It is commonly believed that the truth is always in the middle. Given any two views or any two disputants or any two accounts of an event, both sides have some of it right and some of it wrong; therefore, both sides need to move towards the center.

While this may be a good rule of thumb when it comes to human disputes—divorces, litigation, discrepancies between two people’s memories, etc., it is nonsense as a rule. It often happens that one side is simply right and the other simply wrong.

More importantly, it is utter nonsense in the realms of thought and creativity. When it comes to world views, thought systems, and artistic schools, to make compromise a rule would merely be to abandon consistency and rigor.

What would we get if the Platonists and the Nietzscheans compromised with each other? The Materialists and Idealists? The Realists and the Impressionists? In each case, the answer is likely to be total rot. Intellectual or artistic garbage. Compromism is utterly and absolutely false. A perspective or vision should be authentic. And while it may—and must—evolve, it should do so naturally, of its own volition, so to speak, and not under any species of social pressure or political compulsion. In response to previously unconsidered evidence, perspectives, or artistic influences, yes—inevitably. In response to contrary views merely as such, never—on pain of honor and integrity.

The same is true in the realm of political opinion. There is no reason to believe, and every reason to doubt, that the most correct political opinions are centrist. For one thing, what counts as “centrist” shifts from year to year, to say nothing of decades or centuries. And for another, the greatest intellectual clarity of thought seems to inhabit the extremes, not the center. Marxism on the left presents a coherent historical theory with impressive explanatory power and a vision of a superior and equitable economic order. On the opposite extreme on the right exists an equally potent vision of a benevolent and meritocratic social hierarchy that earns respect for its authority by authentic service to the whole and allies itself with the sacred through a sincere worship. The Marxist vision has never yet been realized on any large scale despite numerous attempts; and the legitimate impulses of the far right are all-too-easily appropriated by Fascist tyrants for their own purposes. But the fact that the far right and the far left have been disastrous in political practice does mean that they are wrong in theory. The idea of an airplane could be cogently conceived, but if the right materials were not available, a working airplane could not be built. We can imagine a world in which all available materials were too weak to withstand the pressures of flight. The idea of an airplane would still be legitimate.

But this brings me to my second point. While compromise as method fails in the artistic and intellectual realms, including political opinion, the same is not true of political action, i.e., politics proper. Politics is the work of generating consensus. While artistic and intellectual efforts must strive for authenticity of vision and clarity of expression, political efforts should strive for social results. It might be going too far to say that politics is compromise, but certainly generating consensus fundamentally involves compromise. Much of politics is trading favors and findings ways for opposing interests to get most of what they seek.

There is a tendency to view “extreme views” with suspicion merely because they are extreme—meaning those views that, for a particular issue or set of issues, occupy the edges of the ever-shifting bell curve of current social opinion. At the same time, there is a tendency to distrust politicians who fail to consistently implement a coherent ideology, who flip-flop, or who consort with the enemy. I believe both tendencies stem from a form of category confusion that this essay attempts to correct. Compromise is for politics, not the intellect. Consistency is for the intellect, not politics.