Moderate Schmoderate

I go to Hampshire College. Yeah, that one with the Saturday Night Live skit about people getting high. Yeah, I’m shaggy from Scooby Doo. It’s not that bad of course, although I would say we have a disproportionate amount of people who smoke pot and cigarettes. But the reason I came here was because everything I read and heard pointed to this place as nonconformist and free-thinking. And here I’ve found a good amount of people who really do think analytically about subjects and who do consider all points of view. However, I’ve also found something else surprising about a place so liberal.

Apparently it is just as easy to be an ignorant liberal as it is to be an ignorant conservative. At my high school, it just so happened that all stupid people (don’t pretend they don’t exist) happened to be conservative, and all smart people (except for a few that we labeled as ‘bad apples’) were liberals. But here, something incredible has happened. The positions have reversed themselves.

People take positions on things that are extraordinarily complicated (let’s say abortion) without even thinking about it, and with the utter conviction that they are right. The conviction is what scares me. It is unrelenting and it is tireless in its protests. Not only do they consider themselves right, they consider everyone else wrong. They are so convinced that the majority of America has no idea what they’re doing, and that if only everyone else could see things their way, everything would be all right. They don’t seem to consider that maybe their economic policies would collapse the nation, or that utter-gun control could endanger our freedom, or that hugging the Middle East won’t actually make it all better.

It is what I’ve deemed (and I didn’t think it could exist!) Fundamentalist Liberalism. And before you all run to your dictionaries, Fundamentalism can actually apply to movements that aren’t religious, it’s just a very broad term. Now, there are two problems that I see with this movement.

One is the same problem that I have with religious fundamentalists, which is that in placing all belief in one thing, you immediately close yourself off from all other arguments. Although the aims are totally different, and I would argue that although Fundamentalist Liberalism is relatively harmless (simply because it has a much smaller base than any other fundamentalist movement), the results seem to be same as Conservative Fundamentalism. It’s kind of interesting how Conservative Fundamentalists want something, like more US involvement in the Middle East (which would, let’s admit, lead to nuclear war with Iran), and Liberal Fundamentalists want absolutely no involvement in the Middle East (which would eventually lead to nuclear war with someone like Iran), and both positions end up in the same way. Because of the fact that the US isn’t alone in the world, either complete view on a far end of spectrum ends up leaving us vulnerable to the other nations that choose the opposite way. Thus moderate (with good progressive intentions) seems to be the best way to go.

The other issue is a general lack of motivation on the Liberal side of the Fundamentalist gap. Because they believe that the rest of the nation is utterly moronic most have given up hope in terms of doing anything constructive. But Religious Fundamentalists have a strong motivation to move forward (converting the public), so it’s now a political force to be reckoned with. This lack of motivation stems from several beliefs: the two strongest are that fact that they think everyone else is stupid, and that the majority are strong atheists. Oh yeah, another similarity. In talking to someone, lets say a Christian, there is no argument that I can make that will make them cease to believe in God. In talking to an Atheist there is no argument I can make that will cause them to believe in God. (I’m agnostic by the way). It’s just interesting (and also quite terrifying) that in swinging to either end of the political spectrum you wind up in the same place, a Dr. Suess wonderland where logic no longer applies, a place that quickly crumbles under the weight of the real world’s demands.

-Erik