President Trump Closes the Overton Window

Townhall ^ | Sep 06, 2025 | William Marshall

[E. Pluribus Unum]

A term that became popular in the last decade or two is the Overton Window Principle. It was a theory conceived in the 1990s by a brilliant young engineer-turned-lawyer, Joseph Overton, who was a libertarian and executive in a libertarian think tank, the Mackinac Center, in Michigan

While working in fundraising for the Mackinac Center, Overton developed his Window principle, while explaining to audiences the purpose of think tanks. The essential idea is that there is in every society a “window”, or range, of thoughts and policies that are generally acceptable to the wider population. The purpose of think tanks, he would say, was to push that window further open by making once unacceptable ideas acceptable.

Key to achieving this goal is by throwing ideas out there that are seemingly outlandish, getting the wider population to discuss them, and thereby prepare the ground for the broader population to eventually accept policies that were once deemed outrageous.

The Left in the West really seemed to embrace Overton’s theory with gusto. Overton died in 2003 at a tragically young age (43) in an aircraft accident, but had he lived to see our society today, the free marketeer that he was probably wouldn’t appreciate the results of his theorizing. The rise of socialist and communist politicians in America, like Zohran Mamdani, Bernie Sanders, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez reveal that the window of acceptable economic policies, particularly for young Americans, is shockingly anti-free market.

But the ideas that were perhaps most outlandish were those involving transgenderism and race- based preferential policies in the form of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.

In a shockingly brief period of time, the Left managed to convince many, if not most, Americans that we must accept absurdist notions, such as a person’s sex not being defined by the chromosomes which inhabit every cell of their...

[TBP]

You never close the Overton Window; you move it. The range of “acceptable” poly moves.

[TBP]

There's a 2010 novel called The Overton Window and its sequel, The Eye of Moloch.

[Pete from Shawnee Mission]

“In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control." -- Theodore Dalrymple”

[clearcarbon]

"Hell, Joseph goebbles used to talk about what most would consider the overton window all the time during the third Reich in the 1930s"

The "Master Race" concept didn't age well.

[ckilmer]

Its also the case that the overton window is opening wider in other areas because of AI.

[suasponte137]

No it didn’t, but he had a masterful understanding of the “Overton Window”..as did lots of figures in history by way of simply understanding human nature.

[Bosco127]

Are those utility companies who want to determine how much energy I am allowed to use going to pay the bill for me too?