There is a lot of talk about the way the Republicans have simplified arguments down to easily accepted premises.  This work goes back to finding the right words, the very successful approach of Luntz and Gingrich. But it's not really about the right words, it's about concepts, possibly false in their case, but concepts nonetheless, concepts which are simple. And there is much handwringing on the left over what is really just an ancient philosophical debate... are our ideals complex because they have to be? would simplification be "simple minded"?  Well, the history of knowledge has a lot to say on simplification, how simplification is achieved, and its value.

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I'm going to use (possibly to the point of abuse) a metaphor from science, but admittedly when science was still called Natural Philosophy, for science is a specialization of philosophy... a certain type of philosophy about something that happened to be reducible... that is, possible to simplify.

What is complexity?  Complexity is the need for many rules, and for those rules to have many parts in order to explain something.  In the history of philosophy, things seem simple once you have the right coordinate system.  If you find the right basic qualities of something such that one quality is distinct from the other, you will probably simplify your understanding, while increasing it's ability to accurately comprehend the subject matter.

So for example, the motion of planets bore some special explanation.  Every night, as every culture had noticed on its own, the stars travel across the sky in an arc.  Each star takes a path that does not intersect the others, and each star was always the same distance from and in the same relation with the other stars.  Planets also take the same arc through the sky at night, and look like bright stars.  

But they do not have the same relation to the stars, they move in the sky from night to night.  "Planet" comes from the reek word for "wanderer".  

And this is where my metaphor needs direct explaining, the key to simplification is first to understand the basic facts, but then, in a case like this, where the basic facts and measurements are available, the job of simplification becomes one of finding the right coordinate system.

Finding a coordinate system, either in a conceptual space such as political philosophy, or in a physical system like the solar system, involves finding the right reference points, the right origin.  From this origin you will state all your measurements.  And a great deal of apparent simplicity rests on your choice of origin system.  The nature of the coordinate system is also important, but I'll ignore that because in my example, that was agreed upon and all that was left to make sense of the data was choice of the proper origin.

By the time of the Ptolemy much was agreed upon, that we were in a three dimensional space, and this included the heavens, that the planets were not stars but bodies in our solar system, that these things were not just traveling across the sky but were traveling in space.  But to explain their motion (which meant the ability to predict it) he chose as his origin point, the Earth.  

It made sense, the Earth was Ptolemy's preferred point of origin... he lived there, it didn't even seem to move, though Ptolemy probably understood it might in fact move.  To support this theory the planets could not move in mere arcs or circles or even ellipses, but had to be moving in circles within circles, wheels within wheels, to explain their backward motions in the sky.  And his system was so accurate it lasted for 1400 years.

But it was complicated.  By moving the origin to the Sun, of course, all was simplified, the planets moved in near circles around the Sun, not around points moving around points moving around points moving around the Earth.

I assume you all know this story, but I lay it out slowly so you have it in mind.  The complexity of liberalism is in exactly the state Ptolemy's theory was in.  We are expressing our philosophy, which is the philosophical spirit itself, relativism, in terms of their reference points.  We express it in a dogmatic coordinate system.  In such a system one has to say things like "well, I voted for AND against it!"  HAHAHA!  Epicycles, good one!  Suuure.

We've done a good job with our epicyclic Ptolemean explanation, we really can calculate good policy using it, but it will forever seem complex until we adopt the coordinate system natural to it.  That coordinate system is relativity.  Physical, social, moral, you name it, relativity wins.  Even WE might want the coordinate system firmly rooted in the mundane, on mundus... the world, our Earth.  Even we tend to want that.  But it really is better located in the Sun, and in relativity.

We need this other coordinate system and its origin point(s) because it is with respect to that system that 1400 years of measurements should be taken, the coordinate system as reference gets drummed into the analysis itself, reinforcing itself.  By measuring celestial motion with respect to the sun, not only do predictions become better, but it becomes obvious the Sun really is the center of the solar system even though one can place their origin points wherever they like... for example, at the center of the Galaxy, or back at the center of the Earth, or perhaps wherever your cat is.  

If the origin can be placed anywhere, then which is "true"...? well, I used the word "natural" because it's a matter of finding where the simplicity lies.  The natural origin to use depends on the problem.  It is located wherever the problem is made most simple.

For progressive politics, that center is relativism, which I believe is related to the philsophical spirit in general.  To explain our philosophy in simple terms requires understanding, embracing, and explaining: relativism.