On Lowering The Partisan Heat
A commenter who appeared on this site in a discussion about conservatives’ attitudes towards torture and allegations of torture (as became clear in the discussion — the question with conservatives often revolves more around the definition of torture than about its moral legitimacy) has turned out to be a DailyKos diarist who has penned a reaction to the discusssion here. While we rarely link to DK, this post and the discussion it has provoked in the DK comments section is excellent enough to warrant an exception, especially since both the tone and content of the exchange shows a rare glimmer of daylight in the long twilight struggle between left and right in today’s polarized political culture.
The issue, according to pmorlan, is letting conservatives “save face” and become free to criticize policies pursued by their party without surrendering everything on the field of partisan battle. I think that is right, as it is converse. Lefitsts are just as prone to defend the indefensible in the name of maintaining partisan strength and unity while under seige as conservatives are. The question then becomes practical and bidirectional: How to pull it off while the extremists and purists from both sides continue howling at the gates? And this is more than just a challenge for bloggers — it is an essential prerequisite to crafting any form of “truth commission” or even prosecutorial process for pursuing allegations of torture and other violations of domestic and international law from the Bush administration. Such processes simply cannot succeed if they are coopted by extremist partisan warfare.
I think the first step lies in lowering the partisan heat across the board. The time has come for both left and right in this country to rediscover what philosophers call the “principle of charity” which asserts that a discussant’s argument should be interpreted in the way most compatible with the assumption that they are reasonable and well-intentioned. Allegations that conservatives love torture as some kind of core value or that liberals are all authoritarian “socialists” trying to recreate the Soviet kulaks in some bizarre post-modern form are not only rhetorically excessive, they are actively poisonous to any potential for reasonable debate even on other issues. As such, they should be rejected by those who share their general ideological leaning as much (if not moreso) than by their opponents.
When it becomes possible to disagree on principle while conceding that the opposition is in fact at least principled in the abstract, then it may be possible to have a meaningful debate about “torture” and other hot-button issues in this country.
it won’t happen until we really do get a President and Congress that represent all of the people. And not just represent the left as is the current situation (or just represent the right as the previous Administration). The left spent 8 years blaming everything up to hangnails on the Bush Administration while sweeping their own corruption and incompetence under the rug and now want to naturally not have any partisanship.
Of course now the left’s child-like behavior and ability level’s are forced to be examined in full light.
and for reasons like this
keep the heat up on this inept President
I am interested in Newt Gingrich’s suggestion that conservatives break off into a third party. I would actually like to see that. By breaking off into a third party the left over GOP would, I believe, allow for many in the democratic party to cross over and join their fold as they would more likely represent a cross section of GOP and democratic moderates. In essence you would end up with three parties.
Democrats of more or less farther left positions. Moderates or the left over GOP with mass defections of moderate democrats and most likely nearly all the libertarians would defect to this party and the New GOP party which would be most likely the purist conservatives who are more then likely the social conservatives.
I would say this party split up would be great for America. With a strong moderate party it would force the idealogical left and right to moderate as well to succeed.
I hope hes right. We truly need a 3rd party in this nation to fix what ails us.
Also I just read his piece at the daily KOS and it seems pretty obvious to me that he simply is trying to figure out a new angle to convince the conservative base to turn on Bush so they can have their retribution.
The left so desperately wants to try Bush/Cheney and half the administration in some massive witch hunt that it truly is sickening to me. Especially given we are or were in a war with 2 nations and terrorists around the world.
Right or wrong. I still believe torture is wrong. But I have a problem with their definition of what constitututes torture and to me everytime I hear them listing what constitututes torture they go so far over board that every prisioner in America could claim they were tortured.
So after reading his piece its obvious he has just one motive. A new angle on GETTING BUSH.
The comment by “Interested” above assumes that divisive politics is a product of representative institutions that have become unrepresentative of “the people” (that assumption is a necessary predicate of the claim that their becoming more representative of the population at large will defuse partisan tensions). The assumption seems baseless, to me. In a democratic system — including a democratic component of a larger system that need not itself be a democracy, such as the democratic systems within our federal republican form of government — one would expect politics to be divided if the people are divided, and every measure indicates that we are. Indeed, when society is polarized, one would expect politics to be polarized; if it were not, one would have to ask just how representative the system was! For some of us, that is not a pressing concern (I for one think that many of our problems arise from a fetishization of democracy, and its unwise, unthinking extension into areas where it has no imaginable utility), but for those who purport to believe in more democracy more of the time, you fellows have to take the rough with the smooth.
The middle would do well to remember that just because the center holds the balance of power does not mean that it is itself a majority, any more than are the right or the left.