The death of Dame Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, one of the great soprano voices ever committed to recording, and within her realm an unchallenged paragon of art, is a way of reminding me of how ideology is defined in both relative and absolute scales. She is controversial for having participated in, and supported, the Nazi regime in her youth. For, as the saying goes, hating the Jews more than was absolutely necessary - controversial because she seemed to go much farther in supporting Naziism that was merely required as a member of that society at time, for which others are forgiven. And yet, we hear the siren song, and understand that being card carrying is not always the beginning and the end of an individual.

It is in this sense that a blog spat which is brewing over Scott Winship's sloppy piece entitled "No End of Ideology". It is sloppy with words, with numbers and with ideas. Already Mark Schmitt and Chris Bowers have fired off responses. But both miss the essential point. It isn't that the netroots aren't ideological, it is that people like Winship are as ideological, in fact, more so, and more rigidly so, than the "netroots".

First let me point out a demographic fact, the internet political activist, is not at the root of anything. These are not people on the bottom of a pyramid, but at the core of a self-sustaining attractor of connections. The analogy to "grass roots" fails, for the simple reason of mathematical incompatibility with a dense short range network at the bottom of a long chain network. The entire discussion is coloured by defining the netroots as an online version of the grassroots, and therefore seeking correspondances. The two are different groups, and are easy to distinguish, the grassroots online chooses forums, email lists, networking sites and web sites as their primary vehicles. The people being talked about in this case work through the link and blogging community.

That two different psychographic groups are being confused makes it difficult to draw clear conclusions. Mark Schmitt tangentially points this out with questioning whether the Dean campaign universe represents "the netroots", and Chris Bowers does as well in pointing out that the moveon universe of voters represents a better slice of "the netroots". He's correct if one is actually looking for a short range root structure, he's incorrect in how the world is actually applied, for example to bloggers. Some bloggers are at the root of the flow of communication, but the ones that are visible, and the commenters that are visible, are not.

Leaving aside this psychographic confusion, which by itself makes hash of Winship's conclusions, there is another implicit assumption, one which Mark Schmitt tries to defend against, but fails to deliver the knock out blow. The reality is that the users of internet politics are ideological. They are not, and Mr. Schmitt has himself pointed this out, ideological in the sense of the micro-politics of issue groups in the past, that is, handing them a checklist of issues will not get a degree of uniformity that indicates agreement on these issues. On the other hand, ideology is not defined by answering questions the same way, but on having a coherent vocabulary and set of assumptions which can be used to join observations in such a way as to reduce cognitive dissonance with a particular world view. In the sense of having a vocabulary - even if there are already conventionalizations and memifications in that vocabulary, such as "netroots" - and a set of assumptions that create a means of harmonizing stream of input and internal world view, then yes, the internet political universe is ideological.

However the implicit assumption by Winship is that "moderates" are not ideological. This is incorrect, and it is observably incorrect. The people who Winship calls "moderate" are more ideological, not less, than the internet they oppose, and this can be seen by their actions. They are more willing to engage in violence to defend their interests and world view, they are more hostile to outsiders and they are more rigid in their thinking. They have an ideology which they use to force fit everything into a very small view of the world. The answer is not Mark Schmitt's and Chris Bowers' argument that the "netroots", however defined, aren't ideological, it is that there is, at the heart, of ordinary discourse a fallacy of equivocation.

That fallacy is that ideology can be defined and measured by agreement on yes/no questions on particular issues. This is laughable on its face. Marxists and Libertarians are far more ideological than any group in the Democratic Party, both having totalizing world views, but they disagree sharply on host of "issues". Ideology is not status as a voting bloc on issues. If you mean "voting bloc" then say "voting bloc". A further useful definition of ideology is the willingness to transgress against social norms in order to defend the coherence or supremacy of the framework - that is, if the world view is more important than the law, or normal rules of society, then there is a very good chance that ideology is in play.

This confusion, of coherent framework with agreement on yes/no top down questions is a mark of ideology in itself. There is no way to prove one from the other. Some ideologies will produce conformity and agreement, but most will not. Romanticism is an ideology, it is also not prone to produce agreement on almost any issue of art or politics. Various Maoists disagreed to the point where some denounced others and had them killed.

Since the definitions that one can ascertain from examples of ideological groups - conformity on particular questions, intellectual framework, and willingness to transgress social norms - are not compatible, and one does not follow from the other, their equation indicates an assumption, and assumptions which join otherwise contradictory definitions as being axiomically correct are indicators of an ideology. Sorry to pull out first principles, but after wading through a math error compounded by a definition error and topped off with a fallacy of equivocation, there was no place else to go but back to the beginning.

The ideology of the "moderate" is that the truth lies between the acceptable extremes of the media space, and that the optimal government consists of disenfranchising of these extremes and agreement by those in the "middle" of this debate. This is an ideology, it has ontology, deontology and epistemology, as well as a cosmology of the political universe. There are demons - "extremists of both kinds", and methods for finding the truth, which are adhered to even in the face of radical failure.

This world view then procedes to force fit all observations into its frame work. For example, we are losing in Iraq, because the left isn't supporting the troops. Iraq is preventing the next 9/11. Don't believe me? Ask the paid Lieberman supporters who hit a photographer and accosted Ned Lamont. It has been amply documented that groups of "Lieberkidz" are trying to follow around the Lamont campaign and cause disruption. In short, conformity on Iraq, a framework which accuses anyone not in conformity of being a sell out to the terrorists, and the willingness to commit assault and battery give Lieberman supporters - a supposed "moderate" according to Gallup - a trifecta on the ideological litmus tests.

In the "moderatist" ideology then, the boundaries of media discourse represent hard boundaries of acceptability. "Perceptions are reality" is more than a cynical reminder, it is a sign of the boundaries of reality. That which cannot be said on Fox News, cannot be said, or made to work. The political strategy of the moderates, indeed their religion of "electability" is to nominate candidates who promise not to say or do anything which could be used to cause a media firestorm.

The internet counter view is so often spoken that it has a phrase: "It.Does.Not.Matter.What.We.Do." and an acronym "IOKIYAR" - It's OK If You Are A Republican - meaning that the same acts for which Democrats and members of the left will be given a full electronic lynching for, raise not a peep from the very boundary makers of the media if done by Republicans. These two counter views argue that regardless of what a candidate says, does or is, if the Republicans decide to smear them, then smearing will happen - but will be immune from counter charges. Swiftboating is a verb, because a group of people could libel John Kerry's war record into the ground, and the vaunted moderate love for collegial discourse was no where to be seen to stop it. They didn't even need forgeries to do it.

Behind this moderatist viewpoint then is a consumerist view of politics. The top of the pyramid proposes, the top down media limits, and then individuals decide on the checklist of Coke/Pepsi alternatives. In this view, people who are alike in too many of their responses, or place too much weight on questions not regarded as important must, somehow, be colluding against the good ordinary mainstream folk. If "the roots" is the holy quality of the left, "the mainstream" is the holy water that blesses all things in the middle.

The advantages of this ideology are numerous. First, it is a great deal simpler to decide issues, and one can decide each and every "issue" in line with ones preconceived notions and values, even if they are contradictory. Second, it provides the illusion of individuality, even if one is part of a great mass of people. Facts? Not really needed, just average the talking heads.

In a world which is complex, people are alienated, media streams of limited number - and most importantly in a society which is constantly threatened from without by overwhelming pressures which could destroy it - this ideology allows radical and rapid simplification to questions which can be debated with factoids. Logic? Not really needed, more important is to find a pseudo-principle which others cannot debunk, such as say "Don't change the rules in the middle", and back it with fragments of data, which may or may not actually mean what they say, or even be accurate. It is chimney corner theology brought to the big screen.

Moderatism, while I have little sympathy for it, worked. It worked, to no small extent, because the external boundaries and implicit agreements kept it working. Certain topics and tactics were off limits, partisan advantage seeking stopped at the water's edge, and certain issues were never placed before the public directly. In short, the modern and post-modern system of secrecy, denial and deception created a play pen within which people could think they were discussion what mattered. The great art to politics was to find media ways of deciding issues which had far more complex dimensions. It is why The Wisdom of Crowds is a stupid book, it assumes that crowds are right, and ergo smarter than experts. The correct conclusion is that in a technological society, a great deal of effort is made to make it so that people's expectations are fulfilled. If lots of people start being wrong about simple things, the system falls apart. Even relatively small violations – Alar, poisoned over-the-counter medications, and thousands of other details are carefully examined and regulated.

What has made moderatism a joke is a series of changes to society, and its own insistence, contrary to the evidence of its behavior and the ease with which it can be described as an ideology, that it isn't an ideology. One of its most important beliefs is that "those other people" are blinded by preconceptions, doctrine, dogma and irrational passion, but not we "cool, considerate men". The other problem is that with the collapse of outside threat, the entire reason for regulating the boundaries of political discourse has collapsed. This is why the Republicans, to get the power they needed to alter society, had to invent "Islamofascism" and claim that we are fighting World War Terror.

In short, the moderate is a species of post-modern top-down ideology, and it demands first that choices be effective, and second that they be packaged in a certain way. They must, no equivocation, have a viable choice on election day in most circumstances.

The reactionary right understood this lust for seeming reasonable could be delivered without actually being reasonable. Humans learned to like sugar because it comes with vitamin bearing fruits. But why sell healthy fruit when you can sell tasty but empty sugar drinks with artificial fruit flavor and pocket the difference?

Moderatism is a joke because the right wing learned how to doctor discourse so that "moderates" in fact became "conservatives". Let's take an obvious numerical example.

55% of the American public, when polled, wants to have US forces out of Iraq within 12 months. That's the clear majority position. And yet, what does "moderate" Joe Lieberman want? Why stay the course, though he has recently begun pretending he wanted Rumsfeld out. Having run a "Rumsfeld Must Resign" blog campaign in 2004, I can state for a fact that this was not his position at the time.

How, exactly, does a position far to the right of the majority of Americans, a clear majority, get to be "moderate"? What are they moderating.

The answer of course is that the moderate is averaging the acceptable viewpoints. If "out now" is the farthest "left" position, and "stay the course" from Bush is the farthest right position, then the moderate epistemology demands the answer be some average between the two. Since Bush is in power, it has to be a moderation of is position. Hence "competent stay the course" becomes one moderate position, and "competent stay, but on a new course", becomes the other moderate position. Both it should be noted, end up with Bush getting to do precisely what he wants.

This game has a known process, first, attack the left most solutions to a problem. Thus being in favor of anything less that a militarized US is right out. Exfoliate the spectrum. In part helped by the self-marginalizing tendencies of the left, but the far left is no more out there than the far right is. The second step once the political alphabet runs from K through Y, rather than A to Z or even D through W, is then to persuade the "moderate" that K is really A in disguise. That the moderate must defend the country from "extremism of both kinds" and therefore there must be a compromise between K and Y, and that compromise is to bend over for the right. Thus the compromise has to be somewhere around R. Over time the society tilts far, far, far to the right. Americans are willing to have taxes to reduce the deficit. That hasn't happened. Americans want social security protected, that isn't happening. Americans want health insurance that work – instead they got Medicare Donut. In each case "moderate" opinion was manipulated to become the slow lane to Republicanism.

Because the Republicans had an active core of people who were permitted to scream, riot and spew – while the left was not – exfoliation of the debate was rather easy. Is there a network as far to the left as Fox is to the right? Of course not. Not even close. Is there a member of the House democratic leadership as far to the left as Boehner – who has vowed to privatize Social Security – is to the right? Bernie Sanders isn't as far to the left as the House Republican leadership is to the right. And he's a – shhhhh – Socialist.

Thus whenever someone labels Lieberman as "moderate", or any number of other Democrats who may be left on small issues and sell out on big ones, or like Byrd who vote right on all the small issues and several big ones, but are left on one or two like the war and Presidential power – they are feeding into the game that the average of the American political spectrum is somewhere to the right of right of center.

And this is, of course, the surest sign of ideological blindness, the willingness to do the same thing, in the same way, and expect different results.

In this arena the blogosphere, the netroots, and the rest of the universe of digitally enabled politics isn't "unideological" but, instead, it is more honest about having an ideology, and more willing to demand that people actually draw conclusions, rather than simply average what Fox and CBS say are the outside polls of the debate. They demand that politicians be people who think, rather than media jellyfish that float.

So with all due respect to the combatants so far – you are arguing based on a false premise that there is something called a "moderate" and that "moderate" is an unideological creature who represents "the middle" of public opinion. Objectively speaking, if one compares voting records to polling positions, this isn't the case. Instead "moderate" is a product placement - politicians to the right of the public convince the public that what they want can't be had, and what the "moderate" offers is the best compromise between acceptable points of view. Joe Lieberman is a "moderate" because we are told over and over again that he is one, and because we are told over and over again, that he is "sensible". And people reach for the moderate and sensible candidate – well, until he publicly melts down and starts sending people around to rat fuck a primary opponent. That's not moderate in the placement sense, and it means that Lieberman is being rejected in the primary, not by leftish activists, but by the majority of primary voters, and increasingly by the majority of residents of the state of Connecticut.

The correct question is where does the "netroots"/blogosphere/digitally enable politics stand in relation to the country on issues, and whether the ideology the present is more able to govern, and more able to come to sound conclusions than the old "moderatist" management of the body politic. This can't be answered at the tale end of a long blog post, but I can say that if the US government were a stock, it would be being dumped- 5 years in the red, ballooning debt, cutting prices on its premium products while trying to squeeze dimes out of its low end, a massively failed Iraq product line, oil guzzling in an environment where people want lower energy costs – if doing things moderately means anything, it seems to mean "moderately bad".

And again, with 70% of the country saying we are on the "wrong track", in what world does "moderate" mean supporting an unpopular war, with an unpopular president, and bankrupt borrow and squander economic policies?