A plea for muscular moderation
December 11, 2008From the Wilson Quarterly:
Muscular moderation from our leaders, and a renewed faith among citizens, requires a new American nationalism, with national identity trumping party loyalty. The public’s frustrated yearning for a patriotic and civic revival fueled both Ronald Reagan’s success and Barack Obama’s meteoric rise. Both men captured Americans’ desire for greater faith in their leaders, their country, their system, themselves. The excitement about John McCain’s compelling life story likewise reflects a yearning for simpler, more patriotic times, rooted in self-sacrifice rather than self-indulgence.
We will start reducing the tension and reviving some faith in politics when we have leaders who understand that they must lead from the center, uniting Americans around core values and ensuring that politics are once again about being rooted in community and solving problems, not just rooting for one set of culture warriors over another.
This reminded me of why I’m a small-L libertarian, disenchanted with the Libertarian Party — not to mention others that claim to support a return to Constitutional liberties. The LP and the others attract single issue zealots and crackpots who are perfectly willing to fight and argue ad infinitum over tiny little scraps of philosophy. To do anything else isn’t “principled.”
That’s why I like the idea of a party that borrows the best ideas of both the Democrats and the Republicans.
Hat tip, The Whig.
Tags: moderation, Whigs
December 11th, 2008 at 12:58 pm
I agree whole-heartedly with the statement quoted from the Wilson Quarterly. I am also frustrated with the current party system and their zealots. The biggest problem, though, is creating an environment for change without becoming overzealous about it. We get caught in a conundrum of “We really want to change! Rally the troops” and yet “We don’t want to look like crack-pots” at the same time. Where does the line get drawn?
Personally, I would like to see an overall movement back to the Constitution that underlies everything else on any political platform. Think back to fifth grade, which is probably one of the last times that the majority of us were exposed to the Preamble to the Constitution. It simply states that the role of the Constitution is to provide a few simple things. Then, from that point, the Constitution was drafted to express particulars about how the Federal government would provide those things. But that’s all. No more (and no less). What we currently have is an over-reaching Federal government that wants to do anything and everything to create power for themselves, instead of leaving “the details” to the more localized portions of government (Education, health care, etc.)…
I could go on and on, but I’ve got to stop. I just realized that I might be late getting back to work from my lunch break…. SHOOT! (See what politics does to me?)