‘Why can’t I have a gun and get an abortion?’

In
a Los Angeles Times
piece about how disappointment with the economy, distrust of
government, and distaste for President Obama drives many Iowa
voters to favor Republican candidates this year, and many others to
sit out the election, a great summary of the lousy choices posed by
the two major parties comes from the mouth of an Iowa City
waitress.

“Why can’t I have a gun and get an abortion?” asks Heather
Molyneux, who won’t be voting in the midterms, not out of lack of
interest in the issues, but revulsion at the Republicans and
Democrats. “Really, they’re both so extreme,” she says of the two
political parties that have made themselves the quasi-official
either-or choices for most Americans for generations.

Pundits like to
echo that second sentiment, arguing that “moderation” and
“common sense” policies will bring Americans together and solve the
nation’s problems. But what these calls for centrism usually amount
to is mashing together the authoritarian tendencies of the left and
the right on which newspaper columnists agree so that we can have
have both gun control and high taxes. Moderation,
to them, means a big, bossy government that avoids the extremism of
leaving people alone.

But Heather Molyneux wonderfully captures the opposite
sentiment. To her—and to
many Americans—extremism means the tendencies of Republicans
and Democrats to lard their policy positions with authoritarian
presumption. People, she adds, should “make their own choices.”

That’s a moderation we should all be able to get behind.