Title : Finding The Middle Ground
link : Finding The Middle Ground
Finding The Middle Ground
The news is mostly not very newsy, so for this morning’s tirade I thought I might venture into the currently underpopulated realm where contemporary political rhetoric doesn’t willingly tread: the imagined “middle ground” that harmonizes the positions of Left and Right without doing unacceptable damage to either.
It’s a very small district, actually. Vanishingly small, according to the cynics. So small you could conceal it behind a cat’s whisker. It’s so small that it might not exist at all. A fair number of persons would say so.
They just might be right about that. But was it always so?
It’s easy to construct a gedankenexperiment in which the non-existence of a middle ground is obvious, whether on moral or on practical grounds. For example, suppose Congressional Democrats were to propose the immediate execution of all male American heterosexuals. Now, I don’t propose to speak for you, Gentle Reader, but I’d be absolutely against that. But what would a “middle ground” advocate propose? Execute only half of us? Phase it in over a five year period? Or maybe just take a limb from each one?
Hearken to Robert A. Heinlein about such fantasies:
Then there was the tertium quid, the flexible mind, the “reasonable” man who hardly had a mind to change--he favored negotiation; he thought we could “do business” with the titans. One such committee, a delegation from the caucus of the opposition party in Congress, actually attempted negotiation. Bypassing the State Department they got in touch via a linkage rigged across Zone Amber with the Governor of Missouri, and were assured of safe conduct and diplomatic immunity--"guarantees" from a titan, but they accepted them; they went to St. Louis--and never came back. They sent messages back; I saw one such, a good rousing speech adding up to, “Come on in; the water is fine!”
Do steers sign treaties with meat packers?
The “titans” mentioned above are sentient slugs with the ability to master a man’s mind and body through any sufficiently substantial connection to his nervous system. They want slaves. What middle ground exists between freedom and slavery?
When the two sides seek outcomes that are morally opposed, or which for practical reasons cannot be simultaneously served, compromise is impossible. No middle ground exists. But what if the predicate condition above were not to apply? What if the two sides agreed both on moral principles and the ultimate end to be served?
That would change the landscape dramatically, wouldn’t it?
Consider prosperity / poverty and their simultaneous existence in American society. Imagine if the following web of conditions were to exist:
- Left and Right agree on the objective conditions that constitute poverty;
- They also agree that poverty is not the fault of the prosperous;
- They also agree that the end to be sought is the elimination of poverty, as far as possible;
Under those conditions – always assuming everyone involved in the matter is sincere about holding the postulated convictions – a middle ground might exist. Moreover, any proposed program for the reduction and/or elimination of poverty would have a built-in test criterion: Is poverty in America declining, or isn’t it? If the answer were “no, it’s increasing (or holding steady),” the program would be deemed to have failed...and both Left and Right would agree to terminate it.
Unwillingness to terminate a program that has failed its stated objective is incontrovertible evidence of insincerity.
All that having been said, is the American Left sincere about wanting to eliminate poverty? Has it ever been sincere? Are there any Democrats in Congress to whom we could impute sincerity on this subject with reasonable assurance?
Here’s another one: transgenderism. This is an emotional disorder recognized by the mental health community. However, that same community has conceded that it lacks an effective therapy for the sufferer. For some percentage of those who claim to be “born the wrong sex,” the only alleviation available is to permit them to “transition:” i.e., to live as the other sex, whether merely in cosmetic matters or after some amount of surgery.
There are hard-liners on either side of this. On the Left, there are those who claim that being regarded and treated as the sex you prefer is some sort of inalienable right, regardless of any other consideration. On the Right, there are those who claim that the desire to represent yourself as other than your birth sex is incontrovertible evidence of a serious mental delusion that mandates your involuntary commitment until you’ve been cured of it. Those two camps are at war over the matter.
Yet a middle ground appears to be available: If you can “pass” as the sex you prefer to be, and commit no offenses against others in doing so, we’ll tolerate you. That is: we’ll treat you as the sex you prefer to assume. We won’t discriminate against you in any way. Why would we, after all? You look and act as what you want to be. The social cost of such an agreement-to-tolerate would be infinitesimal.
The “bearded guy in a dress” obviously can’t meet the toleration standard. But Blaire White could – and does. So the matter is soluble without violating anyone’s rights or privacy.
Today there isn’t much middle ground available between Left and Right, mostly for reasons of moral incompatibility. The Left is almost droolingly eager to eliminate what remains of Americans’ freedom and prosperity. The Right – by and large, anyway – is struggling to preserve both. (From that summary of the matter I’d imagine you can tell which side I’m on.) The return of a politics in which middle-ground approaches to agreed-upon objectives can be found requires that one side or the other prevail absolutely. Any attempt to compromise between those incompatible moral stances would be doomed before it starts.
With that I yield the floor to my Gentle Readers.
Thus Article Finding The Middle Ground
You are now reading the article Finding The Middle Ground with the link address https://theleknews.blogspot.com/2018/07/finding-middle-ground.html
0 Response to "Finding The Middle Ground"
Post a Comment