Since my last update on my “newish political model” I have continued trying it out on different political positions and playing with new ways to conceive the various dimensions, and I’ve developed a slightly new (and, I think, improved) way of thinking about it. The difference is in the way I am thinking about the Fraternity dimension.

If you remember my descriptions of Liberty and Equality, you might want to skip to Fraternity.

Liberty (individual autonomy): freedom of individuals versus authority of collectivities. Who determines how individuals are to think, feel and act?

+) an individual alone determines individual being;

-) the collectivity determines individual being;

0) at the center an individual determines individual being within reasonable limits set by a collectivity.

What kinds of collectivity are we talking about? According to this model any group capable of imposing its will on an individual is considered a collectivity capable of curtailing individual liberty. This differs from Political Compass, which views liberty as curtailed primarily by the federal government.

And what are reasonable limits? That is a matter of perpetual debate and dialogue to be continuously re-determined by Centrists.

Equality (power distribution): desirability of equality versus desirability of rank. How much disparity of power among individuals is acceptable and ideal?

+) each individual is given the same power and resources as every other;

-) each individual is given different amounts of power and resources according to rank;

0) at the center every individual is guaranteed a fair opportunity to acquire power and resources.

What kinds of rank are we talking about? According to this model every value system ranks differently and imposes rank according to its own logic. Societies can rank-stratify by family, class, wealth, race, education, talent, temperament, party membership — anything to which the word “deserve” can be applied. This differs from Political Compass, which casts equality issues in terms of government regulation.

And what is fair? That is a matter of perpetual debate and dialogue to be continuously re-determined by Centrists.

Fraternity (membership in political order ): essentially universal membership versus essentially exclusive obligation.

+) membership in a universal political order is automatically extended to all of humanity;

-) membership in a particular political order is restricted to a group defined by involuntary essential characteristics ;

0) at the center potential membership in a particular political order is universal, and actual membership is entirely voluntary (and not defined by essential characteristics).

In general, the social sciences teach us more about societies of social scientists than it does society in general.

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Show me an example of political or sociological “realism” — a claim of inalterable facts — and I’ll show you an ideologue with an investment in society being some particular way. It might even be the key to an intellectual’s soul.

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Once the foundations of liberalism erode away, and public opinion starts asking hard questions of public truths grown complacent through luxuriation in universal acceptance, the truth of liberal values are anything but self-evident. They epitomize vapid conventionality, and all-too-conveniently, most of the people who continue to uphold them do so through inertia and timidity.

In times like these it almost requires a radical’s personality to excavate the layers of pious dust and quotidian debris that settle over generally accepted moral facts and to burrow into the ground where the wellsprings of liberal morality still flow clear. It turns out, these apparent self-evident (that is, long unexamined) moral principles, such as the ultimate value of the individual, the importance of free speech, thought and action, the exercise of reason, and above all, pluralism are not in the least self-evident once they are flooded in long-suppressed illiberal light and tag-team interrogated by left-wing and the right-wing inquisitors.

Fact is, liberalism was never the natural and inevitable state of society once tyrants are removed from the scene, but rather humankind’s hardest-won accomplishment. But the belief that liberalism exists with mere removal of impediments has led to the neglect of liberal education, and especially a self-aware philosophical explanation of morality.

Instead, the last several generation were rigorously trained to emote on demand: to sympathize as intensely as possible at sacred signifiers of its tribe (generally of categories of people) and to produce anger in equal amounts at the tribe’s categorical enemies, who are those who fail to produce the requisite emotions at key symbolic stimuli. Every tribe can produce its own elaborate supporting theories, including its own homegrown theories on why the other tribe’s theories are nonsensical and the result of nefarious influences.

And bystanders who decided to spare themselves all indoctrination and believe themselves independent observers fared no better. In fending off miseducation, they fend off necessary education as well, and fall into ideological traps they are ill-prepared to detect or to escape once they learn whatever “the truth” their habitual reading conceptually habituates them to understand.

At this point I am interested neither in expounding nor defending my views for people who are by nature or second-nature unsympathetic to liberalism. Instead, I plan to continue my private project of exposing the wellsprings of liberalism to those who have already learned to love them. And I do mean learn to love, because love of liberalism is either learned or latent, never accessible to naive or misled minds.

But it is true: as a liberal I do owe my fellow-citizens an account. But I do not owe it on their philosophical terms or their schedule. These are the things you learn when you work at education, which is another word for allowing learning to change you.

Reading Thomas Frank’s Listen Liberal, I am beginning to question my belief that my objections to what I’ve called left-illiberalism is really (as I had thought) bound up with its excessively egalitarian demands. Frank now has me wondering if my concerns might have more to do with an insufficient commitment to equality, and with the tonal side-effects of preserving one form of inequality through redirection of attention toward other alleged injustices.

It seems possible, if not likely, that a strong preference for diagnosing political conflicts in subtle psychological terms (of prejudices, conscious or unconscious, multiplied over innumerable judgments and biased interactions) could in fact be an evasion tactic for neglecting blunter policy issues that do not involve attempts at controlling what goes on inside other people’s heads — a jurisdiction that is, on principle, out of bounds, and protected in liberal democracies.

Could it be that obsessive preoccupations with racism, sexism, and the other prejudicial -isms might serve as a big stinky red herring that draws attention away from a thoroughly self-serving classism, the classism of a new class whose good conscience depends on not recognizing its own existence and its stake in preserving inequality? I’ve got to admit, Thomas Frank’s exposition of a self-deluded “professional class” strikes me as vastly more credible than the unconscious race-/sex-/orientation-interest narrative so popular in the vulgar left ditto-sphere.

Anyway, Thomas Frank has succeeded in making me question my 3rd Way centrist worldview and and interesting me in revisiting the New Deal. He’s also making me extra-extra-bitter that Bernie didn’t get the nomination.

From my own experience, privilege manifests primarily in two ways, which apply equally to all people of every demographic:

1. Incuriosity: Not feeling obligated to understand what your fellow citizens are trying to tell you. “I see clearly that I see things the right way, and that your view is distorted.”
2. Imperiousness: Not feeling obligated to win the assent of your fellow citizens before doing things that affect their lives. “I don’t have to convince you.”

Privilege is not something that automatically deludes certain categories of people, nor does disprivilege enlighten other categories.

The epistemological and ethical self-privileging of our own inexhautibly irritable illiberal left fringe was in fact an effect of privilege (or perceived privilege). A set of folks thought they possessed sufficient political power (due to numbers and the thrust of history, not to mention the overwhelming privilege of the social status one gains from a degree from an elite university) to steamroll anyone who disagreed with them. They “checked their privilege” when “dialoguing” with token representatives of their favored categories, but when talking to examples of “privileged” categories, took the most privileged position possible and condescendently lectured them on how great they actually had it compared to other unfortunate categories. Or they just discharged their resentment on any demographically qualified human lightning rod that happened to be handy when it was time for lightning to strike.

Our illiberal Left did not care how people felt about “finally having the tables turned on them.”  They didn’t bother listening to opposing views because their vulgar marxoid false consciousness theories explained away the objections of dissenters to their own personal satisfaction.

The sole difference between this gang of ideologues and any other gang of conspiracy theorists is that this gang sort of favored the same people and policies we left-liberals did. Their passion was useful, so we accepted them as allies. We ought to feel ashamed that fewer of us called out their “calling out” — until it cost us what might be the most important election in this nation’s history. Now we are full of remorse and desire to self-reflect on what we were doing wrong. A year ago this self-scrutiny would have gone much further.

So we can complain all day about the Right not being vocal enough about denouncing their fringe, but how did the Left do when we felt secure in our power?

If the Right stands up to marginalize the KKK, they will have demonstrated true moral superiority to the Left, who did far too little to marginalize our SJW.

When I hear grandstanding imitation Martin Luthers or Martin Luther Kings — and there are so many of them — proclaiming unwillingness to compromise on their favorite principle, it makes me worry about America’s future. Whatever truth there is in these principles, it is all undone by disdain for compromise.

Since when is compromise despicable? Compromise is the core principle of liberal-democracy. If there is one place where Americans must be uncompromising, it is in our commitment to compromise.

No principle that exalts itself above the requirement to compromise has any place in a liberal democracy like the United States of America. If your favorite political principle prohibits faithful adherence to the higher principle of compromise, you are a shitty American. You do not understand the profound demands American patriotism makes on its citizens. You belong in some other more backwards country with a more primitive forms of loyalty, not here.

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If we seriously want to get back to what makes this country great, let’s imitate the Constitutional Convention. Let’s proudly make a point of respectfully disagreeing with those who view things very differently, then work hard and patiently at designing peaceful agreements, persevering as long as it takes to succeed.

And if you are one of those many people who think there is no greatness to get back to — that this country was corrupt from the very beginning and will remain corrupt to the end — please be as loudly outspoken on this point as possible so the rest of us know to what to do with your political views.

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I’ve been working on a bibliography of political writings to help those who have a taste for cultivating respect find the best specimens of various political stances. I’m collecting the very best specimens of liberal, neoliberal, democratic socialist and conservative thought. Let me know if you’re interested, and I might post it.

The question at the heart of liberalism is: “Who decides?”

The question at the heart of democracy is: “Who speaks for whom?”

Is there a single question at the heart of liberal-democracy?