The Pragdealist Alternative: A Declaration of Independence

The following is a guest voice contribution from Allan Goldstein.

A new wind is blowing through America. Change is in the air and I’m not talking about Barack Obama. This change is deeper than that, more fundamental. Our president is a product of that change, not its cause. Americans are marginalizing the margins.

The fastest growing party in America is no party. For a century and a half we’ve had Democrats and Republicans, but the populous is rapidly becoming neither. The fastest growing party in America is the Independents.

Independents are misunderstood and derided by both major parties because Independents represent a threat to those parties.

“Independents believe in nothing. They are unable to commit to anything. They are adrift in a salad bar of choices, picking whatever looks good at the moment.” Those are the dismissive accusations, and they are wrong.

Wrong but plausible because, while there is a philosophy beneath the impulse towards independence, it hasn’t yet been clearly articulated.

Many strains of thought have come together to create this new philosophy, but the dominant one is pragmatic idealism or “Pragdealism.” I am a Pragdealist, and I offer that term as my contribution to a political/cultural conversation that needs new terms as much as it needs fresh blood and new ideas.

A Pragdealist believes that an alternative to the conservative/liberal dichotomy is desperately needed, right now, for the most practical, idealistic reason.

There is a fatal flaw in our left-right continuum, a kind of torque, built into both movements, that is constantly trying to tear them apart and rip them from reality. Conservatives and liberals are both under pressure from their extremes; the hard left and the hard right are the magnetic poles of both camps. When your beliefs are ideological, almost religious, the true believers always have the high ground. Those keepers of the flame are the truly righteous; one opposes them at one’s own peril.

Colin Powell is currently undergoing the same excommunication that Joe Lieberman suffered last year. Each tossed out, declared anathema, shunned, because he held one fatal position not blessed by the keepers of the flame, otherwise known as the base. And never mind that Colin Powell is ninety percent conservative and Joe Lieberman ninety percent liberal.

Both men committed a mortal sin; a sin that illustrates just how diseased and dysfunctional their respective camps have become. That sin? They thought for themselves.

The greatest impulse toward Pragdealism isn’t an inability to take sides in the donkey-elephant wars, but a feeling that the dichotomy is exhausted, no longer useful in identifying real-world conflicts, problems, and least of all, solutions. It’s not even conducive to conversation. Democrats and Republicans are like the Dodgers and the Giants. You’re a fan of one or the other; you want one to win and the other to lose; all the time, every time, no reasons necessary. Loyalty is the highest virtue and blind loyalty its purest expression.

Otherwise, how could Sarah Palin be considered a credible leader, or Dennis Kucinich be taken seriously? Both would be a disaster for the nation, but both would get most of their respective parties’ votes, if nominated.

Why do hate groups breed on both sides; why the rigid, stupid, outdated ideas that never seem to die? Why does it take political catastrophe for either side to make some obvious, common sense changes? Because the poles don’t pull that way. The poles pull away from the polls, hard, until the rubber band breaks and your party spends a generation in the wilderness.

Pragdealists aren’t somewhere in the zombie middle between liberals and conservatives, though we agree with some positions of both. But we recognize that both come with so much encrusted history, so many battle scars, grudges and grievances, so damned much baggage, that we take a page from the most hated American institution of all, the airline industry, and say, leave that valise at the curb, Champ. We’re not paying the fifty bucks.

A Pragdealist believes, first of all, that whatever he believes must work, or he won’t believe in it. A Pragdealist is pragmatic, but that doesn’t mean “not idealistic.” We just believe that our ideals must function in the real world.

But pragmatism in the service of nothing is useless, rudderless, ultimately nihilistic. Marx, Jesus, Adam Smith and I all pretty much agree: The greatest good for the greatest number, that’s the ideal. But the pragmatist knows how you try to attain that unattainable goal is everything. It’s the difference between Thomas Paine and Pol Pot.

Pragdealists seek neither right nor left, but the “sweet spot.” Our prejudice pulls us away from extremes, our tug is towards the reasonable, the workable, our philosophy is downright hostile to extremists of all colors. In the blood of a Pragdealist run antibodies that reject the virus of extremism.

Pragdealists of a conservative bent don’t have to worry about being seduced by a Hitler or a Franco, either one would be anathema to a Pragdealist. Pragdealists with liberal inclinations don’t run the risk of falling in love with a Lenin or a Castro, either one would be revealed for the frauds they were when judged by Pragdealist standards.

I’m a Pragdealist who is somewhat more liberal than conservative. But I’ve been told I’m as liberal as it gets. That is so blatantly untrue I don’t think the person who said it even means it. I can think of a hundred writers and politicians more liberal than I am, without breaking a sweat. But pigeonholing me as a member of the other side is a reflex not limited to conservatives. On liberal blogs I’ve been called a neo-con, Zionist thug, and worse.

So, why do true believers of either camp want to glue me to the pole of the opposite camp when I disagree with them on some particular issue or attitude?

Because that’s what they do: liberals demonize conservatives and conservatives return the favor. And anyone who wants to see the world independently, arrive at his own conclusions; anyone who dares to declare his right to think for himself without deference to ancient, exhausted ideologies is a demon to both camps.

The Pragdealist thinks we have demons enough. He will not demonize the right or the left. What he will do is declare his independence, exert his inalienable right to try to use his reason, illuminated by his idealism, to make the world a better place.

The Pragdealist knows he doesn’t have all the answers, but he’s still looking. If the problems of today could have been solved by the liberals or the conservatives, they would have been. Each has had ample opportunity. Yet neither has had a new idea in ages. Are they still looking?

I believe most American are, at heart, Pragdealists. Pragdealist principles and achievements are all over our history of compromise and progress. We are a nation of the middle, when extremes like the Weathermen and the Ku Klux Klan arise, they may flourish for a while, but ultimately we reject them.

But we have lacked the words to enable our moderate impulses; we have let ourselves be defined by other, hotter heads.

No more. There is a Pragdealist alternative. And this is our Declaration of Independence.