All Extremists Should Be Shot

Or at least not rewarded for bad behaviors. Extremists are the real enemies within each political party, and right now conditions are perfect for them across the globe. We're traversing the sharp, narrow ridgeback of a very tall mountain. A misstep to the left will send us down the cliff to neo-liberalism, one to the right and we careen back down into neo-fascism. We should all be quite familiar with the dicta for nation-building abroad; now it's hitting home, and best practices in such ambitious endeavors also apply to parties.

Even if it tastes bad, you help the comparative moderates in a country, you reward them and isolate the radicals. That's how you de-escalate, win the middle, and create balances of power. Democrats in the US are faced with the need for pragmatic party-building, for isolating our radicals by embracing those who are only half a bubble off plumb. I'm not referring to Democrats rebuilding the Democratic Party--Barack Obama did that during the primary and campaign. I mean Democrats urgently need to help rebuild the Republican Party. If we don't...They will.

Of course we shouldn't be just a nation of two parties, but we are, and even if we became a parliamentary system overnight it wouldn't help. So mending the compound fractures in the GOP is a priority for us all. Yes, it's great fun to watch them tear each other apart, don't get me wrong. It's a sinful pleasure watching them try to hitch their busted yachts to blazing SUVs, and to hand the keys over to someone who out-Bushes Bush (yes, the doublay was entendried). The meme going around is to let them Palienate because she's good for fund-raising among the Know-Nothings, and hope they run her or a facsimilie in 2012 so they get thrashed again. Trouble is, I recognize the danger in that outcome. It would hurt us all. And the world. Enormously.

If the Republicans move back towards the center, however, it helps us all. It would keep the Democrats honest and greatly lessen the odds of a steep drop into unworkable neo-liberalisms. The magnitude of the opportunity is huge, and it cannot be retrieved if passed up. If the Dims listen to the devils of their lower natures and play NIGYSOB ("now I got you, son of bitch") we will be sentenced to a generation of over-reach, to another vertiginous political cycle intimately connected to the boom and bust we're experiencing economically. Ergo, the Pugs must be marginalized so the Republicans become and remain a viable threat in a balance of power.

We must reach out to moderate Republicans, the ones being ousted from the inner circle. David Frum, for example. was Bush II's early speechwriter. I despise him and his wretched mistakes, but he is a reformer, he saw this coming, and has written a book called "Comeback." Time to reach out. We need people like Reihan Salam, a smart young intellectual who co-wrote "Grand New Party." We need Peggy Noonan, Jim Manzi, Ed Rollins, John McCain, Chuck Hagel, and many disparate influencers who are center-right. Even Chris Buckley and David Brooks, who function as moderate double agents.

The alternative is we'll get more of Joe the Wife-Beater (really, I've seen the court docs), Jerry Falwell, and millenial apocalypsis. We get more of people who scorn wisdom with extreme prejudice, who always choose narrow ideologies over wider common goods. We need to marginalize Karl Rove and his American Taliban, who pandered to these lower natures in exchange for Phyrric victories which benefitted an unprecious few.

This means we must dampen our impulse to interpret the election as a paean to being liberal. The collapsing economy isn't proof of capitalism's failure. Capitalism works. So does communism, but incarnations of both have to be upheld by plausible myths and regulated by authority-wielding cops who beat the hell out of those who pollute or steal from the commons. Believe it or not, there are governments in which malefactors don't get bailed out, but get jailed in.

Now is not the time to revel in Schadenfreude, or to be small-minded in victory. It is the time to be magnanimous, and glory awaits if we choose to be. There may be very little room to maneuver, but regardless of the fix we're in, the most valuable thing we can have is a government capable of governing, of making good choices and compromises. Wearing the victory lightly will help achieve that. This notion of "all governments are bad" is the result of long brainwashing, and it's a lie. Maybe, just maybe, we can build one that's even good at it. Yes we better.

(Note: I have plagiarized from many sources above. My apologies and thanks to you all.)