Now the Real Work of Radical Moderation Begins
To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely."
Edmund Burke
While the transition process itself remains a bit unclear, most Americans are feeling a sense of relief that the election is over and that a decision has been made.
But the reality is that the work is just beginning. Despite Biden's narrow win, we're still more polarized than ever and the narrowness of the win suggests that we face two very different visions of what America and American greatness can look like. But even more than those deep divisions, there are numerous ways in which our political life is failing average Americans in big and small ways.
Unsurprisingly, we think Radical Moderation can help! We want to offer a way for thinking about and working toward real change in a divided America. Because the reality is, however much we love our country, there's a lot of work to do.
Right now we're putting together a series of posts on the most obvious areas for reform, focusing on those issues where the injustices are the most obvious and where there is, perhaps surprisingly, the most hope for bipartisan or cross-ideological solutions. We'll lay out what we think are the crucial guiding principles and then discuss a Radically Moderate way to apply them. But in what follows, we'll make a start at identifying the political principles that conservatives, progressives, and libertarians can all agree on, and then discussing three areas of deep policy need where we think these principles can help.
We'll also just add that what follows should not be read as a condemnation of American life. We are proud Americans. But as the eminent Edmund Burke once said, "To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely." We Americans have a lot to be proud of, but we also have a lot to be angry about. Our governments have failed to live up to the principles our country was founded on. Our elected representatives have failed to protect individual rights, have failed to establish justice, and have failed to secure the blessings of liberty for Americans of all stripes, across the political divide. These failures can and should be addressed precisely so we can fulfill the promises of our Constitution:
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
The Constitution of the United States of America
We've failed to hit a lot of these promises over the years, and we'll go into more detail on how later. But for now our purpose is to try to provide a path forward.
Before we get to the specifics though, another quick commentary on a bruising election: despite all the hype, the presidential election is one of the least important. The media, and as a result Americans, focus a lot on national politics, much to our detriment, but the real change happens at the local and state levels, as we'll see. One solution suggested by various thinkers is to develop a "politics of place," one where we focus our energies on the local communities where we're most likely to make real change and where polarization is defanged by intimate knowledge of those around us and the challenges we face. As the scholar Fabio Rojas noted in a recent op-ed, we need to think about policies, not presidents. Part of our goal moving forward is to highlight the ways in which we can support Radically Moderate reform in our own communities: reforms that will pull America closer to the promises of her founding while also improving the lives of real individuals living in real communities, promoting flourishing for all.
Sound great? Of course! Is it going to be easy? Nope! Will it be worth it? You bet! So let's get started.
Radically Moderate Policies
It will be worthy of a free, enlightened, and at no distant period, a great nation, to give to mankind the magnanimous and too novel example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence. Who can doubt that, in the course of time and things, the fruits of such a plan would richly repay any temporary advantages which might be lost by a steady adherence to it ? Can it be that Providence has not connected the permanent felicity of a nation with its virtue? The experiment, at least, is recommended by every sentiment which ennobles human nature. Alas! is it rendered impossible by its vices?
George Washington, Farewell Address
We've spent the last few months laying out the principles for a method for thinking about politics and that's great. Having a method for thinking about how to think about politics is an important first step. But there comes a point when we need to start talking, not just about the method for thinking about politics, but the actual content of that politics itself. If Radical Moderation is to have any effect on the broader political sphere it can't be just a way to think about politics. There needs to be some way to judge the actual content of public policies.
We've put together a list of Radically Moderate political principles that we think can and should guide any decent public policy whose goal is to lead to general human flourishing, which is honestly the only goal public policy should really have.
So here goes!
Some Radically Moderate Principles for Thinking about Policy:
Policies should reflect the consent of the people in some way. (More on what this looks like later). We personally like Tom Bell's work on gradations of consent, but there are other approaches one could take. The important message is that consent matters and needs to be taken seriously.
Policies should not harm the vulnerable or weak for the benefit of the strong or powerful. This is a basic requirement of justice and sadly one that is too often ignored in favor of cronyism, special interest, or majoritarian policies.
Policies should not try to direct people's lives in ways they would not choose for themselves. This is a basic requirement of liberty or freedom.
People should have decent and roughly equitable access to the resources and freedoms shared by the community, a basic requirement of equity.
Policies should be clear and easy to understand, apply to everyone equally (including those in power), and should be clearly promulgated, all of which are basic requirements of rule of law.
Policies should respect and take seriously the individuals who make up political communities, with the understanding that individual freedom is not only a foundational moral principle but is also a principle that allows for the innovation and dynamism that protects communities from external shocks.
Policies should respect and take seriously the communities in which individuals flourish and thrive. Individuals require strong and vibrant communities to thrive and policies that destroy or undermine communities erase an important protection that individuals count on in the face of disaster, economic change, and general social upheaval.
Here's the TL;DR version: consent, justice, liberty, equity, rule of law, respect for individuals, respect for communities.
We chose these principles in part because we think they're the foundation for any decent political system, but also because we think there's likely to be substantial agreement from different parts of the political spectrum. Conservatives, progressives, and libertarians (among others), at least in the United States, will all agree that these are principles worth fighting for and preserving. People of all political stripes who genuinely care about human flourishing will find themselves defending these principles because these principles are required for human flourishing. Thousands of years of theory and practice have demonstrated their importance.
What's not here:
Policies that benefit the few at the expense of the many.
Policies that violate the rights of the few for the benefit of the many.
Policies that are guided by and framed by special interests who wield the power of government for their own benefit.
Policies that rely entirely on coercion or force for their enforcement, a violation of consent.
Now, all of these things are complicated and an astute reader will point out that some of these conflict with each other in complicated ways. And that's ideally the art of politics: bringing principles and people together in ways that maximize the flourishing of individuals and the communities they live in.
So the next obvious question becomes: how to apply these principles to the most serious challenges facing us as Americans? For the whole month of November we'll be playing our own minor role in the transition process, laying out a platform for Radically Moderate Reform that tackles some of the most pressing issues facing Americans today.
We're going to dive into:
Criminal justice reform
Health care reform
Immigration reform
Ambitious, you say? Of course! We're starting with these three issues precisely because we think they represent major failures of the American promise, have potential reforms that most people would support, and because failing to reform these areas poses a serious threat to human flourishing across our great nation. So hang tight! We'll be releasing a followup post on how we're going to tackle these issues later this week. Subscribe so you don't miss anything!
In the meantime, what do you think? Would you add to our list of principles? Are there issues you would add? Tell us in the comments!