Launch of the Post-Progressive Movement
As a Senior Fellow of the Institute for Cultural Evolution, I’m happy to announce the release today of The Post-Progressive Post. For this first edition, months in the making, I’ve updated my “Why I Am a Radical Moderate” essay, an excerpt of which you’ll find below. To read the whole essay, republished courtesy of Areo magazine, and to find out more about this important new political and civic movement, click the image directly below or the link following the excerpt.
Excerpt from “Why I Am a Radical Moderate”
I am a radical moderate.
When I say I’m a moderate, I don’t mean that I’m a wobbly centrist who can’t make up his mind. Rather, I mean something akin to the Buddhists’ middle way or Aristotle’s golden mean. And when I call myself a radical, I don’t mean I’m an extremist. Rather, I believe that, in today’s polarized climate, being moderate has become a radical position. And I believe that what is needed right now is a radically full embrace of democracy. When a populist authoritarian mob can rise from within the body politic—as it did on 6 January 2021—and when bad-faith actors are tweaking algorithms and deploying bots to exploit and widen the political divide in the US, the stakes are high.
According to Gallup, in July 2020, more people identified as moderate (36%) than as conservative (34%) or liberal (26%). In 2018, More in Common’s “Hidden Tribes: A Study of America’s Polarized Landscape” study found that those who hold extreme views—on the right and left combined—comprise about 15% of the population. If one adds people who call themselves “devoted conservatives,” that brings the proportion to 33%. The remaining 67% identified as traditional liberals, passive liberals, politically disengaged or moderate.
The study also found that the media bears a large share of the responsibility for our current polarized landscape: “Media executives have realized that they can drive clicks, likes, and views, and make money for themselves and their shareholders, by providing people with the most strident opinions. This means that the most extreme voices—no matter how outlandish—often get the most airtime.” All this tells me that some of us need to start speaking out for the exhausted, silent majority in the middle.
Another reason why radical moderation is called for right now is that, in President Joe Biden’s address before a joint session of Congress on 28 April 2021, he used the rhetoric of Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo, based on the assumption that the US is a racist nation . . .
To read the full essay, and to find out more about post-progressivism, click here. As in the graphic above, you’ll find a photo of me and a thumbnail on the upper right that once clicked will open to the whole essay.
We’d love to hear your thoughts . . .