We need a Centrist party so that when I go to vote it won't be for the lesser of the two evils of the far left ad far right
7
So...a pedagogue is a demagogue that lectures the country instead of shouting at it. Got it. Just don't call it democracy.
9
The best way to understand moderation or centrism, it seems, is not as a timid search for the middle between any two views, but rather as a rejection of excess. People need a natural sense of when things have gone too far in some direction or other.
This fits with a willingness to adopt any policy from "left" or "right" that proves to be reasonable and effective.
90
Mr. Stephens purposely fails to mention all the other first world industrial nations - Australia, Canada, Japan, Denmark, Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, Norway, etc.
Mr. Stephens knows those are the social democracies people are talking about.
Those countries have better education for the working class, universal health care.
They have better economic mobility than the US.
We are the richest industrial country on the planet GDP / capita.
We have people working minimum wage jobs with no health care and below the poverty line.
We have parts of the US with infant mortality rates of a third world country.
Germany is known for high-tech manufacturing and they have faced the same globalization we have.
After 35 years of Reagan trickle-down economics, we got an opioid crisis.
69
It wasn't Hugo Chavez or Angela Merkel who blew up the Middle East and created the massive refugee crisis, it was the U.S. under the dictate of Bush and Cheney.
In South America, we could be helping Venezuela and Argentina advance their economies thereby avoiding the immigration crisis, but we won't. Trump has already declared it may take a military intervention. History tells us that idea has been used before and the results were not exactly great.
34
“…Colombia demonstrates the value of the political center...
Bret – and this has nothing to do with your ideology – there aren’t even several words out of several hundred today, to substantiate your lead-in assertion…
NYT always thought-provoking – but always find myself having to find the footnotes you decline to declare…e.g.:
https://www.indexmundi.com/factbook/compare/colombia.venezuela
Going down the list, the countries look like demographic twins…
So is it possible, for instance, that the cocaine business – being more indigenously staffed than the oil business – led to a more self-schooled and self-sufficient business class in medium-tech and Western Hemisphere import/export…
Am dead serious…
Or, is it that skilled Venezuelans actually have moved to Colombia since Chavez/Maduro – as some Americans threaten to move to Canada, every time a Republican is elected US President…
Still dead serious…
The two Koreas were poverty-stricken backlands, several decades ago…Somehow, they found their different ways…
In the final analysis, it seems like there’s a universal type of societal inflection point, where – to stay in power – the elite seek to calm the poor in one of two ways:
1.Lots of economic opportunity – including access to K-12 education, and apprenticeships and college and professional education beyond that, to sustain the economic prosperity
2.Lots of free stuff, like Chavez and Maduro – without regard to how either quantity or quality will be sustained
6
Mr. Stephens turns to Colombia’s President Duque to shed light on the beauties of the "political center." I gather this is the same center that gave us Kavanaugh, whom Stephens so chivalrously defended in various editorials. Yet there is little beauty in Mr. Stephens's Colombian center. It might come as a disappointment to our chivalrous knight to know that Mr. Duque represent the paramilitary Colombian right, whose contribution to Colombia has been millions of internal refugees and a boss, Mr. Uribe, who is no less of a terrorist-war criminal than the FARC (or the Venezuelan regime) that Mr. Stephens so valiantly denounces. This is according to the NYT’s own investigations.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/08/world/americas/colombia-uribe-death-s...
Carry on Mr. Stephens promoting felonious privileged SCOTUS justices as well as Colombian presidents who, like Trump, gained power on the back of discourse of hatred, with no experience whatsoever, and financed by illegal sources of money (paramilitary)
20
“Politics played as blood sport degrades personal manners and ruins civic institutions. That’s where we are in the United States today.”
Not where I am or have been Brett.
You and those you enable on the other hand... always attacking others for what you do. It passes for conservative these days.
I missed your columns decrying the insults to Obama by republican right wing Supreme Court Justices and right wing republican congressmen and the vow to do every thing possible to make Obama a one term president by the hypocrit of hypocrits who just ran shotgun through the senate after refusing to allow a decent man and good judge even a conversation. I missed your sermons about the tyranny of driving while black and shot while black topped off by shot and killed for being black in your own apartment. Priorities eh preacher man?
But when Kavanaugh threw a disqualifying fit on cue like Clarence playing the race card and Lindsay threw a crazed fit on cue and Trump went to talk nasty to the haters about Dr. Ford to stir hate up cue, you got in line.
As a never democrat with little use for them and about none for Hillary, she is an infinitely better American than enabling you and enabled Trump.
And tho not a fan of the black Lives matter methods, it is a movement of infinitely better Americans—for generations to the beginning, unlike yourself—than you.
Abraham Martin and John. Blood. No Sermons from you how their assasinations stole from America, made it worse. Integrity? Ha.
10
Yeah, Latin America is going to save us.
8
A good column, but too little, too late.
3
This is satire, right ??? Let’s claim the extreme center, but in the meantime, let Trump and his Collaborators do as they wish, and just lie back and enjoy it. That’s been YOUR meaning, lately.
No thank you.
7
Too bad for your argument, Bret, that the "extreme center" is significantly to the left of where you imagine it. It's where universal healthcare and abortion on demand are fact and uncontested law for instance. It's where taxation of the highest earning is much higher and generally paid.
Of course you favoured the Democratic Party being dominated by "Republican-Lite" centrists just a little to the left economically of the Republican Party these past few decades - and never imagined such would move US politics, as a whole, rightwards towards something like Trumpism ruling did you? You're quite the unwitting cheerleader for the disgrace and dissolution of the United States aren't you?
Clearly you're more worried about a rational correction towards the left. "Beware the Bolivarian Far-Leftist Boogeyman who will make the US like Venezuela" seems not the most timely warning right now. Somehow you sleep at night.
8
Sounds like for the U.S. to move center we'll first have to exhaust ourselves with a 75 year fruitless civil war like in Colombia.
3
"A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear."
----Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC)
21
Typical right-wing whataboutism. Why not "I'm rubber, your glue"? To conflate universal health care with Hugo Chavez in an article about Columbia Is classic right-wing demagoguery. Karl Rove would be impressed.
30
I believe there’s a massively cognitive dissonance between this article and the recent cupport of BK. BK is no centrist. Mr. Stephens, please make up your mind.
14
Sorry Mr Stephens, nobody that I know of called you a “warmonger” for your opposition to the Iran nuclear deal. We said you were horribly wrong when it came to praising Trump for walking away from it. We based that on the idea that treaties need to be kept even as we try to amend them. We based that on the idea that the US keeping its word is more valuable than a campaign promise. No, I save the word “warmonger” for the chicken-hawk conference in the WH. Trump and Bolton. Two guys who would have no problem sending Americans to die in the absolute stupidest war we could ever bungle our way into, an attack on Iran, pushing the 2003 Iraq War into a clear second place. So fret not, “warmonger” is not a word I’d ever use to describe you.
4
Ummm. Wasn’t your most recent column all about how great demagogues are and how terrific the blood sport of GOP politics is, to bring the nation to the brink of disaster with T in the WH and K on the Court.
Maybe clarifying, and maybe confusing, to begin to see where your loyalties lie—not with American women or minorities or LBGT community or immigrant children.
16
BIG TENT! In a 2-party system, the parties ought to be big tent. What we have today: the most liberal Republican is right of all Democrats and the most conservative Democrat is left of all Republicans. Sen. Manchin is, rightfully, getting the ire of many of liberal friends. I will let them be angry today. But tomorrow, I will make the case for a big tent Democratic Party. You see, winning election doesn't require broad appeal or centrist policies. But governing does. Democratic policies(SS, Medicaid/care, Civil Rights Era, progressive taxation) remain popular because they were achieved by a big tent party. We must strive and built that kind of Democratic Party.
Ofcourse, it doesn't help anyone when conservatives called Obama a communist, Stalinist or any of those McCarthyite names. ACA is the most capitalist solution to a growing humanitarian problem. Nowhere close to owning the means the production, heck nowhere near the access to all the production(healthcare). The media, knee-jerkingly, jumped on the Alexandria Ocasio Cortez victory(she won in a D+26 district) to paint the Democratic Party for moving leftward when we tragically failed to oust the most conservative Democrat-Daniel Lipinski- in a D +8 district in Chicago.(An actual Nazi is running on the Republican ticket btw. So much for radical center across the aisle.)
4
"Anyone who thinks that left-wing populism is the appropriate remedy for the right-wing variety should look at Venezuela — where the health care is universal and, thanks to socialist shortages, there’s none of it."
Comparing liberal policies and democratic socialism in more enlightened societies to left wing populism as controlled by tin pot military tribunals in central and south america is preposterous -even by your right wing standards of moral equivalency.
I suppose you put northern europe on the same plane of cultural evolution with Venezuela.
Demagoguery -typical of your regressive right wing politics - As expected!
29
Mr. Stephens, you can extol the virtues of the centers 'til the cows come home--you'll find no takers in the Democrat party. For they are:
--anti-capitalism
--anti first amendment (especially college campuses)
--anti second amendment (they would take all guns)
--anti military
--anti-religion
--anti-law enforcement
--anti border security
And....
--pro tax increases
--pro regulation
--pro illegal immigration
--pro abortion (to the 9th month)
--pro drug legalization
The problem with modern Democrats simply blindness--it's ignorance and arrogance--which combine to convince them they actually live in the center--instead of the extreme left lane of traffic. And if you see a liberal on any road--you'll notice a left blinker--because that's the turn they're planning to make--always further left.
3
There's one major problem with Bret's equivalence: Democratic socialism is not populist. The movement is popular but not populist. The distinction is subtle but important. The DSA are arguing for representative governance and representative interest in economic institutions. By contrast, no one can argue Trump is not a demagogue. Trump is an unpopular populist demagogue.
The analogy would have failed anyway though. We have health shortages in a non-socialized health care system. It's called poverty. The availability of health care is absolutely worthless if you can't afford to pay a doctor. The individual consumer is experiencing a health care shortage just the same as someone in South America.
The situation is almost more painful though because you can see abundance but lack accessibility. It's like a starving man looking in the window of grocery store but not having a dollar to buy a loaf of bread. That's conservative health care. Despite the rhetoric on the right, availability does not mean accessibility. Remember I said that when you go to the polls this November.
10
Can’t resist can you? Chavez was never a “social democrat” as you pretend, but I understand that you want to smear American politicians with that moniker.
Duque is Right Wing, not “extreme center” as he proclaims. Undoing a peace accord that was painfully negotiated isn’t justice, it’s welching, and is liable to bring on many more years of violence.
As someone who has spent the last 35 years doing business in Latin America, the biggest issue isn’t ideology, it’s competence. Murderous Right Wing dictatorships have about the same effect on their countries as incompetent Left Wing ones. Interestingly, it’s only the latter that get Bret Stephens upset.
11
So Jeremy Corbyn, Naomi Klein, Michael Moore, Oliver Stone, Cornel West are left-populists. They should not try to fight for democracy because Venezuela is so much worst. Shortcuts after shortcuts.
Of course this column must be read in the context of Kavanaugh’s imminent confirmation to the Supreme Court. Both this and David Brooks’s last column. Why do conservatives always appeal for unity and moderation after they have forced their will on liberals, and not before? If Republicans were truly interested in national unity, they would have bought enormous good will by withdrawing Kavanaugh and nominating a centrist candidate—like Merrick Garland. Sure, neither the far right nor the far left would be thrilled with that choice, but that’s precisely the point. Garland would have nevertheless been confirmed by a large majority of Senators.
Until the party leaders in power are willing to buck their extremist factions, there will be no national unity. Those in the majority must be willing to let the opposition win at least some of the time.
But now that the deed is about to be done, do not dare ask for moderation. We liberals are in no mood to negotiate. To us, it feels like a rapist saying “just give in to the rape, so that the process of healing can begin.” Absolutely not. You conservatives better believe we will fight back and pay you in kind for what you have done to us.
13
I resumed my subscription to The NY Times so as not to miss a column like this. The dangers are real! One has the feeling that we are on a speeding train with competing (and inexperienced) engineers (and feuding passengers) headed toward a disaster—whatever the unemployment rate in October.
The leftward push of the Democratic Party is no antidote to the populist and shameless President who has swallowed the GOP. The hearings on Judge Kavanaugh were the worst example of where we are as a nation. One has to fear that we may not, this time, avoid the abyss.
3
Colombia arrives at the center after years of violence by the FARC and the cocaine cartels. Is Mr. Stephens suggesting that we go thru that to get to his magical centrism?
3
Perhaps it would help if we had a centrist newspaper and centrist media sources... demagogics right and left get better ratings/profits.
1
Incomprehensible column from Stephens today. False equivalences on every front. I don't see a path to the center here.
To cite the "Bolivarian Revolution" in the context of the left's call for universal health care is incendiary, and not pedalogically sound, and neither is the rest of Stephens's column.
He finishes his piece by negating it. "To debate the overarching causes is somewhat useless."
11
In the most simplistic terms, it boils down to basic playground behavior from elementary school. Are you the kid who is a bully? Or the kids who is easily bullied? Or, hopefully, the kid who takes on the bully?
The world needs a whole lot more of the last. Courage has become like that rare diamond for sale..Worth more than anything else and increasingly rare....
Weakness is the disease and at least in America, there appears to be no cure being worked on.....Since 9/11, we have embraced the "victim" whinefest and it owns us.
2
"Extreme center?" Is it centrist for the Republicans to try and allow people from open carry gun states to overrule the gun control laws of states that do not allow open carry? Is it centrist for Trump to try and overrule California's attempt to maintain net neutrality within its own state? Is it centrist for Trump to overrule California's attempt to maintain high auto mileage standards? Is it centrist for the Republicans to steal a Supreme Court seat that the Democrats had a Constitutional right to? And is it centrist for the Republicans to suppress the vote because the people that it would impact would be predominately people of color who would vote Democratic?
Excuse me for not feeling extremely centrist, as it is very hard to do when your opponent's boot is planted formerly on your neck and they are pushing down hard.
10
Annnnnd right on cue: the Right scores an underhanded scorched earth victory, then calls for moderation and a return to civility.
Ah, the conservative mind. I wonder do they believe it themselves.
14
How shocing! Stephens plays by Republican SOP-of-the-day in pointing to Venezuela as a failure and claims it is somehow the fault of democratic socialism, the new boogy man of the far right in America. No mention of the hundreds of thousands of dead at the hands of far right regimes throughout South and Central America through the seventies and eighties. I guess they count as successes in the current Republican Party.
8
Our very own demagogue of demagogues, Trump, just placed his puppet and soul mate, Kavanaugh, on our Supreme Court to protect him from the rule of law. Funny, I remember your last column and your obvious desire to see Kavanaugh get the nod. He got it and now we’re headed in an all out authoritarian direction where white men rule over the rest of us. Guess your blind to this.
2
Bret Stephens should have checked Wikipedia. Iván Duque Márquez is the son of privilege, a banker, and a member of the Democratic Center Party that is led by right wing former president Álvaro Uribe Vélez. Under Uribe and the Democratic Center Colombia was plagued by the growth of right-wing paramilitaries and severe human rights abuses. That is what the “extreme center” means in Colombia.
14
This column is entirely correct in its conclusion - as evidenced by the outraged comments here by those who didn’t bother reading the article or seriously considering its argument.
2
How does a pedagogue get elected when demagoguery has gained foothold in a nation? Does the nation have to plunge all the way into disastrous demagoguery to set the stage for an aware and rational electorate? In my view, the problem in the U.S. right now, and for some time, has been that too few voters care to listen to reasoned arguments, the kind with which reasonable people might disagree. If honest examination of issues is denigrated, as it so often is now, we don’t have any bootstraps to pull ourselves up by.
3
Let's consider some counter-examples, because sometimes fighting a civil war is warranted. The American Revolution would have been called "The American Civil war" if America had lost. Should the colonists have just continued trying to convince the King that they should have any political representation? But we won, so instead the period we call the American civil war was fought over slavery. Should abolitionists have just had a calmer discussion about the shared humanity of black people for another 200 years? While I'm at it, I can take a moment to appreciate the wonderful political compromise between the junta and the democratizers in Myanmar that were all able to amicably agree to allow the Rohingya to be terrorized.
The mistake here is to point to an example of generic political process and claim it always delivers the same results. It's bad inductive logic, an error Stephens appears to be fond of when he also points to Venezuela as proof that socialized medicine causes shortages while 36 other countries have socialized medicine more readily available than America.
My point is sometimes we should be bitterly partisan because sometimes the enemy is within. Sometimes we should literally fight over preventing grave injustices, and the refusal to fight would be the greater sin. And sure sometimes people fight when they shouldn't. But one opportunistic, white-washed example shoe-horning Colombian history into narrative isn't a very good way to tell which is which.
246
@Danny P: I think if the US had lost the Revolutionary War in 1776....the BRITISH would call it "The Failed Colonial Uprising" -- it wouldn't be a Civil War, because it was not internal. It was about the rights of a new nation vs. the colonial power that had control over it from far across the ocean.
And while of course I am opposed to slavery and think it an abomination....it is not wrong to wonder if the end of the actual Civil War could have played out differently....without rancor and bitterness...with a slower transition to freedom for slaves, that might have avoided Reconstruction & carpet baggers....and prevented Jim Crow laws and the rise of the KKK....would have been a entirely bad idea.
People are a country's greatest resource. If the current batch of immigrants are a hardship to bear, history tells us their children will add tremendous value. Countries should be focusing on integrating and educating migrants, as the alternate to fixing the problems in their home countries is often war.
The country losing people is weakening while the country gathering them strengthens, in the long-run (2-3 generations). Leaders need to hammer that message home.
For the U.S., excluding immigrants means a lower ratio of workers to retirees, forcing us to raise taxes relatively more to cover Social Security and Medicare. Bring them in!
42
In the context of our own political malaise, an article about what we might learn from a politically long-struggling Colombia mostly serves to illustrate how far we've fallen under Trump.
9
Should we wait a little bit before showering praises on the man that has been in the office for 2 months? The author has a pretty dishonest point of views, that allows him to lump together Corbyn and Maduro, and see the difference between Merkel and Duque refugee policies where is none. The backlash against Merkel was not because her policy is different from Duque, but because the number of refugees in Germany is much higher than in Colombia (0.5ml vs 10.5ml), not to mention that the help to refugees in Germany much bigger as well. Beside Germany faces refugees not from one country, but rather from multiple countries including Iraq and Afghanistan where the US put such pressure on the Governments that population has to run for their lives. And to say that Corbyn and Maduro are the same, it is like to insist that democracy is bad, because introduction of democracy in the USSR broke the country, and brought wars and economical hardship to the Soviet people.
4
Stephens has shown his true right wing beliefs and his ignorance of labels. Duque is no centrist, he is a creature of Uribe. Maduro is no leftist, he is a bloody and stupid dictator. He lumps Merkel and Orban as similar and equally bad?! One favors open borders (or did), the other won't allow anyone else in.
Stephens uses his dislike of Trump (except for his favorable "bully" editorial regarding the partisan Kavanaugh) as an excuse to insult progressives. Sorry, Bret, the "center" you favor, is conservatism. You are conservative. I am progressive. I believe in respect and civility. Garrick Garland. Garrick Garland. Garrick Garland. Garrick Garland.
8
The ridiculously overused term "populism" has no descriptive or explanatory value. Nor do such terms as "patriarchy" and "misogyny." Confucius had it right:
"What is necessary is to rectify names." "So! indeed!" * * * If names be not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things. If language be not in accordance with the truth of things, affairs cannot be carried on to success. "When affairs cannot be carried on to success, proprieties and music do not flourish. When proprieties and music do not flourish, punishments will not be properly awarded. When punishments are not properly awarded, the people do not know how to move hand or foot."Therefore a superior man considers it necessary that the names he uses may be spoken appropriately, and also that what he speaks may be carried out appropriately. What the superior man requires is just that in his words there may be nothing incorrect."
That's also the upshot of Orwell's entire body of work, including 1984.
3
@MKR maybe one cannot define populism. But you know it when you see it. Anyway, what’s in a name. A rose by any other name, would it not smell as sweet? Of course to some people a rose smells like a sewer. So perhaps invoking great phrases by great individuals is not an answer to the complexities of life.
1
How many thespians or want to be a thespian has Columbia had any state or national office?
Who was or is the Colombian Bono, Murphy, Reagan, Schwarzenegger, Ventura, Franken,Thompson and Trump?
1
Whoah! The Iran Deal was elitist and demagogic? What on earth possessed you to add that aside? Barack Obama was the closest thing you will ever see to a conciliatory centrist pedagogue. That he was rejected by the right (even when offering for example, a conservative health care model) tells you all you need to know about the utility of your thesis.
23
Bret Stephens shows once again why he is the best opinion columnist at the NYT. While the rest of the opinion staff is in full meltdown mode attacking the ghosts of the past, obsessing over the legitimacy of the Supreme Court, name-calling, and echo-chambering unfounded allegations - he points ahead to a future for the NYT as a thoughtful source of analysis. I enjoyed the fact that he used Columbia and Venezuela as prime examples! The world is bigger than just NYC and Washington, D.C.! We can learn a lot from the politics of Central and South America. Bravo!
2
I used to think Bret Stephens was what the New York Times presumably hired him to be: a measured conservative voice on its Op-Ed pages. I read and enjoyed his columns in this light. Now, after his piece about being grateful for Trump, I won't be able to stomach him. Writing about Trump's Supreme Court nominee days before the Senate vote to confirm, Stephens said nothing about Kavanaugh's perjury and partisanship before the Judiciary Committee. He focused instead on the lack of corroborating evidence for the charges brought by Christine Blasey Ford and others. The innocent-until-proven-guilty part of the Kavanaugh story is important. But isn't the heart of the story Kavanaugh's fitness for office? If so, was Stephens being a balancing and contrarian voice in the way he wrote about Kavanaugh and Trump? Or, for whatever reason, was he failing to see the forest for the trees?
25
@Peter Koenig
I hope that the nytimes editors take your POV seriously.
Measured and thoughtful counterpoints to the left are good for the readership. Stephens has lost his credibility in this regard. When I saw this article I was less interested in it than the comments. For now he is just taking up space.
Historians,instead, need more ink. By training they have perspective. Get them on board for the readership.
7
For once I agree with Brett. America has moved so far to the right over the past fifty years we can no longer even see the political center. When keeping an alleged drunk and sexual assaulter off the Supreme Court is seen as too liberal then you know your country has gone off the tracks.
I blame the Clinton's. When they ran as "New Democrats" they gave the Republicans no place else to go except straight off the right wing cliff they were clinging to after Reagan. It is time for America to decide if we want democracy where every American is valued or do we want right wing fascism where the wealthy avoid paying their share of taxes and send your kids off to die fighting wars to protect their wealth and financial interests. It was only 80 years ago that America created the first middle class through the New Deal policies of FDR. We can do it again.
10
@Ronny
How about blaming the Republicans?
6
@Ronny
I agree - bring on a New Deal! But you seem to micharecterize the Right, making them the party of sexual assault, drunkenness and fascism, while leaving the Left mostly unscathed (only saying that they moved in the direction of the right, using a single, good-bad scale.) The Democratic party today is corrupt in its own ways; it's not just Republican-Lite. Democrats are quickly displacing Republicans as the party of wealth and privilege. Less-educated, conservative Americans (and our minorities, to a lesser extent) fight the wars that protect America's global economic standing, to the benefit of many "liberal" stockholders. The Establishment is not what it was...
1
@Ronny
I find it extremely ironic that a party that talks about personal responsibility ad nauseam always blames others for its bad behavior.
6
Too often, as in this case, terms are left undefined. It usually means someone is trying to tribalize and get away with underlying stances. Don't tell me you are a centrist. Tell me what policies you favor.
16
@Donald Green Exactly
3
Maybe you should learn a thing or two about centrism before you write. That you call out Democrats, plural, but not Republicans, except for Trump, who has no party loyalty, is telling.
17
In his last column, Mr. Stephen expressed great satisfaction that Donald Trump had mocked Professor Ford in public. Mr. Stephens believes Democrats were unfair to Brett Kavanaugh, making Dr. Ford fair game.
Putting aside the assumption of unfairness, with which I vehemently disagree, it is NEVER okay for the President of the United States to mock a victim of sexual assault, or any other victim. Should we have to say that?
That Mr. Stephens not only thought it was okay, but cheered it, encouraged it, reveals the unflattering truth of his worldview. For all his self-proclaimed intellectualism, he was in that moment just another angry white man, enraged that a powerful white man might be denied. . . .by a woman.
It was the most despicable column I’ve ever read in the New York Times and will color everything Mr. Stephens writes in the future.
38
Extremists thrive on emotion, not thought.
American education is failing and our people are sliding into ignorance. Standards have dropped to the point that occasionally showing up is all that is required for some 'degrees' to be issued. All of us have seen high school graduates who can't make change without a calculator and college students with hopeless grammar. It's ridiculous and shameful.
To organizations that stand to profit by controlling their herd, such as extremist churches and political parties, for starters, this is a good thing. The masses believe what they are told and do what they are told.
Stupidity also breeds fear. Welcome to the world of Trump.
12
Mr. Stephens, nice try at playing footsies with rational, centrist thought. After last weeks debacle, which included your dispicable defense of Kavanaugh, and the faux attempts by your political cronies including Collins and Flake to masquerade as such, it is apparent your Republican Party has moved so far to the right they wouldn't see the political center with a telescope. You are all demagogues now. However, when called out on this, all of you, like Kavanaugh, petulantly claim innocence. Unfortunately your slips are showing.
9
“What a difference, too, with the simplistic humanitarianism of Angela Merkel, whose “let them in” approach to the Syrian refugee crisis accounts for much of the anti-immigrant backlash and was never paired with a serious attempt to end the crisis at its Syrian source.”
That what demagogues do, they twist the truth, lie and manipulate.
The one million Syrian refugees were already “in”. They were in Europe, piling up in make shift tents and camps at the borders of Austria and Balkan countries. They needed to be settled somewhere and the plan was to distribute them eventually through out Europe. Why degrade this humanitarian act as “simplistic”? Maybe it is simplistic to blame the rise of xenophobia on this humanitarian act?
And how should have Mrs. Merkel paired her decision with a “serious attempt to end the crisis at its Syrian source”? Most reasonable people understand that the Syrian civil war traces it roots back to the unwarranted invasion of Iraq in 2003. Its unintended consequences killed millions of people. Also historians understand that hardly anything but overwhelming outside force can stop a civil war.
Mrs. Merkel had no option to end the Syrian civil war, but she had the courage to end the suffering of a million people who fled this war.
True statesmen and stateswomen act on our values, they protect our dignity and human rights and foremost they challenge their people to do the same.
13
What the president of Columbia is articulating ( with his basket analogy) is egalitarian social democracy, a capitalist system, that regards sectors of a society as stakeholders , who negotiate with each other on the distribution of revenue.
As to your slight of Angela Merkel, she is in fact the most trusted leader in the world today.
Why not stop your knee from jerking and expand your thinking?
6
Venezuela is not a failure of socialism or social government policies. That is a straw man so favored of the right to hitch it to liberalism in the US. This is a hypocritical attempt to discredit the left while scaring the low-information, fearful voter of the right. It is hogwash, like everything else conservatives say out of both sides of their mouths. Venezuela is the failure of a massively corrupt administration using false populism to obtain power and then pillaging the country through party-line corruption, nepotism, graft, and theft. Sound like anybody we know? That is the real lesson of Venezuela's demise, and the actual parallel is right in your corrupt conservative regime.
15
Mr.Stephens fails to mention that Duque is the hand-picked puppet of Colombia's right-wing demagogue-cum-puppeteer: Mr. Uribe. "Extreme centrism?" Not quite. He also fails to mention that the Venezuelans fleeing to Colombia join the over six million Colombians who have been internally displaced by the armed conflict there, an armed conflict that Uribe exacerbated and would now revisit. The lesson for America from Colombia has much more to do with America's imperial legacy in Latin America than with some imagined centrism.
11
Fascism with a socialist slant or fascism with a pro 1% slant is still fascism. Hows about a social democracy that is not fascist? Too nuanced for Bret? See Nordic countries, New Zealand, Canada, etc. It's not a binary choice.
9
A right wing advocate of military force tears up a peace deal, and calls himself a centrist. Calling himself that does not make it so. Stephens should know better.
12
Reclaiming the center is difficult because the Republicans have moved incredibly far to the right. The center today is not the center of 1950, 1960, 1970 or even 1980. What was once Republican orthodoxy is now considered leftist radicalism. We as a nation need to come to grips with what the GOP has done to our democracy, and we had better do this soon, because there won't be much left when the dotard and his enablers finish.
11
Mr. Stephens, at this point I'm not sure you'd recognize the "extreme center" if it bit you on the butt.
23
What is the best sound on earth? For me, it is the laughter of a child. Within that laughter lives a child who is loved, not hungry, safe and secure. I submit this is what everyone wants for their children from the Arctic tundra to the scorching deserts. Why then do we continually fall into the trap of supporting divisive demagogues to lead us?
Are my children more loved, better fed, more safe or more secure by going to a rally to scream "Lock her up!" Can we not still hear the cries of the children ripped from their parents at the border? And where are they now? Out of sight, out of mind.
Are we better off spending our days in endless often fruitless protests over the next big thing like the balls in a pachinko machine bounding through life?
We are replacing Tutsi and Hutu with Red and Blue. The Mississippi River may become our Kigera River as in Rwanda, carrying the limbs and bodies of the victims to the sea unless we find another way.
I want to value each of my country's men and women just as they value me without checking their colors first. We all bleed red. We must also bleed red, white and blue.
45
Why, because there are people who want safety and health only for their children. In a nation ruled by conservative Darwinism the selfish impulse is the best one and power is all that matters. Trump and Kavanough come from that world of entitlement and privilege and retaining dominance is the primary motivation. There isn’t a center when all the power and influence resides on one extreme. Both Russia and Venezuela are good examples, guess which one Trump admires and why.
3
So, you equate populists of the left and right. You are saying that the peoples' interests and business interests are of equal weight. Unions and management, landlords and tenants, privatization and government ownership don't matter?
If it wasn't for our military/industrial complex driving our incessant wars, we wouldn't see refugees streaming into Europe and disrupting governments that had taken the people's welfare into account with decent healthcare and education.
It's the same in Latin America where business interests mitigate against fair treatment of the population.
16
Excellent interview and article on Colombia. And Stephens is well informed on the basics of Colombian political history over the past 80 or so years. The key point about "demagogues" vs. centrism is also essential and well illustrated by the Colombian case. Now, Mr. Stephens, what do you recommend that we do about it here in our own United States in 2018? Over to you. Are you declaring yourself as a centrist? And what about the reference to "pedagogues" as an alternative? Please elaborate. [I think this word goes over better in Spanish; in English it's the same word but it sounds a bit pejorative and egg-headed.]
2
Yesterday Brett was thanking Trump for the inspired choice of the Brett “Bart” Kavanaugh. Today he turns his thoughts and pen to cite the exemplary centrist leadership of Columbia. When we have to start taking our cues from Columbia , were in worse trouble than I thought.
Thanks for the column Brett: this one goes on the wall.
6
Hey Bret, Go down hall and get an economics lesson from Krugman-and after you passed econ. 101, take a history course on the how aristocracies and monarchies work out against/ or with today's inequality. Then go to a few of the private jet-ports around world and talk about tax policy with the .01%' ers, Let's see how great they think extreme center's politics would work out for them and if the would like to support that idea.Then please, write a column on inheritance tax policy of the current Mitch McConnell republican party and it's contribution to the current state of our Democracy.
26
Mr. Stevens,
What exactly is your definition of centrist politics? As an expat living in Colombia, I can assure you that the majority of Colombians do NOT refer to Duque as centrist. He is not even a little to the right, rather to the extreme. Please do a better job of investigating before reporting, the Colombian people would greatly appreciate it.
39
@logical
Before I read your comment I thought that the editor's choice of a photograph to accompany Stephen's column belied its content since it pictured Senor Duque surrounded by the military (hence the far right). I wouldn't have known this, but you apparently do. How dare you question the great Bret Stephens! He won a Pulitzer you know partially in support for his full-throated of our Iraq War.
Stephens is an ideologue who can't quite seem to lose his biases when he views the world. This is the sentence that got me: " Anyone who thinks that left-wing populism is the appropriate remedy for the right-wing variety should look at Venezuela — where the health care is universal and, thanks to socialist shortages, there’s none of it."
People like Stephens always move to the extreme to not prove their point. There many, many countries that effectively provide universal healthcare to their citizens, the USA not being one of them. Take note Bret, Israel is just one of them.
8
Name one centrist republican on the senate judicial committee Mr. Stephens. Name on centrist republican in Congress. Every republican votes in lockstep with Trump.
42
After you cheered Trump for being a bully in order to get his (and apparently your) Supreme Court nominee through the Senate, you write a column about the value of centrism? Really??
54
Under what human and nonhuman conditions is/can "Reclaiming the extreme center ," brief in its words, energizing in its implied power, clear in its direction, convincing in its certitude, become a reality? This merits much consideration if this conclusion is not to become yet another mantra. I am not looking for a NYT recipe.I am suggesting that there is a need to also note that whatever is planned, carried out, learned from its documentable, transparent, outcomes, so as to "fail better," each time one falls and is able, chooses to get up again, that realities' dynamic, multidimensionalities need to be considered. Constantly. They are as everpresent,and operating, as each day is.Uncertainties. Unpredictabilities. Randomness.Lack of total control regarding a selected "target" notwithstanding types, levels and qualities of one's efforts. Alone and with others. Another consideration. the roles, implications and outcomes of toxic semantic surrealism. What can the semantically created "extreme center,"
or, a "moderate middle" mean/demand of human, daily coping, adapting, and functioning within the current toxic web of infectious identity politics? All over! When personal unaccountability, for voiced harmful words and done-deeds, is enabled, by "good folk?" Amidst daily socio-eco-ethics-political corroding by complacency and complicity. When we continue to confuse a targeted, desired IT with words. Created to represent IT.The "extreme center," just as words, are not IT!
Given your expression of gratitude for Trump and his bully boys ramming Kavanaugh through a Supreme Court confirmation with no due process, It is rich beyond belief today that you extol "extreme centrism."
Which is it? Centrism or demagoguery? As a Trump enabler, you can't have it both ways.
That said, as current resident NYTimes contrarian, maybe you can. Just don't expect to be taken very seriously on "extreme centrism."
14
If we had a president who was thoughtful and spoke to us in calm tones we would be a different country. Instead, we got a man who mocks the handicapped and the victimized, screams in words and tweets every chance he gets, and rejoices in getting people to yell things at the top of their lungs like "lock her up." This is our problem - it's not a question of center versus left or right wing. It's a question of encouraging people to think and act like adults instead of screaming bloody murder like a four-year-old every five minutes. We have a large, spoiled baby running our country and encouraging us to be like him.
8
If only the United States had had an erudite, eloquent leader with pedagogical skills to lead us, maybe we wouldn't be in the fix that we're in now. Oh wait, we did, and conservatives' scorched earth politics has left us with "the 'build the wall and imprison the kids' crowd currently in power in Washington."
14
The democrats for the last two decades have played to the center...what has it got them---They have lost two presidencies to minority elected candidates, lost a Supreme Court Justice, lost most state houses, lost most governorships, and the legacy of President Obama---the ultimate pedagogue---is being systematically dismantled by an ultimate demagogue.
14
I wish you had made this strong, impassioned argument for Hillary Clinton, the realist centrist, with reasonable levels of smear and taint, before the 2016 election. You are totally right now, and would be totally right then.
6
Believing in the political center means accepting the exploitation of working people by a corporatist ruling class and the ongoing gross inequality between the rich and the rest of us.
Capitalism is a ruthless system that drops crumbs on the working class in order to keep workers in their place and provide markets for the profits of the parasites. And when economies tighten, the rain of crumbs dwindles and it's working people who suffer while the rich sit on their hoards of gold.
There's no compromise between the people whose labor produces everything and those who exploit them. The center is only a temporary relaxation of the stranglehold on society held by the right.
If recent history has taught us anything, it's that the more the Democratic Party has moved toward the center, the more it has betrayed what working people need, and the more it has lost.
9
Somehow, I knew when Donald Trump and his obedient Republicans in the Senate co-opted the F.B.I. and propelled a hyper-conservative bully with radical anti-democratic views and belligerent conspiracy theories unto the Supreme Court, Bret Stephens would find a way to blame it on the Democrats.
14
Tone arguments are more popular than ever, but they're still illegitimate.
2
We had an election Monday the center Liberals were replaced by the center conservatives. The winning party promised to be the government of all Quebecers and on Tuesday the arguing was all over and everyone got to work.
America had always had its problems but it strove to become a more perfect union. But Buckley Jr, Goldwater, Nixon , and Reagan came along and even your Democrats are too far right of center. I am 70 and I don't know whether I will survive the demise of the USA. So far I am a cancer survivor but I suspect I may likely see the dissolution of the USA begin before I leave this vale of tears.
I am not much for belief but my Torah has the story of Joseph interpreting the Pharaoh's dreams. There is a time for raising taxes and a time for lowering them, there is a time for less government and a time for more government. Your right wing cult has destroyed America, I can hear the giant crumbling and hope its crash doesn't take all of us with it.
10
Bret can talk about the "political center" all he wants, but where is it?
We have a two-party system where the primaries drive candidates to the extreme right and left and the most engaged go out and vote. So now we wind up with more extreme candidates on both sides.
We now have a "winner take all" mentality, where the current president did not even win a majority of the popular vote yet has governed as if he has a landslide mandate. There is not even the pretense of working with the other side. I have little doubt the Democrats will do the same and extract their revenge when they are in charge.
The 24-hour news media, eager for controversy to generate content, ratings and money, continually fuels anger and mistrust of government by substituting partisan opinion for actual news and information. And social media has become a tool for every wing nut and conspiracy theorist to mobilize his or her maximum possible receptive audience. And a tool for our enemies.
And we have millions, if not billions, in PAC, "social welfare organization" and Citizens United money flooding into politics today, with the new power trophy for America's wealthy being how many political candidates they can own. And clearly the Kochs, Mercers, Adelsons, Steyers and their ilk are not buying centrists.
So, Bret, while the center may have "value", unfortunately there are no buyers today. We can thank our two main political parties, spineless elected officials and complicit judges for all of this.
3
It's news that a right-wing radical and armchair enthusiast of aggressive war would deem himself a centrist.
But, like David Brooks, it would seem Bret Stephens simply can't understand why no one listens to him.
If only there were fewer second acts in American life.
13
Mr. Stephens: In your last column, you made it clear that you believe a big bully is the ultimate solution to difficult conflicts. Why should we listen to anything you say about politics ever again? In the end, you’ll default to “We need a big strong man to make everyone shut up.” This is how it happens in history, and you, Mr. Stephens, along with Senator Graham and all the other lovers of Big Strong Bully Men are making it all happen once again. Congratulations, and see you on the other side (if we make it.)
21
Wonderful message. Too bad more writers of this caliber are not employed by the Times. Mr. Stephens could have referred to his employer as one of the extremists poisoning our country.
The fact that you think the NYT is extremist is hilarious. Go read Jacobin and the Nation; find out that the political spectrum is much wider than Fox has defined for you
3
Stephens tells us he's deeply worried about Demagogues and Pedagogues in other countries like Colombia, while at the same time applauding Demagogues here in America. He attacks all who dare to disagree with him on their policies (whether Trump's tax cuts for billionaires, or his ramming Brett Kavanaugh onto the Supreme Court).
In Colombia, Iván Duque, is definitely not a centrist, he's a right-wing politician who has spent most of his life battling leftists. You can have little sympathy for leftists, and still see how Stephens the neocon is once again paying fast and lose facts. The so called Democratic Center, is a political party founded by former president Álvaro Uribe. Uribe is so feared by the people of Colombia that during this presidential campaign he had to assert that Duque, "is not my puppet," It's something you say when someone is your puppet.
Uribe, whose political philosophy is known as "uribismo," is defined by his military and paramilitary warfare against the insurgents, close ties with neocons in the United States, and the ruthless eradication of drugs. His presidency from 2002 to 2010 left bitterness in areas where his counterinsurgency and anti-drug campaigns were waged because he used them, as Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has, to torture and destroy his political enemies. Stephens really likes torture. He was, and remains, a leading unapologetic advocate of Dick Cheney's torture program. One must wonder why he didn't bother to mention it here.
13
Wow. After a column touting Trump's "bullying" as a god-send to getting extreme right Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court, Bret Stephens has the audacity to praise the "extreme center" of Duque and pan "demagogues."
12
Bret, given that universal health care is the RULE everywhere else in the advanced industrialized world, why wouldn't adoption of it be a centrist program?
Given how the system is currently being gamed by for-profit insurance companies, hospital systems, the pharmaceutical industry, and some bad doctors, leading to expenditures more than 50% higher than our nearest advanced industrial economic competitor, why wouldn't adoption of a system that creates an 800 lb gorilla capable of knocking heads together to make all these bad actors behave be the stuff of what I call Union, or a defensible nationalist program (as opposed to the indefensible one that Trump is promoting)?
There are policies that great nation states need to pursue regardless of which side of the political divide they originated on or are primarily associated with; universal health happens to be one of them - and need I remind you that a Republican, Teddy Roosevelt, first championed it here in America?
I am personally wary of the dream of "democratic socialism" inasmuch as it assumes a perfection of character in a majority of people that is likely illusory. Some people are just conventionally selfish, if not hopelessly narcissistic like our current President. But IMHO, a substantial majority of the people can be reached by an appeal to what Tocqueville called "self-interest well understood".
We've moved so far right in America that appeals to a common sense centrism are now considered leftist!
14
Duque sounds good and I approve of Stephens’ ideas, in theory. But remember that we had a centrist leader: Barack Obama. His most dramatic achievement, Obamacare, was modeled on Romneycare. He reached out again and again to the GOP. What he got was intransigence and slander. The right wing fumed, plotted revenge, and Trump, the embodiment of resentment, spite, and divisiveness, took power. So I am pessimistic about the prospects for moderate politics in this country ... if it still is one country.
23
@A reader, Reaching out is not the same as compromising and bargaining. The same way a telephone conversation is not a dialogue if you do all the talking. In my opinion, Obama was too young, too inexperienced, and too idealistic to be an effective legislative negotiator. Not one Republican voted for his health care bill. The bill was rammed through along partisan lines and as a result, it is seen as a Democratic and not American health care plan - and it is still subject to on-going debate and frustration by both parties. Is that what Obama intended? Is that what he wanted? But, that's what we have gotten and he must be tagged with that outcome. Rather than bringing people together, it created a wider split. Neither party is 100% correct on any matter, nor are their leaders, nor are their followers. The best we can hope for is that a majority of the time we are correct and that we leave space to acknowledge our errors. Lastly, given the fact that Democrats want things from the government, it is on them to make the case for it, pay for it, and to improve it when it fails.
@Jay Sax
As I recall the negotiating of Obamacare in congress took place for well over a year and Democrats were criticized by their own for compromising too much with Repubs. Obama was likewise criticized by his own for not being involved enough. Obama wanted congress to do its job. In the end yes only Democrats voted for it but it was hardly “rammed” through.
I have a few questions for Bret.
1. Yes, Venezuela is a mess. But the economy of Venezuela has been based on oil since well before Chavez. Don't you think the drastic fall in the price of oil had anything to do with the mess in Venezuela?
2. Yes , Venezuela is a failed authoritarian socialist state. But China is also an authoritarian socialist state, If authoritarian socialist states are doomed to failure, why are we so afraid of China, and where are the millions (billions?) of Chinese refugees?
3.yes, I agree that authoritarianism has had a generally poor record. But which of the following two lists of people support democracy, one person, on vote and which support making voting difficult, gerrymandering, and excluding certain groups from voting:
Jeremy Corbyn, Naomi Klein, Michael Moore, Oliver Stone, and Cornel West
or
Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, Chuck Grassley, Brett Kavanaugh, and yes, Jeff Flake and Susan Collins?
9
@Len Charlap, you lost me at point three: "yes, I agree that authoritarianism has had a generally poor record." Generally? Did you just walk out of the Middle Ages? "Yes, generally kings, abuse everyone but not my king, because he's different and I'm of royal blood." Here is an eye-opener authoritarianism used by the right or left is wrong as a governing principle and is the least legitimate basis for ruling people. Again, we if can't agree on that then we can't agree on anything.
Amen, brother.
Long live the centrists! (example 1: The wildly successful Clinton Administration from 1993-2001).
This is a big, diverse country. If your "side" is thrilled, the other "side" is furious. That will not work in the long run. That equals CIVIL WAR!
The center is the ONLY viable path forward. No one is thrilled all the time. Compromises are made. But we generally move forward with peace and satisfaction.
What a relief that would be.
5
Brett, we had a pedagogue, for eight years.
And our Congress, and half our states, did everything in their power to undermine him. To willfully not compromise.
When he was elected, he was tarred as liberal, when his policies most closely resembled Nixonian centrism. McConnell decreed he'd work to make Obama a one term President. The GOP walked away from the work of trying to fix healthcare - and their compliant that no one was listening to them falls short, when given their own chance, they had nothing.
They tried to undermine the national economy by risking default on the debt; they wrote their own foreign policy statement and delivered to Iran; they took away his ability to seat a Justice.
The GOP rejected compromise - that attitude sank Boehner who was conservative, but not nuts - and pushed us to the winner takes all, winning is all that matters philosophy that is embodied by Trump.
You want a pedagogue, a centrist? Well then why the heck weren't you supporting Obama?
72
@Cathy You shouldn't expose Stephens' blatant hypocrisies -- he may lose his gig as the NYT house "conservative". Of course, as he angles toward minimization of Trump's incalculable travesties, he may render himself complicit in the cult without your help and so his faux centrism seen as a cynical pose not unlike that of Susan Collins.
2
You make it sound like the left has none of the answers and the right is not being given credit for it's policies. Just because universal healthcare doesn't work in Venezuela doesn't mean it doesn't work in other parts of the world. It does. It may not be perfect, but what is? How many Americans will die as the lack of access for healthcare becomes the norm? How many will die and/or suffer from mental illness because the funding has been slashed? The Trump way is to threaten anyone who doesn't fall into lock step with US demands and values. Remember Iran used to do that (think Shah) and the people hated it and revolted. And rather than get into another Afghanistan and get stuck in Iran controlling the chaos the American people are tired of and which has not worked as evidenced by our still being in Afghanistan, Obama tried a diplomatic approach. Not perfect, but perhaps preferable to being an occupier in yet another country. Oh the Trump theory is the Middle Eastern countries will take over. Where exactly does he get any assurance that will happen? Syria?, Afghanistan? Yemen? Libya? Remember when you go into the gift shop the sign reads: " You broke it, you own it". The Trump adage is "I broke it, and I refuse to pay for it". But make no mistake. There is always a price to pay. Just a matter of how much. And you never get everything you want. Unless, of course, you lie when you say you do.
2
"Anyone who thinks that left-wing populism is the appropriate remedy for the right-wing variety should look at Venezuela- where the health care is universal and, thanks to socialist shortages, there's none of it."
What a gross distortion of the political reality.
Chavez reformed the health care system, reformed the identity card issuance system and increased voter turn-out, improved housing for the poor, increased wages, reduced wage payment fraud and improved the Gini index.
Having dual citizenship after 15 years in Venezuela, for me
Venezuela now is a government of a military mafia propping up a President who keeps his mouth shut and his hands off of their income stream, produced by "taxing" imports and contraband, creating exchange shortages, illegal gold mining and drugs.
Venezuela now compares to an African diamond dictatorship.
And Colombia? Where is this reclaimed center?
Clearly unstable with a Gini of nearly 60 in a world where Canada can proudly report a Gini of 35, and even the U.S. {where three billionaires own about half of it] shows at about 45.
Inequality and peace have never been good bedfellows.
Never have and never will.
Look at what is happening here, now and ask yourself why.
4
This column is disingenuous. What is in the “center” in one country (for example, healthcare for all in France, or oppression of women in Saudi Arabia) can easily be on the “left” or the “right” in another (the former on the left, the latter on the right, in the U.S.). Thus Mr Stephens doesn’t really mean “center”; what he actually means is “policies I like”.
17
@Jonathan Blees, The center is a middle ground between two opposing forces and its purpose is not choice 1 or choice 2 but a choice 3, which combines elements of choice 1 and choice 2. In 1949, Arthur Schlesinger wrote the Vital Center about this same topic and I recommend it to you. As Bret makes clear, it is about finding a center and not giving in to winner take all political outcomes. A country has to choose a choose and accept choice 3 outcome. Hence, he compares Columbia seeking choice 3 alternatives with Venezuela which only seeks 1 socialistic outcome.
Reply to 9/28 when comments closed-
9/28 column is a sad piece of intellectual dishonesty. It demonstrates threats and bullying.
He exaggerates the issue of believability. That skips the main issues - what they have been throughout history - honesty, validity of information, and displays and judgment of character. The ancient Greeks warned us about lying and demagoguery in politics.
Stephens should no longer be an invited columnist. He raises too many fake issues. His threats are based on false equivalence.
He hauls out fake equivalence by comparing the testimony of Ford and Kavanaugh. His criticism of Ford follows the usual shameful pattern of attacks on victims of abuse. Ford's initially stated desire to remain anonymous is a norm. That and Feinstein's delay in publicizing her case caused a delay. It was not the major fault that Stephens raises it to be. Ford and her lawyer requested an FBI investigation weeks ago. There is no hurry.
Why is the GOP still hiding material records from the Bush admin. and not calling all witnesses?
Stephens exaggerates an attack on Dems as cynical, not truth-seeking, unfair, ignoring guardrails? An unwarranted attack. He barely mentions the much greater list of faults of the GOP. Manufactured concern, anger, and sanctimony are among Stephens' tools.
Conservatives lied about the Bork hearing. Young Stephens believed them. Bork had highly controversial positions and carried out the Saturday night massacre. Opposition to him was warranted
1
@Harry Thorn, wrong article, wrong facts, and wrong politics. You skip straight over the main issue to argue for an unsupported conclusion. Sen. Feinstein acted improperly with regards to this hearing. Ford provided no corroboration for her 35-year-old allegations. You asked for and received a 7th FBI investigation. Democrats tore into and attacked Bork, Thomas, and Kavanaugh. When was the last time the Republicans tore into a Democratic nominee? The best case you have is Garland? Garland just wasn't invited to an interview to use the Democratic talking point on interview methodology. Did Republican try to destroy Garland - no. They made clear from the start that they would use the Biden Rule on him and Obama knew it and still pushed on to try to get a third nominee. And the Republicans are being political? Come on.
In parts of Colombia the world is still divided between extremes - with on the one hand violent large land owners and allied murderous militias and on the other hand peasants, trade unions and guerrilla's.
Duque has clearly chosen a side in this conflict. For that reason I don't believe that there is any reason to call him a moderate.
31
" . . . . where the health care is universal and, thanks to socialist shortages, there's none of it" belies a highly partisan, even unyielding position on health care on the
part of Bret Stevens. But what does he care? For him here are no consequences for expounding inaccurate tautologies like this. But nearly every country in the western world has systems that might be given to "socialist shortages," but aren't. That kind of phrase is an instant brain-deadener. Brain deadening is what pols, and
demagogues do. And Bret Stephens, as well.
1
Which ideology is more extreme? Liberal ideas like universal healthcare and reproductive rights that are about human rights and that every other civilized industrial nation has affords its people. Or conservative ideas that promote the further eroding of the separation of church and state and the existence of likes of citizens united that influence our judicial system in the favor of large corporations. Only one ideology threatens tears down the foundation of our democracy and it doesn’t involve pre-existing conditions.
4
"...where the health care is universal and, thanks to socialist shortages, there’s none of it."
Kind of a broad brush, don't you think? Most of the wealthy nations of the world have universal access to health care with better health outcomes at lower costs overall. By all means, preach the Golden Mean, but practice it, too. Not all universal health care looks like Venezuela.
5
Countries like Canada, Australia, Denmark, Holland, Sweden, Germany, etc. don't have the poverty we have.
And Germany is known for manufacturing. They have good schools for the working class. They have trade schools and high tech manufacturing. They have affordable university.
Those countries have universal health care.
We have parts of the US with infant mortality rates the same as some African countries.
And we are the richest industrial country on the planet GDP / capita.
And those other countries have faced the same globalization we have.
After 35 years of Reagan trickle-down economics, we got an opioid crisis.
And our economic divide has never been greater since the Gilded Age.
So if Mr. Stephens is worried about countries like Colombia, 35 years of Republican artificial divide to win elections and the resulting Republican tax plans and economics and have moved us further in their direction.
Both in terms of economics and in terms of political divide.
12
What would Republicans be saying if it had been a Democratic nominee for the Supreme Court with the lying under oath and the temperament Kavanaguh showed?
Of course Republicans would vote against him.
The difference is that Democrats would also vote against him.
And the only reason Kavanaugh will get on the Supreme Court is because Mitch McConnell changed the threshold from 60 to 51.
History will not treat McConnell, Grassley, and Graham kindly.
On the other hand, we and our children will be paying the price with more Citizens United on steroids.
17
After Mr. Stephens opinion piece about being "grateful for Trump"; I really have no need to read any of his opinions. There is absolutely nothing and I mean absolutely nothing to be grateful for about having Trump as President. As an independent, I am open to reading all views, but Mr. Stephens loses all credibility by putting forth an argument that Trump possesses some redeeming value we as a country should be grateful for.
88
@SLF are you sure you're really an independent? Maybe you're just an undocumented far left Democrat? I think you'd have to be pretty closed off to new ideas to dismiss the guy entirely because he dares suggest some good way come from bad.
After the Russian Revolution, generations ago, people who might now be called liberals welcomed it because it represented dramatic change from oppression, corruption and suffering for the majority of the nation. It took them a long time to realize that the hope was futile because the revolution was taken over by ruthless politicians whose impulse was for power. That usually happens when revolutions destabilize governments.
Venezuela has become a symbol of what's wrong with socialism, but it's really a symbol of what happens when the power-hungry use whatever means at hand to aggrandize that power. The proof is a look at other nations that have used some aspects of socialism to make their citizens more secure.
In our own country, state-operated enterprises have provided education, highways and other infrastructure that has made us prosperous. Services that are used by all and available for all are part of our history. Yes, that is socialism, but no one used to think that such services are evil.
With the fall of the USSR, we lost a dangerous enemy. International Communism did conspire to hurt us. But, the threat was always overrated and used as a political tool internally among our own citizens and externally among the people of the world.
The real threat is the ruthless quest for power. That is something that can exist anywhere on the political spectrum.
29
Using Venezuela as an example of "democratic socialism" for the purpose of deriding universal health care proposals in the U.S. is like using Donald Trump as an exemplar of American virtue. The only illumination it brings is to the writer's prejudices.
163
The picture is somewhat disconcerting. A lone civilian surrounded by military men. All dictatorships surround themselves with the military or pseudo military.
This is a danger in the US too. In recent years military men or former senior military men have become ever more important in our Administrations. This is reflected in the militarization of our foreign policy.
10
TO RESUSCITATE THE CENTER: OPEN PRIMARIES
By shutting out non-party-registered voters (a growing demographic in the US, tilted younger), candidate selection is skewed toward the extremes.
By using very low turnout (14%) primaries as the target for vested-interest or ideological "primarying" of centrist candidates, Citizens United monies are more powerful in destroying their chances.
Open primaries, of the type used in California, pushes candidate selection toward the center, as independent voters gain their say.
Only when the candidate selection process favors centrism can general elections be diverted from tribalism.
Maybe a third party is needed to clean up the mess created by the interest-group-infested Republicans and Democrats.....
10
I like the idea of open primaries, but I can't say it's worked to promote centrism in MA.
@Randallbird
Thank you for your comment. Having always lived in states that require registration with a party to vote in the primaries, I have always felt "forced " to choose a party affiliation, but have always voted as an Independent in general elections.
In the current political climate with each party seeming to become more and more entrenched in either right or left ideology, I would also like to see open primaries. I would then feel free to register as an Independent without giving up any right to a voice in the primaries.
The value of the political center in politics today as opposed to swinging to left or right not to mention the extremes of such?
I don't see any political move today as particularly promising for freedom, democracy, the value of the individual in society which leads to the greatest accomplishments in art or science or other fields. Typically our comprehension of society swinging to extremes of left or right is conceived as an imbalance, an act of increasing inequality, even minority rule over majority (anti-democratic) no matter declarations that doing so will decrease inequality in society.
And trying to straddle things by promising a center to politics is just similar to trying to arrest a pendulum swing which itself does not result in equality, freedom, democracy, etc. but rather a situation in which society is held like a pendulum ball beneath a minority controlling from above. Which is to say a mature political outlook recognizes that all decisions are pretty ugly and although the political center might be preferable to swings to right or left it's still an ugly state of control over the public.
The key to politics, which has yet to be forged in any worthwhile sense involves somehow releasing the best talents in society so that society finally flowers somehow, so that organization appears in which there is cohesion but maximum realization of individuality. We seem today much more concerned with stem or trunk of society than leaves and flowering growth of society.
2
Ideological absolutism driven by those who are certain there is one and only one true answer which can and must be implemented always ends in disaster. It's not a question of Left or Right, Religious or Secular. Righteous certainty without compromise does not mix well with power.
"... one cannot have everything one wants—not only in practice, but even in theory. The denial of this, the search for a single, overarching ideal because it is the one and only true one for humanity, invariably leads to coercion. And then to destruction, blood ..."
- Isaiah Berlin
Trump's demagoguery is barely coherent enough to label as an ideology -- more standard issue wannabe authoritarian cult of personality built around a malignant narcissist. But he won't be here forever.
In the multi-decade post Trump repair period all ideological sides need to approach governing with more humility, more compromise.
But an argument for a move towards the "extreme center" is not an excuse for false equivalency. Today's Republican party has been complicit in an attack on the concept of truth and the norms of American democracy. I am not sure they can find a way back. There just doesn't seem to be enough people in the GOP who understand what they have wrought. I hold on to the hope that I am wrong.
19
I am so tired of the nostrum that the center is where all sanity is. What we need is not to have everyone cowering in the center, what we need is for politicians not to lie. Not to lie about climate change, about racism, about inequality and tax cuts for the rich, about how regulations are always bad, about the dishonesty and rage and unfitness of Supreme Court nominees. We need a Republican Party willing to acknowledge empirical reality. Partisanship is fine, when it's honest, and when each side listens to the other. Mr Stephens seems unable to tell the difference between Hugo Chavez and Bernie Sanders. Which makes him one of the Republican liars.
108
@AW your point is well taken, but I think the point is not that centrism done well is a weak average, but the strong recognition that real life is complex and rarely amenable to ideological treatment. I think the disconnect is that you think the far left is any less religious and anti empirics than the far right. I don't want an average of that so much as people willing to think and ask questions. The solutions may look like a mix of right and left on the whole, but it won't be a dumb compromise but a considered answer on a case by case basis. A lot of work, and anything but easy if done right.
1
Agree with much of what you say, except "republican liars". We're not all blind or liars. Believe we could tone it down some and achieve more progress.
The extremes on both left and right thrive on simple answers, which are too simple to work.
One of the good things that might have come from Trump's presidency was a national discussion of immigration. It didn't happen. Why?
One reason was Trump's inflammatory rhetoric.
An example is Trump's statement that illegal immigrants included rapists. The problem is that even if immigrants are exemplary n other ways, it is still the case that the US has finite resources. We need to discuss how we want to distribute those resources to have maximum impact, and how to do it while upholding respect for the law.
Instead of opening a rational discussion, Democrats have responded with calling Trump a racist. Perhaps Trump is pushing buttons of the poor, who are frustrated because their incomes are declining and look at illegal immigrants as taking resources that undercut their social safety net. But calling somebody a racist or a bigot does not lead to negotiations in which solutions are found which all sides find at least tolerable.
Trump's base consists of the poorly educated. Perhaps we should not be so hard on their inability to formulate solutions.
Liberals on the other hand appear to be sanctimonious. What exactly does it accomplish to declare LA a sanctuary city? It is a way of declaring that liberals are morally superior to conservatives. Of course, it makes the right angry instead of ready to compromise.
Politics has become toxic because of extreme positions.
5
@Jake Wagner
I would argue that Trump’s position on immigration is not based on reason, specifically this country’s finite resources. Liberals believe that his distaste for those who are dark skinned (even those who were born here) has its roots in a more emotional need to maintain a sense of superiority (white). Many would call this racism. During President Obama’s administration it was not the Democrats who abandoned comprehensive immigration reform.
5
I am so tired of people who glorify “the center” by crying “a pox on both your houses” but stand for nothing, offer no solutions and usually sneak into their screed a condemnation of their favorite whipping boy as an example of the excesses of one side or the other. In his case Stephens adroitly condemns the provision of health care as something that a return to centrism would eliminate. He offers no facts to prove his suggestion even though many countries successfully administer health care programs without going off the dreaded deep end of extremism. People who yearn for the center are usually wolves in sheeps’ clothing. The solution to disputes is not always cutting the baby in half. Sometimes one side is right and the other is just plain wrong.
65
Honestly? I'd rather have a demagogue. Would I rather be manipulated or merely condescended to? Admittedly a difficult choice.
1
Bret Stephens, I see your value now. I just laughed out loud.
If Iván Duque is the lesser of two evils for the Colombian people, then I'm all for it.
That being said, if Iván Duque is the lesser of two evils for the Colombian people after the past couple of decades, then the United States has got to be the worst international ally that any country could ever think to have.
So now Stephens praises the Center and compares in so many words people like Bernie Sanders and Cobryn to Chavez.
Is there no end to Stephen's duplicity?
He is in torment because a nationalistic demagogue here has shown that a majority of the Republican faithful have been waiting for someone like him for decades. And the Republican establishment panders to this demagogue to accomplish their goals of tax cut for corporations and the rich and supplying the Supreme Court with a reactionary, misogynist majority.
Stephens torment maybe a facade. For he seems to have all he could hope for with the US embassy in Jerusalem and our exit from the agreement with Iran. But perhaps all he really hopes for is Iraq redux and the US attacks and invades Iran.
16
Lumping Michael Moore et al with Hugo Chavez is downright disingenuous at best or propaganda at its worst. Those people listed are democrats not demagogues. Their "sin" is to rail against the corporatist agenda favored by conservatives.
99
Colombia's history closely matches our own. Their revolutionary war was roughly contemporaneous with our own. Their civil war, between conservatives and liberals, has already lasted more than 100 years. Periodically it has devolved into armed conflict. Trump is a demagogue plain and simple. The Republicans have become a party of rightwing extremists. They are using the demagogue to shove their rightwing extremist policies down our throats. Uniting Trump and his Republicans are a shared interest in retaining white power and white privileges and entitlements.
14
These are some good points. The Kavanaugh hearing has been used as a wedge to further separate the country. Fox News has no interest in making peace with Democrats. Politicians and their mouthpieces are an embarrassment to America.
4
Although Colombia has a long way to go to show resolve in seeking compromise towards society's peace, Duque is showing the right temperament to make it possible. That we, as a community of nations, are unable to oust Maduro by a concerted effort to block his every move until he calls for democracy to return (by stepping down from his incompetent and corrupt regime) is a disgrace. Similarly, accepting a vulgar demagogue, highly incompetent and deeply corrupt, in the White House is demeaning to any democracy worth it's name. Too bad we have a complicit G.O.P. allowing Trump's misrule (currently acting more like a klepto-plutocracy). If happy families are all alike, I would vote for a social democracy, with it's salient feature being that of cutting down our current gross inequality, witness the segregation in education, housing and health. Now, if we could gather some humility, and add some prudence (doing what's right, however difficult), we may be on to something worth talking about. As Duque said, populism is not the answer. Even Trump knows that.
2
The Republicans promised to destroy Obama. They promised the same to Clinton.
Bret Stephens supported blood sport for decades.
The only problem he has that is that the democrats are finally saying enough is enough. We are tired of having children put in camps. We are tired of torture. Of wars fought under false pretenses. We think not harassing women is a good thing. We believe in working with other nations instead of threatening them continually (us and them is Bush, Trump just amped it up.)
Hypocrisy is a Bret Stephens game, and he should feel ashamed. He is like Bret Kavanaugh thinking that most Americans don't understand that we see the bullying, we see the assault upon our nation and it is RED.
115
Wait. So believing in democratic socialism is equivalent to the authoritarian socialism of Venezuela? The new progressive movement is not demagoguery, or the left version of trumpism. I am so tired of these false equivalencies.
29
Will pedagogues triumph over demagogues in a world where democracy is expected to deliver everything a person wants, means all opinions are equally valuable? Where screaming drowns out carefully worded thoughts? So much to figure out and watch. Guess I’ll keep reading the Times for Mr Stephens’ writings. He seems to be the rarely principled voices these days.
3
Hey Mr Stephens -- health care is universal also in Anglo-Saxon nations like the UK, Canada, Australia, and NZ! You can be a decent democratic society and still take care of folks! You can even have universal healthcare and a "Conservative" government, as evidence from other Anglo-Saxon nations. Learning from the history of Britain perhaps politically what we should aim for is "reasonableness"! Since I have born (1982) that seems to be in ever shorter supply in the GOP -- SAD!
64
The specific grievances that spark the phenomenon of demagoguery are many. I would suggest two underlying social and intellectual foundations that are rampant. First, the diminishing of the practical notion of common good where everyone contributes to the future as Duque comments. We are all in a real way our sister's and brother's keeper, holding to this precept, means accepting one's duty to contribute. A corollary is misguided individualism focused solely on my rights, my situation, and the affronts to my sense of reality. The second is the lack of reasoned reflection on how we reason to a conclusion. For example, NRA and gun lobby supporters seek wide and complete access to firearms and decry lack of government interference in the name of freedom. Yet many recoil at the Pro Choice argument that uses the same logic for wide access to abortions. The point is not to advocate here for one position or the other, but until we can reflect on reasoning, it becomes impossible to enter into serious dialogue necessary to find the center from which we can move forward. Without that center, the future is indeed perilous.
11
"Reclaiming the extreme center is the way it’s done, and Colombia has lessons worth learning." Mr. Stephens, I am quite certain that you and I would define the "center" quite differently. I see our country currently being governed by the far right. A move to the center would reestablish a strong EPA to protect the air and water quality for all Americans. It would strengthen Social Security and provide universal healthcare to all our citizens. While promoting policies which encourage the development and expansion of businesses, a move to the center would also promote a tax structure which would reward those in the middle class, and provide enough revenue for needed infrastructure projects. Doing the things i've mentioned would take us back to just about where were before the Trump wrecking crew arrived. But there is only one way we'll move to the center: Elect Democrats.
50
Any move to the center will be blocked by money. Kavanaugh's elevation insures we will be stuck in this mode for a long time. It will be left for future historians to assess the damage done to the USA. The center would be the will of the people....but we no longer have the means to apply the will.
18
Columbia had a war between rightist terrorists and leftist terrorists. The rightist terrorists saw any attempt by the masses to press for a political voice that would call for economic fairness as communism, to be stamped out rather than negotiated with. The right controlled the forces of law and order, whose abuse of their authority was generally not called terrorism while violent resistance to this abuse was called terrorism.
We had terroristic violence in the South, which was only rarely responded to with violence, much less terror. This violence was allowed, and sometimes facilitated and aided, by the forces of law and order. The political center in the South wanted the economic structure of the South maintained to the extent that it could be maintained without extralegal terrorism, but biased and unequal law enforcement was not seen as extralegal or terroristic.
A center that stands up to the left while not standing up to the right is a sham, and will find itself being made into a tool of the right, providing camouflage and respectability for the right's defense of its prerogatives. In Venezuela, the right's tools to maintain its power included corruption and empty promises that were vitiated by corruption in their execution. Venezuela's oil wealth was always going to be shared with those outside the oil industry, but it never happened. So Venezuela had a leftist revolution that shared standards of honesty with the preceding governments, and failed.
12
I never have my toenails clipped professionally.
While I, like Bret, hail the election of Iván Duque as President of Colombia, I suppose that what his country really has to teach us, in an age of increasingly more permissive drug laws, is how to put coca growth on a serious paying basis. I think murderous thugs probably have something to do with it.
Colombia has far more basic social matters to attend to than a desire to more effectively moderate ideological extremism.
3
There is nothing centrist, nothing centrist at all, about the club of bully boys who are ramming Judge Kavanaugh through despite his lies, his opposition to voting rights, his support of torture, and his support of presidential power.
That he has some ancient history of abusing women and demonstrates that he still has a drinking problem is extra.
He lies a lot. He is extremely partisan.
You looking for demagogues? You don't need to leave the US any more. We're run by a bunch of them, Trump and the greedsters and looters in chief, mostly old bossy white men who don't listen, only dictate. They are about the take over the third branch of government willy nilly, while blaming their victims as if their victims were just like them.
186
Enough of the gender tribalism @Susan. Your argument would be much more effective without bringing gender baggage in to a problem you have with 0.00001% of the population. This is exactly part of the problem and what (rightly, in this case) drives moderates away from the left.
1
How does America get its center back? Conservatives have to listen to liberals who talk about the urgency of now. Liberals have to listen to conservatives who say "Slow down. We can't all process this overnight".
There has got to be a reasonable balance somewhere in the middle which results in a better quality of life for everyone, and sooner rather than later.
13
Whenever a conservative apologist calls for compromise in the name of civility, what it means is overlook our latest theft and transgression against America because we want to make you look as bad as we actor are. Never mind "slow down, we can't do this overnight". Being a conservative means you never see the new day. It is always tomorrow and tomorrow for by progress, while conservatives dismantle societal gains and keep pushing us backwards. Republicans slash taxes on the super rich, and then say we can't afford Medicare and Social Security. Compromising with them is taking pity on those who killed their parents because they are orphans. It is letting them get away with murder.
7
Centrists in the US are focussed on voting Dem in the midterms in order to tie Trump up for a couple of years. Many are willing to vote for candidates they ordinarily wouldn't favor to do this. So the pendulum may swing to the left, perhaps a bit artificially, in November just to inhibit this guy. We probably won't know whether "extreme centrism" is politically viable here until we are in a post-Trump world.
28
@Maura3 They WERE focused on voting for Dems, or at least I was... but unfortunately after this last week I cannot vote for either side in good faith. The democrats behaved so viciously and in with such hypocrisy and partisanship that they deserve no ones vote. Every one from both sides should be out. Neither is worse than the other - they're both terrible.
1
@Maura3 The only way to control Trump is to vote every single republican out of office by actively supporting. giving money to and voting for ALL democrats on Nov. 6, 2018.
7
@Prescott
Voting on or over one issue does not a thinking person make. The list of problems the current administration and its GOP enablers have created, from eviscerating pollution standards, separating babies from parents (no end in sight for this), transferring the country’s wealth to a very few, etc. I could go on......are reasons to vote for Dems this time.
"elitism and demagoguery can also mix with noxious results. Anyone tagged a “warmonger” simply because they thought the Iran deal was badly negotiated knows the feeling."......Demagogues thrive where facts and reason are abandon. I have yet to hear anyone provide a rational explanation for why they thought the Iran negotiation was a bad deal. It is easy for anyone to go blah, blah, blah it was a bad deal. It is apparently not so easy for anyone to explain exactly why it was a bad deal by providing facts. I strongly suspect that the reason why no one has provided facts to support the contention that it was a bad deal is because they have no facts, So go ahead and say blah, blah blah it was a bad deal, and I will call you out. Demagogues thrive where facts and reason are abandon.
120
Too bad Bret is so hurt by being called a warmonger. Maybe when his party stops inflating the weapons budget at the expense of healthcare, schools, infrastructure, etc, they won't look so much like warmongers. Maybe if they didn't think assault weapons should be in the hands of every nut job in the country we wouldn't see them as warmongers. Maybe when they stop taking us to war on false pretenses no one will find a reason to dub them warmongers. I was tagged a traitor because I didn't believe GWB's lies about WMD and said so. I didn't believe invading a country that has nothing to do with 9/11 was a very bright idea. Coming from the warmongers themselves, I wear that insult as a badge of honor. Who was right then and who's the traitor now?
6
@W.A. Spitzer Well said.
"In the age of Trump, it’s easy to forget that elitism and demagoguery can also mix with noxious results. Anyone tagged a “warmonger” simply because they thought the Iran deal was badly negotiated knows the feeling." Such over-simplified nonsense as this zinger form Stephens abounds when there is no care for truth. He knows well that many, if not most, who attack the Iran deal ARE wanting war -- try John Bolton, for starters -- instead of a reasonable and successful internationally-agreed-to deal that stopped an active program to develop nuclear weapons in Iran. But, contrary to Stephens' "centrist" pose, if Israel is against it, no matter how warmongering it may be vis a vis Iran, so is he.
3
@W.A. Spitzer: dismissing other people's opinions as "blah blah blah" is how we got into this mess.
A few more specifics would be helpful. Bad policies, good policies. For example, Corbyn wants to give workers a minority position on boards of directors. Good or bad? How would the "radical center" ameliorate the refugee crisis in the middle east? Prior to fixing Syria, I mean. Should we try to provide all Americans with medical care or finance corporate stock buybacks instead?
Like the president of Columbia said, "Where is it that we want to go, how is it that we want to make it happen, and what is it that everybody has to put in the basket to achieve those goals?" But note that he didn't say how he planned to feed and house the refugees, or how to put maximum pressure on the Venezuelan government without starving an already hungry population. The devil is in the details. It doesn't really matter whether he calls himself a socialist, a radical centrist, or Popeye the Sailor Man.
33
With a third-world quality president, aided and abetted by a similarly minded legislative body and carefully selected and plowed-through high court, it is only reasonable to expect the United States will follow in very similar fashion the literal hand-to-hand combat of politics associated with Colombia, Venezuela, Nicaragua and their lesser neighbors to our south. Mexico has seen its share of elected leaders and law enforcement personnel removed with extreme prejudice. An attempt was partially successful in Canada a couple years ago, and was indeed successful against the police on more than one occasion in this country in just the past few years.
Imagine the cost to provide round-the-clock protection to every one of the 535 members of the Senate and House: Black SUVs with multiple escort vehicles for each one; guards for their families. Obviously the same security for all presidentially-appointed staff.
We are not far from the above described situation. Not far at all.
42
@Glen: Moving towards the outcome you describe. Rather than “close.”
And the Black SUV’s? Quite similar to the Mercedes-Benz black staff cars of a certain twentieth century German regime.
5
the word "extreme center" is funny. it sounds more like opportunism, or 'I-will-do-nothing-while-you-fight' policy. it's likely to blame both sides all the time whatever issues rise. let me ask, isn't that another face of populism?
11
It is the face of false populism.
2
Hear, hear, Mr. Stephens: I, too, value the "political center." That is why I vote consistently for Democrats, the one party in the U.S. that represents the center.
239