Since I wrote the first post, a friend was generous enough to read it and offer some great questions and comments, which I'm going to discuss here. These have also led me to revise the basic outline of this idea (name still TBD), which is great; refining and reworking this work-in-progress idea is the whole purpose of this project.

Here's the outline of the idea I presented in the first post:

1. Every individual deserves a full life.

2. The purpose of government is to secure for everyone the conditions that make a full life possible.

3. The right way to get there is whatever works best.

Call that v0.1. On to the comments.

How is this articulation of a "full life" for everyone any different from what most liberals want?

First, maybe it is basically the same; it's not important that it's different. The problem I have is that the way we divide sides today contributes to the polarization and dysfunction of our politics. I want to change that, starting with myself, but I don’t need to disagree with what liberals want to get there.

But, second, is it clear what liberals want? In my experience, liberals tend to speak in issues and policies, and can be very clear on the outcomes they want in those terms: e.g., if we institute X healthcare program, the cost of healthcare for the average family will go down by $Y and Z millions more people will have access. But I've rarely, if ever, seen a goal articulated across issues and policies for what life looks like for a typical person if the liberal/left agenda is enacted. I've been engaged long enough that I could articulate one, and would largely agree with it, but I don't think it's well understood by most people. That's part of why I want to put an expression of the vision first. Policies should get you to the vision; vision shouldn't be a summary of policy outcomes.

Third, orienting around a full life probably is actually different in at least a few places from what most liberals would want. To over-generalize, most of the liberals I know are quite focused on economic opportunity and security as well as civil liberties and social justice, but less concerned with whether life has purpose and meaning, at least as a political question. That makes the full life approach, or at least me, more interested in ideas about the importance of work, family and community cohesion, religious liberty, and economic liberty, to name a few, than an average liberal. As I’m learning, it also means that I might be less interested in something like reducing inequality as an end in itself, instead of as a factor in whether everyone is set up to lead a full life.

Some conservatives would agree that the goal of civilization is a full life, and that's exactly what they are trying to provide.

For example, they might say: There is a good life, a life lived within traditional values and social roles, and we want to get more people there by making sure the government encourages the right life choices, or at least doesn't enable the wrong ones.

This is a crucial question, and it highlights the weakness of my term "full life." I'll need to replace it but don't have a better one yet; bear with me.

It's of absolute importance that the full life be the one each individual chooses for themself, that each of us lives a life that we experience as full. Many of us can find comfort and meaning in the way our communities (or at least those in positions of authority) want us to live, but for many of us those expectations will be suffocating. There are examples that spring to mind—the gay youth who can't come out to his family and neighbors, the woman without access to full reproductive care—but there are countless ways, large and small, in which our circumstances can prevent us from being ourselves and from living a full life. Government can't remove all of these obstacles, but it can contribute to the conditions that help people find freedom, and at minimum it can refrain from codifying repression and giving it the force of law. If your program is to engineer a good life for everyone by prescribing how we all must live, we're not on the same team, however good your intentions.

But, people have to be able to try to persuade one another of how to live a good life. If you have a strong view of how others should live and feel called to spread that message, but you attempt it through persuasion rather than coercion (by the government or otherwise) or abuse, we can be on the same team—even if I think you’re totally wrong.

You said you were trying to move past polarization. Wouldn’t any new political label create the same polarizing binary, between those who are in and those who are out?

We need political identities to make sense of the complex world we face. As citizens, we have to make sense of too much information, too many issues, too many players, too many agendas. Political identities like liberal, conservative, socialist, libertarian, Democrat, Republican, etc. simplify the problem, giving us a starting point for how to think about every question and a community of those we agree with on at least some things. Most people need this association, so identity is inevitable.

As long as there are political identities, there have to be in-groups and out-groups; an identity that includes everyone is nothing. But, an identity doesn’t have to polarize people or push them to extremes, the way that the spectrum identities do. Instead, it can bring people who share broad hopes and values together, and hopefully allow the means to be decided by constructive debate within the group rather than scorched-earth battles between groups.

Some people who fall outside the full-life identity include those who:

• ·Want to use government to impose their values and practices on everyone

• Aren’t committed to democracy and the core freedoms that are prerequisites for a full life

• Support policies without looking into, or even asking, whether they will actually be effective

• Use public debate as an opportunity for attention-seeking or self-enrichment rather than real improvements to people’s lives

I’m happy to embrace an identity that excludes all of this behavior.

Revisions

At the end of these questions, a revised version of the basic tenets:

1. Each individual deserves to live a full life, and to decide what that means for themself

2. Government’s purpose is to secure the conditions that make a full life possible for each of us.

3. To accomplish that, government should do whatever works best.

More to come.

Nick