I've always wondered why so many people prize the "middle of the road" as a safe place to be. I get it with airliners, where the pilot keeps the nose wheel on the yellow line until takeoff – but then the tower has assured him there is no one coming from the opposite direction. Almost always that is true.
In the family car, the "middle of the road" is likely to cause you a lot of problems while driving down the highway. Assuming you are a dedicated "middle of the roader" and like to spread out when nobody else is on the road, are you really going to drive by that patrol car parked further up the highway before easing back into the right lane?
Consensus and many of our friends and neighbors tell us that the "middle of the road" is the safest place to be. But how can that be true?
Around this time every couple of years, we hear talk about the virtues of "middle of the road" politics. Just like the highway, the terms "left" and "right" as applied to politics are two very different lanes of travel. And like the traditional highway, on the political highway one lane goes one way; the other goes the other way.
The terms "left" and "right" are really shorthand for two very different views of how the world works – or doesn't work. In fact, these two views of the world – government control on the left, individual freedom on the right – are really models we keep in our heads about how the world works. When we have a question about how to proceed, we consult them.
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Contrary to what those on the left think, the past really is important. They think it's important, but only as a tool for revising what really happened into what they wanted to have happen in the world.
Those on the right think the past is important because it provides a GPS track showing where we came from. By studying it, we can see what problems we encountered and evaluate how our actions back then worked or didn't work. And ultimately we can see where we are going based on those past actions. The past shows that nations, like people, experience greater or less success depending upon which lane they live their life in.
This GPS track from the past shows the results of previous "experiments" in the leftist model of government control very clearly. Government always demands more control over more things, and finally, as people rebel, that control degenerates into government-issue boots, uniforms and a gun pointed at you. We're the government. Do it our way. Or else.
Those of us on the right don't trust government. The bigger government gets, the less we trust it. And the more hard-core leftist the government is, the bigger it gets.
Big government is bad for a very simple reason. As government grows bigger and dictates more human actions, freedom disappears. When freedom disappears, there is no ability for someone to discover a better way of doing something. Why? Because it's illegal. You have to do it our way. We're the government. We're in charge. Do it our way, go to jail, or we will shoot you in the head. End of story. Ask the 60 million victims of communism who dissented.
Maybe you think you've been a "middle of the roader" in your politics. "A little of this, a little of that, it's a good thing." But when you're pretty sure there are no surveillance cameras mounted along the highway and you pull out into the middle of the road, you are missing the big picture.
You are not in the middle of the road when you look at the past. You are driving in a vast but tightening circle to the left, with human souls and resources all trending toward more and more government control, with less and less human freedom. It's like that little whirlpool that forms over the sink or tub drain.
Viewed from the airline captain's perspective, you are driving around and around in smaller and smaller circles to the left. If an airliner does that, it's known as a graveyard spiral. It's the last flight that planeload of people will ever take.
The past has a beginning, and it will have an ending, too. In between those two points we can learn from its story.
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