As I finish up one project and begin, slowly, diving into the next, I have been thinking more about my political views. I am a libertarian, more specifically, a Bleeding Heart Libertarian. As I noted in a previous post, my libertarianism seems to make me something of a moderate. That may sound odd—it did to me at first—but I think it makes sense. As I noted in that earlier piece, libertarians “aren’t on the other side of the aisle; we straddle the aisle.” We straddle the aisle, perhaps most classically, because we are fans of civil liberties and so align with democrats (or the stereotype thereof) while also being opponents of government intervention in markets and so align with republicans (or the stereotype thereof). As John Tomasi argues, we do not believe one can separate economic liberty from civil liberty; they go hand in hand. The fact that we insist on this means, as I also noted in that earlier post, that we have substantive disagreements with people at different ends of the political spectrum and so have learned to speak with both, often seeking some form of compromise. That compromise does not entail giving up our principles; it entails working for the long term goal of expanding freedom for all.
I’ve recently seen a couple of posts about being politically moderate. The title of this post is an attempt to encourage a recognition of what might be a growing movement of sorts that encourages this. Let’s call this “moderatism” (I admit I did not know it was a word).
In this piece at Discourse Magazine, Joseph Romance nicely lays out why we need more moderates. Part of my take away from the piece is that a moderate can—and should—be confident both in her abilities and her beliefs regarding the best course of action and nonetheless maintain proper humility, recognizing she might be wrong. That is, I think, the ideal way to be a liberal (and, perhaps, especially a libertarian). And it is in that role that the moderate can engage in productive discourse with people on the extremes, perhaps getting them to recognize the value in actually listening to others and seriously considering their views. One quote: “moderates work to puncture the kind of ideological groupthink that can occur when many people who are politically certain come together. They’re clearly not ditherers who believe in nothing. Instead, they approach politics and policy with a sense of humility about accepting the future is unknown and a belief that they should encounter the world with respect for the possibility of error.”
The second piece is another excellent post from my friend Lauren Hall at her Substack. In her post, she argues against the overly pessimistic mood of college students (and others) today. There is, of course, much to be concerned with about the state of the world today, including the state of politics in the US. But to realize that and fail to realize how much better the world is today than it was even just 50 years ago is to fail to be serious about history. It is to be immoderate, only seeing one side of things. As a moderate, we should recognize both. We shouldn’t shy away from the fact that in many ways the world is far better than its been and has been getting better especially since (roughly) the Industrial Revolution at the end of the 19th century. We are materially better off. We are also politically better off with more people living in freedom and able to participate in their own governing than ever before. Of course, we must also straddle the divide here and recognize the simple fact that we still have problems. Racism and sexism are still real. Rates of depression are high. And, there are still far too many people living in poverty (though in absolute terms and as a percentage of world population, the numbers have been getting better—i.e., smaller).
What we need now is realism—not in the sense derived from international affairs, but in the sense that we look at the world to see what has worked and try to figure out more about what will work—what will help us reduce the problems and improve the world moving forward. That requires recognizing the good and the bad. It requires moderatism. For an excellent example of this, see my friend David Schmidtz’s excellent new Living Together.