Part 2 of 2
I just made myself a cup of coffee, French press, picked one up at an estate sale for a dollar. The instructions I found online were specific: let the grounds steep in the hot water for exactly four minutes. Any longer and too much bitterness seeps out, and you’ve ruined what should have been a good cup.
The power of Collectivism works the same way.
A measured amount, applied for a limited time, produces something genuinely useful. Roads, courts, national defense, a basic safety net — these are the coffee. The grounds do their job and get filtered out. But leave the grounds in too long and the bitterness takes over. What was supposed to enhance your life poisons it instead. And the longer you wait to pull the grounds, the worse it gets.
Lord Acton is credited with the observation that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. I have a theological quibble with the absolute end of that claim. The only being with absolute power is God, and He’s not corrupt in the least. But the gradient is right. The more power any human individual or institution accumulates, the more corrupt they become. Not because they’re uniquely evil. Because they’re human, and concentrated power warps human judgment the way gravity warps light. It doesn’t require malice. It just requires mass.
This is the mechanism that should terrify Moderate Democrats. Not because Individualists are coming to take your programs away. Because the Extreme Collectivists on your own side are going to make those programs indefensible.
How the Extreme Devours the Moderate
Extreme Collectivism doesn’t just threaten Moderate Democrats politically. It destroys the case for moderate Collectivism.
Consider public education. The moderate Collectivist argument for public schools is straightforward and strong: every child deserves access to quality education regardless of their parents’ income. That’s a defensible position. You can make that argument to an Individualist and get a respectful hearing, even if some might disagree.
But when public education becomes a vehicle for ideological programming; when parents discover that the school system is teaching contested social theories as settled fact, hiding information about their children’s mental health decisions, and treating parental objection as evidence of bigotry; the moderate argument collapses. Not because the original principle was wrong, but because the institution was captured by people who see education as a tool for social transformation rather than a service for students.
The Extreme Left didn’t strengthen public education. It made public education politically radioactive. The homeschooling movement and the push for school choice didn’t grow because Individualists suddenly got more persuasive. They grew because parents watched the institutions their tax dollars funded turn hostile to their values. The extremists handed the Individualists their best argument on a silver platter.
The same pattern repeats everywhere.
Immigration? The moderate case for humane immigration policy is reasonable. But when the Far Left turned “humane” into “effectively open borders”, with sanctuary cities actively obstructing federal enforcement, with no meaningful vetting, with social services strained past capacity, the political backlash didn’t just hit the extremists. It hit anyone arguing for immigration reform at all. The moderate position got buried under the extreme one because they shared a Handle.
Healthcare? The moderate case for accessible healthcare has broad public support. But when it gets bundled with mandates that force religious organizations to fund procedures they consider immoral, or when “access” becomes code for government-run systems that eliminate private alternatives, the coalition fractures. Moderate voters who wanted better insurance options suddenly find themselves defending single-payer socialism because their party leadership moved the goalposts while they weren’t looking.
Every time the Extreme Left captures a moderate institution or policy and pushes it past the point of public tolerance, the result is the same. The backlash doesn’t surgically remove the extreme position. It takes the moderate position with it. The bitter grounds don’t just ruin themselves. They ruin the whole cup.
The Slope You’re Standing On
Moderate Democrats reside at the edge of a very slippery slope. And they spend their time staring uphill.
The people further up the slope, the Individualists, the Libertarians, the populist (MAGA) Right, are visible, loud, and easy to identify as opponents. They hold different values. They use different language. They vote for different candidates. They make convenient enemies.
The people further down the slope are harder to see as a threat because they share your vocabulary. They talk about justice, equity, compassion, and community. They use the same Handle you do. They sit in the same party meetings and vote in the same primaries.
But they’re pulling you downhill. And the further down the slope you go, the faster the descent becomes, because Collectivism’s gravitational pull accelerates as power concentrates. Each concession to the extreme makes the next concession easier and the resistance harder.
Orwell saw this in the 1930s and 40s. The moderate socialists who made excuses for Stalin because he was “on their side” found themselves defending gulags by increments. Not because they were evil, but because each step felt small and the alternative, breaking with their own tribe, felt unthinkable.
The slope is steeper than you think. And you’re closer to the edge than you admit.
What Orwell Would Tell You
If Orwell were writing today, I think his advice to Moderate Democrats would sound something like this:
Your principles are not your party. If the party abandons the principles, you don’t follow the party. You fight for the principles, even if that means fighting your own side. Especially if it means that.
The people who call you traitors for dissenting are telling you something important about themselves. They’re telling you they value compliance over conviction. That’s a Collectivist instinct, and it should worry you more than anything the other party is doing.
The French press works because someone pours the coffee out at the right time. Leave the grounds in and the whole thing goes bitter. Your job, the Moderate Democrat’s job, is to be the hand on the plunger. To know when collective power has done its useful work and needs to be filtered out before it ruins everything.
That’s not a betrayal of your values. That’s the only way to save them.