Big vs. small government, Blue vs. Red states, the Union vs. the Confederacy: each of these pairings represents different iterations on a recurring theme in the history of American politics. Now, more than ever in recent memory, these competing ideologies are emerging as polar opposites that threaten to drive the US political establishment into a stalemate. For progressives, there is the warranted fear that this deadlock is quickly devolving into a zero-sum game, in which the extreme conservatism of the Right has already won. As I watched the Tea Party-sponsored Republican debate, I was disturbed by the lack of compassion for the disadvantaged touted by several of the candidates, Ron Paul in particular. Bolstered by applause from the audience, …

The theory of incommensurability presents us with the view that when forced to decide between different options, we may lack the ability to objectively compare the values underlying each alternative. Though our ultimate decision may be grounded in a variety of reasons, the fact of our decision is not proof in itself that the values behind our choice are better than those that we left behind. Some principles may rise above others, according to incommensurabilists, but that means only that they have won the battle in praxis, not in ethics. The impossibility of comparison may exist in some cases, but incommensurability fails to justify the ethics behind the ranking of values in policy matters; without compromise, the valuation of equal …