In response to a bit pulled from my previous post — namely, this bit:
— just thought I’d highlight that bit for all the “compromise at all costs” types, some of who seem to be leading the GOP in Congress, others of whom have assumed the role of mouthpiece for the party — and vanishingly few of whom seem to be as on “our” side as they pretend to be.
— Mike NTH writes:
Just thought I would point out that the US Constitution is a compromise document, that the government it set up was envisioned to be a compromising government. If that cannot be seen then I see no hope for any effective change in how the government compromises.
Change how the government compromises? Yes; since compromise is what the system has running right through it, what must be changed is what the compromise point is, what is the baseline of compromise, from expansion is taken for granted and the compromise is the speed to retraction is taken for granted and the compromise is the speed.
This will, admittedly, take a long time to accomplish, but it took a long time to get where we are today. So continue infiltrating and taking over a political party and continue insisting that the premises of the debate shift, because that is what it is going to take.
That’s how I see it.
Okay. But how does that pressure my argument?
Note that my concern (and criticism) was aimed at “‘compromise at all costs‘ types”, and that, further, I’d argue that when “compromise” is redefined by both the “progressives” and their propaganda arm, a putative (though wholly impostor) watchdog press, to mean and pressure to mean in fact and action, “always move toward the Democrat position,” — which these days is the progressive/socialist/Marxist left position — then “compromise” of the type our country was founded on is not what’s in play.
— Which is why I always go on about the importance of not ceding language and meaning to the left.
The compromise the Framers had in mind assumed that the basic ideas of individual liberty, guarded under the aegis of unalienable rights and protected by limited, enumerated powers for the federal government, was the baseline for negotiations and the platform for forging compromise.
If, however, one faction in the negotiations doesn’t accept the baseline premise, there’s really no reason to enter into negotiations in the first place, lest you find yourself perforce adopting — in increments, each time you’re pressured to “compromise” — bits and pieces of the alien premise.
After a spell, what was once alien becomes institutionalized — or, if you prefer, has infested the substructure, much like ideological termites.
What the GOP and the Democrats both want is for us to learn to think of compromise as always and inexorably moving toward expansion of governmental powers (either with or without an increase in “revenues,” depending on the party); that’s not compromise. That’s losing more slowly.
And sometimes the only real compromise is to refuse to compromise — a move that leaves the status quo in place until you are able to find a negotiating partner who first and foremost accepts the terms of the debate, the parameters of which are articulated in the Declaration and the Constitution.
Anything else should be a non-starter. And if that means you get labeled “unwilling to compromise,” your job then is to fight to take back the meaning of “compromise” from those who have hijacked it and turned it into a “bipartisan” form of “fate,” with the endgame being a kind of leftist Utopia, in which the rulers and the proles are finally separated, as history intended them to be.
Which is why I always go on about the importance of not ceding language and meaning to the left.
I took Mike’s comment to be a bit tongue-in-cheek, where he was saying “By all means, let’s be reasonable and compromise with one another,” except that he’s redefined ‘compromise’ to mean debating the speed at which we dismantle the federal government.
I think in this case, Mike is ceding language and meaning to Mike.
I understand that, Squid. I’m just saying that sometimes the best compromise is to refuse to compromise, when what you’d be doing is not compromising.
Right now, doing nothing is “obstructionism.”
Cool. I just didn’t want Mike to be misconstrued.
Regarding your argument, I’d agree that we’ve long-since passed the point where our counterparts in Washington went from being colleagues with a differing opinion to becoming enemies bent on subjugating us. One doesn’t compromise with one’s enemies; one defeats them.
I hope that we get a couple of candidates in the coming campaign who are able to articulate exactly what it is we’re fighting for. They’ll have to be mighty compelling, if they hope to break through the media curtain.
Madison, in Federalist 37 and 38 (“Concerning the Difficulties of the Convention in Devising a Proper Form of Government“), speaks a bit of the problems reaching a decision in the creation of the Constitution and the uses of compromise in doing so. However, the whole point of Federalist 37, 38 and the following 39 on Republican governance was intently to refuse further compromise on that decision reached. Madison was four-square for the Constitution to be ratified as written. No more bargaining (even though he was probably already writing the Bill of Rights in his head to buy off his friend Mr. Mason). He’d be happy to explain the result until the cows come home, but would resist every effort to alter it prior to implementation (which implementation included proper means of alteration once accomplished).
It wouldn’t lead to Utopia and Madison acknowledges this. But it is very good, he says, you won’t do better (now). As high as his modest estimation of the product may have been, I suspect that estimation to have been a tad lower than would be justified by the results.
you’ve got to give a little take a little and let your poor heart break a little
Does it pressure your argument? I didn’t think I was doing that. I thought I was refining your argument, that it isn’t compromise per se that is the problem but what is being compromised and where we start from in doing so.
You have blogged often on the importance of language and how changing definitions and meaning helps or hinders undestanding, and how this is used by teh Left to savage anyone they disagree with. Similarly, government can only expand and the compromise is how fast. The Left has been able to seize control of the debate and even when it looks like thay have lost they win because the underlying conventional wisdom is that government always expands. That is what needs to be changed first, the underlying premise has to be rejected and it must be clearly articulated that we are rejecting the conventional wisdom – so called because it is good at describing what is, but utterly unable to describe what ought to be.
The only time we as a nation were unable to compromise resulted in the Civil War; obviously, I want to avoid that, and the only way I can see that we avoid that is by aggressively working to change the conventional wisdom from expand to retract.
That, as I have said, will take time, and one of the things we have to do is take over a party and become the establishment there, making retraction an establishment position. It won’t be easy because the political establishment isn’t going to like a change in the conventional wisdom, intellectuals and academia won’t, entertainment and media won’t, because all of them draw a great deal of psychic sustenance on knowing the system and they all – or most – draw their very livliehoods from the system the conventional wisdom describes.
I thought the part about the protestors in Europe was interesting because these people – I don’t know if this was instinctive or thought out – were doing exactly that by rejecting the conventional wisdom. They had nothing yet to put in its place, but they were doing something very necessary by trying to change the premises of the debate.
Anyone up for a Long March?
Oh – let me finish this up: “The only time we as a nation were unable to compromise resulted in the Civil War; obviously, I want to avoid that, and the only way I can see that we avoid that is by aggressively working to change the conventional wisdom from expand to retract.”
Because compromise is written into our system removing it changes the system and I am leery about mucking around too much in the Constitution – I think I’m smart, but I don’t think I’m all the heck as smart or wise as those who wrote it. So since compromise isn what the Constitution produces, and failure to compromise can lead to some very big terrible things, I would prefer we keep compromising; but to keep compromising and not also destroy the system through insolvency and loss of personal liberty, then the very foundation of the debate, the conventional wisdom needs to be changed to “retract, compromise on the speed of retraction”.
I can live with that compromise, and I think the republic can thrive with that compromise.
This is why I pointed to the “compromise at all costs” bit.
I never asserted the promise was compromise.
So I just wanted to make that clear, and in the course of answering in a comment, I realized I had enough for a post expanding on my original thought. Your comment was a platform that allowed me to do so, is all.
“. . . and failure to compromise can lead to some very big terrible things, I would prefer we keep compromising . . . ”
Just as a failure to compromise in some cases will lead to bad things, so also an acquiescence to compromise can lead to bad things. We want to step back from any offer of compromise to ask, is the result good or bad? So the end of political action is intended to make things better, whether by means of some novelty or by the preservation of some extant condition.
Absolutely. Just as “change” is not necessarily good — rather, strive for improvement — likewise “compromise” is not necessarily good.
The standard purpose of compromise is to come to an agreement sooner rather than later. But if the agreement is founded on erroneous assumptions about the problem, dragging out the negotiations makes more sense in the long run, to help ensure that correct assumptions about the problem can replace the false ones.
And what is the problem with progressivism (always, of course, but in a heightened sense today)? It seems as simple as that progressivism’s prescriptions prove to make things worse.
And how is it that this comes to pass? It is as simple as that human beings are still around to reason on the prescriptions and the results. Progressivism promises “science” in political things. Yet this “science” shows itself inadequate to the problems which arise, or in other cases make better things worse by application! And thus the “system” collapses, loses its presumptive authority and begins to lash out in dogmatic nonsense. Ah, power! Oops. Not so damned scientific after all.
“We want to step back from any offer of compromise to ask, is the result good or bad?”
Yep. And since the US system is built with the intent to compromise, and the one time we weren’t able to come to a compromise it came to blows, and since there are no sure things in war, I definitely prefer to avoid not compromising.
However, I don’t want to compromise into insolvency and lost liberty. But the system is built on compromise, so what do we do?
The answer, as I see it, is to change the conventional wisdom that government always expands and to compromise is the speed of the expansion, to government contracts and the compromise is the speed of the contraction. And to change the conventional wisdom means that a political party has to be taken over so that its establishment actually supports the change rather than just mouths it. So it is to be a Long March through the Republican Party, change the establishment, change the conventional wisdom in the party to an actual honest-to-God contraction of government, and start negotiating with that as the actual premise.
That, will be a lot of work.
I am open to being convinced about other routes, though.
I don’t know if this is so MikeyNTH. It looks as much to me as that the “system” (I hate this word!) is built on competitive striving, various centers of power vying with one another to preserve or expand their zones of control, constantly contending with one another in a three-part dance of influence. To say nothing of the idea of multitudinous faction spread across the land checking one another’s interests.
Well, yes the seperation of powers is there, sdferr. But I think that implies compromise, for if there are competing powers that cannot eliminate each other or take over completely, and they want something done and they need the help of another power to get this thing done, then they are going to have to compromise something, give something, in order to get something.
Otherwise it has to go all South American like Hugo and Lord knows how well that works.
So it is to be a Long March through the Republican Party…
No, it’s gonna be a Damn Quick March, because the ol’ Ship of State is drifting dangerously close to a lee shore right now.
Here – saw this – and I think Milton Friedman was saying what I’ve been trying to say here. Change the conventional wisdom – Expansion Forever! – and our governmental set-up* works.
http://www.punditandpundette.com/2011/08/video-milton-friedman-on-making-wrong.html
*Set-up, system, arrangement, the how we run things in these parts, you know – that.
True, but only in circumstances in which they see some return to their own benefit. So the competitive side would win out in circumstances in which they don’t. In other words, obstructively.
Friedman nutshelled public choice theory there pretty well, didn’t he? Looks like, in the end, public choice theory would be as or more dependent on the qualities of the voters as it would on the qualities of the politicians. And if that’s true, we’ve got a problem Houston.
“And if that’s true, we’ve got a problem Houston.”
A-yep. I didn’t say this was going to be easy, or would be over with soon.
Where did I put those hiking boots…
sdferr’s comment is why I think we’re going to have that Civil War. Because we’ve become an unlimited franchise warm body democracy, which is not what the Founders intended. And we’re never going to get the moocher class agree to give that up; if nothing else, their vote represents the last bit of value they have to trade for 3 hots and a cot.
“The compromise the Framers had in mind assumed that the basic ideas of individual liberty, guarded under the aegis of unalienable rights and protected by limited, enumerated powers for the federal government, was the baseline for negotiations and the platform for forging compromise.”
or in
Simple Caveman Pilot speak:
Compromise on preferences not on principles. Of course the tricky thing is to know the difference. (I’m pretty sure that is the “one thing” that Jack Palance refered to in City Slickers;)