This Beaten Horse Just Won't Die

One last thing to say, maybe, about anchors and the mythical "center." In the last post I described how the placement of the anchors of political debates will create different "centers" and how "moving to the center" just moves the anchors closer together, making a new "center" much closer to the anchor that pretty much stays put. I also made quick reference to how reality treats the ideas, positions, and policies such narrow "centers" and tends to come back to those, like Gore now, like Lincoln before, who refuse to make the compromises and shifts toward that moving black hole that just sucks down principle and flexibility in the face of a complex, fluid reality.

What I didn't do was provide the range of examples from American history that illustrate the point. This is really an easy game to play. Just think of any important milestone in our history and track back how long it took to come about. When was the seed planted, when did it start to blossom, when did it mature into political and cultural reality, and when did its limits leave it vulnerable to new seeds and blossoms? Think about the American Revolution. Guys didn't just suddenly get mad one evening and decide, "To Hell with this Stamp Act, let's go dump some tea." Historians will tell you the key dates, wars with the French, failures of diplomacy (including Ben Franklin's) that were the original basis for the original anchors, the guys advocating independence, long before the Shot Heard 'Round the World. As history played out and reality set in, those "extremists," those "radicals," pulled the "center" toward them. They didn't become the "center"--our revolution was pretty conservative as those things go--but they made it possible for the idea of independence to become the "center." Sure, there were Kevin Drums and Mark Kleimans mumbling, "b-b-b-but that's so unreasonable," but they were treated exactly as their namesakes today should be treated in these increasingly similar times.

Keep playing the game. Rosa Parks just one day said, "Back off, buddy, I'm not getting up," and Montgomery spontaneously turned our civil rights history around? The Abolitionists were roundly denounced by the Maha Barbs for the self-defeating nature of their "extremist" protests against that "yes, it's bad, but let's not upset anybody the wrong way, just think Zen" slavery. Barring the next places John McCain will be giving speeches, where do you find anyplace where "slavery is evil" is not the "center" now? Frances Townsend had to set an anchor on old-age insurance years and years before it came into its own as what we know as Social Security. Ask Bush the Younger and his financial opportunist friends what happens when you claim that isn't the "center" now.

The latter brings up a point, though, a part of which has been slowly making its way through the blogosphere, regarding the value of anchors from a Repub perspective. It's being recognized that the "set an anchor and pull the center toward it" approach has been winning steady ground for what used to be "extremist" positions such as school vouchers, nuclear dominion, and the privatization of Social Security. What's surprising about the growing realization among highly educated and aware bloggers is that it is, in fact, one of the very basic lessons of American political history. (That should tell you all you need to know about the state and contribution of American historians and political scientists to where we find ourselves as a nation on Planet Reality right now. As a recovering political scientist, I deeply and truly apologize.) When the people who should know better from the start have to have it drummed in, it explains a lot about where we are now.

Another thing to note here is simply that there can be a life-death cycle for anchors and their less "extreme" byproducts if they aren't consistently maintained and renewed. No set of ideas is completely appropriate for all the possible permutations that reality hacks up, and so even wildly successful ideas can eventually be challenged effectively for their weaknesses and failures. And when ideas become institutionalized and power positions built around them, their users will fail to adapt to those challenges, probably not even take them seriously, not busy living off the fruits of the original successes. Then, clearly, the old ideas can be brought down, not by mere variations put forward by those "moving to the center," but by new ideas and positions which, because they challenge the "center" are, by definition, "out there,", "not serious," "extreme." I know you saw the history of the Soviet Union there, but did you happen to catch the history of the post-New Deal Dems in that description and the rise of the once radical Gingrichites?

So I get back to the point of my last post. To renew and restore this country from the decay and cancers brought on its Legacy by the ascendant (now moribunding and Brezhnevist) Repubs, the Dems have to, have to, pull themselves and the nation back away from the "center" that the DLC/Clinton/Begala types have drawn them toward. Practically, that means many things. It means encouraging primaries rather than anointing pre-approved, pre-packaged "centrists" like Lieberman or Casey who 30 years ago would have been laughed off the stage as Dems. It means developing and disseminating, encouraging and fertilizing "out there" anchors and ideas, through everything from progressive blogs to new think tanks and sponsored authors and analysts, not launching into anti-flag burning and telling business groups that young people don't know how to work. It means looking at reality, not polls of opinion rarely plugged into reality when "Survivor" is on or Marissa is dying, and framing the ways to address the problems we face, even if public opinion doesn't want to believe or see them as problems right now. Most of all, the point made here over and over, it means making Planet Reality understandable in terms of stories and memes already common and shared among Americans, like our obligations to those who came before and after us, like our shared heritage and hopes as a nation and culture, like our place in world history as a promoter of personal freedom and opportunity and responsible and democratic government. You know, what Lincoln stood for, even though, at his particular time, those things weren't necessarily the "center" for everyone, especially the Confederacy (which, surprise, has led us to the debacles we're in right now), but which history has vindicated for him.

If the forefathers, if Lincoln, if FDR, if King and Parks and Bob Moses had decided, let's just move to the "center," the American Legacy would not be what it historically has been. Moving to the "center" has put that Legacy in one of the greatest dangers it has ever faced. If the Dems insist on following the "center" and supporting candidates who represent that misguided philosophy simply in the name of winning a particular election, they may succeed temporarily, but it will leave their anchors so close to the Repubs and placed for new Repub victories and "center"-pulling that what they win will not be worth having.

And will make the American Legacy something completely different in history.