Tag: democracy

Voting Matters

~ purplesage41 ~ Leave a comment

There is a meanness in our world

Driven by lust for power, greed for wealth,

Is life a zero sum game

Which we can only win when others lose?

Collaboration, once an honored act

Now seen as sleeping with the enemy.

This pettiness is armed

With powers of destruction and confusion

Never known before.

Technology weaponized in the media

Can destroy social networks

A nuclear blast to the web of community.

Where is the yellow brick road

To lead us through the evil wood

into a world of peace and harmony?

Elections matter.

Head or Heart?

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For most of this seemingly endless election year, Republicans have been speaking to the emotions while Democrats were speaking to the reasoning mind. President Biden was calmly reciting the many accomplishments of his administration while Republicans painted government as an overweening threat to our personal freedom and our cherished values. Their affirming audience resonating with that campaign style included (among others) evangelical Christians of a certain focus (abortion), white men who resented upstart women and minorities, and gun lovers (as in “they want to take away our guns!”). The language of fear, anger, and despair were the vehicles to convey empathy for those who felt ignored or even persecuted by a government that catered to women, immigrants, and poor people, and was prone to making rules that everyone had to obey.

Suddenly and with little warning, everything changed in July.  Biden out, Harris in.  Remarkably, a prosecutor turned attorney general turned senator turned Vice-President, and a woman o color to boot, was a powerful instrument in turning the flailing Democrats into the party of hope, joy, and unity, with the able assistance of a folksy high school teacher and coach turned Congressman turned governor. Republicans, who in the Trump era have been avoiding most serious policy discussions that appeal to the reasoning mind, preferred a message of fear and anger, but were stuck with trying to disown or explain away Project 2025,. This very wordy 900 page document appealed to the left bbrain with a detailed blueprint for a totalitarian Republican administration.

Nods of assent to proposed policies have always taken a back seat to the gut sense of connecting through the emotions when it comes to choosing a president.. Yes, policy matters, but voters know that the problems the next president has to address may be very different from what is going on right now or in the immediate past. So they are looking for clues about he or she thinks and feels and makes decisions. Those clues are found in the message it conveys about whose concerns are going to get the most attention in the next administration.  In general, polls always ask about issues, but  people vote as much or not more with their gut rather than their brain. Those poll responses about what issues matter most to them are probably the product of rationalizing their feelings than analyzing the costs and benefits of child tax care credits or the price of insulin.

If emotions are the key to successful campaigning (just like advertising), the important question in the 2024 Presidential election is, which emotions does the candidate want to evoke? Does love cast out fear? Does hope triumph over anger or despair?  After eight years of an endless campaign by Donald Trump in and out of office that focused on negative emotions, is It possible to turn the tables by making the election about hope, joy and connectedness with one another?

As an economist, we sometimes came across what were called natural experiments, since no one would give us an actual economy to play with. In this country, we learned a lot from states that adopted certain policies while others did not—a higher minimum wage, for example.  This election pits two emotion-based campaigns against each other.  I do have a preference about candidates, and also about issues, but the idea of two parties offering competing visions of American cast in terms of hope for the future is a lot more appealing to me as a voter than anger or despair.

Results from this more or less natural experiment coming in seven weeks to a polling place near you.

Ready for the Counter-Revolution?

~ purplesage41 ~ 4 Comments


Today is  the end of a month with three famous revolutions—American, Cuban, and French.  Did they make things better? Sometimes, for some people, at a very high cost. We are the heirs and progenitors of many revolutions.  The digital revolution. The industrial revolution. The printing press, which revolutionized 16th century Europe. The Green revolution, which was at the time believed the answer to world hunger but wasn’t. The Protestant Reformation, at least the left wing of it, which threw out lots of bathwater and several babies in the process.

 Actual armed battles were the chosen format for many of these revolts. One of my heroines is Boudica, Queen of the Iceni in Britain, The Iceni and their allies, led by Boudica, revolted against Rome in 60 AD and even won some major battles before finally being defeated by a more disciplined Roman army.  The Iceni and their Celtic relatives practiced democracy, unlike the Romans, which is good for peacetime but not so much in the military,

England’s Civil War began by beheading King Charles I and led 12 years later to restoring the monarchy. Twenty-eight years later, the Glorious Revolution ousted The Old Pretender, ran off the Young Pretender. and created animosity between Scotland (homeland of England’s Stuart kings) and England that persists to this day.   The bloody and endless French Revolution. The American revolution. The US Civil War (civil wars are also revolutions). The Spanish Civil War. The many revolutions against colonial domination in Asia, Africa, and South America.

In the 18th century, Americans tried to create a workable government to manage the public affairs of 13 very diverse colonies once they were free from the oppression of British rule.  That utopian vision is always the delusion of revolutionaries, the faith that keeps them going through Valley Forge and other calamities.  But no one ever anticipates a counter-revolution.

 The Roman Catholic Church officially launched a counter Reformation. The American Civil War was definitely a counterrevolution to protect the privileges of the while male hierarchy of the Southern slave states. France had so many counter-revolutions I can never keep track.

We citizens of the United States are in the throes of an attempted counter-revolution, long in the planning, detailed in its vision for post-democracy in America, and banking on this year’s election to bring it about, whether peacefully or with violence. It is a vision of what its proponents thought life used to be like when men (white ones) were men and women know their place and so did the lower classes, especially African Americans and native Americans. These counter-revolutionaries believe that an earlier America was a society in which we were only responsible for ourselves (we=men), women lived lives a modified version of he Handmaid’s Tale, teaching a dubious version of Christianity was mandatory in public schools, equality of opportunity and respect were lacking, and violence was the answer to everything. Rule by a privileged minority at the expense of a resentful majority.

And yet…there are increasing signs that democracy, like the phoenix, can rise from the ashes—maybe even put out the flames! We are all called neither to unwarranted optimism or to deep despair, but to active, engaged hope to keep our fragile democracy alive for the generations yet to come. Like the Minutemen of the original American Revolution, you are not called to violence but to support, act, and vote for democracy to survive.  As my fellow economist Eugene Steuerle says, “We get the government we deserve.”

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Autocracy, Democracy,–Geriatocracy?

~ purplesage41 ~ 1 Comment

Beneath the heated debate over whether Joe Biden is too old for another term as president is a more fundamental question.  Why do we let all these old people hang on to their jobs and make decisions about a future that they will not experience, while those with the most to lose are underrepresented. (Full disclosure: I am a certifiable “too old to govern person at age 83.”)   A younger president and a younger Congress would be less moored in the past and present and more attuned to the big challenges of the future—climate change, clean energy, artificial intelligence, depletion of fossil fuels, species extinction, water shortages, pollution, income inequality, political polarization, etc. What I propose is a modified form of term limits that is well worth considering.

What would it take? First, it would require a Constitutional amendment that adds the words “and not or over 75 at the time of election” to the minimum age qualifications for president and vice-President.  AND to members of Congress.  It’s a much better, fairer way to get some needed turnover and fresh air in both branches of government. It would mean that we never again have senator over the age of 81, or a present over the age of 79. No more 100-year-old senators like the late Strom Thurmond!

 Having imposed it on themselves, these two branches could then extend a similar requirement for all federal leaders whose appointments must be confirmed by one of both branches of Congress. That legislative age ceiling should apply to all current as well as future appointments in the executive branch and the federal judiciary and should require departure when one turns 75. It is not unprecedented at the state level.  My home state of South Carolina already requires state Supreme Court judges to step down at age 72, and I know there are other states with similar restrictions.

It’s long past time to empower younger people to have a greater say in their future.

Winner Take All

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Winner takes all is endemic to American society.  Just ask Vince Lombardi (Winning isn’t everything. It’s the only thing.) Fierce competition for “success” has polarized and stratified our society between the haves and the have-nots. There is only one Oscar winner in each category, only one national champion in any sport, one successful candidate for every office on the ballot.

I learned a useful lesson in my congregation this past week.  We have been discussing proposed changes in Article II of the Unitarian Universalist Association bylaws, the section that sets forth our version of theology.  There is sharp disagreement over what changes are being made, a libertarian/humanist vocal minority on one side, the mainstream on the other.  My congregation has five delegates, and the board, in its surprising wisdom, will call for a vote and assign delegates to vote on each question in proportion to the intensity of the congregation’s vote.

How might we apply this elsewhere in our common life?  Well, there is ranked choice voting in place of poorly attended runoffs.  It is a little bit more complicated but a fairer representative of preferences.  There is the jungle primary in which all candidates for an elective office run and the top two candidates, regardless of party, advance to the November election. There are just two outlier states who allocate electors based on Congressional district.  There is the challenge of designated seats versus electing the top 2, 3,4 or 5 members of a city or county council –each option says something different about representation of minorities. There is redistricting, largely nullified these days by the Trump Court (they just couldn’t’ get around to South Carolina’s first district in time for this year’s election), but still a useful tool.

The Quakers gave us an alternative, also practiced by the early New England Congregationalists, of consensus—the sense of the meeting trying to come up with an answer that all could, if not endorse, at least live with—after everyone has a chance to be heard.  Works well in small groups.  My local League of Women Voters went through a consensus process this past week and emerged satisfied with both the experience and the outcome.

In the Olympics we honor the top three with gold, silver, and bronze.  Getting a bronze medal is still considered a great achievement. Perhaps we can find other ways of win-win outcomes in our personal and public life.

Women’s Work

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I have been thinking about who are the people working to bring about the financial and political downfall of Trump. There is a panthean (note feminist spelling) of women. Liz Cheney. E. Jean Carroll. Letitia James. Fanni Willis. Ruby Freeman and Shay Moss. Nancy  Pelosi. Nikki Haley. Judge Chutkin. Cassidy Hutchinson.

The Latin word virtus (virtue) literally means manliness. (The made-up feminist equivalent, muliertus, doesn’t resonate very well!) Aristotle argued that there are four primary virtues, the private virtues of prudence and temperance or moderation, and the public virtues of courage and justice. (His Greek equivalent of virtus was arḗte, which translates as excellence, not manliness.)  A list of men possessing and exercising the primary public virtue of moral courage with respect to Trump would be a lot shorter. (Judge Erdogan. Jack Smith. Brad Raffensberger. Adam Kinzinger.)

Additional nominations welcome for both genders.

Our task as the middle and beyond generations is to encourage GenZ and millennials to show up at the polls, because in an era of toxic masculinity, they don’t vote like our generations do. I am working as a poll worker (6 am to 8 pm) in the South Carolina presidential on February 3rd and 24th, so it will be interesting to see who shows up.  My assignment is in a working class community, where I expect that African Americans will turn out to some degree in the Democratic primary while the numerous Trump-supporting evangelical “Christian” white angry aging folks will show up for the Republican primary.  I have to vote early 20 miles from home since I am not working in my own polling place, so in a few weeks I will be off to vote for Nikki, encouraging her to keep being a thorn in the flesh of the Donald.

My friends and blog followers, do what you can to mobilize what truly is the silent majority of our generation. My life at age 82 is much more past than future. On a personal level, I am trying to minimize any burden I leave for my daughters and grandchildren. On a communal/national/global level, I am trying to do what little I can to leave our children and heirs a safer, healthier, more livable world. Join me in trying to convince them to get engaged in the process of making that happen.

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The Risk-Averse Voter

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Fifty years ago ,I was roped into teaching risk and insurance, a required course for several majors in the business school at Clemson University.  The insurance part was rather dull, but risk was interesting. Right now, I am thinking about the risks associated with voting strategy in the presidential primaries. The race has come down to Biden, Trump, and Haley.  How should one spend one’s single precious vote so as to contribute to the most desirable outcome in November? And what are the risks involved in making that choice?

In 2010, three friends of mine, all Democrats, voted in the Republican primary to try to select the candidate least likely to win in the general election. (South Carolina splits about 55-60% Republican and the rest Democrat. Voters do occasionally elect a Democrat to a statewide office.)  These three thoughtful women reasoned that South Carolina was a sexist, racist state (true) and that it would never elect an Indian woman.  They voted for Nikki Haley. It is a strategy they did not intend to apply again, but ironically, in this year’s presidential primary, they will be voting for—Nikki Haley.

What’s a voter to do? There are two parts to the strategy.  The first steps to rank your preferences Three are three candidates, which creates six possible preference rankings.

  1. Biden, Haley, Trump
  2. Biden, Trump, Haley
  3. Trump, Haley, Biden
  4. Trump, Biden, Haley
  5. Haley, Biden, Trump
  6. Haley, Trump, Biden

I find options 2 and 4 highly improbable.  Option 3 is easy, vote in the Republican primary for Trump.  No hard choices there. The same is true of options 5 and 6, to vote for Haley in the Republican primary.  If you prefer Haley or Trump to Biden, you vote for the preferred one in the Republican primary.  The challenge of risk assessment is only in option 1, the ordering Biden, Haley, Trump.  That voter is probably a Democrat or a Democrat-leaning independent. In some states, she can vote in either party’s primary.

If Biden is your first choice, there isn’t much need to vote in the Democratic for Biden because he will win anyway. Instead, you express your support by voting in the Republican primary for—which? The least electable one? The least dangerous one? Ah, there’s the rub.  The sense I get from talking to voters is that Haley runs stronger against Biden. but even the remote possibility of re-electing Trump would have much more serious consequences.   

Which one do you think has the lesser chance? Which one could you more easily live with if elected? If you strongly prefer Biden over either Republican, but could definitely rest easier with Haley on the ballot, that suggests you should vote for her.  But beware, she may be more electable—she’s attractive, articulate, and YOUNG. And very conservative. Whereas Trump may be able to energize his base but not much of anyone else.

Some Democrats will just vote for Biden, especially if they live in a state where the primary is limited to registered party members.  (I do have a good friend, a liberal Democrat in Florida, who called me last year to tell me that she is now a registered Republican. I understood her choice. She is not the only one taking that course!)  I live in an open primary state. I can simply walk in and say “I feel like a Democrat” or “I feel like a Republican.” 

Normally both party primaries are held at the same time and in the same place, saving money and poll worker time, but this year the Democratic National Committee gummed up the works, at least in South Carolina.  As a result, I will be working as a poll worker in both primaries in February and casting my own early ballot 20 miles away at the Easley public library. In all three places, I will be among voters chewing on the same dilemma. What are they risking by making this choice, and what might be the consequences?

Or they can stay home.  But as I used to say to some of my libertarian economist colleagues who thought voting was a waste of time, ”If you don’t vote, you lose your right to bitch.” That’s a First Amendment right that has to be earned.

What would you do, and why?

The Season of Hope

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Advent begins with hope, which continues as we move into a new year. We can choose our attitude. We can be optimistic, expecting that everything will turn out all right in the end. Yes, there is war in Gaza and Ukraine, and drought and famine and earthquakes and volcanic eruptions and species extinction and rising sea levels and a crisis of democracy here and around the world. Optimists just shrug and are confident that all will be well in the end. No need to do anything different.

Pessimists reach the same conclusion from the opposite perspective. Nothing I do will make any difference. We are headed into a not so brave new world, one where we can’t believe what we hear and see, because of the failings of our institutions and the advent of artificial intelligence. So, let’s eat, and drink, and be merry, for tomorrow, we die.

In between the extremes of unjustified optimism and defeatist pessimism lies the middle path of hope. But not just passive hope. Theologian Joanna Macy insists hope is worth no more than either pessimism or optimism unless it is active hope. What are you going to do to bring about a different, better outcome in 2024?

Some of our aspirations (also sometimes known as New Year’s resolutions) tend to be personal—like the perennial goals of eating better, watching less TV, getting more exercise, spending more time with friends and family, reading one hundred books. Those are fine goals, but notice that they are input goals, not output goals or results. If your aspiration is weight loss, for example, the experts tell us to focus on controlling your intake of food and your hours of exercise, not losing twenty pounds. You can only control inputs, not outcomes.

Your personal hope is a healthy body, mind and spirit. Active hope means identifying actions that we can take that will make those outcomes more likely.

The same advice applies to our hopes for our world, our nation, our communities. Yet, we need for our society—our communities, our nation, our world—the same identification of desired outcomes and actions we can undertake that make those outcomes more likely. My aspirations for the world are peace, justice, democracy, and sustainability. Those may not be your goals, but whatever hopes you have for the world, nation or community, the same advice applies.

Some of my inputs are personal choices that promote those goals—the way I deal with energy use, eating habits and gardening (organically), work for peaceful solutions to conflict in the family and the neighborhood, respect differences of opinion and seek common ground, and the way I stay informed about how my choices impact those aspirational goals so that I can choose more wisely. But they are not enough. I cannot save the world by recycling or other individual acts. They are necessary but not sufficient, as the mathematicians like to say. 

Perhaps you are familiar with Marge Piercy’s poem:

“Alone, you can fight,

You can refuse, you can

take what revenge you can

but they roll over you.

But two people fighting

back to back can cut through

a mob, snake-dancing file

Can break a cordon, an army can meet an army.

Two people can keep each other

sane, can give support, conviction,

love, massage, hope, sex.

Three people are a delegation,

a committee, a wedge. With four

you can play bridge and start

an organization….

Google the rest of it! Her point is that we are stronger and more effective in groups than as isolated individuals. Shared aspirations for a better future for ourselves and our children require a community. I would add a second point — Don’t go looking for the World Improvement Society. There are many changes that our world needs, and we can’t tackle them all at once. Find an organization that matches one or two of those aspirational goals, one which also matches your skills, experience, and knowledge (or a willingness to acquire them).

For me, the organizational choices were easy, made long ago. One group is focused, the other more general. My faith community shares all those aspirations and encourages us to work toward one or several of them in partnership with our brothers and sisters in faith. Other community organizations like the Rotary Club or a political party may be a better fit for some readers.

While I contribute financially to a wide range of “do-good” organizations at the local, state and national levels, the organization on which I have focused much of my “save the world” time and effort for the past 55 years is the League of Women Voters. The League of Women Voter matches my skills and experience and is primarily focused on democracy. You may be drawn to the Sierra Club, the ACLU, or some other organization that engages in direct action or lobbies for policy decisions that improve the world we live in.

When it comes to saving the world, what part of that agenda speaks to you, where does your particular passion meet your skills? What organized group of people can best help you channel your effort to making the world a better place both for us and future generations? How can you participate in that work?

Now that’s a New Year’s resolution worth making. Check back with me in 12 months and we will see how much progress we have made on our little piece of the action for a better future.

Pick Your Tyranny

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Pick Your Tyranny?

In the 19th century, John C. Calhoun, on whose former plantation I taught, was concerned about the tyranny of the majority.  That is, he feared that a majority would impose their wishes on the whole country without regard to those who were harmed or disadvantaged by their actions.  He had a point, even though at the time it was a point about slavery (and secondarily, about tariffs). But equally distressing is what the U.S. is experiencing now, the tyranny of the minority. A vocal minority is trying to inflict a narrow, change-resistant, anti-democratic way of being onto a majority that clearly and openly disagrees with them about guns, abortion, book censorship, gender identity, sexual orientation, and a whole host of cultural issues.

The Constitution tried to avoid that kind of cultural tyranny in parts of the Bill of Rights, especially the First Amendment and the Fourth (which until Dobbs was interpreted as creating a right of privacy). The general attitude of the cultural majority is embodied in the bumper sticker, “if you don’t want an abortion, don’t have one.”  If you don’t want your child to have gender-affirming care, you are certainly free to make that choice, but don’t inflict your minority religious and political views on my child. Likewise, if you don’t want your child exposed to ideas in certain books, you have that right, but it does not allow you to prevent everyone else’s children from engaging with those ideas or books. (By the time those protected children are adolescents, many of them will be intensely curious about the content of those forbidden ideas or books—and will find a way to satisfy that curiosity!)

 If readers want to accuse me of being  “woke”, I am happy to wear that label. I don’t want to be asleep. I want to be aware of the challenges others face and help them find ways to overcome them, whether those challenges arise from an unwanted or life-threatening pregnancy,  gender identity, sexual orientation, poverty, racism, misogyny, or any of the many hazards of being human in a pluralistic society.

Economic policies are a different matter. We can assert our own cultural practices without inflicting them on everyone else, but the economy is community property. We all affect the economy with our earning and spending and saving and its ups and downs in turn affect each of us. As you may have noticed, it has become increasingly difficult to get agreement on our shared economic policies—the budget, the national debt, the tax system, the role of government in infrastructure and disaster relief and reducing poverty. In economic policy, the tyranny is that of a very wealthy minority who want lower taxes, less government regulation, and privatization of everything from schools to health care to fire protection and law enforcement. Those changes would let them get out of contributing to these services for anyone outside of their immediate families in their private schools and inside the gated communities tat provide their own road maintenance, fire protection,and security..

That minority has been quite successful in imposing their view of how the nation should run its government budgets, school choice, reduced funding for public higher education, and resistance to expansion of publicly funded health care. In health care, for instance, the US. has worse health outcomes and higher health expenditures both public and private than any other developed nation.  They are aided and abetted in this pursuit of unenlightened self-interest by certain features of our Constitution that were put in place to placate the wealthy slave-owning plantation class by ensuring that that nation would have disproportionately ore more representation in Congress and the electoral college from smaller, rural, and from 1787 to 1868, slave-owning states.

We don’t need more Republicans or more Democrats, more congressional hearings or more showdowns over shutting down the government. We just need to give up the joy of tyrannizing over those with whom we disagree and, in the words of Rodney King, ask ourselves “Can’t we just all get along?” The cry of tyranny (often rephrased as fascism or socialism) is used by both sides to try to get their own way, but it also undermines trust and confidence in our institutions by convincing people that they are in the service of the tyranny on the other side  Democracy, unlike football, is not about winning. It’s about compromising. It’s about considering the needs and concerns of all kinds of minorities whether their minority position is grounded in religion, culture, gender, age, race, income, health, security, education, or anything else. It’s also about the role of government in meeting the needs of the majority for basic public services and protections and ensuring that the cost of providing those services is shared equitably among its citizens.

None of us can or should get everything we want at the expense of others. Considering differences in needs and desires and being willing to make compromises is the hallmark of being an adult and a good citizen. As the 2024 elections approach, those are the qualities I will be looking for.in candidates for public office fro city council to the president of the United States.

Passionately Moderate In Print

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Almost three years ago I posted this blog about my book in process. The title is Passionately Moderate: Civic Virtue and Democracy. Now it’s in print, available in paperback or digital form from amazon. I hope you will buy a copy and urge your friends to do likewise. For those of you who are more recent subscribers, here is the original blog from 2020.

“How can you call yourself passionately moderate? I thought you were a liberal, ” my oldest daughter asks.  Yes, I answered, my personal preferences are liberal. Universal health care, a woman’s right to reproductive choice, a tax system that doesn’t favor the wealthy, affordable college and affordable housing…the list goes on. But I realize that a sizeable chunk of my city, state and nation subscribes to a different set of priorities and preferences, overlapping in some cases and diametrically opposite in others.  And even if my views were those of the majority, which they are in some cases, I don’t want to impose them on a frustrated and probably angry minority.  I am willing to compromise, to settle for the pretty good or even the good enough for now rather than holding out for the very best. I am passionate about openness to compromise, the give and take that means none of us get exactly what we want personally but what may be good enough, at least for now.  That makes me a liberal in theory and a moderate in practice.

Moderation lies at the core of the two academic disciplines I love the most and have taught to several generations of college students   I have a Ph.D. in economics from my early days and worked as an academic economist for 30 years.  Then I went to seminary and got a master’s degrees in theology with a concentration in ethics, which helped me to get my economic head and my theological heart on the same page. It also gave me the opportunity to teach ethics and public policy for 15 years to graduate students in policy studies because I was able to bring these two  disciplines together.

As both an economist and a theologian, I was interested in very practical questions about how we live our lives, and in particular, how we live in community.  For an economist, that means a focus on policy—making and implemented decisions that affect our material well-being in our common life.  For theology, my focus has been ethics, which was my concentration in seminary.  Theological ethics explores how our faith understanding guides our participation in governance in a democratic society. In the process of studying ethics, I fell in love with virtue ethics, which is not tied to any particular faith tradition but infuses all of them.

 The heart of Aristotelian virtue ethics, incorporated into late medieval scholasticism by Thomas Aquinas,  is moderation.  Moderation is fulcrum on which Aristotle’s golden mean rests. The golden mean, which we will explore further in later chapters, contends that each virtue lies at the midpoint between two vices (or sins, in Christian/Jewish language).  One vice is the virtue’s extreme, the other its opposite.  Aristotle’s notion of the golden mean fit perfectly into the decision processes of my economist mind and my progressive heart.

Thirty years ago, economist Alan Blinder wrote a book called Hard Heads, Soft Hearts, arguing that the Republicans were the party of hard heads, hard hearts, while the Democrats were the party of soft heads, soft hearts. What we needed, he argued, was hard heads and soft hearts–rational decision processes combined with compassion and empathy.The same dichotomy exists between economists and theologians—and in my head and heart.  It is in the middle meeting point that we engage both head and heart in dialogue with each other.

 The core of economic decision-making is also a balancing act, weighing costs and benefit, pain and pleasure, and steering a middle course rather than going to the extremes.  In fact, economics embodies utilitarian ethics, the greatest good for the greatest number.  It’s all about getting to get good outcomes.

Barry Goldwater got it wrong when, running for president in 1964, he said, “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue..” He lost in a landslide. Mderation, along with patience, is a more likely path to human flourishing than extremism. In political economy (the old name of economics, it is economics as a guide to public policy), moderation is not just a principle, it’s a survival strategy. The successful candidate is ever in search of the median voter, constantly resisting the pull of the extremes where few voters reside.  Yes, there is lure of standing tall for what you believe, whether it’s an extreme version of the second amendment or free college for all;  rigid and unyielding in the face of pressure to compromise. It’s high drama, and it was Bernie Sanders’ strategy in both 2016 and 2020 when he failed to get the Democratic nomination But it doesn’t create or sustain communities in which we can dwell together in peace and enable humans to be nurtured and flourish.   So if you value a healthy and sustainable human community, please consider join me in declaring yourself a passionate moderate. With this qualification from Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Moderation in all things, including moderation.”

The golden mean applies not just to virtue, but to other qualities of being.  I have friends who are perfectionists, which is frustrating for them because it is impossible to always be perfect, and so often the perfect keeps us from getting to the good enough. Perfection is the opposite of moderation.  Carelessness, indifference, apatheia represent its extreme.  Most of us invest our perfectionism—if we have any—in just one or a few areas of life. W vacillate between appreciating the gift that perfectionists bring and exasperation at the lack of big picture, the delays while everything is revisited one more time.  I have worked with perfectionists, and it has never been easy for either of us.

My passion for moderation is a passion for process, not outcomes.  In order to practice moderation as a commitment to good process, you have to let your inner Buddha guide you in letting go of attachment to outcomes. I do believe that in most cases that good processes are more likely to lead to good outcomes. Not best outcomes. Not perfect outcomes.  But again, outcomes that are steps in the right direction, or good enough for now. 

Note: This blog is an excerpt from the opening chapter of a book in progress.