Radical Centrist Quotes from Wikiquote
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More than two centuries ago, Benjamin Franklin wanted us to invent a uniquely
American politics that served ordinary people by creatively borrowing from all
points of view. It's not too late for us to listen to him.
* Mark Satin<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mark_Satin>, in Radical Middle:
The Politics We Need Now (2004), p. x
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When we Americans disagree over issues like abortion or gun control, typically
we'll "battle it out" until one side "wins." But one side rarely "wins" for
long. The losing side always seems to come back with reinforcements, ready for
more. For most Americans, this constant balling is the very essence of
politics. But more and more of us are beginning to suspect that the batting,
itself, is part and parcel of what we need to overcome. ... The idea here is
not so much to come up with a better political platform as it is to come up
with a better political discourse ... one that forces all "sides" to listen to
and learn from each other. Out of this new discourse, a better political
platform may emerge.
* Mark Satin<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mark_Satin>, in New Options for
America: The Second American Experiment Has Begun (1991), p. 218
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* Philosophically as well as politically,
Capek<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Karel_%C4%8Capek> was a man of the center,
but not in the sense used by hostile critics. The center he was aiming for was
not a lukewarm middle ground between extremes. It was a radical center,
radical<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Radical> in the original sense of the
word: at the root of things. Capek rejected
collectivism<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Collectivism> of any type, but was
just as opposed to selfish<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Selfish>
individualism<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Individualism>. He was a passionate
democrat<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Democracy> and a
pluralist<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Pluralist>. He was often called a
relativist<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Relativist> because he disliked single
vision and preferred to look at everything from many sides … Yet Capek did not
believe that truth is relative nor that everyone his or her own truth. Capek is
also often described as a pragmatist<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Pragmatist>.
But in his belief in the reality of objective truth, he departed from both
relativism and from pragmatist thought.
* Peter Kussi<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Kussi>, in his
Introduction to Toward the Radical Center: A Karel Čapek Reader (1990), p. 10
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We use the word radical – in keeping with its Latin derivation from "radix," or
"root" – to emphasize that we are interested not in tinkering at the margin of
our inherited public, private, and communal institutions but rather in
promoting, when necessary, a wholesale revamping of their component parts.
* Ted Halstead<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Halstead> and Michael
Lind<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Lind>, in The Radical Center: The
Future of American Politics (2001), p. 16
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We call our new political program the Radical Center. We chose this name to
differentiate our principles and policies from those of the Democratic Left and
the Republican Right. To us, it seems obvious that the familiar varieties of
liberalism and conservatism ... are largely irrelevant in the fundamentally
different environment of first half of the twenty-first century. "Centrism"
itself has become something of a shallow mantra in recent American politics. It
is usually involved in a tactical effort to bridge the differences between the
existing Left and Right – yielding a "Squishy Center" that lies between Left
and Right, rather than a "Radical Center."
* Ted Halstead<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Halstead> and Michael
Lind<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Lind>, in The Radical Center: The
Future of American Politics (2001), pp. 15–16
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The phrase "the radical center" was used to describe disaffected white
working-class Democrats by the sociologist Donald I Wallace in The Radical
Center: Middle Americans and the Politics of Alienation ... . Replying to Joe
Klein<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Klein>'s Newsweek cover story "Stalking
the Radical Middle," September 25, 1995, John
Judis<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Judis> distinguished between the
political views of the working-class "radical middle" or "radical center," and
the affluent "sensible center" ... we are not using the term Radical Center in
this narrow sense, which changes in partisanship and demography already may
have rendered obsolete. Rather, we use the term to describe a public philosophy
distinct from liberalism<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Liberalism> and
conservatism<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Conservatism> in the forms in which
they have been familiar for the past generation.
* Ted Halstead<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Halstead> and Michael
Lind<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Lind>, in The Radical Center : The
Future of American Politics (2002), p. 230
* The author referred to in the first sentence is Donald I. Warren, not
"Donald I. Wallace" as stated by the authors in both their original edition
from 2001 and the first paperback edition from 2002, which is cited here
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