Feb 23, 2005
Middle of the Road ideologues?
Or, “A Rant of the Middle Way.”
But why isn’t the middle ground an ideology? Most of the time we don’t speak of it that way. Ideologues are people who hold rigidly to a core set of beliefs. The people in the middle are not considered rigid. Certainly they don’t think of themselves that way.
Sometimes they see themselves as pragmatists: People who conclude (with apologies to Alexander Pope):
“The view’s better from here.” Another example from the Progressives. They believed that because they were in the Middle Class that they could see the flaws and the virtues of both labor and management, both the immigrant and the native born. Their vista was the truer one.
Given that they were thoroughly connected to the industrial order, this had more than a touch of the Puritan: they were in the capitalist world but not of it. We have no trouble speaking of Puritans as ideologues, so why not their distant descendants? And why didn’t they speak of themselves in that way?
So where are the ideologues of the middle way? Why don’t we have battle cries of “Down with the Extremists!” Why is there no graffiti threatening to line both sides up against the wall and shoot them?
Why do we leave it to the Pretenders to put a kick in the message?
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PS. Jon’s post just below on “Pipe’s Privateers” is a marvel.
Come on baby,I was just looking at a proposal for a senior capstone paper on the Wisconsin Idea. The student notes that Progressives saw themselves as mediating between two ideological extremes. That’s certainly the view of Charles McCarthy, who wrote the book The Wisconsin Idea. which the student is focusing on right now.
Get in the road.
Come on now,
In the middle of the road, yeah (The Pretenders).
But why isn’t the middle ground an ideology? Most of the time we don’t speak of it that way. Ideologues are people who hold rigidly to a core set of beliefs. The people in the middle are not considered rigid. Certainly they don’t think of themselves that way.
Sometimes they see themselves as pragmatists: People who conclude (with apologies to Alexander Pope):
And spite of Pride, in erring Reason's spite,Others almost ritually assume that the “truth is somewhere in between.” Isn’t that ideological—or certainly epistemological. We find the truth by looking between the extremes. Ideologues do evil at the extremes but we know better.
One truth is clear, Whatever works, is right.
“The view’s better from here.” Another example from the Progressives. They believed that because they were in the Middle Class that they could see the flaws and the virtues of both labor and management, both the immigrant and the native born. Their vista was the truer one.
Given that they were thoroughly connected to the industrial order, this had more than a touch of the Puritan: they were in the capitalist world but not of it. We have no trouble speaking of Puritans as ideologues, so why not their distant descendants? And why didn’t they speak of themselves in that way?
So where are the ideologues of the middle way? Why don’t we have battle cries of “Down with the Extremists!” Why is there no graffiti threatening to line both sides up against the wall and shoot them?
Why do we leave it to the Pretenders to put a kick in the message?
In the middle of the road you see the darndest thingsOr is there a middle at all?
Like fakirs driving ’round in jeeps through the city
Wearing big diamond rings and silk suits
Past corrugated tin shacks full up with kids
Oh man I don’t mean a hampstead nursery
When you own a big chunk of the bloody third world
The babies just come with the scenery
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PS. Jon’s post just below on “Pipe’s Privateers” is a marvel.