Centerfield

Hello guys... This may or may not be the first time that I've been to your weblog; I've been to so many of them. Having a "centrist" weblog is an interesting concept. I am a staunch conservative, not a centrist, but I am a traditionalist conservative, who opposes the Iraq war, and many of the policies of the Bush administration.

This is an interesting blog.

Welcome, Aakash. Taking a peek at your blog, I noticed you have some Ohio folks listed in your "Leaders" column, including our very promising Lt. Governor, Jennette Bradley.

I met Ms. Bradley at one of our local campaign events here in Columbus -- very nice person, very accomplished, articulate, with an intriguing mix of views on the issues. I sense she's kind of the rising star in the Republican party here -- perhaps a future governor?

I don't think the "echo chamber" and "stifling of dissent" stages are necessarily inevitable. I think it has a lot to do with the nature of the community.

If we're talking about some sort of intellectual community, I think these stages are very likely if the commmunity is ideological. For my part, I don't find all that much mental stimulation in agreeing with everyone and patting each other on the back.

One thing that I like about centerfield is we're able to disagree, recognize good points that other people make, and keep the flaming to a minimum. If we have an ideology, at least to some extent it's an ideology that's "anti-ideological." I think there's some committment to what Richard Paul calls "strong-sense critical thinking," where you are digesting information and trying to figure out what's right, as opposed to "weak-sense critical thinking," in which you already think you know what's going on, and use that structure as a filter that explains outside events from that already hardened perspective. Weak-sense critical thinkers have ready-made interpretations for any event. Basically, it's the difference between having a falsifiable hypothesis or a non-falsifiable hypothesis.

I guess this CAN create an echo chamber, as wingnuts don't seem to find much positive reinforcement here. But this is at least to some extent tempered by posters' willingness to look at views from both sides and link to them here.

I don't want to start too much back-slapping, but in the time I've been posting, we've had visits from conservative folks calling us liberals in moderate clothing, as well as visits from liberal folks shocked that we can't see the basic evil in GWB.

I like to think that our ability to ruffle feathers on both fringes means we're doing something right.

Oh, and Aakash? Please come again. I see a ton of value in participation from anyone who feels strongly about their viewpoints and wants to make a strong case. My take is that if someone feels strongly about something, then their perception HAS TO have some merit, even if we might disagree about exactly what that merit is.

I have no interest in crafting and shredding straw men. I don't think we've had anyone represent the conservative anti-war view here, so chime in if you want.

That's one of the best short capsule descriptions I've ever seen on the ossification of orthodoxy in organizations of any type, a process I've witnessed over and over agian in community groups, political groups and administrations, and business hierarchies.

From my experiences with a local Dean group, I think your description of the process is spot on.

However, I don't necessarily think #7 ("Bad information leads to bad choices and defeat.") is inevitable or necessarily the cause of defeat. Every campaign has true believers. You should've seen the Kerry blog when he was down in the dumps in November, December. Lots and lots of disillusioned bitching.

Bad information could lead to not working hard (this definately happened in the Dean campaign) but it could be that the group simply isn't powerful enough to win at all. In which case it doesn't matter whether or not they have bad information -- the win or loss is out of the group's hands.