A Christian Liberal is NOT an oxymoron.

Posted by XT on December 6th, 2008 in US News

Jon Henke writes:

In 2003, Megan McArdle coined Jane’s Law: “The devotees of the party in power are smug and arrogant. The devotees of the party out of power are insane.” Some friends on the Left appear to be exploring both.

That’s about all the substance there is to the post. It’s an observation worth having at hand, but it bears out contemplating why a party in power becomes smug and arrogant and why insanity strikes those who are out of power.

At this point in history, neither party is really a “big tent party”. Democrats are, more or less, a liberal party with some members that tend to drag it back to the center. Republicans are a conservative party that has purged itself of centrist tendencies (by and large). The results of this is that a very slight movement in the electorate can cause rather large shifts in power.

Consider the normal distribution curve to the left. Given lack of reliable information to the contrary, I’ll say that the American electorate’s ideology reasonably approximates a normal distribution. Yes, I’m aware of various studies that have tried to quantify how many Americans are conservative or liberal, but it’s difficult to reliably determine exactly where the midpoint of ideology is, much less how far a person lies from said midpoint.

On either side of the midpoint, there are three areas. The central part, where about 34% of the people exist. The middle part, where about 27% exist. And the extreme – the tail – where the remainder exist (the asymptotic portion beyond the third statistical deviation is too small to be of much use here). The people in the center are most likely not to actually belong to either party – they are the truly independent voters that only pay attention when crisis strikes or when an election looms. The tail will be the wingnuts that work everything all the time for their pet causes – and they are usually all or nothing causes. The people in the middle are generally faithful partisans, who may fight about the exact details of their party’s platform, but they are generally satisfied with it.

Which side do you think makes the most noise? The people in the tails. The reason is that they are, by definition, extremists. The mainstream media doesn’t really care much about them until they need a quote to make someone else seem reasonable. That is, in fact, their most reliable role in politics.

The media, by the way, tends to move towards the dead center because, if individual reporters stay at it long enough, they get tired of being lied to. By both sides. Besides, they sell best when someone bleeds. Anyone. Bipartisan feasting.

So it’s the regular partisans that end up doing most of the lifting. But they generally don’t get much notice. I can almost guarantee you that, if you pay attention to Congress, the people who get the press don’t do much actual work, and the people busy doing the work don’t have time to have press conferences.

There was a time when both parties had contingents from either side of midpoint. This was largely because each one dominated specific regions (which looks to be happening again, by the way). The country was “aligned” and the parties, wanting as much power as possible, would tolerate liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats in order to hold on. Conservative Democrats are resurgent – thanks, in large part, to Howard Dean’s commitment to a 50-state strategy. Liberal Republicans are limited to Leonard Lance, the freshman Congressman from New Jersey.

Now, I tend to think that reality has a liberal bent to it, but it is not a liberal reality. Reality is simply reality. But it is perceived through an ideological lens. And anyone who wears glasses can tell you that you need to have two lenses to see acccurately (in fact, if you close one eye and have someone move their hand through your peripheral line of vision, you’ll find a place where their hand completely disappears – the “blind spot”). This is where Democrats end up being better off than Republicans – because they do have conservatives within their fold.

If Democrats marginalize conservatives, they will lose power fairly quickly because a positive and a positive make a larger positive – and two ideologues on the same side drag each other to the extremes. This is because they simply fail to hear voices that are too far to the other side. Conservative Democrats can add balance if they are valued by the party and tolerated as necessary for the ultimate health of the ruling coalition. As long as Democrats remember that their primary purpose is to keep a strong Democratic Party, they will continue to rule – because they will have to have conservatives to balance their view of reality.

Republicans need a liberal wing, not because liberal ideology is better than conservative ideology, but because it will keep them from losing track of the rest of the country. It will necessarily pull them to the center, but they will have no problem remaining on the conservative side of the center. It will keep the conservative movement from making the Republican Party a purist organization.

Ruling parties are arrogant because they forget to include enough people to hold onto the vital center. Out-of-power parties are insane because they cling to “failed ideologies”. Until a crisis crops up – then they can claim they would have done things differently.

Obviously, there’s a ton more than can be said, but that’s enough for one read.

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