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0 pointsasdfman1236y ago0 comments

Tons of people out there "can't join any tribe" because their belief systems are sufficiently different than those of people around them, and the way this is written suggests that it's almost a novel idea to Paul Graham.

Has anyone cornered him and beaten him up for having moderate beliefs?

And having beliefs across the political spectrum hardly makes him novel. I'm probably a classic left leaning liberal. I'm in favor of universal healthcare. But I don't think gun control will solve all our problems, I'm okay with lower corporate taxes, but believe in greater wealth distribution. I think identity politics has gone too far. But I refuse to vote for Republicans because to an elect a Republican means to give more power to their voting bloc, and I don't like their policies.

Do I need to invent a special term for myself? No. I'm a complicated individual. Everyone else is one, too. It's easy to assume you're the only one thinking for yourself, but it's more likely that you just fail to understand others are as complicated as you are.

Also, I do believe he was implying that while his beliefs fall across the spectrum, they generally tend towards the center.

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10 comments · 4 top-level

roenxi6y ago· 4 in thread

> Has anyone cornered him and beaten him up for having moderate beliefs?

Going again to the 'not actually reading the article' point, he has sneakily defined a moderate as someone potentially only holding extremest beliefs and probably as likely to be beaten up as anyone else.

An extremist moderate, say.

> I'm in favor of ... but I refuse to vote for Republicans

There are good and bad people in every part of the spectrum. If you think only the Republicans are dangerous to elect you are either talking about the very-short-term of one election cycle or you are not thinking for yourself.

A good check of if you are thinking for yourself is not feeling comfortable accepting or rejecting either side, or becoming almost a single issue voter (because nobody has time to be across more than one or two issues).

asdfman123OP6y ago

I have a Republican in my district who I quite like but cannot vote for because congresspeople aren't able to vote for themselves, but with the rest of their party. The Republican party consistently votes against, and does damage to, many things I hold dear, so voting democrat is the lesser evil unless the democratic candidate is corrupt or inept.

michaelmrose6y ago

If you don't vote mostly with the rest of the republicans you can't really be one. For one you will lose the financial support of the republican machine and for two you will lose primaries to your more "right" thinking brethren.

The Republican party as a block

- Wants to turn immigration from a constant source of innovation and vitality that has benefited our nation to a dead highway with a gulag for brown people and their children that want to live here so bad they are willing to sneak in even after the white people told them they weren't wanted.

- Wants to do nothing about the environmental impact of human beings because its more profitable to do nothing right up until its disastrous. Basically fuck the grand kids I want to be rich now.

- Wants to do nothing about health care until it becomes a rolling disaster for the bottom 50% while insuring that the reliably right voting blue hairs are taken care of.

None of these are inherently liberal or conservative positions. The fact that its framed as such is a testament to the truly bizarre world we inhabit. In the context of the extremist positions taken by the current Republican party the only safe bet is to decrease their power.

roenxi6y ago

> Wants to turn immigration from a constant source of innovation and vitality that has benefited our nation to a dead highway with a gulag for brown people and their children that want to live here so bad they are willing to sneak in even after the white people told them they weren't wanted.

But pointing out the obvious - that clearly isn't a conclusion you've come to by listening to Republicans. For example, if you look at Republican propaganda [0] they agree that immigration is a valuable source of potential innovation and vitality - the bit about prioritising high skill migrants.

That isn't an 'I've seriously thought about their position and weighed up what they said and then decided I don't like the platform' style opinion. It is a 'I've listened carefully to my people and know their talking points' style opinion. It would be a struggle to label it as moderate in any sense of the word.

[0] https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/president-do...

githaw6y ago

> There are good and bad people in every part of the spectrum. If you think only the Republicans are dangerous to elect you are either talking about the very-short-term of one election cycle or you are not thinking for yourself.

You see, that's funny because having read the article, the above nicely nails the views an extreme moderate would hold.

IIAOPSW6y ago· 2 in thread

>Do I need to invent a special term for myself? No. yes. Unless you don't want to ever convince anyone of any of your views.

You haven't understood the "intentional moderate". Contrarianism is a shortcut to the respect owed to skeptics. The purpose of the intentional moderate is to portray themselves as just like you: "a complicated individual". But unlike you they really aren't. Its a ruse. There is no substantive reason for their disagreements such as "I don't like their policies."

There's enough of this out there that if you self describe as "moderate", people might be classifying you as an affable idiot with no real views. Personally I like the more modern term "radical centerist".

zjaffee6y ago

I think in the context of the current presidential race, Amy Klobuchar could be closest to described as an intentional moderate. Namely someone who focuses on simply just changing laws at the cost of any sort of deeper ideological belief, at least with regards to how she frames her view point rather than by defending her proposals within their own merit she focuses on the compromise aspect.

Biden on the other hand is clearly a traditional liberal, not a social democrat, socialist, or progressive. At the same time, George H.W. Bush, or even Mitt Romney, are also a liberals in the same sense, with both politicians being pulled in different directions because of where their party currently stands. This sort of view point isn't moderate in any sense of the word, a liberal, who believes in free markets and has a globalist world view is a unified political theory for how things should be done.

However, a person who is an accidental moderate themselves, who never developed their own or latched onto any unified broad political theory, would tend to support candidates like the above because the American political system tends towards liberal capitalism as being the political center.

IIAOPSW6y ago

I don't think intentional moderates ever run in any party. The point is to give off an impression not to do actual work. At worst some politicians understand "talk less, smile more, don't let them know what you're against or what you're for". I guess you could call this "superficial intentional moderation".

SkyBelow6y ago

>Has anyone cornered him and beaten him up for having moderate beliefs?

The question would be has anyone beaten him up for having conservative or liberal beliefs when in a group who has the opposite.

But then I wonder about this judgment in general. How political groups are generally getting beaten up for their political opinions. Back in my college days I use to try supporting some really out there views as experiments in taking human stances to their natural conclusions, and while I did have a few professors sit me down and have a talk to determine if I was being serious, I was never beaten up for any of them. The entire metric of if people use physical violence against you is partially dependent upon a person's ability to know when they are crossing a line or not, much like how I stopped this behavior after college because it would get me fired.

_bxg16y ago

> And having beliefs across the political spectrum hardly makes him novel.

Clearly you're not on Twitter.

Every day I see people deriding moderates for being moderates. So this post is an attempt to de-conflate people who don't subscribe to one of the parties and people who just want to be as inoffensive as possible.

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