Flattening to the Middle

“The World Is Flat” by Thomas Friedman is going well. Another “globalization book”, I liked his “Lexus and the Olive Tree”, but since he has come out with this one , anyone with an interest can just as well skip that one and move directly to this. Lot of the same ground with some more advanced thought and information.

One of the things that I like about Freidman is that he seems to be a voice that both the “middle left” and the “middle right” can at least understand, and in many cases, come to agreement on. There is a lot of discussion of “polarization” of the country (not in the book, this is a “meta-discussion”, the book will come on other days), and there is a lot of truth to that as well, since we live in a time where what used to be “shared values” are not nearly as well shared as they once were. I’d list; Christian faith, commitment to family and moral values, basic support for the US system as being “very good, or the best”, belief that individuals need to have personal responsibility, and a strong value to hard work as a good thing. Pre-1960, I see these basic values as holding an 80/20 kind of majority in the US. The 60’s changed that, and a significant part of our country turned “hard left”, with their list of values being; there is no God, little commitment to traditional family, strong commitment to personal gratification, lack of individual responsibility (I’m a victim), basic animosity to the US system as being “unfair”, and a sense of “right”, or “entitlement” rather than value of individual work.

The “new left” rose in power through the 60’s and 70’s, but likely never reached much over 30-35% of the actual electorate. Their power and influence however has been magnified by the fact that they are the voices of the mainline media, Hollywood, and Universities. They make of 90%+ of those elites, so their “values” (or lack of values) is constantly displayed and presented in a positive light. The vast majority of people feel much more comfortable to be on the “popular side”, so while many of the actual views/agenda of this group likely was never really espoused by more than 35% of the electorate, the left elite has always been able to package their agenda to appeal enough to make them very competitive politically.

When the media talks about “polarization”, it really means that it’s agenda is being questioned. From the 50’s to the 90’s we were a “majority Democrat” country, but during much of that time, the Democrats were far more to the center than they are today. A lot of the old Southern Democrats were quite conservative, especially on moral issues, so Democrat / Republican was largely a discussion about role of Government and Business Climate … the parties often agreed on “American values”, “American exceptionalism”, and “American Defense”. The big change in American politics is really just the Democrats moving left. Looking at most of the values of the Republicans, they are very little changed from “American Consensus” shared by BOTH parties in the 50’s.

One of the general topics I’d like to explore over the next few days or weeks are areas where Americans can “come together”. I see Friedman as a “center left” guy that can make sense on some of those things in a way that can bind people to the center, and hopefully shrink that angry, and often anti-American left wing.