Independent Nation

The perils of blogging are many indeed. It's easy to get swept away by hype. You are potentially at risk if you talk about your employer. And privacy, sooner or later, becomes a fanciful artifact of bygone days.

I'm beginning to think that transparency is the new techno- fundamentalist morality; I am forced to "be the same man on Saturday night as I am on Sunday morning" not because I am afraid of a wrathful god, but because technological fingerprints, Google memory, and those proverbial intersection cameras will record my every move from this day hence.

I willingly decided to live with this reality. But I'm amused by the deep desire to apply political categories. After spending a few weeks discussing politics with several friends (over email) who think I'm a Republican, I smiled when NixGuy called me a lefty.

It's understandable. I don't have a lot of sympathy for conservatives on cultural issues, but the liberals irritate me with their cynical foreign policy. And both sides seem to pollute our civic discourse with rancor and unnecessary venom.

Which is why it was nice to see John Avlon on The Daily Show last night promoting his book, Independent Nation. He made the case with vigor. Centrism can be a two-fisted, principled approach to political philosophy that might find a surprisingly large constituency.