Almost everyone agrees there should be more compromises in politics. So I’m curious, how would that play out?
While I love the policy debates and the nuances, most people go for the big issues. So, according to the party platforms/my gut, here’s what I’d put as the 3 for each party:
Democrats: Abortion rights, gun control, climate change.
Republicans: Immigration, culture war (say, critical race theory in schools or gender affirming care for minors) , trump gets to be president. (Sorry but it really seems like a cult of personality at this point.)
Anyway, here’s the exercise: say the other side was willing to give up on all three of their issues but you had to give up on one of your side’s. OR, you can have two of your side’s but have to give up on the third.
Just curious to see how this plays out. (You are of course free to name other priorities you think better represent the parties but obviously if you write “making Joe Pesci day a national holiday” as a priority and give it up, that doesn’t really count.)
Edit: The consensus seems to be a big no to compromise. Which, fair, I imagine those on the Right feel just as strongly about what they would call baby murdering and replacing American workers etc.
Just kind of sad to see it in action.
But thanks/congrats to those who did try and work through a compromise!
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Call me naive or stubborn but these aren’t points I would compromise at all with.
Abortion rights: People have the right to bodily autonomy. Anything less means that you don’t own yourself.
Gun Control: People have a right to live safely and without fear or going to school to be shot up or at the mall. The fact that gun violence and school shootings are a regular occurrence is not a good thing.
Climate Change: Every single scientist is literally saying the next few decades will see some of the worst weather patterns in human history and that’s even if we go to 0 emissions starting tomorrow. This will affect humanity on a global scale and cause unprecedented population displacement and suffering.
Any compromise on any of these posts means you are causing some kind of demographic to suffer and die simply to appease the egos of individuals who lack empathy.
Compromise would mean you bend over to coorporate interests, and that’s a no from me as well.
The sad hilariousness of this really comes into play when you look at the compromises of the opposite three points that OP suggested. If I try to do the same style of justification explanations you gave as to why those would be uncompromisable:
Immigration: people have a right to… Jobs? (Firmly debunked that immigrants are “taking American jobs”). People have a right to not have to see non-Americans in “their” country?
Culture war: people have a right to… Ignore racism? People have a right to be as ignorant as they please? People have a right to be saved from others confirming their sexual identity and feeling peer pressure to do the same?
Trump gets to be president: people have a right to… Fascist leadership if they willingly elect it? People deserve the “best president ever”?
It’s absurd that these are political issues if you take a half a step back and examine the 6 points in isolation. 3 of them are concerned with individuals making their own choices or the safety of humanity as a whole. 3 of them are about nationalism or controlling information and education, basically the definition of “putting myself and my beliefs above the rights of others”. How the hell did we even get into a situation where this is what we are choosing between? Or rather, a situation where roughly half our country actually thinks this is a choice and not just blatantly obvious based on basic morality.
Oh yeah, I 100% agree with you. I don’t know what OP was thinking when making this post and listing those points.
How the hell did we even get into a situation where this is what we are choosing between? Or rather, a situation where roughly half our country actually thinks this is a choice and not just blatantly obvious based on basic morality.
Easy, we compromised :). We said ok we’ll meet you halfway on things that are absolutely crucial to humans rights for the sake of progress. Over the decades the right got more and more extreme as we continued compromising. It’s not just in the US. I see it here in Canada as well. I really hate it.
What would you say are the big three priorities for either side?
Here’s the thing: you’re not wrong on what each side seems to have as priorities. It’s just absurd that anyone should think there’s any kind of equivalence between them.
Half of America seems to think so. And whether we like it or not, we live in a pluralistic society.
The point of my original comment was on how bad compromise is in these scenarios. We got to this point where we are arguing for basic human decency with complete sociopaths. When I read your post all I could think of is “this is literally asking us to choose which demographic we should screw over for the sake of appeasement and compromise”.
I know I’m coming off really bitter, and none of it is targeted towards you. I’m just really tired of this all.
That’s fair.
Lol that’s what I noticed too.
One side wants less people to die, the other side wants fascism and racism. Please help me compromise.
This is why they’re known as wedge issues because there’s no compromise.
Aren’t wedge issues for stuff that are divisive for a group of people who usually agree on most things? Something like the effective tax rates for billionaires among democrats.
Yup!
There is no room for a discussion. It’s like one side saying “kill everyone” and the other side is saying “let’s not kill people” then people are like “well, let’s compromise and kill just some people, it’s only fair.” No, I’m done. Democrats have been way too tame and compromising for too long, I’m done entertaining this BS.
Ironically, that is almost exactly how the pro-life movement feels about abortion.
I’m sure they do. But the thing is science at stats don’t back their stance.
Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, that’s a pretty iffy claim when we’re getting into what counts as life.
If I push a pregnant woman down some stairs and cause her to lose a baby, we all still view it as a despicable act, much worse than if she’d not been pregnant.
I personally am all for abortion rights but I’m not arrogant enough to decide everyone else is absolutely wrong and I am the arbiter of what is and isn’t life.
So because you’re not the ultimate moral arbiter, why not leave it up to the people who may or may not get an abortion? Almost like it’s pro CHOICE.
Your example of pushing is still assault and non-consensual, pretty easy to call a difference there. The only argument I’ve heard hold any water is the cutoff time for abortion, but that’s not what pro life people are ever talking about.
Your example of pushing is still assault and non-consensual, pretty easy to call a difference there.
So are you saying that me pushing a pregnant woman down the stairs is the same as doing so to a non pregnant woman?
why not leave it up to the people who may or may not get an abortion?
Again, I’m pro-choice. But, the pro-life response is simply that the unborn child doesn’t get a say in the matter. We don’t allow people to murder their born children even though it’s their own child. The pro-life movement just argues that the definition of child should include those who have yet to be born.
I mean, try asking any pregnant mom about whether the thing kicking around inside them is alive or not…
Well at the point of kicking, I don’t think many people are saying abortion is still an option. Pushing a pregnant person feels worse, in the same way hurting any more vulnerable party does. Can’t really argue with that. Causing a miscarriage should be a more serious offense yes, but I feel like it is a difference between suicide and manslaughter. Both are crime, and both have the same end point, but one was action taken against another.
The unborn child doesn’t get a say because it doesn’t have a say yet. It doesn’t have an opinion. It doesn’t want to live. It can’t survive on its own, it’s just a parasite basically until it’s born.
Being pregnant is a life threatening emergency, until we had modern medical intervention, we had death from childbirth all the time. Like, all the friggin time. Making someone carry to term is not exactly a no-risk/no struggle situation for them, and forcing them to is just punishment for sinning for a lot of pro-life people. Same reason a portion of pro life people want to ban contraceptives.
The goal is to stop having unhappy, poor, abused, or unwanted children, and to have happy, well adjusted, wanted and loved children. The pro-life argument usually stops as soon as a kid is born. No adoption programs, no child health care reform, no handouts for struggling parents, nothing. So someone who wasn’t ready to have a kid might now be forced to either abandon them or barely make it through life with a kid, making everything harder for all of them.
Well at the point of kicking, I don’t think many people are saying abortion is still an option.
It absolutely is and was under Roe v Wade. Babies start to kick and move as early as 16 weeks. While Roe did allow states to regulate the second trimester (14 - 28 weeks) many states had no restrictions on abortions during this period:
https://www.axios.com/2022/05/14/abortion-state-laws-bans-roe-supreme-court
So again, do you think any pregnant mom who has you put your hand on her belly to feel the kid kick, would they agree the kicker is just a clump of cells or a parasite? (Actually, having had many pregnant friends scratch that last one, I think all of them at one point jokingly referred to their internal parasite.)
But the point is that even the most staunch pro-choice of us should have the decency to admit that the thing inside may not quite be a person but is certainly more than a clump of cells. Then the divergence is who has the rights, the outcomes etc. I agree with you that it’s wrong to force a woman to carry a kid to term but, as I keep trying to say, those who disagree have a point.
I know it’s super uncool these days to try and understand those with whom we disagree and even less cool to empathize with them but I promise you, it’s a worthwhile endeavor.
You are absolutely right. It’s a tough battle because they believe they are literally voting to not kill babies. It would be like someone trying to convince me to kill a toddler. How could I possibly compromise?
I don’t agree, but I can understand.
So are you saying that me pushing a pregnant woman down the stairs is the same as doing so to a non pregnant woman?
Imo, no. Pushing a woman is assault, pushing a pregnant woman is assault and something else (another post suggested something akin to manslaughter, which I think fits if the assault causes a miscarriage)
the pro-life response is simply that the unborn child doesn’t get a say in the matter.
Correct. An unborn child doesn’t get a say in whether they are aborted or born. They have no opinions, they have no wants. The unborn child cannot consent to being aborted but they cannot consent to being born either. The only valid opinion and choice is that of the mother, because it’s the mother’s life that is very physically (and eventually also mentally, socially, etc) affected by the pregnancy.
Which is also why I said that pushing a pregnant woman should have harsher penalties than just assault: it also endangers or destroys something whose state of being only the woman should be in charge of.
It’s like if I pickpocket your wallet that’s stealing, but if I steal the wallet from your house that’s also breaking and entering.
You are being perfectly reasonable and coherent by the way. Whoever is downvoting you doesn’t seem to understand the point of discussion.
They go on to argue that abortion is murder in a different comment. They’re using careful language but it’s obvious this isn’t a person who is simply “arguing the other side,” this is a conversation done in bad faith.
One side has stats that have down that Roe V Wade massively reduced crime as less children were born into the system or unwanted. The burden of an unwanted child can ruin both the parents and childs life. We’ve seen how abortion bans can lead to doctors being scared to do anything in some situations causing the mother to die.
The other side is people saying a fetus has a soul because an old book told them so.
It’s pretty clear which side should be backed. Not saying either side is perfect, but one side has a lot more supporting evidence than the other.
Let’s not forget, the pro choice side is just that, you have a choice. No one is forcing anything, the other side is. Again, the choice is clear to me.
The example of pushing a woman down the stairs is silly. The reason why it’s worse if she’s pregnant is because you took away her choice and opportunity to have that baby, after she is dealing with all that comes with being pregnant. That is not the same as a person who is a month in and doesn’t want it, by her choice.
Again, I’m not trying to argue for one side over the other. I’m just saying that from their point of view, both sides have some sense of legitimacy. I tend to agree with you that abortion should be available to all who want one because it’s not my damned decision to make.
But yet again, for the pro-lifers, murdering babies, no matter how good the results etc might be is fundamentally wrong.
The reason why it’s worse if she’s pregnant is because you took away her choice and opportunity to have that baby
To each their own I guess. I personally would feel horrible about killing a child not just removing a temporary opportunity or something. I’m not saying it’s the same as an abortion, just that we on a fundamental level do understand that the fetus isn’t just a clump of cells.
Sad you’re downvoted for pointing out the truth, it’s not even your opinion!
Welcome to Lemmy! Downvotes will be your guide.
If there was something I give up on, it’s gun control. For several reasons:
- There’s basically no gun control anyways so it’s not like we’re giving up something.
- Compared to abortion rights (ie bodily autonomy) and climate change (ie existential crisis), not having gun control is the least bad. It’s still pretty crucial, to be fair, but comparing to actual existential crises like the other 2, not having gun control doesn’t seem that bad in comparison
I don’t pander to fascists. None.
Do you consider yourself a partisan? The pervasive notion that there are “two sides” and you must be on one of them, it results in ordinary citizens viewing one another with suspicion and fear. It’s a useful lie that serves the interests of those who would foster division in order to maintain the cultural status quo.
Not calling you out in particular. Just that I think about this every time something is posted that perpetuates this false “our team, their team” narrative because it’s a powerful, insipid tool of oppression against the common person. True, people differ on contentious issues, sometimes irreconcilably. But if we are made to view one another as dyed-in-the-wool adversaries over that, we will fail to discover our common interests much less promote them through solidarity.
Not denying that the two major political parties in the United States do hold seemingly unassailable dominance in major elections like the one we’re entering, largely due to determining winner by first-past-the-post. And yes, sadly it’s very often the case that a meaningful vote will support one of those parties. But it doesn’t have to be this way forever. In fact, I will be able to vote for city office candidates by ranked choice starting this year!
Sorry for the rant. Not an expert. Just a dude who wants to love his neighbor.
Just a dude who wants to love his neighbor.
And the big issue seems to be that the two sides have drastically different definitions of the word “love”. There was a study a while ago, which found that conservatives are more likely to have liberal friends, while liberals are less likely to have conservative friends. It sounds odd on the surface… But the reality is that if a liberal hangs out with conservatives long enough to become friends, those conservatives will eventually get comfortable. Comfortable enough to start using hard slurs, or they will call the liberal “one of the good ones” as if it’s a compliment.
It’s no wonder that liberals are less likely to report having conservative friends. Liberals have tried, and have been burned by all of the conservatives that they got close to. Meanwhile, the most offensive thing a liberal does around conservatives is just… Exist? Relatively speaking, it’s easy for a conservative to keep liberals around, because the liberal isn’t constantly trying to undermine the conservative’s right to personhood. Whether or not you can own guns isn’t an immediate existential threat to a conservative.
In this study, were the terms “conservative” and “liberal” self-applied by the subjects? People do adopt those labels for themselves, but I would urge careful consideration before doing so. Where they can be useful in describing one’s position on a specific issue, when applied directly to the person they are needlessly reductive. Exactly the sort of thing that facilitates the mental assignment of oneself or others into an imaginary camp on one side of a false dichotomy.
The essence of what you are saying makes sense to me, and I do understand those terms are routinely applied to people both by themselves and by others. But your post, though well-meaning also serves to perpetuate the “conservatives vs. liberals” view of political discourse. I realize I may be Sisyphus under the boulder here, but it’s my challenge to the United States political duopoly.
The pervasive notion that there are “two sides” and you must be on one of them
Nah, though there is an irony to arguing that the notion of two sides means we view each other with suspicion right after deciding what I believe because of the question I asked.
Just like you, I get that there are two major political parties, one of which will hold power, both of which view the other as the enemy. I asked this to see what the general consensus would be as my friends and I played a similar game and were stymied pretty quickly.
Not calling you out personally, Lauchs and I do apologize if it seems that way. Just that reading in your question the usage of “your side” and “the other side” brought to mind once again the fact that many people I know have come to view politics a team sport. Didn’t decide anything about your beliefs.
I’m fine with getting rid of the immigrants in America but it has to be all immigrants. European, every body. Got to get a visa from the native peoples if you want to stay and work. Hopefully they reject the racists.
If you look back far enough the native peoples are immigrants.
Not that I’m opposed to an entire continent being free of humans altogether.
Human rights are not a compromise. I will not even entertain the idea of compromising those. Abortion rights stay.
Gun control is an iffy one. It really should be fixed, but it will take decades of continuing reforms and filtering firearms out of the market to really get it to where it should be. On a short term basis, “compromising” (but not giving up) on this would be OK.
Climate change will obviously just kill us all, soooo…
In a keep two, give one scenario to shut Republicans up for an election cycle, it would be safe to compromise on gun control in exchange for cementing proper human rights and getting meaningful climate action.
I am willing to compromise and allow trial by combat to be reintroduced as a valid judicial process. The only caveat is that the wealthy cannot appoint champions to fight for them.
Seriously though, I’m not in love with either party. Honestly, there are things I despise about both. Most Americans are pretty middle of the road. It’s the extremists and the parties holding the country hostage, not the American people.
Ahaha, I really enjoy this comment.
I think you’re right, most folks are middle of the road but damned if I can think of a way to get the middle to actually dominate politics…
I am willing to compromise and allow trial by combat to be reintroduced as a valid judicial process.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_by_combat
Trial by combat (also wager of battle, trial by battle or judicial duel) was a method of Germanic law to settle accusations in the absence of witnesses or a confession in which two parties in dispute fought in single combat; the winner of the fight was proclaimed to be right. In essence, it was a judicially sanctioned duel. It remained in use throughout the European Middle Ages, gradually disappearing in the course of the 16th century.
So that was before the US became a country.
Wikipedia sadly doesn’t mention it, but a few years ago, some Brit decided to challenge what IIRC was a traffic infraction and demand trial by combat. The judge issued a ruling that trial by combat was no longer permissible, so it’s officially off the books in the UK under case law.
kagis
Vehicle registration violation.
Is Trial By Combat Still Legal?
Citing a law from 1066, a man requested a fight to the death to settle a $33 motoring fine.
In 2002, in Suffolk in England, a 60-year-old man didn’t tell the country’s motoring authority that his motorcycle was off the road. That authority, the DVLA, can fine individuals for things like not paying road tax and similar admin things.
The man, Leon Humphreys, was fined £25 ($33) for his small infringement, but the man didn’t pay and was taken to court.
Trial by combat
Almost a thousand years earlier, in 1066, William the Conqueror introduced the right to trial by combat – a fight to the death to resolve disputes using swords or other weapons such as pikes.
The thinking behind this was that God would back who was right, and they would win. Elderly people and women were allowed to nominate a champion to fight on their behalf.
You couldn’t just demand trial by combat with anyone. Rather, it needed a genuine legal matter to be resolved, and was one official way of resolving that matter. It let God decide the outcome, apparently, and the guilty party would pay the ultimate price.
Humphreys decided that instead of paying the fine, he would call upon the ancient law, saying;
“I believe the right to trial by combat is still on the statute books… I am willing to fight a champion put up by the DVLA if they want to accept my challenge – but they must remember it is a fight to the death… I am reasonably fit and not afraid of taking anyone on in a fight.”
A spokesman for the British courts simply said of the matter;
“I am not aware that anyone has the right to demand trial by combat these days.”
And the DVLA responded;
“We have never dealt with a request for trial by combat before. We are looking into the legal issues.”
The courts unsurprisingly rejected the request for trial by combat, which hasn’t really been used much since around 1300 when trial by jury replaced it. Mr. Humphreys never got his deathly fight, and all DVLA clerks remained safely at their desks.
Instead, he was fined £200 ($265) for not paying the fine, and a further £100 ($133) in court costs.
However, British courts don’t bind the US, not since independence, and last time I looked, it still hadn’t been resolved in the US. WP doesn’t have any clear case law prohibiting it, though the Brits came close:
Proposals to abolish trial by battle were made in the 17th century, and twice in the 18th, but were unsuccessful.[23] In 1774, as part of the legislative response to the Boston Tea Party, Parliament considered a bill that would have abolished appeals of murder and trials by battle in the American colonies. It was successfully opposed by Member of Parliament John Dunning, who called the appeal of murder “that great pillar of the Constitution”.[24] Writer and MP Edmund Burke, on the other hand, supported the abolition, calling the appeal and wager “superstitious and barbarous to the last degree”.[25]
At the time of independence in 1776, trial by combat had not been abolished and it has never formally been abolished since. The question of whether trial by combat remains a valid alternative to civil action has been argued to remain open, at least in theory. In McNatt v. Richards (1983), the Delaware Court of Chancery rejected the defendant’s request for “trial by combat to the death” on the grounds that dueling was illegal.[50] In Forgotten Trial Techniques: The Wager of Battle, Donald J. Evans set out the possibility of a trial by battle in the setting of a lawyer’s office.[51] A tongue-in-cheek motion during 2015 for trial by combat in response to a civil suit was rejected in 2016.[52]
In 2020, a man named David Zachary Ostrom requested a trial by combat in response to a custody and property dispute with his ex-wife over their children.[53] Following Ostrom requesting trial by combat, he was court-ordered to be administered a sanity test and was temporarily restricted from parenting rights. Upon successfully clearing his sanity test, Ostrom’s parenting time was restored. Ostrom has since admitted that he initially made the request for trial by combat in order to attract media attention to his case.[54]
Now, IIRC there are some limited forms of dueling – not to the death, but fights – that are legally sanctioned in at least one state, IIRC Oregon or Washington state.
goes looking
Washington. And, Texas being Texas, Texas also has a sanctioned form.
https://texascriminaljustice.com/what-is-the-mutual-combat-law-in-texas/
In some ways, Texas has had a reputation in the past as the Wild West. If you have ever wondered if two parties in the state can fight without worrying about the legal consequences, the answer is yes. Texas is only one of two states (Washington state being the other) where mutual combat can be an affirmative offense in specific assault cases.
Most people know that it is against the law to punch or otherwise assault someone. But did you know that the Texas mutual combat law allows, in certain situations, for two parties to fight and injure one another without legal consequences, to a certain degree?
The law behind certain mutual combat being allowed is Texas Penal Code 22.06. The law states that a party charged with assault can argue that the alleged victim consented to the fight. This defense may apply in the following circumstances:
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The fight did not result in serious bodily injury
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The alleged victim was aware of the risks but consented
Consent does not have to be overtly verbal; all that is required under the law is that you had a reasonable belief that consent was given. However, you must prove as the defendant that consent was reached before the incident. Your Texas criminal defense attorney will review the case evidence to determine if consent can be proven.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/mutual-combat-states
Washington state is one of only two states in America where mutual combat is totally legal. Most states do not have a specific law relating to mutual combat, leaving consensual fights in a sort of gray area. Washington state, however, does have a law legalizing mutual combat.
The Washington state law regarding mutual combat does lay out one provision that makes fighting legally a little challenging: To be legal, a fight has to be overseen by a police officer. Most of the time, police officers have something better to do with their time than watch a couple of guys brawl.
The police officer is supposed to act as a referee by breaking up the fight when an obvious victor has emerged. The police officer also must keep bystanders from being injured and property from being damaged. This would make the fight illegal.
So I think that either a judge would need to have a different interpretation of the legality of dueling or impact on the right to trial by combat than that Delaware judge – which might happen – or the trial by combat would need to occur in Texas and be constrained to not incur serious bodily injury – like, no killing or maiming – or be in Washington.
It just so happens that I am in Washington.
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Almost everyone agrees there should be more compromises in politics
Bullshit.
Republicans want to “compromise” by getting everything they want.
Moderates politicians want “compromise” by giving them half and telling progressives to be happy Republicans only get half.
So most politicians say they want compromise, but I’d have to see a source for “almost everyone” saying it. Most voters don’t want compromise.
I mean, if you look at the responses in this thread, most folks have put their compromise as getting everything they want on the Dem side of things…
Though, you’re not entirely wrong on the compromise thing. It’s one of those things people say they want until they realize that means giving up on what they want. You might enjoy this old 538 article about it, which has this painful pair of paragraphs on the subject:
But how much does bipartisanship actually matter to voters? Americans have long said they prefer that the parties work together, and respondents in Morning Consult’s poll were no different. For instance, 85 percent of voters said it was very or somewhat important for legislation to have bipartisan support, 69 percent agreed that policies with bipartisan backing were the best policies, and 62 percent disagreed with the idea that it was a waste of time for politicians to seek bipartisan support. What’s more, there were no meaningful differences between how Democrats and Republicans answered these questions.
However, polls also show that many Americans are willing to scrap bipartisanship if it means passing legislation that their party prefers. For instance, a 2019 poll from the Pew Research Center found that despite majorities of Democrats (69 percent) and Republicans (61 percent) saying it was very important that elected officials be willing to compromise, members of both parties thought it was more important for officials from the other party to compromise than it was for officials from their own party to do so. Seventy-nine percent of Democrats thought it was very important for Republican lawmakers to compromise compared with just 41 percent of Republicans. Likewise, 78 percent of Republicans thought it was very important for Democratic lawmakers to compromise compared with 48 percent of Democrats.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-much-do-americans-really-care-about-bipartisanship/
I’d give up any and every gun point in favor of police reform, proper election and transition of power legislation, and climate change.
Great question. Democracy is all about compromise. I am bothered by how few people seem to grasp this fact. Personally, when I hear the phrase “squabbling politicians”, I roll my eyes - to squabble is their job! They’re doing it on our behalf because people have different interests and different values and so we don’t all agree, and that is a good thing. A polity where everybody agrees - well, there are names for that kind of political system and none of them are democracy.
Over here in Europe, I just wish the progressive parties (for whom I vote) would do the obvious deal and sacrifice their dilatory approach to immigration and in particular border security. This issue is undermining all their other policy goals. The obvious allergy of voters to porous borders is not just a result of disinformation, and taking a tougher line on it does not necessarily mean infringing human rights.
I am bothered by how few people seem to grasp this fact.
Yeah, some of the responses in this thread have been predictable but still disheartening.
would do the obvious deal and sacrifice their dilatory approach to immigration and in particular border security.
100%. It just seems like the progressives are losing the war for the sake of being in the moral feel good category, witness the rise of the Far Right in Poland, Germany, France and probably others that I’m too ignorant to know about (sorry!) That being said, reading over this thread and you can kind of see why the Progressive parties are in a bit of a bind, we do seem allergic to the notion that we might not get everything we want.
How many queer people deaths are ok for you? How many women dying during childbirth are you willing to give up on for your compromise? The only thing politicians compromise on is whose pockets get lined more. Compromise on rights for others is a very privileged position to be in.
Indeed. The moral purity issue has always been the Achilles heel of progressive politics. It makes compromise hard and it drives heretics - i.e. the people whose votes you need - crazy.
I don’t think the kind of compromise that is necessary is able to be stated in the way you’re asking for, because of how values feed into beliefs.
Take abortion rights for example: someone who would describe themselves as “pro-life” may argue something that is effectively saying that murdering babies is never okay. I would be in complete agreement there. As someone who is “pro-choice”, the core of my argument is usually some form of “a clump of cells that could become a person does not trump the rights to bodily autonomy that an existing person has”. No progress will be made in this discussion unless we can address the fact that the vast majority of abortions are nowhere near “murdering babies”. That’s where compromise is most likely to happen, in the discussion that arises when trying to reconcile different word views, and coming to speak in mutually intelligible terms.
For example, one area where I and many other abortion advocates have compromised on this front is recognising that the line between “a clump of cells” and “a baby” is pretty blurry. Personally, I don’t know where I stand on where the law should stand on that line; in my country, abortions after 24 weeks can only be done in exceptional cases (mother’s health at risk, foetal anomalies etc.). I think a time limit like this seems reasonable, but I’m not sure whether at 24 weeks, a foetus is more like a clump of cells, or a baby. I have personally had a very early term abortion, and I’m grateful to have had that opportunity, because I have no idea how I’d feel if I was in that 20-24 weeks range. Acknowledging this uncertainty I feel is part of how compromise works. I would hope that someone on the “other side” of the argument would apply a similar approach to try to understand and entertain my argument wrt bodily autonomy. In a way, this is an easy example, because all the leeway in positions has been explored, and the core issue is something that can’t be compromised on (such as how I can’t have a productive discussion with people who are actively against women’s bodily autonomy, or people who believe that life starts at conception).
An area in which I’m working on trying to compromise on is trying to reshape how I think about farmers and other similar social groups. Farmers are a good example because I am a very left wing, queer, university-educated city-living scientist who has Opinions on the climate, and I’m very socially progressive. To some people, I am the big bad Other, an inherent problem with the world. I don’t like this, because certainly I don’t see myself as “the problem”. I’d actually rather like to be part of the solution, but I won’t do that well if I take the easy route of dismissing people like this as just racist, idiotic bigots whose opinions I shouldn’t care about. Many of them are bigoted, but if I don’t want to mass exterminate people whose views are unacceptable to me, nor be exterminated myself, I need to try to imagine a world where I could break bread with these people. That’s a pretty difficult challenge.
PhilosophyTube’s video on Judith Butler helped a lot on this actually. I have been realising more and more that the common ground that exists between me and many of my “political enemies” is that we are humans who are scared and struggling, like me. When I feel hopeless, solidarity pulls me through, and thinking in this way makes it easier to feel compassion for people whose anger and bigotry isolates them from this kind of community support: a person can simultaneously be a product of their environment, and responsible for their actions; they can both be a victim of fascist ideology (through becoming isolated, disempowered and stewing in hate), and also an active perpetrator of said hate.
This reframing isn’t itself compromise, but hopefully if I continue to work to see what I share with the people I most disagree with, I’ll be able to have the kinds of conversations that build compromise. Successful compromise takes a small amount of shared ground and extends that, bit by bit, person by person. That’s why I think your question didn’t get the answers you were hoping for: by the time things become solidified into political parties and manifesto stances, there isn’t much fluidity and ambiguity left to act as space for new, shared understanding.
If you made it to the end of this comment, thanks for bearing with my meandering. If you’d like to read an essay about compromise that’s a much better story than my rambles, you might enjoy this article about a beautifully mundane yet improbable compromise helped build the internet. . The whole article is great, but I especially love this part:
"In the beginning, the disagreements seemed insurmountable, and Miller felt disheartened: ‘The first night we thought: This is gonna fail miserably. At first nobody saw eye to eye or trusted each other enough yet to let each other in and try to figure out the art of the possible.’ But as concessions and then agreements were made, people began to feel energised by the creation of a new system, even if imperfect; one piece at a time, their system could bring the content of the web within reach for everyone. As Caplan remembers: ‘By the second day, there was a lot of drinking and all-night working groups. We were running on adrenaline and energy. By the last day, we realised we were making history.’ "
I take heart in the understanding that compromise is messy, and hard to evaluate when you’re in the thick of it.
I think this was really well written and gets at the heart of what actual compromise entails much better than my quick question could possibly do.
I’d give up gun control for America to no longer be allied with Israel.
Compromise can only exist when there’s at least one coincidence of interest. A greater good or similar common value that motivates the parties to negotiate over the aisle on individual issues. The principles, values, goals and even worldview of the two party system in the US is radically polarized. Which makes it almost impossible to negotiate a compromise. Right now, the few policy issues they agree on are nonessential points (supporting Israel, e.g.) that don’t weight the balance and exist out of pure accident. It exist on either side for completely different reasons. When one side argues that some people deserves to die, it is hard to negotiate when the protection of life and dignity is above all for the other side. But compounded by the fact that they don’t even agree what life, person hood and dignity even mean.
The Dems really should give up the party line on gun control. Red flag laws make a lot of sense, but bans on specific weapons are unpopular,
Ineffective, unworkable, and almost certainly unconstitutional.That’s fair. I come at guns with my weird Canadian perspective but I do think different classes of weapons is reasonable. Here, rifles are treated vwry differently from handguns which are basically allowed in a locked storage box at home (with ammo in, if I remember my firearms license training correctly, another locked box) or in the trunk of your car while you are on the most direct route to a firing range or coming home from one.
We have almost no gun crime. In America, I’ve had guns drawn on me twice by cops (understandably nervous cops, I would be nervous too if everyone had a handgun!) after being pulled over for speeding and one time a dude I met at a Sharks game pulled one on a guy who threatened us with a knife.
That just seems like a ridiculous way to live. I’ve had a blast shooting off guns in the bush, drunk and high in Oregon but as much fun as that was, definitely doesn’t outweigh the whole “guns are just around and yeah, school shootings happen” thing.
