Compromise

[Montmorency]

Seamus, now that you've covered the theoretical details do you have any ideas on how the contemporary 'cult of compromise' arose, at least in American history?

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

For example, this paper's introduction (I haven't read the full thing) suggests the author argues the Founders had a sense of compromise that was substantially similar to the modern sense, something I'm dubious of.

Interests v Positions. A classic from Fisher and Ury in Getting to Yes. Most people fight over positions "I want X!" when they are trying to achieve a certain end state {the interest}. They hide their real interest on the assumption that if it is known to the other party, that that other party will try to screw you over it. Sadly, most people get so caught up in arguing their position that they forget what it was in service of in the first place.

You are often better served by "revealing" your interest and then seeking to learn theirs. It can be surprising how collaborative solutions can become with clearer thinking.

I like that you brought this up because I think it is entirely appropriate as a component of replacing a compromise-as-ideology approach, implied by the deficits thereof. To be concrete, I perceive the modern Democratic party's great sins to have been overemphasizing narrow positions, striking up a pretense of competition, and preemptively compromising in the service of centrally-contrived narratives (policy becoming secondary to strategic optics). With complicity in the following process:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

I don't want to indulge in the standard idealistic both-sidesism and suggest that "both sides" should be more collaborative, but that good Lefty policy, though dicey on paper for establishment operatives, would inherently be more collaborative regarding the perceptions and needs of conservative citizens than relentlessly pursuing and moderating the GOP agenda.

The absence of this being exactly why enough districts shifted red to cost Hillary Clinton the election despite in theory being a superior candidate and human to the alternative, the argument goes.

I would say that (if I am understanding Rorty's position correctly), when liberals become psychoanalysts instead of economists they purposely abandoned government as an ineffective tool towards cleansing Americans of their personal sins. This of course will undercut their commitment towards any large scale policy goals and reinforces a self-flagellating mentality that insists your vision of the world is inherently flawed, and must be merged with many different values and opinions if it wishes to meet a purity test. In that perspective, yes, compromise is the ideal and is promoted for its own sake.

Solomon: You passed over the crucial bit, that the system forced a situation where the best option has to be routinely dismissed for 'something better than the worst outcome'. This isn't a positive demonstration of the power of compromise. It illustrates how differing stakes and interests may cast compromise into abnegation.

Think of the American Civil War as the product of irreconcilable differences, papered over by half a century of delaying tactics. Unfortunately we didn't have the political will to carry out thorough deConfederatization. This failure, fittingly, must largely stem from the economic capture of the North/Republican Party by industrial and agricultural interests, and the general racism of its people - both of which features neo-Confederates are fond of drawing attention to. "Getting on with business" was more important than maintaining a costly and distracting ideological occupation of territory in the interests of the Negro.

Labor unions wish to protect their competitive advantage by preventing cheap labor from immigrating to the country and undercutting their workers...and profits.

I understand the immanent condition to labor unions (who could resolve it just be extending equal treatment to all, just as they were forced to do with women and minorities, which itself drove white men out of unions from the '70s). What I mean is, what explicit pro-Union hock was there when Kennedy and LBJ were in many respects lefter on immigration in the 1960s. I just don't see how, without more information, '90s Democrats supported hardline border security legislation specifically out of deference to unions, whom they were already in the process of marginalizing.

As for Old vs. New Left, why not both dot jpeg? Of course the kind of "identity politics" salient today (which are really just in addition to the religious, ethnic, and mode-of-life identity politics in the rest of the country's history) must be coupled with (economic) class politics to reach their full development - and vice versa.

It's what they call I N T E R S E C T I O N. Seriously one of the best ideas out of feminism and critical theory, and one that should be more widely disseminated reflected upon. Because it's so obviously important once you think about it, and for once in a red moon the terminology is transparent in meaning.