Building the Philosophical Arguments for a Moderate Politics

It's time the sensible center had a more robust intellectual backing

Photo by Marija Zaric on Unsplash

Through a combination of observing events in Western politics for more than twenty years, and also learning from historical events that came before my time, I have come to the conclusion that a moderate politics is what would best serve us, in terms of truly making things better for people. Based on the aforementioned objective evidence, I am absolutely certain of this conclusion. Far-left politics is driven by misguided theory that often achieves nothing in practice but division and backlash. On the other hand, reactionary right politics always ends up hurting people, by creating new forms of injustice. A moderate politics is the best way to avoid both extremes, and just as importantly, to avoid society swinging between those two extremes.

Although moderate politics should be a sound choice for any logical thinking person, the problem is that, in practice, it tends to be unattractive to many of the most politically active members of society. This is because its nuances, its acceptance of imperfection, and its insistence in patience in many areas of life is often no match the emotionally charged arguments of both the far-left and the reactionary right. I believe this 'weakness' can be at least partly overcome by developing sound counter-arguments against the common patterns of thinking and argumentation found in the far-left and the reactionary right respectively. Also, given that both the far-left and the reactionary right often successfully recruit adherents by painting grand (and unrealistic) pictures of their vision, we moderates need to be equally able to paint a vivid picture of our vision, if we want to successfully compete against the extremes.

I will talk about the far-left first. As I've pointed out many times before, the whole politics of the 21st century Western far-left is rooted in two branches of philosophy: postmodernism and critical theory. Therefore, the key to winning the argument against the far-left is to intellectually win the argument against these two worldviews. The way we can approach this is two-fold: firstly, by demonstrating the intellectual unsoundness of these worldviews, and secondly, by demonstrating the real world harms of activism and political action rooted in these worldviews. Postmodernism rejects the pursuit of objective truth, and sees speech and discourse primarily as exercises of power. Identity-based critical theories, often drawing on postmodernism, imagine society as being made up of interlocking 'systems of oppression', where people are defined as oppressors or the oppressed based on their immutable characteristics. Together, these two overarching philosophical views lead to seeing culture as constructed to oppress the marginalized rather than organically evolved to serve the needs of the people, seeing society as a sphere of powerplay rather than a marketplace of ideas where the objective truth can be pursued, and seeing people as inherently divided into oppressor vs. oppressed groups rather than individuals with their own needs, desires and agency. Unsurprisingly, a politics rooted in this outlook is often hostile to free speech, and is generally counterproductive in terms of resolving society's most sensitive conflicts. One needs to look no further than 2010s wokeness, its harmful impacts on free speech, and the backlash it ultimately brought, to prove this point. Other previous instances of the far-left causing similarly deleterious effects include the 1960s-70s New Left (which led to the backlash of the 1980s), the 1930s left in Europe (which led to the rise of fascism and World War II), and the actions of the Jacobins during the French Revolution (which led to Napoleon and the restoration of the monarchy). The far-left's formula has produced the same result again and again, and I think it would be irresponsible to allow them to experiment with society one more time.

The classical liberal tradition, rooted in Enlightenment ideals, provide the most apparent arguments to rebut the postmodern critical theory worldview. That free speech is conducive to understanding the objective truth, and that understanding the truth is necessary for practical progress, is itself a self-evident truth that is provable by the study of history alone. It is for this reason that we must always stand firm for free speech. Also, there are good reasons why we should require objective evidence before we can agree that claims being made are sound. Postmodern critical theory's insistence that society is made up of interlocking systems of oppression simply doesn't meet this standard, and thus should be rejected for the same reason we reject flat-eartherism and anti-vax nonsense alike. Besides, viewing society as being made up of interlocking systems of oppression is simply counterproductive, if we want to bring people together to resolve society's most sensitive conflicts, by finding solutions that would be satisfactory for every party.

The conservative philosophical tradition, going back to thinkers like Edmund Burke, also provide important arguments against the postmodern critical theory worldview. I've long said that Burkean conservatives were the historical equivalent of today's (genuine) anti-woke liberals. Like today's anti-woke liberals, they saw how the top-down, inorganic imposition of social change, driven by abstract philosophical doctrine, can be harmful to freedom, and also make things worse in unexpected ways in reality. This is why change must be gradual, rooted in practical need rather than abstract philosophy, and implemented in a way that respects society's long-standing values as much as possible. This lesson is one that progressives would do well to learn. This, in turn, is why I have long argued that the philosophical insights of the conservative cannon should be re-integrated into progressive thinking, and this would make for a good foundation for a sustainable reformist politics. Note that the conservative philosophical tradition is very different from what is wrongly called 'conservative' politics in the contemporary West, which is clearly more authoritarian-reactionary than conservative. True conservative philosophy would lead to a moderate reformist politics, and not whatever Trump and his ilk represent.

Now let's talk about the reactionary right. If we look at history, reactionary movements have a uniformly bad track record. They always lead to irrational policies, gross injustices, and often conflict and war. This is because they are emotionally charged and irrational, and often deliberately so. Reactionary politics often takes advantage of widespread frustration with a certain phenomenon (wokeness being the most recent example), and turn it into fuel for a destructive politics that serves those with a questionable agenda, by using emotion to bypass rationality. In moments of reactionary emotion, the normal rational function of humans is impaired, and what would normally be rejected can often be accepted. This effect is often deliberately enhanced further by the use of peer pressure, tribalism, and exaggerated portrayals of the 'enemy' or the issue causing concern. Moderates need to be able to neutralize the tactics used to build reactionary political movements. We also need to be able to address the frustrations being seized upon by reactionaries, in order to stop them from being able to mass recruit people to their cause. I believe moderates are much more effective at doing this than the far-left, simply because we are practical, empirical and evidence-based, and aren't blinded by ideological dogma like much of the far-left is.

In conclusion, we need to develop philosophical arguments to justify a moderate politics, to paint a picture of why a moderate reformist politics is better than the alternatives of the far-left and the reactionary right, in order to win the battle against these extremes in the marketplace of ideas. To do so, we can draw from both the Enlightenment-classical liberal tradition and the Burkean conservative tradition. We should also point to concrete historical examples to illustrate our point. Finally, we need to address and neutralize the core ideas that motivate the far-left and the reactionary right respectively: for the far-left, this would be postmodern critical theory, and for the reactionary right, this would be whatever frustration they are seizing on to weaponize. The effective use of rationality to neutralize and defeat bad ideas will be crucial to our success.

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TaraElla is a singer-songwriter and author, who is the author of the Progressive Conservative Manifesto, the Moral Libertarian Manifesto and the Moral Libertarian book series. She is also the author of her autobiography The TaraElla Story.