In his December 16th post, KW led me, as he often does, to rethink what I mean by something I have said. In this case the word centrist.
Perhaps I have misled the reader into thinking that I believe that I hold some “centrist position” on every question, the collection of which amounts to a well defined “centrist dogma.” Surely finding such a thing is even less likely than locating a single “left position” or “right position” on every question, because in the latter two cases one has, at least, the positions of the two major political parties that could be used as a base starting point.
I do not believe that there is an organized centrist position.
However, I do believe that there is such a thing as a centrist type person. To make it clear that I am using centrist as a noun and not as an adjective, an ’s has been added to the word centrist in the header.
The fair question then is, what do I mean when I describe myself as a “centrist”? The reason that I began, in the early nineties, to think of myself as an independent or centrist was that I started to notice that all of my liberal friends seemed to think that I was a conservative and all of my conservative friends seemed to think that I was a liberal. It seemed that in almost every discussion I ended up arguing that “the other side has a point, too”.
So this is part one of my effort to say what I mean when I use the word centrist. I will add to it regularly until I get it to look like I want it. Your comments and suggestions are invited.
Sorry Rob, I cannot bring myself to call it the Yellow Armadillo Way.
.
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I look forward to further thoughts on "the centrist's view". If being a centrist means that one is inclined to find the central core of wisdom that exists in the position taken by folks on the left and the right, as Wayne suggests, then being a centrist is only being thoughtful and rational. But beyond that, one who seeks to find the truth that exist, like virtue, in the middle (virtus stat in medio) is bound to be someone who believe that "politics is the art of compromise." Given the general unwillingness to compromise (making the recent "lame duck" session of Congress a nearly golden moment) Wayne is sadly correct in saying that "there is [not] an organized centrist position. We'd better create one soon if we wish to survive as a strong country, nay, even as a species!
ReplyDeleteI am willing to accept the description of my positions as being simply "thoughtful and rational".
ReplyDelete