One of the greatest political misfortunes to hit America is the phony war between Conservative and Liberal. It’s an unnecessary divide, and it paralyzes reason.
Currently the conservative commentators are the best example of the death of ideas, because they hold the top position in the media. But the same calcification of ideas prevails in the liberal positions also, and we’ll come to witness this more over the next eight years of Obama’s presidency.
The national debate should not be a war for supremacy of either position, conservative and liberal, that results in one side disqualified and the other triumphant. Such a result tilts the debate into an excess that has to be wrong, by its very nature of excess. The truth is sharp-edged and fine, but simple, not extreme.
Instead of a war that posits a winner, the national debate should balance on a cutting edge sharpened by the grinding of two forces on its opposing sides. The challenge for national policy is to develop sufficient character, made up of reason and balance, to stand with poise on this cutting edge.
How can it be that a sharp edge is not an extreme thing? Buddhists know the answer to this in the famous teaching given by the Buddha, explaining the best way to train the mind. Like the string of a musical instrument, the perfect tuning results from holding it not too tight, not too loose.
This may seem a simple thing, but the metric of “not too tight, not too loose” can readily be seen to form the basis of all skill. In the beginning of all mastery, one must venture to the tight extreme, and back to the loose extreme, in order to pinpoint the perfect setting. As a master, of course, one can go unerringly to the perfect point, but this will always lie between its extremes.
Skill in the kind of debate that seeks a truthful result rather than the self-indulgence of battle will turn to the method of not too tight and not too loose. In the national debate this will only come from a free exchange between the extreme of conservatism and the extreme of liberalism.
We’ve seen the thinking of conservatives in the last two decades come to a complete standstill. The current election makes much of the outworn Republican ideas on economic matters, and the current economic crisis shows the barren fruit of these ideas. Conservative economic ideology costs us too much money, something here is too tight or too loose.
Conservative doesn’t mean never changing. Conservatism in its useful form understands that everything is impermanent, and seeks to distil out of the passing times the very best things to renew for the future.
Liberal doesn’t mean always changing. The more things change, the more the timeless qualities of our human life display themselves to our understanding. Liberal thought to be useful should embrace the principles expressed in conservatism and manifest them according to new, often experimental designs.
The best that conservative thought can give us is to deliver an inheritance to our children. The best that liberal thought can give us is to present a future for this legacy to nestle into.
Thus should run the national debate.
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