We've Moved!

The New Moderate needed room to grow, and we were starting to feel cramped in our old accommodations here. Blogger gave us a handsome design and easy-to-use software, but the strictly chronological blog format never really suited our needs and ambitions.

The new site, newmoderate.com, gives us ample space to spread out and blossom into a one-stop resource for concerned moderates. Check it out, get involved and watch us grow into a movement to be reckoned with!

Stay centered,
Rick Bayan

Morality

Righty: Everything we need to know about morality is conveniently contained in the Bible. For those of us with short attention spans, God even summarized His moral laws on a couple of stone tablets. We call them the Ten Commandments, and they’re as relevant today as they were back in Moses’ time. Don’t kill. Don’t covet. Don’t commit adultery. Don’t eat uncooked shellfish. And the other seven, too. Of course, our cultivated, upper-middle class "progressives" think they know better than God, and that’s precisely what’s wrong with the world today.

Lefty: Morality is in the eye of the beholder. Some of us (are you listening, Righty?) still believe that it consists of rigid laws supposedly dictated by the bloodthirsty god of an ancient desert tribe. If they still want to believe in their myths three thousand years later, that’s fine. But it’s immoral for them to impose their moral delusions upon the rest of us. For me, true morality means taking collective action to improve life for the oppressed. It means loving our fellow humans regardless of race, creed or sexual orientation. Morality has nothing to do with the bedroom, as long as we’re dealing with consenting adults. If it feels right, chances are it IS right.

The New Moderate:

Once upon a time, our religions supplied us with all the morality we needed. And regardless of whether those morals were divinely inspired, most of their principles are still surprisingly sound. (That goes for the teachings of Confucius, Buddha and Lao-tse, too.) But what happens when ancient religious dictates lose their grip over the educated classes, as we’re witnessing in our time?

Here’s what happens: we see a great, gaping rift between the pious folks who still swear allegiance to the Good Book... and the more self-consciously "enlightened" crowd who essentially create their own morals as they go along. Of course it’s moral to love your fellow humans, but is it OK to make love in a public park? Shouldn’t we insist on moral absolutes that govern our actions? It’s a tricky question.

Most of us can agree that child abuse is morally wrong, for example. But what constitutes child abuse? If your kid sets off a cherry bomb inside the house, is it abusive to administer a few sharp whacks to the posterior? Fifty years ago such punishment would have been considered a character-building experience; today a progressive-minded witness might notify the child welfare authorities. (Naturally, that same progressive witness might also have the poor kid suspended from school for possession of aspirin.) In short, whose values do we honor?

Until the social upheaval of the late 1960s, Western society took its moral guidance from the Bible: no agonizing over values, no shades of gray; everything was laid out for us on the printed page, including the all-important ban on fornication.

Sexual morality is a universe unto itself, of course. The ‘60s liberated millions of libidos in a massive wave of sexual self-indulgence -- much of it healthy, some of it excessive or downright kinky. Suddenly any private act between consenting adults was considered kosher, even if it involved buggy whips and Nazi uniforms.

Are sex fetishists immoral even if they confine their peculiar appetites to the bedroom? We’ve lost the authority to say so in public, though we’re still free to conclude privately that a lust for being handcuffed while wearing a chicken costume says something important about a person’s character.

That right to private judgment might be the key. We can’t legislate morality, but we can internalize it. We can set good examples. (When I asked a wise friend how to raise a decent kid, he told me, "Morals are caught, not taught.") We can reject the cult of "cool" and create a culture that once again encourages honor and kindness and all the other noble virtues.

We might think we live in depraved times, but we still have the ability to recognize when something grates against our moral principles. That instinct is called a moral compass, and it comes in handy when we’re lost in the woods. I was encouraged by the mass revulsion we felt toward the Wall Street honchos who made billions for themselves while they gambled away our life savings. Maybe we’re not so close to perdition after all.

Summary: We can’t force our moral principles on others, but we can lead by setting positive examples in our own conduct.

Nationalized Healthcare in the U.S.

Righty: The U.S. healthcare system is the finest in the world: the best doctors, the best facilities, the best research. To tamper with it and bring it under federal control would be a disaster. Doctors are already smarting from HMO red tape and absurd amounts of paperwork. Do we want our medical facilities to be staffed by doctors or bureaucrats? The best healthcare isn't cheap, and it shouldn't be. But why should people who watch their diet and take time to exercise (like me) have to pay for the follies of chronic smokers and couch potatoes who stuff themselves with corn chips? Typical socialism: just dump everyone into the same pot without regard to individual habits or initiative. Grrr... why don't you malcontents just move to Sweden?

Lefty: Nobody should ever have to face bankruptcy because of illness, but that's precisely what's happening to millions of Americans under the current system. Our health insurance system is an international disgrace: profit-hungry insurers routinely deny coverage to the people who need it most and gouge those who have to pay for it themselves. It almost seems as if they go out of their way to make life miserable for the sick and needy among us. There's your social Darwinism in action, Righty! Ain't it grand? We need a sweeping reform of our entire medical establishment, and we need it now. No more delays!

The New Moderate:

I have an important question, and now is the time to ask it: why do we have to choose between totally nationalized healthcare and our current "too bad if you can't pay" system? These seem to be the only two options under discussion, and they're both unacceptable. Why can't we simply opt for nationalized, universal health insurance? Seems sensible enough, doesn't it? But nobody's even talking about it.

Here's the perfect centrist solution to our healthcare crisis. We'd let the doctors practice medicine the way they've been practicing, and we'd let patients see their doctors at will -- without having to wait six months for a tonsillectomy. But we'd fund the health insurance system with our taxes to create a safety net for those who aren't covered by an employer. That way, no individuals are denied coverage and nobody is forced into bankruptcy.

Under this plan, we wouldn't have to nationalize the insurance companies (even though this irate moderate thinks they deserve to be nationalized!). We'd simply nationalize the payment of premiums. End of story. We're long overdue for universal coverage, and we can't wait any longer as our population continues to age. Wake up, Washington!

Summary: Let's stop pushing for a totally revamped, nationalized healthcare bureaucracy and simply fix the system where it needs to be fixed: by providing tax-funded health insurance for those who don't already receive it from their employers. That way, nobody gets left out.

Censorship

Righty: I might disagree with Lefty’s pronouncements 93 percent of the time, but I’d defend to the death Lefty’s right to pronounce those pronouncements. All right, maybe not to the death, but I’d take a good kick in the brisket rather than stifle our progressive friend. Like our Founding Fathers, I believe in the free marketplace of ideas. For example, if some left-wing nutjob advocated monetary reparations for women (oh, the pain of all those centuries of forced domesticity!), I’d trust the wisdom of the people to heckle the nutjob off the podium. That’s democracy in action.

Lefty: Censorship has no place in a free society, but neither do hate-spewing, small-minded demagogues whose virulent ideas can cause actual harm to others. I see nothing wrong with banning neo-Nazis or Rush Limbaugh from airing their repugnant tirades in public. In such extreme cases, we owe the people a measure of protection from the dangers of rabid demagoguery. That means banning hate speech over the airwaves and monitoring who gets to speak on campus. As Fidel Castro said, "The universities are open only to those who share my beliefs."

The New Moderate:

When it comes to free speech, our stand should be staunch and uncompromising: all ideas, however objectionable, deserve a hearing. And, as the good Dr. Johnson used to say, "There’s an end on’t!"

But I have a confession to make. The woeful state of our culture has convinced me that the free marketplace occasionally goes awry. I have no objection to even the most objectionable ideas, and I would never push for censorship in the realm of words -- whether printed, broadcast or delivered in person. It’s the sounds and images that are starting to rankle me and fill me with dread -- the dark, satanic ugliness of cultural artifacts aimed at adolescent boys, in particular. Rap music that lures young minds into fantasies of rape, domination, thuggery and murder. Video games (like the vile and alarmingly popular Grand Theft Auto 4) that glorify a brutal, soulless, survivor-take-all mentality. Over-the-top pornographic images, available by the thousands online, that would sicken Hugh Hefner and even the Marquis de Sade. Not to mention all the atrocious "shock art," replete with sliced corpses and bodily effluvia, aimed at more discerning audiences.

I'm really not a prude, but all my instincts tell me to fight the spread of brutalism and degeneracy. I'm old enough to remember when our culture actually promoted nobility of character (what a concept!) along with the charm and easygoing laughter of a more innocent time. Something has to be done before we slide irreversibly into a bottomless cesspool.

Too late, you say? Not really. But have we reached the point at which we need to start imposing restrictions on the purveyors of shabby culture? If so, do we risk becoming an authoritarian society that suppresses freedom of expression? Whose standards do we honor?

As usual, I think there’s a middle ground. And there's a precedent.

From 1934 to 1968, Hollywood effectively censored its own productions to avoid possible government intervention. The Hays Code, which went a little overboard in limiting our glimpses of ladies’ thighs, underwear and other charming sights, nevertheless coincided with a golden age of American popular culture. The films of this era still enchant us today, and they did it all without a single F-word. By aiming up instead of down, Hollywood appealed to the best instincts of its audiences. This was self-censorship par excellence.

We’ll never return to the squeaky-clean standards of the Hays Code era, and I don’t think we should. But if we value our souls, and the soul of our civilization, we need to start exerting some pressure on the folks who deliver our cultural goods. Even in the Internet era, most of our commercial movies, TV fare, music and games come to us from a handful of giant media corporations. We need to convince them to stop the flow of cultural sewage. Let’s not dictate what they can produce, but let’s call them to account when they bombard us with repellent dreck. Let's urge them to examine why they feel compelled to produce such dreck, and whether they could survive -- whether, in fact, they might even thrive -- if they appealed to our better natures. So far, we’ve managed to convince them that sleaze sells. Let's do the opposite.

In the end, of course, we get the culture we deserve. It won't be easy to stuff all those evils back into Pandora's Box. But I think we deserve better, and I hope Righty and Lefty would agree.

Summary: We should never ban ideas, even when the free marketplace seems to be enamored of the worst of them. But the ever-spreading ugliness of contemporary pop culture calls for serious soul-searching and just possibly a new wave of self-censorship on the part of our cultural establishment.

The Environment

Righty: I'm tired of being lectured and bullied by naive ecology dweebs and former presidential candidates who have nothing better to do with their time (and ours). You'd think we were about to pave the entire planet with asphalt. The fact is that over sixty percent of the Earth's land surface is wilderness. Sixty percent! Imagine all that land just sitting there, as virginal as a nun. Not exactly cause for alarm, is it? A vibrant economy requires the exploitation of natural resources. I'm not suggesting that we rape the planet, just harness it for the betterment of mankind. Is that too much to ask, Lefty? Or do you want to keep all that pristine land for yourself and your environmentally enlightened, tree-hugging, sandal-wearing upper-middle class liberal friends?

Lefty: You capitalist exploiters seem to think you can just keep taking and taking -- without giving a thought to the consequences. Sure, the land might be sixty percent wilderness right now. But think about what that means, Righty (you'll have to rev up your cerebral cortex for this one, I'm afraid). It means that one lousy species of enterprising ape has already plundered forty percent of the Earth's land surface! What do you think our planet will look like a century from now if developing giants like China, Brazil, India and Indonesia keep chugging along the way the United States has done throughout its history? We need to enact global legislation to protect our vital rain forests, wetlands, watersheds and other fragile ecosystems from the ravages of greedy developers and other business interests. We need to act now, or there's no going back. Think about it, Righty: what will you guys do when you've run out of resources to exploit? Oh, I forgot: capitalists don't care about anything beyond the upcoming fiscal year.

The New Moderate:

We really can't afford to take a moderate position when it comes to saving the planet. We have no choice but to save it, because the likelihood of interplanetary colonization seems pretty dim for now. The Earth's resources are finite, and we don't want to be caught short when we have all those billions of humans to feed, house and equip with cell phones. I don't think we should cripple the driving engines of our economy with punitive legislation, but we clearly need to regulate their enterprises.

Where Lefty and I part company is over the matter of marketing style. Let me explain. The earnest ecologists who have dominated the environmental movement since the 1960s have tended to be wonkish zealots with a blind spot for the poetry of the natural world. They drain it of its inherent beauty and drama with all their insistent harping on carbon footprints, ecosystems, recycling and other well-intentioned puritanical hectoring. Sure, all these things are vital to preserving the planet, but nature can't be (and shouldn't be) reduced to a banal PowerPoint presentation. I fear that the zealots alienate more people than they persuade. Shrillness has never aided the mass acceptance of any worthy endeavor.

If we want to win converts to the cause, we need to inspire people with the romantic grandeur and incredible intricacy of the world beyond our suburban fringes. We need them to hear the wind on the prairie, the music of a rushing stream, the trumpeting of wild geese in flight. We need to remind everyone that nature is an indispensable, irreplaceable sanctuary and a source of continual awe. Eventually, recycling our bottles might seem like more of a privilege than a chore.

Summary: Of course we need to preserve and protect the environment, but let's not drain it of poetry in our zeal to promote the cause. Tone down the shrillness so we can hear the music.

Black Intelligence

Righty: We have to face the music at some point: black people just aren’t quite as sharp as the rest of us. Look at their chronic poverty everywhere in the world, their abysmal academic performance, their substandard results on SATs and IQ tests. I get tired of hearing that their intellectual shortcomings are due to their history of slavery and victimization. Come on, blacks have been free for 140 years now, and they’ve enjoyed equal rights since the 1960s. And we’re still leaving them in the dust. Sure, there are individual blacks who are pretty smart. (Most of them have at least a few drops of white blood, of course.) But the majority of blacks simply can’t compete at our level. That’s probably because they were left behind in Africa and never had the opportunity to evolve along with whites and Asians. Native black African cultures show no appreciable evidence of technology, learning or civilized arts. Why is it that even the children of black professionals score relatively low on intelligence tests? Why are there so few black mathematicians and physicists? You can’t tell me that racism has anything to do with it. The sooner we have the courage to face the truth, the sooner we can help blacks find their proper niche in society -- even if it means that the majority of them will be steered toward vocational school rather than college. It beats prison, where a third of black men are ending up these days.

Lefty: I hate to keep saying you’ve outdone yourself, Righty. But you’ve REALLY outdone yourself this time. Your comments amount to hate speech -- that’s how vile they are. You’re spewing RACIST GARBAGE, plain and simple. If this were my website, I’d ban you. But we’ve come here to debate, so let me demolish your arguments rationally. First, you can’t equate test results with actual intelligence. These tests are devised by white academics who use cultural references that totally discount the black experience. If you took a test devised by blacks, based on black culture and experience, you’d undoubtedly score even lower than you would on a white-designed test. Second, slavery and racism have left their lingering and insidious traces upon the psyches of today’s blacks. It doesn’t matter how far in the past those injustices occurred (and believe me, they’re still occurring today). All black people grow up with the notion that they’re second-class citizens, so they perform according to our expectations (and the expectations they’ve internalized). Take away the legacy of racism, and blacks would be performing at the same level as everyone else. Third: You cite the lack of "technology, learning or civilized arts" (whatever that means) in Africa. But you conveniently forget that sub-Saharan Africa was totally isolated from other world cultures until the age of colonization. Europe and Asia continually exchanged ideas via trade routes and warfare, so they grew and prospered. Even in isolation, black civilizations created remarkable monuments, and black scholars were highly esteemed in the ancient and medieval worlds. As for your implication that blacks are less "evolved," you can take that notion and shove it where the sun don’t shine. Race has been proven to be an artificial construct -- or have you had trouble keeping up with your reading, Righty? Still moving our lips, are we?

The New Moderate:

Yes, the cold statistics lean toward Righty’s observation that black IQs, on average, lag behind those of whites and Asians (the median for African Americans is around 85). By the time you reach 100, the bell curve for blacks is already flattening out. And nobody needs to be reminded that blacks have struggled (and are still struggling) to compete academically. African American dropout rates are pretty hefty compared to those of whites and Asians. A significant slice of the black population is functionally illiterate. Why? This is a troubling and almost taboo topic, but we can’t simply shove it under the rug and pretend it doesn’t exist.

Are the standardized tests subtly biased against blacks? Probably, but not significantly enough to skew the results to the degree that we’ve seen. Mathematics is culturally neutral, yet the math scores of black students tend to lag just as depressingly as their reading comprehension scores. What to make of the disparity, then? You can cite the often brutal anti-intellectual atmosphere that prevails in so many black neighborhoods -- but why are black neighborhoods anti-intellectual in the first place? Could there be a grain of truth to the racist stereotyping of black intelligence? After all, blacks languish even in Africa, where they enjoy self-rule. What if, God forbid, all those millennia of adapting to cold climates really did enhance the minds of whites and Asians?

I suggest that we tackle this hypersensitive topic from a less inflammatory perspective. We’ve all read about left-brained and right-brained individuals. Left-brained people have well-developed logical skills; they excel at abstract reasoning, reading comprehension, math and science. Right-brained people are more intuitive in their thinking: less rigidly logical, more creative and expressive. Neither style is more or less "intelligent" than the other, though Western society disproportionately rewards left-brained skills.

Are you beginning to see the picture? My hypothesis (and I wish I could see it tested by actual scientists) is that blacks, on average, are more right-brained than the rest of us. Think of the undeniable black genius for improvisation and innovation in music, language and culture in general. This is right-brained thinking par excellence, and I defy anyone to disagree with me.

Along the same lines, one could argue that adapting to inhospitable climates in Europe and Asia favored left-brained individuals -- those who could devise logical solutions to environmental challenges (though the Huns, Vikings and medieval serfs don't exactly impress us as formidable logicians). Maybe left-brained thinking was an aberration at first, a mutation that aided survival in the glacial north. And maybe those left-brained survivors lost something of their ancestors' spontaneity and creativity until they became the accountants and computer programmers of today.

An important question: can we learn to be left-brained, or are we born that way? In other words, are we talking about inherited or cultural traits? I seriously doubt if blacks are hard-wired to think solely with their right hemispheres (how to explain all the black lawyers out there?), but I wouldn’t be surprised if we eventually discovered a hereditary component. I have to wonder if it will ever happen, given the taboo status of the topic. But the sooner we unlock the mystery of subpar black academic achievement, the sooner we’ll be able to close the gap.

For example, if we discovered that blacks are more right-brained than whites or Asians, our school systems could devise special teaching methods to reach young black minds (and, for that matter, right-brained students regardless of race). We might even shed the antiquated belief that IQ is an adequate measure of intelligence. Do you see the possibilities for academic progress here?

My hypothesis makes abundant use of generalizations, and of course we should never use generalizations to apply to individuals within a group. Certainly not all blacks are right-brained, just as not all whites and Asians are left-brained. But we can no longer ignore this particular elephant in the room. As affluent whites and Asians continue to provide all manner of intellectual nurturing for their offspring, black children will lag further behind unless our teachers can connect with them. It's highly unlikely that black kids are less intelligent, but it's possible that they’re differently intelligent. Let's find out for sure by opening our minds and doing the research.

Summary: Despite lower test scores and academic failures, blacks most likely aren’t any less intelligent than whites or Asians; they simply might be more right-brained. This information, if borne out by scientific studies, would help us close the achievement gap in schools. Let’s override our PC inhibitions and do the research!

Modern Art

Righty: The art of the past hundred years has been an abomination on a colossal scale: a blatant, in-our-faces celebration of the ugly and the perverse. Nothing has spelled the end of Western civilization more tellingly than the collapse of our artistic standards. How is it that we came to accept these fraudulent doodles as art in the first place? (It wouldn't have anything to do with the toadying art critics, would it? Could it be that the critics suddenly found themselves indispensable because only they could confer meaning upon all those meaningless scribbles? I'm sure they liked feeling indispensable.) From the crude, flat, incomprehensible daubings of the Cubists to the ghastly shock art of Damien Hirst (he of the maggoty cow heads), modern art has been a cultural disaster from day one. Even worse, the art-loving public has bought it hook, line and sinker. A hundred years of crap! When will the madness end?

Lefty: As usual, Righty rejects anything that won't conform to his preconceived standards (in this case, what constitutes "art"). He's too narrow and provincial to appreciate the visionary souls who courageously rejected centuries of uninspired, literal-minded bourgeois art for something more adventurous, provocative and disturbing. Art isn't about being "pretty." Just the opposite: it should reflect all the agony and turmoil of the human spirit. I've reached the point where I can't even look at the polished "masterpieces" of Raphael or Vermeer without feeling "Ho-hum, very nice, but where's the beef?" Modern art is so challenging and innovative that I'm afraid it has spoiled me for anything else. Too bad Righty and his friends will never get it.

The New Moderate:

I have to agree with Righty that too much of modern art is simply about shocking a befuddled bourgeoisie. I detect an element of rapacious adolescent glee in the aesthetic rampages of our cocksure modern artists. Sure, they've demolished the cold, glossy marble statues that once held us in thrall. But what have they created in their place?

Is it enough simply to shock, offend and disturb, in the manner of today's formaldehyde-preserved carcasses and dung-encrusted Virgins? Of course not. Is it enough to put a dead ladybug in a styrofoam cup, as one inspired artiste recently did, and expect it to be enshrined as high art? No again. You need more than a concept to create art; you need artistry.

Artistry seems to be almost irrelevant in the great debate over the merits of modernism. It should be the central issue.

Is Picasso a great artist? Sure, but he's also an overrated one: a master innovator worshipped as a towering colossus. A few of his works, such as the magisterial Guernica, have a terrifying power and pathos. Numerous others are ingenious, inventive and pleasing to the senses despite their apparent lack of sense. Others are simply glib or ugly or both. At least he mastered his craft before spending the second half of his career promoting himself as a modernist icon.

The same can't be said for those clever con-artists who place a single horizontal stripe on an empty canvas and receive endless plaudits from the cognoscenti. Come on, are we creating art or macrame wall-hangings? Since we've scrapped any objective standards of artistic accomplishment (e.g., the ability to create the illusion of light or depth or perspective), the most asinine dreck now qualifies as art if somebody with a doctorate calls it art. This is where Righty becomes apoplectic, and this is where I sympathize with him.

Where Righty and I go our separate ways is over his inclination to dismiss an entire century of modern art, and everything in it, as a cultural calamity. Much of it has been calamitous, sadly enough, but you have to sift through the rubbish pile for the occasional gems that gleam at us from the heap. A handful of names worth noting: Munch, Vuillard, Braque, Matisse, Miro, Gorky, Segal, and yes, the overrated Picasso. Their work can be dark or whimsical or technically daring or incomprehensible. But almost always you detect evidence of a soul beneath the surface (another prerequisite to calling art "art").

Reassuringly, much critical and popular attention has turned lately to artists of the modern era whose sensibilities didn't necessarily coincide with those of their modernist peers. The rising stature of representational artists like Edward Hopper and Frida Kahlo should gladden those who believe art should dazzle our senses and grip our souls.

Summary: Much of modern art has been needlessly destructive, ugly and meaningless, but we should stay open-minded enough to appreciate the occasional gems that redeem it.