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December 2019  
  
There are two distinct ways to be politically moderate: on purpose and by
accident. Intentional moderates are trimmers, deliberately choosing a position
mid-way between the extremes of right and left. Accidental moderates end up in
the middle, on average, because they make up their own minds about each
question, and the far right and far left are roughly equally wrong.  
  
You can distinguish intentional from accidental moderates by the distribution
of their opinions. If the far left opinion on some matter is 0 and the far
right opinion 100, an intentional moderate's opinion on every question will be
near 50. Whereas an accidental moderate's opinions will be scattered over a
broad range, but will, like those of the intentional moderate, average to
about 50.  
  
Intentional moderates are similar to those on the far left and the far right
in that their opinions are, in a sense, not their own. The defining quality of
an ideologue, whether on the left or the right, is to acquire one's opinions
in bulk. You don't get to pick and choose. Your opinions about taxation can be
predicted from your opinions about sex. And although intentional moderates
might seem to be the opposite of ideologues, their beliefs (though in their
case the word "positions" might be more accurate) are also acquired in bulk.
If the median opinion shifts to the right or left, the intentional moderate
must shift with it. Otherwise they stop being moderate.  
  
Accidental moderates, on the other hand, not only choose their own answers,
but choose their own questions. They may not care at all about questions that
the left and right both think are terribly important. So you can only even
measure the politics of an accidental moderate from the intersection of the
questions they care about and those the left and right care about, and this
can sometimes be vanishingly small.  
  
It is not merely a manipulative rhetorical trick to say "if you're not with
us, you're against us," but often simply false.  
  
Moderates are sometimes derided as cowards, particularly by the extreme left.
But while it may be accurate to call intentional moderates cowards, openly
being an accidental moderate requires the most courage of all, because you get
attacked from both right and left, and you don't have the comfort of being an
orthodox member of a large group to sustain you.  
  
Nearly all the most impressive people I know are accidental moderates. If I
knew a lot of professional athletes, or people in the entertainment business,
that might be different. Being on the far left or far right doesn't affect how
fast you run or how well you sing. But someone who works with ideas has to be
independent-minded to do it well.  
  
Or more precisely, you have to be independent-minded about the ideas you work
with. You could be mindlessly doctrinaire in your politics and still be a good
mathematician. In the 20th century, a lot of very smart people were Marxists 
just no one who was smart about the subjects Marxism involves. But if the
ideas you use in your work intersect with the politics of your time, you have
two choices: be an accidental moderate, or be mediocre.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
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