Elusive middle ground, etc.

[sabotabby]

Amanda Marcotte always finds/writes the best stuff. Case in point: Time to hand the podium to the pinkos, which demonstrates in handy chart form what I'm been saying about the American (and now, Canadian) Left for years. Her starting point is this must-read article by Joshua Trevino (Republican think-tanker and founder of RedState.com), which, in the plainest possible language, describes how an idea moves from "unthinkable" to "policy" and demonstrates how one shifts the public discourse from left to right.

It's nothing that hasn't been said before, and it really should be obvious, but I still see liberals—particularly American Democrats—scratching their heads over this stuff. Trevino writes:

The mission of a think tank is to introduce ideas into public discourse and normalize them within the public discourse.

The example he uses is that of privatizing schools (Amanda uses reproductive freedom), and among the most recent related stories, I offer Howard Dean claiming that marriage is "between a man and a woman."

The moral of the story, as Amanda writes?

The speed at which people can be pulled rightward and yet still consider themselves “moderate” says a lot about why people are moderate in the first place. Most people don’t sit around reasoning out why they believe what they do so much as absorb the discourse, realize they have emotional reactions to both sides and split the difference. The abortion debate is a clear-cut example of this–”moderate” pro-choicers, for instance, tend to think that women should be under the state thumb but allowed a few more choices than strict anti-choicers would allow them. The good news is that this means that there’s no real reason to freak out anymore that having people with actual progressive opinions on the left are going to run off voters.

Your homework is to use the Overton Window (see the Trevino link) to describe public opinion shifts on an issue of your choice. Go!

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Some other neat stuff on the blogosphere lately: Teresa Nielsen Hayden raises the point that militarizing the border can result in keeping people in as easily as it can keep people out.

Then again, with border patrols like this:


President George W. Bush rides in a U.S. Border Patrol dune buggy during a tour
of the Yuma sector near the U.S. Mexico border in Yuma, Arizona, Thursday, May 18, 2006.
White House photo by Eric Draper. (Hat tip: jk_fabiani)

...do USians or non-status immigrants actually have anything to worry about?

The spelling leaves something to be desired, but Social Darwinism vs. Some Endangered Tigers is a rollicking good read.

Finally, you've probably seen it before (especially if you read zombie_survival), but the zombie-cockroach story is really gross and cool. The post turns into a debate between reality-based people and IDers, which is then suddenly halted by the appearance of one of the scientists mentioned in the article. Awesome.

EDIT: One more link: Stick it up your ass, fuckin' Starbucks. Just in time for tomorrow's IWW event.