a centrist's view - 3 revised

The model of the spectrum is now in a centrist's view - 4

Just outside the centrist are the left and right wing folk and together make up the broad middle of American politics. They believe that it really is true that two honest people can look at the same situation and come to different conclusions. They try hard to be reasonable and among other things they try not to misrepresent the other participant’s position. The left and right wing folk differ from the centrist in that they are generally predisposed to see things one way or the other. The centrist is either not inclined to do that or (as is my case) finds himself sometimes predisposed toward one side and sometimes the other.

Further out are the partisans of each side. Their objective is to win the argument. They range from those who operate like a lawyer, who is making the best case for his client, to those who make arguments that should be embarrassing to them. For an example consider Jonathan Alter: "When it (Obamacare’s mandate) goes to the Supreme Court it's even crazier because you have these judges, these justices, who they've spent their whole career preaching against judicial activism, legislating from the bench. And they're about to be the biggest hypocrites ever to wear black robes." What he is saying is if a justice claims to be against judicial activism, then that justice can NEVER judge a law to be unconstitutional. That is, there is no legitimate position that opposes judicial activism.

Moving further out you get to the wingnuts of each side who basically appear to not understand the concepts that go into making a discussion, things like evidence, argument, etc. For example, if you produced a Hawaiian birth certificate that listed Obama as a Muslim at birth, I know people who would simultaneously see that as being a) reliable enough to prove that Obama is now a Muslim but b) not reliable enough to prove that he was a natural born citizen.