Given the other posts on the moderateness of this site, I suppose I should add my two cents. I don’t post here as often as some of the others, but I certainly add my voice now and then. As for “moderation,” I agree with Michael and David’s sense that moderation refers to tone, not necessarily ideology or political position. Michael and I disagree on many issues, but I know that we can use this blog – along with our wonderful regular commenters – to explore these issues without devolving to partisan hackery.
As for me, I am a moderate liberal. That means that I tend to support the liberal side on most hot-button political issues. I am also a staunch partisan Democrat – mostly because of my dislike of the Republican Party. My “moderation” comes from my historical perspective. I’ve had many arguments with bona fide right wingers over the years – my father-in-law in particular – and one thing always stands out: the arguments we have are not new. Take social conservative fear mongering about cultural decline, for example. As a historian, I regularly read commentary from early 19th century religious reformers lamenting the loss of social control that resulted from the market revolution of the 1820s. Or consider the Salem Witch Trials of 1692. One reason for their severity was the deeply held fear among Puritan elites that the old Puritan theocratic order was breaking down in the face of new “Yankee” immigration. The Witch Trials were, in many ways, akin to the great reactionary social movements of our time, driven by fear of change and a tinge of economic tension. Hearing social conservatives bewail the loss of “family values” is, to me, like listening to a broken record. We’ve been down that road before.
That perspective tends to moderate my own thinking. The issue that makes me most liberal is separation of church and state. My position on this issue comes from two personal sources: my Judaism in a majority Christian country, and my lack of religiosity in a country that wholeheartedly rejects atheism (only Islam disqualifies candidates for President more than atheism to the American electorate). As such, I am deeply sensitive to claims of “Christian nationhood.” That said, I am also aware of how benign most past proclamations of, say, “the Creator” or “God’s blessing” meant out of the lips of Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln or Franklin Roosevelt. What bothers me about the “put religion back in the public square” people (and why public square and not public sphere, anyway?) is that they are driven by resentment against modern-day religious pluralism. They don’t want a benign “Creator” getting mention. They want full-on fundamentalist Christianity taught in public schools, and they will work at it one step at a time. At least, that’s how I see them.
Anyway, I am rather militantly partisan, but ideologically moderate and flexible. I am so partisan because I deeply fear the religious right. And on that, I am hardly alone; the decline of the GOP in the North is a direct result of the Republican Party adopting social conservatism at the expense of pragmatism and social libertarianism. On ideology, I generally support free trade. I am not a pacifist; I opposed the Iraq war not because it was “illegal” or “immoral” but because it was unnecessary and unlikely to produce the outcome its prognosticators proclaimed. I generally support withdrawal, not because I want all our troops out of harm’s way, but because I don’t see how our presence materially contributes to our national security within an Iraqi civil war. On domestic issues, I don’t see any use in gun control. And I believe abortion is morally abhorrent (even though many deeply religious Jews disagree with me on that). So, on gays, church-and-state and the death penalty, I am staunchly liberal. On abortion, guns, foreign policy and free trade, I’m more moderate. On social welfare for the poor, I lean toward the liberal end of the spectrum, but only when I feel the recipient communities will have a real say over distribution of resources (paternalism, either voluntary or governmental, is what kills social welfare; the community-based decision-making process at the heart of the original Great Society program was abandoned in favor of Washington-centric bureaucracy). Some of my views are informed by my historical perspective. Others driven by my religious identity (confused as it is). And others just by lived experience and reflection (and race, class and gender, of course:)). In the end, I declare myself moderately liberal and I find this site to be a comfortable place to exchange my thoughts and ideas with others.