Hello Solomon:
While I admire your fighting spirit I believe you are wrong in your assessment.
The Obama Presidency has jolted the country back to an independent conservative
position, just right of center. I'll take one issue. More people now say they
are pro-life than pro-choice which reflects a slight rightward shift in the
past five years or so. Also, some believe gestational imagery is changing a
lot of people's minds because they can now see how horrible abortion procedures
are and how baby-like fetuses look.
As I mentioned earlier the liberty movement is growing rapidly among youth.
Conservative is still the preferred ideological label according to Gallup - 43%
of Americans the last time I looked. Independent is also growing. Nobody
wants to be called a liberal. If you took the threat of losing social
security and Medicare off the table there would be even more conservatives. A
lot of people vote for democrats on that issue alone.
I also disagree with you about the ideology hoax. An educated person cannot
not have an ideology. It is just a way of saying I'm too cool for those
fundamentalists. As I read your description of beliefs below it is clear to me
that you do have an ideology. You just call it centrism, like Billy does. To
me it seems that you are arguing about what is the best centrist ideology, not
that there is no ideology. You seem quite confident in yours.
I believe there are reasonable and hopeful ideologies that do fall between and
aside the fundamentalisms of how we have envisioned left and right since the
1960's. But we should identify distinct belief systems rather than saying we
are issue by issue. That is too hollow and dishonest.
But, I concur that Billy's philosophy also is not a non-ideological position.
Sorry for the double negatives. Using the word centrist implies that it is
something that it is not. In my opinion, the economic progressivism is a
minority position nationwide. And his social conservatism is farther right
than even most conservatives so that makes it non-centrist.
We are living in interesting times.
Kevin
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', 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
--
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
