate what many have thought didn't need restating. Rather than an amendment that defines marriage, I would prefer an amendment that clearly defines the rights that are protected and allows other matters to be determined in the legislature or the ballot box.

Latest Carnival of the Vanities @ Solomonia

I should have posted this a couple of days a ago, but better late then never. The 129th Carnival of the Vanities, the granddaddy of the blogging carnivals, is at fellow Homespun Blogger Solomonia this week and as always its a great way to sample a wide range of blogs, both old and new. Solomon does a nice job as host this week and the offering seems especially good. The Carnival will be at my other blog, Bird's Eye View next week so get your submissions in!