Hi Solomon, First of all, welcome! I've been following you on Twitter for a while, and am very grateful you decide to join us.
On Dec 2, 2011, at 6:49 AM, Rise of the Center wrote: > I'm going to be a sticker on terms here, which I'm usually not, but this is > an important point. I agree. > It makes zero sense to use the word centrISM. That implies a system of > thought is in place... and there isn't. > This is an entirely different subject, but the branding of 'radical centrism' > is horrible. Most mainstream voters are very turned off by the idea of > anything labeled radical, and one of the appeals of moderate/centrist > politics is that it is the very opposite of radical politics. Actually no. Perhaps by accident, you have hit the nail precisely on the head. If you haven't yet, I encourage you to read the Wikipedia article (of which I wrote the original version a long time ago): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_center_(politics) The important point is that there are two very different strands of centrist thinking. The first -- and arguably the most common -- is what you represent: > That's why the social network for centrist/moderate activism I've been > working on (still in pre-beta, using a primitive design and some major > functionality is still not up) is called Uniters.org - branding is important, > and the center is where our country unites, which you even touched on in your > comment. Calling it radical is a big mistake We call that viewpoing the "sensible center", which is synonymous "moderate". You're right, for people like that anything radical is totally anathema. People in the sensible center what common sense, non-scary solutions that borrow from both the left and right, and compromise where necessary. There is no organized system of thought, merely some shared agreement around *process* and desired outcomes. It tends to skew economically conservative/socially liberal, better educated, and in that sense shares some demographics with Libertarians. Does that describe you pretty well? It doesn't describe us. Those of us at the core of the group (i.e., not DRB and Kevin, our token Libertarians frenemies :-) deliberately embrace the oxymoronic and disturbing term "radical centrism", because it *does* describe the political project we are engaged it. We are *primarily* engaged in developing a radically new system of thought, in order to inspire "radical" reforms (in the sense of "from the roots") in both our theory and practice of government. See our website for details: http://radicalcentrism.org/about/ Unlike sensible centrists, we tends to skew more socially conservative/fiscally liberal, as Kevin has noted. We believe that the competing political philosophies of the last 100 years (or 200, 1000, 6000, depending on who you ask :-) had many useful ideas, but are now fundamentally bankrupt. We want to foster a deep re-thinking of the core concepts underlying our very notions of democracy, capitalism, and civil society. We don't believe any one group has a monopoly on answers (including us) -- but we think we are at least asking the right questions (and most others aren't). > .And as far as the political developments in Britain and France go... they > were heavily infuenced by Anthony Giddens, who either came up with the term > Third Way, or popularized it. They do not call it radical, and have been > quite successful. All three of the biggest parties in Britain have moderated > since the 90's. Yes, we do count the Third Way as one of our sources of inspiration, along with Etzioni's Communitarianism. We appreciate the value of moderation, we just don't want it taken to extremes. :-) > Actually you can fairly call yourself a centrist party and be theocratic if > you happen to be in a country that is steeped in hard core religion. As I > keep saying, centrist doesn't have anything to do with any particular idea, > it just means you are in the center of the political spectrum in the place > you are talking about. In our country being centrist on religion roughly > means you're not anti-religion, but you want a healthy separation of church > and state. Right, that is one of the reasons why those of us here aren't all that interested in "mere centrism." We don't find moderate Islamism (no freedom for women or religion, but they won't cut off hands or sponsor terrorists) terribly attractive. We want to solve the bigger problem -- how to make civil society work properly across cultures on a global scale. > Weird that I never found this place before... I have a daily email of > centrist searches that caught this in it's net a couple weeks back. Interestingly, we've had a flood of new people (like, five, which for us is a flood :) in the last six months. I don't know why. Perhaps because I added a "Forum" link onto the webpage. I need to check my analytics... We are a small group, but long-lived (since at least 2004) and with a surprising intellectual depth. How long have you been at this? > Solomon Kleinsmith > Rise of the Center Even if you don't identify with what we are doing, we'd still love to have you along for the discussion! Have you taken our survey yet? Best, -- Ernie P. Centroids Moderate -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org
