Who's Overton? And what's this about his "window"?

Authoritarian arguments about what is and isn't fit for public debate are actually just efforts to introduce superficial preference and bias into the discussions.

The concept described as an "Overton window" is wonderfully illuminating but it is in no way proscriptive. In my interpretation, at least, it describes the limits of societal debate by recognizing that, in practical terms, there is an actual boundary beyond which debate may not productively be engaged. It likewise demonstrates that the size, shape and perspective of that "window" is in no way a fixed or settled affair. It is better defined simply as a pragmatic, ever-evolving description of how things actually work.

For instance, it accomplishes little to argue for guillotines as the solution to wealth disparity because there's no reasonable chance we're going to adopt them. You have the right to advance a satirical argument that we ought to "eat the rich" and redistribute their ill-gotten gains, but Overton reminds us that it ain't gonna happen. It's too far outside the Window to stand a chance.

But when Elizabeth Warren advocates for a wealth tax to make dramatic changes in how we tax billionaires, the debate moves back inside the window. It's now a legitimate subject for debate (and, in my mind, a compelling one).

Think back to the arguments over slavery in this country. At that time, the idea of making other human beings your property was well within the Overton Window; indeed, that was the conventional consensus for much of human history.

Examined from today's perspective, the struggle to abolish slavery in the country offers a prime example of what it takes to change the Window, to bring formerly verboten topics into the public debate. Voices like abolitionist editor William Lloyd Garrison offer a reminder of what a fierce, protracted struggle it was to get people to give up owning and abusing other people as standard practice:

"I am aware that many object to the severity of my language; but is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I do not wish to think, or speak, or write, with moderation. No! no! Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hand of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen;—but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present. I am in earnest—I will not equivocate—I will not excuse—I will not retreat a single inch—AND I WILL BE HEARD…”

By these lights, today’s debate about “woke” and “cancel culture” are easily recognized as the piddling distractions they so clearly are.