You Can't Split the Baby! Tim Kelly's Feel-Good "Principled Centrism"

Pasadena Sub Rosa ^ | Mardh 6, 2009 | Wayne Lusvardi

[WayneLusvardi]

Writing in the March 1 issue of the Pasadena Star News, Tim Kelly, a psychologist and Director of the DePree Public Policy Center at Fuller Seminary in Pasadena, calls for President Obama to govern from the political center and avoid the alleged divisive extreme right wing politics of his predecessor, George W. Bush ("Obama must govern from the center to be successful" - see link: http://www.pasadenastarnews.com/ci_11813772).

But Kelly's call for President Obama to embrace a policy of "principled centrism" not only is historically and politically ignorant, it is dishonest and childish as Jewish thinker Dennis Prager has recently reminded us.

Mr. Kelly sees in President Obama a Lincolnesque figure who voices bipartisanship and a willingness to listen unlike Bush who purportedly was "arrogant and stubborn" and unwilling to remove Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense. Kelly apparently is ignorant of the fact that Lincoln would have had approval ratings lower than Bush mainly due to his stubborn resistance to compromise with the Southern states when confronted with enormous mounting fatalities. And just as Bush had to fire Rumsfeld, Lincoln had to fire General McClellan and replace him with General Burnside for not ruthlessly prosecuting the Civil War.

Kelly defines his brand of Centrism as follows:

Centrism is the need for our time. Extreme voices from the left and the right poison the waters of public discourse and fan the flames of hatred toward any who dare to disagree. What is desperately needed is principled and courageous policymakers who are willing to move toward the center and collaborate for the sake of the public good.

Centrism alone means trying to reconcile divergent views by splitting the difference. What is needed today is better called "principled centrism," which begins with core principles as a framework within which to evaluate various perspectives. . Contrary to Kelly, centrism is not an end in itself.

Centrism in Marxism reflected an ideological position between revolutionary and reformist positions. Russian Bolshevik Communism was centrist.

In America Ross Perot and Lou Dobbs both spout what Rich Lowry calls "Apocalyptic Centrism" (Rich Lowry, "The Apocalyptic Centrism of Lou Dobbs"). Their trick is to spout cliches drawn from the right and the left laced with paranoia and economic ignorance, while warning of the end of America as we know it -- any one of which has a 50/50 chance that it will resonate with the average person.

Obama's brand of centrism thus far seems a mix between radical reformist Marxism and American Apocalyptic Centrism. So Obama is a centrist of sorts; so what? What kind of centrist is he?

Kelly, an avowed Christian by faith, oddly doesn't seem to recognize that Centrism is not a Christian, but a Greek, concept (i.e., the Golden Mean). A little bank robbery, some financial fraud, and a dab of Ponzi schemes are good for you and for society under the Golden Mean, but not under the Golden Rule. Metaphorically speaking, you can "split the baby" under the Golden Mean but you can not sacrifice your child on the altar of so-called "change" under Judaism or Christianity.

Jewish thinker Dennis Prager ("Sen. Obama's Calls for Unity are Not What They Seem") calls President Obama's advocacy of unity (i.e., Centrism) both dishonest and childish.

First, it is dishonest. Such calls for centrist unity want you to unite behind the values of those cognitive elites in power and wants everyone who disagrees to change the way they think for the sake of unity. As Prager astutely observes, Obama has no plans to change his positions on any important issues to achieve consensus, as indicated in his first month in office.

The same dishonesty is true for Kelly's position. What are the values, or "principles" as Kelly calls them, that he believes we should all agree on? To Kelly they are:

"...a high view of human rights, personal responsibility, freedom, equality, national security, and faith. The principled centrist wants to hear from all parties, even those who strongly disagree, and values civility and dialogue over combative unilateralism."

In other words, Kelly's values are the pretty much the same as Obama's: liberal leftist. It is little wonder that Kelly wants President Obama to reflect his "centrism."

Secondly, Prager states that calls for centrist unity are childish: as we mature we accept that people will have differences. Just as we learn that any political differences between our parents may not reflect a lack of love or devotion, the same holds true in politics. Moreover, it is adolescent like to fail to recognize that our political system is based on civil conflict and separation of powers, not collaboration. The Japanese political system is built on collaboration and harmony, not the American system.

To Kelly the virtue of Centrism is its own reward - it makes you feel good regardless of whether there is a reward for society or not. But what can you expect from a psychologist whose apparent central values in setting social policies are therapeutic: you must talk and not fight, you must compromise (even if you're right), and you must bring about good feelings and harmony not necessarily good outcomes. These may be worthwhile values to pursue on the micro level in psychotherapy, but they are hardly good values on which to base social policy or our government. Coincidentally, these are feminine, not masculine, values.

Contrary to Tim Kelly, conservatism, not centrism, is the central need of our time. This is not the same as Republicanism. "Principled" conservatism sees the messiness of history, is suspicious of the idea of progress, is skeptical of innovation, values order and continuity, is skeptical of grand intellectual, scientific, or financial designs for the improvement of society, and believes it is best to leave people alone.

Conservatism is the recognition that policies that seek "growth" (Clinton-Bush) or "change" (Obama), are both likely to result in ruinous consequences.

Starting under President Clinton and U.S. Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin (a Democrat Wall Street insider) we saw the rise of Bubble Economies with the dot.com and tele.com bubbles. Under Bush, we have seen the Real Estate Bubble crafted partly by Democratic Party operatives at Fannie Mae and Indy Mac and at Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanely, all dominated by the Democratic Party. We are now reaping the consequences of nearly three decades of liberal bubble economies. These "innovative" financial policies have wreaked havoc on our social institutions.

The same could be said for President Obama's policies for "change." Most of these policies have been tried before under President Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty and failed miserably and ruined the Black family (Moynihan). Moreover, such policies were hardly centrist in that they simultaneously propounded "guns and butter" which resulted in inflation and stagflation in ensuing decades. To make matters worse, Obama proposes to bring back the War on Poverty programs together with re-igniting the Real Estate Bubble and affordable housing programs.

If anything, we need a return to conservatism not centrism. Fuller Seminary seems to be full of those who are ashamed of their conservative roots. Unfortunately, as long as we have cognitive elites like Kelly stereotyping and demonizing conservatism and conservatives, we won't likely see any form of financial or social recovery.

[Mr Ramsbotham]

Liberalism—just do it until you need glasses.

[Blood of Tyrants]

Or until you need a teleprompter to put together a coherent sentence.