November 18, 2006
The Fallacy Of 'The Center'
Peggy Noonan has an article at Opinion Journal in which she asks Who'll Claim the Center?
While Peggy did not make any claims about the structure of politics, I'd like to adresss a common fallacy which underlies her article. In my opinion, the concept of a political "center" which lies along a gradient from Left to Right is intellectually vacant, and moreover, wrong.
The idea that the current state of politics, or the valuation of a politician's status can be depicted along a line from Left to Right is stupid. It's as if we've taken a diverse landscape, a multidimensional space of ideas, and run it through a hydraulic press that smashes it into a flat piece of scrap metal which we can understand.
I'd like to propose a new way of thinking about political landscape.
Politics is a multidimensional conflict. At the center of this conflict are the people who are most active. Think of "the center" as the front lines in the war called Politics. The people at the front lines are the people most engaged with the enemy. They attack, they retreat, they kill and are killed. These people are "the center."
There are many dimensions in U.S. politics. One could even argue that the number of dimensions is limitless. There are taxes, foreign policy, welfare, abortion, military spending, health care, immigration, the environment, etc. To understand the state of the country at a given time, you would have to chart the front lines of politics on an N-space map of issues, where N is the number of issues.
For each issue, a politician has a particular view. Perhaps he has a desire to move the current state of that issue from its current position. Perhaps he does not. To understand a politician's platform, one must understand his desires on all issues. In so doing, we would have an idea of where he would like to take the country in that N-space map of ideas.
Given this view, think about what it means to say "a politician is moving to the center." In the old way, what does it mean? Can you explain how that politician feels about a particular issue by describing his position relative to the left, right, or center? You cannot. Only in understanding the intimate and complex details of that politician's platform can you understand the direction in which he'd like to take the country.
The idea of a bipolar spectrum of politics is stupid. It's as if we'd charted bottles of wine along a bipolar spectrum of taste.
And...
Posted by Richard at November 18, 2006 12:19 PM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.goodrichardsalmanac.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/63
Listed below are links to weblogs that reference The Fallacy Of 'The Center':
» Roundup of News from Lord Nazh's Daily Ramble
Roundup of news from alot of blogs. [Read More]
Tracked on November 18, 2006 3:44 PM