“I have no other end in this writing, but only to discover myself, who, also, shall, peradventure, be another thing tomorrow, if I chance to meet any new instruction to change me.”  – Montaigne

The term flip-flop has become as ubiquitous in accusatory politics as the ridiculous “footwear” that bear the same name have become in the population at large.  I have to say that I prefer a change of mind to a precarious piece of rubber snapping at my heel.

In my mind, an elected official who never flip flops has ceased to think and learn.  Anyone who continues to collect and try to understand information on a subject will experience some movement in his opinions of the problem and the solution.  This developing understanding may not often cause a complete reversal of positions, but it will happen occasionally.  And as understanding changes—even if only a little bit—language, tactics, perceptions, preconceptions, goals, metrics, and meaning change.

Those who expect their elected officials—or anyone else, for that matter—never to flip flop have some serious misconceptions: either 1) that the official already knows everything or 2) that all new information that comes to light will support the official’s (or more truthfully, the supporter’s) stances.  Either way, the person is a fool.

Unfortunately, I think that in our Internet age when people are able to seek out exclusively those “media sources” that validate rather than inform, we will see less flip-flopping.  It will also fall victim to campaign contributions from the fringes, linked to particular issues.  As the people, the candidates, and the money circulate wildly in their echo chambers, there will be less time and opportunity for reflection and honest, respectful debate.

We should all respect a sincere flip-flop.  Who knows, we may learn something someday that puts us in the position of digging up the courage to do our own 180º turn.

In the movie All of Me the soul of Lilly Tomlin’s character is mistakenly trapped inside the body of Steve Martin’s character.  Anyone who has seen this movie has witnessed one of the great masters of physical comedy do some of his best work as his body lurches around, trying to obey the two wills trapped inside it.

It’s funny when it’s Steve Martin, but it’s not so funny when it’s your government.

With the money coming from the extreme wings of each of the two major party—and the influence that it buys flowing back out to them—our federal government and some state governments resemble Steve Martin lurching and tripping around, pushing agendas each farther from the center than the last set of representatives did.

Cover the kids’ ears
As most of the country pleads for reason and cooperation, the word “compromise” becomes a weapon in the arsenals of politicians: “I won’t compromise my principles of [fill in the superficial political objective]”; or “The other side refuses to compromise [while our side is giving up SO much ground]”.

But compromise is exactly what we need for the government to “govern”—and a centrist third party is the way to get it.

We’ve all heard the term “coalition government” but many of us don’t know what it is because it doesn’t really exist in the U.S.

A coalition government happens, primarily in parliamentary systems, when a party wins a plurality of the representative seats, but not a majority.  In order to create a majority and get anything done, the party that won plurality must form an alliance with another party.

This requires some give and take—or compromise—to align their priorities on which to base their agenda.  And this is what the federal and state governments are missing in most of the U.S.

In the U.S., “to the victor go the spoils,” and to the financer goes the influence; the winning party doesn’t have to compromise because they are a majority, and their money sources don’t want them to compromise, so they don’t—not even if it’s the best thing for the people.

When this happens, ideology rules.  It reminds me of another comedic movie, Erik the Viking, in which, when the island of Hy-Brazil begins to sink into the ocean, the government’s official line is to be calm because “This is NOT happening.”

On the other hand, parties in a country where one party rarely gets a majority know that compromise is inevitable.  And the inevitability of compromise makes it a fact of life rather than a flaw or a weapon.

Most of these coalition governments are either center-right or center-left, but the center is almost always a part of them.  Why?  Because that’s where the people are.

Center citizens
This centrism brings stability to the system.  None of the parties can take the government and run hell-bent for the fringes.  No center-whatever coalition will quote the refrain from Washington every other year, “The American people have given us a mandate . . .,” and take the agenda to the extreme.

So what do we do?

-          Support centrist candidates

-          Encourage existing officials to become independent (but you have to have a lot of support in your back pocket to convince him/her)

-          Influence your chosen party toward the center

-          Find a friend from the other side of the aisle whom you can talk to respectfully and intelligently about the issues

-          Support third parties (through activism, funds, and voting)

If we want a country that is not controlled from the fringes like a double-minded man, we must bring the agenda to the center.  And that requires people pulling the influence back from the fringes and into where the citizens are—in the center.

Last year I found a new Christmas song—really a (wild) variation on an older Christmas song.  It’s “Little Town” by a two-person band called Over The Rhine.  It’s a beautiful song (not at all the tune of “O Little Town of Bethlehem”) with a great message.  I encourage you to download it from iTunes or wherever.  Satisfaction is guaranteed in that I will pay you 100% cash back plus 1% interest if you don’t like it (refund must be in person and you must give me 24 hours’ notice so I can get a $1 bill).

Little Town – Over the Rhine

O little town of Bethlehem
How still we see thee lie
Above thy dark and dreamless sleep
The silent stars go by

Yet in thy dark streets shineth
The everlasting light
The hopes and fears of all the years
Are met in thee tonight

The lamplit streets of Bethlehem
We walk now through the night
There is no peace in Bethlehem
There is no peace in sight

The wounds of generations
Almost too deep to heal
Scar the timeworn miracle
And make it seem surreal

The baby in the manger
Grew to a man one day
And still we try to listen now
To what he had to say

Put up your swords forever
Forgive your enemies
Love your neighbor as yourself
Let your little children come to me

When someone tells me we need a free market, I say “A totally free market means anti-freeze sold as snow-cone syrup.”  They retort, “Well, of course we need some regulation.”  And so it becomes an argument of the degree of regulation.

When someone says we need enough regulation to stamp out all cheating, corruption, waste, and lead paint from China, I point out that in order to do that we would need a government official assigned to monitor no more than ten people (and more people to monitor the monitors).  This is neither attractive nor financially feasible.  And so it becomes an argument of the degree of freedom to make mistakes.

Taxes are a favorite target of the right.  When in a discussion with someone who fancies himself anti-tax, I’ll propose we reduce the tax rate to zero—that will really get the economy humming!  He will concede that taxes are essential to an efficient and energetic government.  And so it becomes are argument of the degree of taxation.

On the other hand, when someone asserts we need to raise taxes on the rich, I say, “Should we return to the highest tax rate during WWII of 94%?”  Reasonable people will admit that is too high.  And so it becomes are argument of degrees of personal financial freedom.

In business there is the concept of a Pareto win.  If the seller sells a good or service for more than the minimum he will accept and the buyer pays less than the maximum he will pay, then they both win.  In politics particularly, but also in religion, this common ground is vast.  The fact is that most of us agree on more than we disagree on.  If we can first identify and explore common ground, then we can retain our respect, humility, and our communication skills as we broaden our perspective and learn from the experiences and insights of others.

Below are some of the best quotes I pulled from my brief and selective reading of Montaigne.  I’m sure I’ll be back to visit him.

From “Of Pedantry”
“We suffer ourselves to lean and rely so strongly upon the arm of another, that we destroy our own strength and vigour.”

“though we could become learned by other men’s learning, a man can never be wise but by his own wisdom.”

“these fellows, to make a parade and to get opinion, mustering the ridiculous knowledge of theirs, that floats on the superficies of the brain, are perpetually perplexing and entangling themselves in their own nonsense.”

“All other knowledge is hurtful to him who has not the science of goodness.”

From “Of the Education of Children”
“I have no other end in this writing, but only to discover myself, who, also, shall, peradventure, be another thing tomorrow, if I chance to meet any new instruction to change me.”

“the greatest and most important difficulty of human science is the education of children.”

“we may whet and sharpen our wits by rubbing them against those of others.”

“[the student] shall, by reading [great] books, converse with the great and heroic souls of the best ages.”

“The conduct of our lives is the true mirror of our doctrine.”

From “That it is Folly to Measure Truth and Error by Our Own Capacity”
“resolutely to condemn anything for false and impossible, is arrogantly and impiously to circumscribe and limit the will of God, and the power of our mother nature, within the bounds of my own capacity. . . .”

“How many unlikely things are there testified by people worthy of faith, which, if we cannot persuade ourselves absolutely to believe, we ought at least to leave them in suspense; for, to condemn them as impossible, is by a temerarious presumption to pretend to know the utmost bounds of possibility.”

From “Of Cannibals”
“every one gives the title of barbarism to everything that is not in use in his own country.”

From “That the Relish of Good and Evil Depends in a Great Measure upon the Opinion we Have of Them”
“The confidence in another man’s virtue is no light evidence of a man’s own. . . .”

“not he whom the world believes, but he who believes himself to be so, is content;”

“A straight oar seems crooked in the water.”

From “Upon Some Verses of Virgil”
“few will quarrel with the license of my writings, who have not more to quarrel with in the license of their own thoughts. . . .”

“Every one is wary and discreet in confession, but men ought to be so in action;”

“Every one avoids seeing a man born, every one runs to see him die;”

“there are . . . people . . . who value themselves upon contempt of themselves, and purport to grow better by being worse.”

“Amongst chief deformities I reckon forced and artificial beauties. . . .”

What is the most listened-to radio show in America?  Rush Limbaugh’s.  Estimates range between 14 and 30 million listeners.  In July of 2008 Limbaugh signed an eight-year, $400 million contract—hardly the kind of money a revolutionary gets for speaking truth to power.

What is the most-watched cable news channel?  Fox News Channel, which regularly has 50% more than, and often twice as many, viewers as #2 CNN.

What is the most-watched cable news show?  Fox News’s The O’Reilly Factor, with its anything-but-journalistic host, regularly pulls in 3.5 to 4 million viewers.  Granted, his viewers are about half of the number watching a broadcast evening news program, but broadcast news viewership has declined by about a million viewers a year since 1980, while FOX News continues to grow.  Moreover, the broadcast channels feature 2-4 hours of news each day while the cable news channels broadcast “news” 24/7.  And let’s not forget that Fox’s broadcast channel shares a lot of personnel and an obvious conservative bent with the cable Fox News Channel.

So they’re huge; so what?

In a recent Pew Research Center survey on perceptions about President Obama’s religious life, they found that seven percent more people in August 2010 (18%) think Obama is a Muslim than did in March of 2009 (11%).  And not coincidentally “When asked how they learned about Obama’s religion in an open-ended question, 60% of those who say Obama is a Muslim cite the media.”  This is why it’s important.  People are outsourcing their thinking to ideologically driven pseudo-journalists—on both sides of the spectrum.  Sean O’Limbeck is more heard than Keith Mahrtthews, but only more problematic because of the size of the audience.

The right-wing is also very adept at defining the language of the debate.  Terms like “death tax,” “socialized medicine,” “death panels,” “welfare queens,” etc. have no counterpart from the left.  The left-wing finds itself in the unappealing position of some of our founding fathers who were, by default, labeled the Anti-Federalists because they didn’t define the language of the debate first.

So why does the right-wing continue to claim oppression by the “main-stream” media?  The right-wing obviously has a very large—and very malleable—audience.  Whence the stance of victimhood?  Because if you’re going to spur a revolution, “Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil” (Hoffer).  The MSM is among many devils the right-wing uses to generate fear, anger, and dependency in their faithful listeners.  The left-wing also sets up devils for the same purpose, but I can’t identify one that is  as delusional and self-contradictory as the MSM when the right-wing is such a media juggernaut (comments to the contrary are welcome).  It’s common knowledge that people tend to seek out media that reflect their own values; but the right-wing continues to claim both that 1) America is a center-right nation, and 2) the MSM has a liberal bias.  This is a non-sequitur.  Either the MSM doesn’t have a liberal bias or America is a center-left nation.

Why does the right-wing choose the MSM as a target?  “[L]ike an ideal deity, the ideal devil is omnipotent and omnipresent” (Hoffer).  The MSM is so large and omnipresent, with so much fallibility that it makes an easy target as a menace, and one that’s not going away soon.  If one is looking for bias, the MSM is so huge that one can find bias of any kind—and vilify the whole for the bias of the part.

The right-wing–like the left wing–must be in revolution mode at all times for self-preservation.  Once people become comfortable with the present, they stop listening to dogma, ideology, and fearmongering.  If Limbaugh’s listeners think life’s OK, they’ll stop listening to him.

Americans love an underdog and a revolution.  As long as the right-wing media juggernaut can convince enough people that they are indeed a revolutionary underdog, they will set much of the agenda in American politics.

Dear Senator,

Please use your vote to help pass the DREAM bill allowing illegal immigrants in-state tuition.  It is the best thing for Utah, no matter your stance on illegal immigration.  In a time when fewer people are going to college because of the cost and difficulty, it is foolish to make it more difficult for a few who have the tenacity to get a degree.

Even if you vehemently oppose illegal immigration, giving illegal immigrants in-state tuition will benefit Utah.  First, if the climate changes and these students are someday allowed to work legally in the U.S., it would be best that they have college degrees so that they can contribute more to the state and not be a drain on it instead.  Second, if they should return to their country of origin, their U.S. college educations will serve them greatly there, making them less likely to return to the U.S.  They may also be able to effect enough change with their college educations that they can help to provide a better life for others in their own country, making illegal immigration to the U.S. less attractive.  Thirdly, from a security perspective, having more educated people among the illegal immigrant community will increase the likelihood that criminal activity will be reported and countered.

The numbers of college attendees and graduates continue to decrease as costs continue to rise.  The kind of person who is willing to confront these facts and overcome them is the kind of person we want as part of our state.

Please vote for the DREAM act to strengthen Utah.

Independents have three problems: 1) we think we don’t have the numbers to do anything; 2) we think we couldn’t come to agreement as a group on anything consistently enough to form any kind of cohesive influence; and 3) we’re seldom willing to contribute money and time to candidates or issues because we don’t live and die by single issues.

I think we’re wrong.  We’re obviously wrong about the numbers.  In Utah, as in most other places, independents constitute the plurality, if not the majority.  Granted, many independents are simply uninterested in politics.  But we cared enough not to simply put our parents’ party affiliation.  And enough are interested in what happens to make a HUGE difference.

Secondly, we’re wrong about coming to a consensus on anything.  It’s precisely the independents who can objectively, without the blinders of single-issue mania, see that our system is breaking, and that the only way to fix it is to bring back compromise and bi- or multipartisanship.  Only the independents can make the center (where the general population is) politically significant.  Our issue needs to be good governance rather than all the politicized issues out there that have no place in the halls of government.

The third doubt is the toughest, because it’s the truest.  Most of us independents don’t care enough to put anything into the political process.  However, a breaking point is approaching when the independent center must make its weight felt in order to preserve the forms of good governance.  If the independent center does nothing, we will one day suddenly find ourselves standing in a country torn in half by the money on the fringes.

So what does an independent do?  First, realize s/he is part of the centrist majority.  Second, learn about issues that affect us, and look into both sides to find common ground (this is really hard, because we often have to admit we’ve been wrong and we have to stretch our comfort zones and put ourselves in others’ shoes—but it must be done).  Third, talk to other centrists and independents about solutions to issues.  Fourth, start letter-writing campaigns to target elected officials.  If an official receives 10-12 of the same letter, we have his/her attention because we have shown that a) we’re talking about the issues, b) we’re organized, c) we’re watching him/her, and d) we care enough to act.  Officials also know that if there are a dozen people who sign the letter, there are several dozen more who have heard our opinions and are within our circle of influence.  And so with a dozen letters, we make ourselves a voting block, a “special interest group.”

Good governance isn’t sexy.  It isn’t a hot-button issue that gets the rank and file to open their wallets and pound the pavement.  But it may be the most important issue we can advocate in our current political climate.

Rather than the Ten Commandments, let’s erect monuments of the Sermon on the Mount, surely the pithiest expression of Christian ideals.

I hear some hemming and hawing.  Why?  Would it be inconvenient for America and Americans to publicly acknowledge the need to be meek and merciful, to rejoice in persecution, to eschew anger, to be well-disposed to adversaries, to avoid not only immoral acts but immoral thoughts, to turn the other cheek, to give more than what’s asked of us, to carry the equipment of a soldier of an occupying army twice as far as the law requires [or the modern situational equivalent of such an odious act], to love our enemies, to bless them that curse us, to do good to them that hate us, and to pray for them which despitefully use us and persecute us?

I propose that the Christian members of this nation build monuments, not in parks or on buildings, but within ourselves of the Sermon on the Mount.  Christians should be, each of us ourselves, monuments to our faith.

But a plaque of the Ten Commandments is easy.  They are a very low hurdle that one can comply with and feel good about himself.  We can hang a plaque, have a ribbon cutting ceremony, pat ourselves on the back for another anchor to the Christian character of America, and go on living in exactly the same way we did before.

On the other hand inscribing the Sermon on the Mount in our granite hearts is SOOO hard.  There is no ribbon cutting ceremony, because the task is never done.  There are repeated failures and set-backs along the way.  But as we build these monuments, we cannot continue to live the same lives we have.  We must change for the better.  And it is my belief that these internal monuments will do more for reinforcement of the true Christian character (humble, merciful, meek, generous, and foregiving) of our society than a million plaques of the Ten Commandments in government buildings.

The animosity between the two principal political parties in the U.S. is unusually high these days. Doubtless there are many reasons, but I’ve been thinking lately more about the ramifications rather than the reasons. These two parties are a set of Saul and Paul of whom Hoffer spoke. They hate each other, but depend on each other for mutual existence. Without the Saul, or “devil” of an “other,” a political party sits like a child on a see-saw with no partner. The party out of power counts on the unrealistic expectations placed in and the incompetence of the ruling party. The opposition knows it will have its turn when we the people “throw the bums out.” So they sit and criticize, whine and obstruct while the ruling party steamrolls, blunders, and overreaches. If it weren’t for the incompetence of each party, the other may never come to power. And so they are like the moon, needing the sun to go away so it can be seen, but not too far away so it can still reflect the sun’s light.  

This has always been the case, but these day there’s a new twist. The political news pre-packaging industry (Air Amolbermann and Sean O’Limbeck amid others) exaggerate the faults of the other while diminishing those of their own ilk. And too many Americans on both sides are duped into thinking they are really getting “fair and balanced” political news, just because it sits well with their own opinions–after all, I’m Paul. We conveniently don’t have to think, because as long as we only listen to one side of the argument, no one will poke holes or make us ask hard questions.

This disinformation 1) creates more extremism, and thereby 2) generates (not coincidentally) more money for the extremes of each party as Americans are led to believe the other side is made up of Sauls. The results of this are more extreme candidates, leading to more extreme positions, leading to more gridlock in government, leading to an inability for government to function, to effect its goals as outlined in the preamble to the Constitution and similar state and local government constitutions and charters.

What compounds this situation is that the people the parties are putting forward as candidates are not as good as they should be. They are party men and women whose allegiance is to the party’s platform, not the Constitution or its goals. So when they get into office, they don’t look to promote the general welfare, but to promote the party welfare. Rather than provide for the common defense, they provide for the party defense. And this, rather than forming a more perfect union, fractures the union.

Incumbents, pragmatists, independents, and centrists are dropping like flies. Bob Bennett of Utah and Arlen Specter are only the first of many more expected to fall victim to the “you just aren’t extreme enough for me” fervor. Charlie Crist, the moderate and very popular Republican Governor of Florida withdrew from pursuing the Republican nomination for the Senate because a more extreme candidate was going to beat him in the primary. He’s now running as an independent.

Here’s the point of my post. Centrists and moderates from either side of the great dividing line between right and left (there are 300 million opinions as to where that line falls) need to support people like Crist. As much as I hate to say it, we need to send them money. The last thing the Senate in particular and the federal government in general needs is more gridlock—they’re already ineffective enough. It needs moderating voices and people who can reach across the aisle. That act alone is treasonous to party people, and that extremism is ruining our country.

Government only happens through cooperation and log-rolling, not through obstruction and steamrolling. Government should be an action, not an inaction, not an ideology, not a political weapon. We the people need to support people who will represent the people and the goals of the Constitution, not the parties.