Jonathan Haidt's 2012 book, The Righteous Mind, is essential reading for Radical Centrists. In it, Haidt makes the point that the human mind resembles nothing so much as an elephant and a mahout -a rider, more or less a jockey- who guides the animal along some chosen path. Yet the elephant is not always compliant and may take a good deal of coaxing to get it to go where you want it to. The elephant also requires feeding, rewards, and concern for its safety. Essentially, the mind is more than 90% emotions, instincts, conditioning, and all the rest, and less than 10% rationality. You simply cannot get anywhere unless you understand this elementary fact. We are creatures of reason only to an extent. Logical functions are like the mahout, small, indeed, compared to the elephant. That is, we need to know our inner elephant. Radical Centrist philosophy starts with this principle, or it should; not everyone who self identifies with RC has internalized this perspective. Yet it cannot be dispensed with. This brings up the question of the best terminology to use. Radical Centrism is primarily a political philosophy. However, at the personal level politics may be beside the point, or secondary. In this case we are discussing psychology more then anything else. What, then, should this be called? One idea is to use the term "evaluationism" as most descriptive. The purpose of our thinking is to evaluate our personal reality, to genuinely understand what it is, what "makes us tick," and what our choices really consist of. The demand is for objectivity, but knowing full well that anyone can only be a rider on his or her private elephant; rational self interest, the standard of judgement for just about all other philosophies, is simply wrong. Rational self interest weighs about 100 pounds; the elephant weighs maybe 3 or 4 tons. What does the elephant consist of? Exactly what the Surrealists said it does. Inner horrors, embarrassing secrets, private desires, fantasies of many kinds, phobias, obsessions, but also, at least here and there, some really good stuff that makes like worthwhile. In so many words, to become a Radical Centrist learn advertising, educational theory, communications, psychology and as much social psychology as you can absorb, and something of anthropology. Not necessarily by means of formal schooling, but learn these things nonetheless. Which is asking a lot but this is the best thing to do, or as much as you can accomplish in real life. There is no substitute for a solid base of hard knowledge. No-one can do it all, but learn as much as you can. This will give you personal satisfaction and, in the process, make you valuable to others with whom you can then exchange information and insights to help everyone reach their objectives. You should also know as much economics as you have time for, computers, sociology, political science, science, history, and Comparative Religion. Do you want to be good at this, or not? And do not, above all, neglect the arts. It simply is false that culture is a luxury that we can be dismissive toward because everything else matters far more. Everything else matters less -because not only are we creatures of the unconscious, we are creatures of culture. Take this in several ways, but start with what is called "popular culture." This means the songs you listen to and what they do to your mind, to the values you hold dear, to your perceptions, and to your tastes. It means the TV shows you watch, the books you read, the movies you see, the kinds of sports that turn you on, your favorite magazines, museums you visit, where you go on vacations, your hobbies, restaurants you frequent, CDs you buy, games you play, websites you visit, choices in outdoor recreation, and still more. Radical Centrism, especially to the extent it is based on evaluationism, assumes another core principle. This comes directly from the Bible and is found in 1 Corinthians 6: 12 and reads: " 'I am free to do anything,' you say. Yes, but not everything is for my good." This is absolutely foundational to everything about philosophy as Radical Centrists understand the concept. Unless something is good for you, don't do it- but if it is good for you, let nothing stop you from doing it. How can you know if something is truly in your best interests? The Bible provides additional guidance, the following quote found in Philippians 4: 8. "And now, my friends, all that is true, all that is noble, all that is just and pure, all that is lovable and gracious, whatever is excellent and admirable, fill all your thoughts with these things." Why fill your thoughts with anything else? This does not -not at all- rule out honest examination of your innermost problems since those problems are truths you need to confront. What it does say, however, is don't go looking for trouble, don't wallow in pessimism, don't decide to do something that you have serious doubts will do you any good. And don't make stupid choices. To put this in the crudest terms possible so that the idea is communicated effectively, in what way is sex that involves an asshole filled with fecal matter anything but mentally sick? In what way is mutual masturbation a psychologically healthy alternative to loving sexual intercourse? In what way is anything at all about homosexuality lovable and gracious, or excellent and admirable? In what way is anything at all about homosexuality something other than emotionally retarded and sick? There is no "civil rights" case to be made about homosexuality, the issue is psychological health vs. mental illness. But it isn't only the Bible that teaches these kinds of truths. You can find them in great literature, in the faith traditions of Buddhism and Hinduism, in the visual arts, and in classics of philosophy itself, from Aquinas to Kant, from Kierkegaard to Kaufmann. Indeed, there is a serious caution to make about the Bible, namely, our propensity to read it doctrinally, not objectively. We are taught to read the text the way that a church or synagogue wants you to read it, not how the authors of scripture intended. But to be able to do that, you need to know the historical context in which the various books of the Bible were written. Yet this is impossible to do when a doctrine insists that the only way to interpret the Bible is by reference to other passages in the book and to studiously ignore the testimony of archaeology, or Roman history, or Jewish history, or Persian history, or cross cultural studies of contemporary religions outside of monotheism, or the subject of religious mythology. To return momentarily to the theme of bad books, reference might be made to the 1998 Oxford History of the Biblical World, supposedly the last word at the time on the subject of objective Bible scholarship. Yet the volume includes an essay by Leonard Greenspoon, "Between Alexandria and Antioch, Jews and Judaism in the Hellenistic Period." My note to myself in my copy of the book says this about Greenspoon: "Simpleton / not a scholar." There is no better way to characterize his dubious contribution to the Oxford anthology. It is pure religious pabulum, verbatim understanding of Bible texts, an unquestioning approach to the historicity of the Biblical accounts of ancient events, and something with vague resemblance to scholarship that is really is a veneer over an Orthodox Jewish interpretation of the Bible. Which is to say, with apologies to respectable Evangelical scholars, it isn't only Evangelicals who produce simple-minded literalistic readings of the Judeo-Christian scriptures. There are also blinders we put upon ourselves when we assume, without thinking about this at all, that commonplace theological understanding is the only possible way to approach the Bible or other religious texts. To be sure, the points being made here should not be taken as disparagement of faith institutions or even, in most cases, of religious values. People "cling to their religion" for very good reasons. A church community can be -as most assuredly are- a safe haven from the storms of life. A church gives people reassurance and hope. A church can provide parents a secure social environment to help raise a family, to give kids good examples to follow in their lives, and to focus our minds on making the most of our lives and avoid paths of self destruction. The problem is that any number of beliefs that Christians may have are open to question. For example, when a tornado destroys a town in the Midwest is that an "act of God"? Why does anyone ever say any such thing? If any supernatural agency is involved it makes far better sense to say that it is an act of Satan, the destruction is evil in every way, it is unjust, cruel, and ugly. Similarly, are life's tragedies, like a debilitating illness that strikes a loved one, somehow caused by the Almighty? Does God "teach us a lesson" by causing someone to suffer terrible pain or end up crippled or disfigured? Blaming God, when you think about it, is total nonsense. This is the argument in Rabbi Harold S. Kushner's 1981 best seller, When Bad Things Happen to Good People. The trouble is that conventional theology insists that God is omnipotent -that is, all powerful. But is this what the Bible says? Actually, in places this does seem to be the best interpretation of the text. But in other places different viewpoints are expressed. However, if you insist on the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy you cannot possibly admit any such thing. The default view is that we should accept the worst case interpretation and dismiss what is more optimistic or, from a scholarly perspective, more realistic. Take Ecclesiastes 4: 1-3 as an example- "Again I saw all the oppressions that are practiced under the sun, and behold, the tears of the oppressed, and they had no one to comfort them! On the side of their oppressors there was power, and there was no one to comfort them. And I thought the dead who are already dead more fortunate than the living who are still alive; but better than both is he who has not yet been, and has not seen the evil deeds that are done under the sun." This does not sound like an omnipotent God to me. It sounds much more like a deity that has limitations. But, then, the Bible is explicit that this is the case. Certainly this is true if theology about Satan has any validity. By definition Satan has powers of his own, malignant powers but powers nonetheless. Obviously God is not all powerful. And you simply cannot iron out the contradiction between the doctrine and the Bible -all the while as you are convinced that the doctrine expresses iron-clad truth about the Bible. You are in a conceptual trap. Kushner goes further, in citing Proverbs 12: 21- "No ills befall the righteous, but the wicked are filled with trouble." This is total malarkey. It also contradicts what Koheleth said in Ecclesiastes. And it is false to the experience of every thinking man or woman. Sometimes the unjust prosper, sometimes the virtuous suffer, and sometimes the balance is horribly skewed in favor of evil. Who deserved the Holocaust during WWII? Did the righteous escape extreme cruelty and death? The notion that you will prosper in this life if you simply are virtuous is ludicrous. The best anyone can say is that righteousness may increase the likelihood that you will succeed, the way that many people disregard the theology of Jehovah's Witnesses and hire them as workmen or tradesmen or professional women -they can be trusted, they are honest, they work hard. But that didn't stop the Nazis from killing Jehovah's Witnesses, also. There is another problem with the "virtue always triumphs" maxim: This may result in what is known as "blaming the victim" mentality. "If you are so smart why aren't you rich?" can translate as "if you are so virtuous why aren't you successful?" Therefore, if someone is unsuccessful the tendency may be to impute evil to him or her. "He got what he deserved," in other words, when maybe he was cheated, lied to, swindled, taken unfair advantage of, or otherwise treated unfairly. Maybe he didn't stand a chance in the marketplace because of nepotism, all the money going to scions of wealthy business people, or to other family members, shutting out perfectly good and deserving people. Rabbi Kushner's solution to the problem of injustice in the world, and to the problem of unfair suffering, was to reconceptualize God. He did so while at the same time reaffirming the essential message of the Bible, but not accepting any interpretation of the book that defines God according to special interests -of denominations, of classes of clergy, of religious publishing houses, or TV evangelists. God is limited; God cannot do all of the good in the world that "he" might like to do. God may well be omniscient -all knowing- but he simply isn't omnipotent. That is impossible, we might add, as long as the Devil is around, as long as there are forces for evil in the world. This doesn't mean that God isn't good, it means that God isn't what we may wish he was and ascribe to him, total power over everything in existence. Sometimes, even in the face of the worst of evils, like the Holocaust of the Jews under Nazi domination, or the fate of Hindus and Buddhists under Muslim denomination in India's history, God simply lacks the power to prevent human tragedy. Hence, said Rabbi Kushner, there are lessons for Jews to learn from Christians. In the New Testament there is the example of Jesus, believed by Christians to incarnate God on Earth. God, so understood, can himself suffer and die -totally unjustly. In sum, we need to think of God as a being with limits, a being who helps, who is worthy of devotion, but who cannot do everything. And this solves the problem of suffering -by admitting that it may be up to us as individuals, maybe as communities, to confront evil in any ways open to us, not because God doesn't care, or somehow is sadistic, but because, as powerful as he may be, his power only goes so far. The rest is up to us. This attitude is also grown up, it takes responsibility, it is realistic and does not make impossible demands. As a footnote to this discussion, we might add that the Zoroastrians also can provide wisdom for such matters. For instance, as they see things, their's is not the only "way to Heaven." There are other ways. But the Zoroastrian way is the best way. This relegates to nothingness all claims by others to having the "only way" -because that is pretension based on megalomania. And even more to the point, the graciousness of the Zoroastrian view is evidence of its goodness. One other thing: About some forms of evil the Zoroastrians are realistic in a manner you simply do not find elsewhere. Why do horseflys exist or malaria-causing mosquitos or rapacious predators like sharks? Most other spiritual traditions, including Deep Ecology, take the view that such creatures exist for some divine purpose. The evil that they do ultimately causes offsetting good down the line. To which the Zoroastrians say "rubbish." That isn't true at all. We are cursed with rats and disease- causing bacteria and cockroaches because Satan has created these evil beings; they literally are the work of the Devil. There is no excuse for them, and to the extent possible for us, we should exterminate them. I concur completely. All of which says that there are ways to restructure your mind so that it can help you in innumerable practical ways in real life. But you need to rid yourself of shibboleths and false doctrines and unproductive ways of thinking. And you need to grasp the fact that much, indeed, about the "real world," is illusion. Day in and day out someone is trying to deceive you. That is the cold sober truth and you had better deal with it. What is being fed to you? You need to find out -for yourself. What is being fed to you from the mass media, from government, from entertainers, from opinion leaders, and from often not well informed friends -or colleagues at work? And it certainly is not only religious people who may feed you inferior mental cuisine, it may be Atheists who have their own characteristic limitations. Again, speaking personally, I have an appreciation of thoughtful Atheist criticisms of religion and of many other topics. For instance, while he has some serious voids in knowledge, it is difficult to do better by way of a comprehensive critique of religion that Sam Harris' 2004 book, The End of Faith. Its just that some of the worst he can throw at you is dealt with to telling effect in Alister McGrath's also 2004 volume, The Twilight of Atheism. Atheists are fooling themselves if they believe that all problems can be solved by means of the light of reason or common sense. That outlook may have been all that could have been expected in the 18th century but anyone who is ignorant of the basics of psychology, starting with Freudian psychology, is whistling in the dark, ignorant of what is most fundamental about human consciousness. "Culture" often is taken to refer to elite culture more than anything else. This means classical music, symphonies, oratorios, et al, and it means paintings by the masters, it means Shakespeare and Goethe, the poetry of Dryden, the novels of Stendahl and Dostoevsky (whom the Surrealists did much to popularize), ancient Greek sculpture, and medieval tapestry. You can add to this list at will and include moderns as well, writers like Hemingway and Nabokov, 20th century cantatas by Prokofiev and Orff, the art of Chagall, the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright, and such things as high couture fashion design and film noir. But you still may be fed things that do you no good. This is made abundantly clear in a 1999 book by Frances Stoner Saunders, The Cultural Cold War, the CIA and the World of Arts and Letters. The text is a revelation in describing how the Central Intelligence Agency bankrolled a great many high culture creations, especially in the era of the 1950s and 1960s, although this continued for some years afterward. The gist of the matter is that it is utterly naive to take the view that many modern-era high culture creations that are acknowledged as good are really good at all, which you may have known viscerally for years now, but because "your betters" said otherwise you doubted your own feelings. However, there are answers to such questions as "why is so much contemporary Classical music utter garbage?" A large part of the answer can be found in exactly what the CIA wanted funded during the USA / USSR conflict of the past. To be sure, the CIA did not make arbitrary choices, its people listened to cultural taste makers, for example the Rockefellers, but when all is said the millions that were lavished on atonalist composers, etc, and on the darlings of the New York glitterati, homosexual 'artists,' made a huge difference in shaping the worthless mess that is most of Classical music in the 21st century. Not that those who believe in the wonders of the market, in laissez faire, can begin to understand the obvious. But the market may not mean a dammed thing when hundreds of millions of dollars floated utterly sick art for the sake of spoiling things for the Soviet Union by 'stealing' many avant garde artists away from the Communists and making them celebrities in the West. All of which hopelessly distorted the marketplace of ideas for generations. All the while as free market worshippers told us repeatedly that talent will rise to the top and the marketplace will weed out all the bad things and you don't need underwriting because money isn't as important as artistic skill. Of course, funding may be unavailable for even the best projects. Maybe, despite appearances, money simply isn't there, or it is being used for other perfectly sound purposes. Or the reason may be that a foundation or potential benefactor has priorities you have no knowledge about. Or maybe your "track record" is unremarkable and someone may not have confidence in you, or, for that matter, he may have concerns about your priorities. In that case, while it may be unfair, or stupidity on someone's part, you proceed anyway, as best you can, with whatever resources can be scraped together. There may be no other way. This increases your odds of failure, there isn't any question that undercapitalized projects have two strikes against them from the beginning, but at least you will learn valuable lessons against the time when you can try again. Complain all you want to, why not? But don't use injustice as an excuse to do nothing. But the entire line of thought that virtue always wins out is pure horse poop. It is ridiculously naive. It rests on ignorance of how the world really works. It is an excuse not to make oneself informed. It is dysfunctional and anything but practical -in the name of practicality itself, of course. And, for all of the idealism that may motivate someone to say such things, it is irresponsible in the extreme. It gives people a false impression of what is really going on and how funding decisions may actually be made and by whom. In this case, some of the most respected institutions in Classical music were involved in the poisoning of serious composition, including not only the New York Philharmonic, but ensembles like the famed Louisville Symphony Orchestra, otherwise respected as a patron of contemporary Classical. There was some recognition of quality work, of course, the orchestra needed to maintain credibility, but hundreds of thousands of dollars annually in the form of commissions was paid to over-rated 'moderns' whom no-one in their right minds would listen to, especially to homosexuals, ultimately to serve the purposes of the CIA in its battle against the Soviets. And everyone "in the know" is supposed to like this kind of garbage music? Radical Centrism says that you need to do the research to make yourself informed. Can you begin the understand why this is insisted on, again and again? What is the alternative? The alternative is being duped -again and again. If you are a political partisan, anyone who remotely approaches being a rock-ribbed Republican or a yellow dog Democrat, matters are even worse. All your news comes from one perspective, one point of view, and in effect you collude in your own self deception, because one thing you can be absolutely sure of is that the major political parties have an interest in not telling you all the facts, an interest in concealing entire classes of facts, and what they do tell you comes with a biased interpretation of facts that serve party purposes before anything else. Yet as a partisan you absorb all of this until it become second nature and you cease to be able to sort out facts from fictions about facts, and just those facts that the party wants you to know. There may well be positions within either political party that are perfectly good, of course. This is not in dispute. The point is that neither party has exclusive rights to good ideas and neither is immune from advocating stupid ideas. Radical Centrist philosophy works with this fact and uses it to your advantage. Which is to say that it is a virtue for Radical Centrists to pick and choose from among the political views of all political parties, selecting the best ideas and disregarding the worst ideas. Speaking personally another time, here are five Left-wing ideas that I have made my own, unreservedly, strongly, viz., radically: Abolition of strip-mining of coal in mountainous terrain. Completely outlawing the practice, treating it as a felony crime. Such strip mining is an outrage, it destroys entire mountains and even mountain ranges for eternity, despoiling the land and ruining the environment. Teaching of evolution in the public schools, along with sociobiology and evolutionary biology. There is no conceivable justification for teaching so-called "young Earth" creationism. Redesigning the economic system so that it becomes impossible for wealth to concentrate at the top among 1% of the population; that kind of system is totally unfair, causes needless hardship, and is immoral. This does not mean confiscatory taxation or redistribution but it does mean structural changes in the system that makes grossly distorted hogging of wealth no longer possible. Exactly how this might be done is an open question but it must be made to happen. Establishment of a working system of clean energy, especially through so-called renewables. This means all research necessary to develop a viable solar industry, viable tidal power resources, wind turbines, and so forth. The caveat is that if one reason why solar energy may be economically problematic is because of cheap labor and hence cheaper prices for solar panels from China or elsewhere, then we must act to protect American businesses until such time as they can compete efficiently in the marketplace. Economic protectionism has its place in any overall system of economics. However, what must be borne in mind is that there necessary will be an extended period of transition between now and a clean energy future. This says that projects like the Keystone pipeline also have their place as do hybrid automobiles until such time as hydrogen or other systems become sufficiently efficient to compete in the market. A nationwide system for making maximum high speed broadband accessible to every American citizen, along with support services for optimizing productive use of computers. This means new emphasis on so-called "desktop" systems so that US citizens have more opportunities to launch start-up businesses, to conduct professional research, to create information-sharing networks, and so forth. Portable devices are useful for various purposes but they have decided limitations and simply are uncompetitive with desktop systems for serious work. Here are five Right-wing ideas that I have also made my own : A Constitutional Amendment that re-criminalizes homosexuality, discrediting the American Psychiatric Association as captive of homosexual interests and therefore unable to make the undeniable case that homosexuality is a full blown pathology, a serious mental illness, that should be eliminated from civilized society. A constitutional Amendment that outlaws Islam within the United States and demands the deportation of all Muslims who do not publicly renounce the criminal and Fascist-in-character religion of Muhammad. Iranians, Arabs, Pakistanis, and others who abandon Islam and become something else, Buddhists or Christians or Zoroastrians, whatever they choose, would be welcome and should be treated like any other immigrant population, but Islam should not be tolerated in any form whatsoever. Phasing out public sector labor unions. No less than Franklin Delano Roosevelt regarded such unions as a violation of the public interest since such workers perform services that are necessary for a viable society. There certainly ought to be safeguards to protect public sector employees from possible abuses and to ensure competitive wage levels, but labor unions as they are presently constituted cannot do any such thing and primarily serve to extort ever higher wages regardless of such things as teacher merit or government ability to pay, and act as obstacles to innovation in education. Immigration reform; no illegal immigration should be tolerated. It should also mean that US borders will be secured even if it takes a mile high fence to do it. However, no current administration can possibly undo the policy failures of past presidents starting with Ronald Reagan. Some consideration should be made for people who have lived law-abiding lives in the United States for many years and who have children born here and who have started lives here. But all illegal immigrants who have criminal records should be deported without argument, all gang members, and all who are infected with contagious diseases that were contacted in their country of origin. Henceforth, no-one should be admitted into the United States illegally and all who try should be incarcerated and upon completion of sentence be expelled from the country in perpetuity. To enforce compliance the border should be militarized. Civil Service reform such that all government employment is conditional on merit and such things as essential language skills, ability to write reports in standard English, knowledge of basic law and US history, and the like. This must also mean advancement based on merit, termination when an employee is incompetent to his or her tasks, and no racial or ethnic preferences in hiring. ----- Any number of other issues could be discussed, such as health care, where my views are strongly supportive of a single-payer system that excludes no-one from medical and dental care; as a condition for licensing, doctors and dentists should agree to provide care at approved Medicare, etc., rates for some percentage of all of their patients. Doctors who so desire should be free to offer other care to patients who wish to pay for specialized services by way of insurance plans or the like. This not only is Left-wing in outlook it goes far beyond what most Democrats have advocated in the past. In other areas my views may lean Right, as with my opposition to abortion. However, on that issue, my views come close to the mainstream of public opinion since there is no reason to outlaw all abortions and it is inexcusable to sacrifice the life of a mother if abortion is the only option to her death or debility. Nor should rape victims be prohibited from receiving abortions, and likewise for victims of incest. But by and large I agree with the principle that abortions should be safe, legal, and RARE. Unfortunately in the past those who used these words presided over a system in which abortion was safe, legal, and rampant. This is inexcusable. Everything possible should be done to minimize abortion. The question is why this set of views about public policy should not be regarded as completely coherent. Each position taken can be argued on empirical and philosophical grounds to good effect, each is based on various -it seems to me- unarguable truths. And there certainly is no reason the believe that the platforms of the major parties are consistent; indeed, they are filled with inconsistencies. Not everyone has the same set of political priorities as I have, of course. For someone else the "top ten important issues" might be different in any number of particulars. What Radical Centrism is, however, is a politics that emphasizes the worth of rational deliberation in choosing which issues mean the most to you and how you decide your positions. You are free to create your own list -with just this one qualification: If you reach different conclusions you had better be prepared to defend them with hard evidence and airtight logical reasons. "This I believe" is not an adequate defense, nor is appeal to tradition, nor "I feel strongly about." You need to make a case just the way an attorney at trail needs to make a case. All of this is Radical Centrism, along with awareness that there is no level playing field in politics. Someone always starts at an advantage, someone else at a disadvantage. And in all cases we are subjected to illusions that are manufactured by special interests or political candidacies or popular culture. Nothing is as it seems, this is an axiom of Radical Centrism. We are lied to repeatedly -by just about everyone it would seem. Actually things are not this bleak, but the point is that you need to be aware that unless you really know your stuff you will be deceived -worse, you will deceive yourself and nurse along a flawed ideology that leads you into self deceptions of many kinds. This will never end unless you abandon your flawed ideology. The world is partly smoke and mirrors, much moreso that anyone wishes was the case, and you need to grow up and accept reality for what it is. The original insight to this effect dates to about 500 BC and was arrived at by Gautama Buddha, but it has innumerable uses in day-to-day life as a working principle. This is because lying is also useful, and you can be certain that someone is always trying to pull a fast one on you. Lying can be person-to-person but it can also take the form of TV commercials, TV news, political speeches, business transactions, and much else. Trust is a wonderful thing but it has to be earned and until it is, be wary, learn to be a good skeptic. This is also part of the philosophy of Radical Centrism. This takes us to James Bond. -- -- 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 --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
[RC] [ RC ] Image and Story # 2
BILROJ via Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community Thu, 22 Oct 2015 16:53:02 -0700
