Unenlightened Centrism

Taking the middle-ground does not make you a rational, dignified, elder-statesmen if one of the sides is obviously right

A while ago, I wrote a probably in hindsight too polemical reply to a silly article by Damon Linker. Linker argues against Peter Singer’s view of animal liberation. Well, I say argues, but there aren’t really many arguments in his essay—just sort of bizarre assertions in a desperate attempt to paint vegans as crazy. Here’s a representative sample:

“It is a curious fact that in virtually all of human history, only in liberal democracies—societies founded on the recognition of the innate dignity of all members of the human race—have animals enjoyed certain minimum protections, codified in our own country in the Animal Welfare Act. It is a no less curious fact that these same liberal democracies have become infected over the past decades with a corrosive self-doubt, giving rise in some educated circles to antiliberal, antiwhite, antimale, anti-Western, and now, with perfect logic, antihuman enthusiasms. The proponents of these various but linked ideologies march under a banner of justice and the promise of extending the blessings of equality to one or more excluded Others. Such piety is to be expected in a radical movement seeking well-meaning allies; but it need not deflect us from the main focus of their aggressive passions, which the euthanasia-endorsing Peter Singer, for one, has at least had the candor to admit to. Can anyone really doubt that, were the misanthropic agenda of the animal-rights movement actually to succeed, the result would be an increase in man’s inhumanity, to man and animal alike? In the end, fostering our age-old “prejudice” in favor of human dignity may be the best thing we can do for animals, not to mention for ourselves.”

I found this odd when I first read it, but I didn’t pay it any mind. I didn’t really know who Damon Linker was. It turns out he’s a sort of moderate centrist—I actually like his political views a lot. I’d say that I’m to the left of the so-called enlightened centrists, but they tend to be pretty politically reasonable and have the right views on the obvious issues like free trade and overturning disastrous housing regulations, so I sort of consider them on my team.

But it’s very easy to be a hammer in search of a nail. And this is, I imagine, Linker’s error here. He saw some dispute, thought, “hmm, one side seems really unreasonable and radical, I’ll adopt the calm, centrist, reasonable, middle-ground.” This is a sensible way to approach a lot of political issues—often both sides are quite hysterical and crazy, while the middle-ground is far more reasonable. But it cannot be used in place of reasoning.

One’s aim in politics and philosophizing should not be to be perceived as a reasonable moderate; it should be to be right. There are, of course, lots of issues where the right answer is between the two extremes. But when the position that we should not torture to death upwards of 70 billion beings is seen as a radical position, it’s worth being radical. The position that slavery should be abolished was once seen as radical, but it would be foolish to dismiss it just on the grounds that it is radical.

Walter Block wrote a reply to Michael Huemer’s book, in which Huemer advocates ethical vegetarianism. Block claims (bizarrely!) that Huemer’s position is a non-libertarian position and is thus wrong. Huemer’s gives the reply that one would expect, sharply criticizing Block’s irrational tribalism:

Despite being a libertarian myself, I find this argument form not at all persuasive. I do not accept any position simply because it is the libertarian position. I first figure out what I believe about a variety of philosophical issues, then look for labels to describe my views. I call myself a libertarian because that term happens to correspond to my political views. I do not first decide that I’m a libertarian and then adjust my views to make sure that the label fits me; that would be irrational. If it should turn out that I endorse some libertarian views and some non-libertarian views, that is of no concern to me.

You should definitely check out that paper by Huemer, it’s both very funny and very decisive—a lot of it is funny, but I especially liked the intro:

Block raises a dizzying array of objections, too numerous and varied for me to address all of them here. Fortunately, many of them are beside the point of my book. I have in mind where Block advocates legalizing insider trading [1, p. 60], criticizes my use of “them” [1, p. 60], discusses ending trade with China [1, p. 58], and so on. In addition, some of Block’s remarks are very difficult to make sense of on their face, such as his suggestion that there is no way of knowing whether a cure for cancer would be more valuable than a brief episode of sadistic pleasure for two boys [1, p. 55]. I shall pass over these points.

But returning to the main point, I think Block is the libertarian version of some of these so-called enlightened centrists. They have this sort of bland, milquetoast ideology, according to which the right answer is in the middle. Then whenever there’s a dispute, they’ll adopt the position in the middle. But this is foolish; one should, rather than trying to adopt the middle position, try to adopt the true position. They should do this by considering the arguments on both sides and then figuring out which side is more persuasive.

The middle ground is likely to be right a lot of the time. But there are a huge number of cases where, just from first principles, we’d expect it to be wrong. We’d expect people to be biased by their self-interest—so as a consequence, we should expect that when there are some radicals who are advocating a position out of accords with their self-interest, they’re disproportionately likely to be right. This should lead us to give higher-order deference to the case for veganism. Then, when one actually considers the arguments for veganism, they find that they are utterly overwhelming. The critics of veganism, like Linker, make obviously false and absurd arguments like the following:

“Thus, Singer can account for the pain that humans and animals alike experience when they are hungry and the pleasure they feel when they eat, but he cannot explain, for example, a person’s choice to starve himself for a cause. He understands that human beings, like animals, derive pleasure from sex and sometimes endure pangs of longing when they are deprived of it, but he cannot explain how or why, unlike animals, some choose to embrace celibacy for the sake of its noble purity. He is certainly attuned to the tendency we share with animals to fear and avoid pain and bodily harm, but he is incapable of understanding a man’s willingness to face certain death on the battlefield when called upon to do so by his country. Still less can he explain why stories of such sacrifice sometimes move us to tears.” 

Everyone knows that humans are different from animals. The question is whether animals have any properties which make it okay to torture them for burgers. No one is advocating dissolving the distinction between animals or humans entirely or allowing them to drive. We don’t think that it’s okay to torture for burgers even those humans who don’t starve themselves for a cause, who are just amoral hedonists. So Linker’s argument falls flat; it does not justify current practices.

Another good example of where one should not be a centrist is foreign policy. Yes, there are no-doubt lots of ill-informed young people who get carried away and have strong foreign policy views for bad reasons or are too zealous. But our foreign policy is clearly appalling. We routinely kill millions of people based on flimsy justification. If one is a radical centrist in search of a nail, they’ll conclude that the right answer is in the middle. But when one is in search of truth, they’ll realize that there is a bipartisan consensus that the U.S. should act only in its own interest, ignoring the other 7.6 billion people who populate the globe. When the bipartisan consensus involves ignoring the interests of nearly everyone on Earth, and when this consensus has been responsible for the deaths of millions of people all around the world, the correct view will potentially be quite radical.

Or take immigration. To their credit, a lot of centrists are very supportive of immigration. Unfortunately though a lot of them try to adopt the middle-ground postion, suggesting that we should have a bit more legal immigration but crack down on illegal immigration. The issue of immigration is only contentious because we almost entirely ignore the interests of immigrants themselves. Immigration restrictions are morally appalling and utterly indefensible, and the factual claims that their defenders make are all wrong. Global open borders would double global wealth—immigration is an issue where the correct view will be quite radical.

Ultimately, one shouldn’t decide their political views by first deciding on an ideology and then shaping their views to fit the ideology. They should start with specific views and then shape the ideology to shape the views. Many so-called enlightened centrists should listen to Goldwater when he declared “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!”