> > However, Libertarian influence, which was what I was talking about, is far > greater. > Year after year of advocacy has had an impact. To the extent that the > Republican Party > is influenced at leadership levels. This is especially true if you include > devotees of > Ayn Rand in the "Libertarian" mix.
Actually the issue here is that the republican base has shifted to the right, towards fringe groups like libertarians, and pushed out more and more moderates. There hasn't been a shift in the general populace, there has just been a shift in where the GOP party base's tent covers. No offense, but I really don't care enough to get into an in depth conversation about libertarians, objectivists, etc. I wasn't kidding when I said I think it's a waste of time. The phrase "Radical Centrism" has been gaining recognition over the years > since > our group started up in 2004. Senator Warner self-identifies with RC and, > of course, > so do any number of people who are associated one way or another with the > Atlantic > magazine or the New America Foundation. It was actually far more popular in the late 90's and early 00's, and people are using it less and less. Far more people use the term moderate, centrist on it's own, or just plain independent. Don't take my word for it if you don't want to. You can find this out by doing Google keyword searches. Radical Centrist or radical centrism are terms that are used so infrequently that they don't even come up in Google's keyword tracking service, while centrists, moderates and independents do. The terminology is only misunderstood in your mind because you disagree with it. Among political wonks it's already understood as essentially the sort of center-left take that New America and Third Way take. To them it's you that is misusing the word - trying to redefine it, and they're right, that's exactly what you're trying to do. It's rare for that to work, but it's happened before. There was a time when the term progressive meant a moderate democrat, but it got taken by the far left. They had a lot more people in their ranks though, while thats not the case here. To redefine this to what you're saying, you'd have to swell your ranks exponentially over and over, and also fight off the small but finally growing army of people like me who are working to promote centrist ideas and who's work would be damaged if you managed to redefine how that word was commonly seen. You don't seem to have been listening to what I've said... I think ideology is an impediment to political evolution. I don't care how you define radical centrism on your website, because the idea of putting together an ideology is something I'm very much against. I joined this group to discuss issues of the day with roughly centrist people, not to help you develop an ideology that I think would be an impediment to the evolution of our country and the center of the political spectrum in our country if it were to be adopted widely. I've written about this fairly extensively over the last few years... one of the better examples of this being 'Centrists Don't Buy Into Ideology Hoax<http://riseofthecenter.com/2010/08/25/centrists-dont-buy-into-ideology-hoax-2/>', from way back last summer. Here is a sample, and this applies just as much to your ideology as it does any other: We don’t need an ideology for the center… we’ve come to our conclusions > just fine without any damn political dogma telling us how we should arrive > at our political beliefs, thank you very much. Many of us shrink from the > two major parties largly because of this, as we saw that old political > dogma wasn’t giving us workable answers to the problems of today. I don’t need an ideology to think that I don’t want to pass on such an > insane level of debt to any children I may have. I don’t need an ideology > to think that we should work on developing ways to generate the energy we > need for our economy to keep churning, without destroying out environment. > Nor do I need an ideology to look at that situation and come to the > conclusion that a tax on carbon, or significant raises in the gas tax (or > any regressive tax) makes any sense. I don’t need an ideology to think that > my gay friends should be able to visit their long time lover on their death > bed, even if their family doesn’t want them to, and that they should be > able to get some kind of legal status for their relationship, whether you > call it marriage or something else. I’ve come to these conclusions by looking at them, thinking about them, > talking to others about them, and coming to my own conclusions. Most don’t > put a fraction of the amount of time I have, but many people, a majority on > nearly every issue, agree with my stances nonetheless. These issues may be > complex, but often the underlying issues are not. Regular people don’t need to know the details of trade agreements with > certain countries to know that we screw ourselves over by letting foreign > goods come into our ports relatively unhindered. Ross Perot was right, > opening our border to Mexico was a massive mistake. People got that then, > with his silly but effective charts, and they get it now, as our trade > deficit continues to mirror Perot’s “giant sucking sound”. *The center does not need an ideology, what we need is to collectively > fight against the ideological hoax… this insane idea that somehow, because > we haven’t come to our conclusions through ideological dogma, that our > positions are somehow less relevant, strong or are somehow wishy washy. On > the contrary, it makes much more sense to come to your conclusions by > looking at each issue.* Its garbage, and its time we started working on fighting back against this > hoax. -- 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
