I don't think you understand the point of centrists.
Centrists agree that choices need to be made. Centrists think that some of those choices should go in one direction, some in the other, and most in a direction not presented by either side. Centrists believe in logic, discourse, and evidence to get to choices, over ideology. Centrists believe in looking for solutions which work for everyone when possible. Etc.
Everyone hates centrists, since if you disagree on charters OR abortion OR charters OR race OR police OR .... with someone on the left or on the right, they think you're a horrible person. You'll always disagree on at least one axis.
Charter schools: They work great with proper checks-and-balances. They should be not-for-profits, follow extensive transparency laws, have salary caps, and strong civil rights protections. They should compete with public schools without restrictions beyond that. If public schools go under because of better competitors, more power to them!
Medicine: Works great pure free market. Works great purely nationalized. What we don't want is a complex network of regulations from lobbyists combined with mandatory insurance (whether by government regulation or by practicality). Both the far-right and the far-left solutions would work great! We've landed in a no-man's land in between.
Gun control: It's a reasonable policy, but rule-of-law should prevail. We've got a Constitution for a reason, and we should follow it, even if it feels unreasonable. If we disagree, we should amend it.
Race: The left is correct about most of the problems, and bonkers about most of the solutions. We need to have an open national discourse about changes, and to do that, we need free speech and to get rid of cancel culture. The left's oppression of free speech contributes to the systemic oppression they're trying to eliminate.
... and so on.
You don't need to agree with the above, but they're strong, principled stances, agreeing with neither side.
> "Medicine: Works great pure free market. Works great purely nationalized. What we don't want is a complex network of regulations from lobbyists combined with mandatory insurance (whether by government regulation or by practicality). Both the far-right and the far-left solutions would work great! We've landed in a no-man's land in between."
I don't think the far-right solution ever worked great. ACA is far from perfect, but it is saving lives. But the problem with US health insurance goes far deeper than merely how you pay for it and who gets access to it; the entire system is run in a very non-transparent way in order to maximise profits. The goal of the current system is still profit, not healing people, and that's where it goes wrong.
It's good that you mention mandatory insurance by practicality, because that's really the case: only very rich people can pay medical costs out of pocket; to most people, medical costs are a life or death issue, so it can never be a truly free market. A healthy-in-between system would be private insurance in a strongly regulated system; this works in a lot of countries. It's the lawless free-for-all where it's fine to screw or misinform patients for profit, that doesn't work.
My primary "centrist" issue is probably abortion: in the US the discussion seems to be all-or-nothing: either all abortion is legal or all abortion is banned, no matter what. A sensible compromise would be to allow early term abortions (first trimester miscarriages are extremely common, the embryo is still in an early stage of development), while strongly regulating late term abortions (they're already rare, and are only necessary for extreme medical problems). Abortion as an alternative to contraception can be made unnecessary through better sex ed and better access to contraceptives.
This reads a lot like "My very-conservative positions are centrist."
I don't think you'd find very many people willing to agree those positions are centrist.
Which is fine. Your positions are your positions, and obviously you hold them because you think them to be reasonable. But "centrist?" I don't think so.
You're both applying a wildly subjective label whose meaning nobody can agree on. I happen to think (as a relatively centrist American living on the West Coast) that those opinions are indeed "centrist". They might count as "very conservative" in the part of the country I live in, but in many other parts they would be distinctly "liberal" (another word whose meaning has been utterly scrambled).
In general I think there's a tendency for politically engaged people to put "views I disagree with" in the "other" bin, and everyone defines "extreme" and "center" to reflect their particular idea of what the sane, morally correct opinion is. There were plenty of people on the left who seemed to think Warren (for example) was a centrist neoliberal sellout.
This is exactly it. Every conservative I speak with thinks I'm Joseph Stalin, and every liberal thinks I'm Adolf Hitler. I've stopped talking to people about these things.
What's amazing about it is you can voice disagreement in just one place, and you're either a liberal snowflake or a Trump-supporting racist. It doesn't seem to matter which place you disagree, or whether your disagreement falls on the other side of the political spectrum.
None of this is strong or principled. What's the principle?
* Charter schools: Politicians create charter school setups that don't have proper checks and balances and tend to completely shirk their responsibility to public schools in the process. Your statement isn't some fringe idea. It's just not why charter schools are pushed. If you take a look at what happens with charter schools you'd see why people get divided on them. We aren't presented with a rational system. We're presented with a system that gets hijacked to push religious schools and/or defund public schools without.
* Medicine: "Works great pure free market." - Citation Needed. No one will give us your far left solution.
* Gun control: In case you haven't noticed, we aren't allowed to question it. We aren't even allowed to study it. This game is rigged.
* Race: How does cancel culture play into this? I'm not allowed to find a different Applebees if the manager is a racist? "The left's oppression of free speech" - do tell.
Many poor countries have free market medicine: the number of medical providers is not constrained by a guild system; new drugs and medical procedures are regulated lightly if at all; pricing is completely transparent; patients can choose their standard of care, and there is extensive unbundling (e.g. a surgeon gives you a recommended list of supplies, and you have the option to obtain them yourself in any way you wish); non-emergency procedures must be paid for in cash in advance (which tends to result in prices being reasonable); the very poor rely on charities or an extremely basic state-funded backstop.
Such systems are surprisingly efficient and often seem to work better than the lawyer- and lobbyist-designed mess of American healthcare.
I’m not sure those are centrist positions. On the first one, I disagree with you on the science. On the second, you explicitly pointed put why centrism is bad (and with important qualifications, I sort of agree with the point you were making there). With respect to guns... meh that might be centrist, but it’s not really specific enough to base actual policy and constitutional law on - the history is also much more complex than you imply. With respect to race, I’d suggest you’re painting with an absurdly broad brush that doesn’t reflect the actual ideological spectrum.
In my opinion, trying to be “centrist” is more of an aesthetic choice than actually related to ideology.
What I will give you is that any community where honest discussion of actual, specific issues is impossible is toxic... but in practice I see that critique most often wielded by dishonest provocateurs.
2) Each of those is an essay or two to justify. Of course they're not specific. This isn't a political essay. I'm giving examples -- enough to understand the gist, not the nuance.
3) In modern America, all of these views piss everyone off -- left AND right. If you articulate most of them, you'll get fired WHOEVER your boss is AND uninvited to the family dinner.
That this "critique [is] most often wielded by dishonest provocateurs" is precisely because everyone else is afraid to speak. In a functioning civic society, we'd have many opinions like the ones above, and we'd all discuss them and work towards the best solutions. I've found that the best solution to "dishonest provocateurs" is still to assume the best intentions until shown otherwise.
1. I know, I also don’t think its meaningfully “centrist”.
2. Not sure what your point is here - you originally pointed out why either right or left solutions would be good, but the compromise is bad.
3. I don’t think that’s true - believe it or not it is still possible to discuss actual issues. I certainly do, with people who disagree with me.
So... there are a few positions on which you might be a “moderate”, but I don’t see any argument actually presented for why centrist solutions are preferable to those backed up by an actual ideological goal.
People over-estimate the degree to which our political parties represent an inherently consistent set of policy ideas. For example, social liberalism and being pro-immigration are intertwined in the US. But the socially liberal women prime ministers of Denmark and New Zealand are also anti-immigration. About 1 in 6 Democrats believe abortion should nearly always be illegal. African Americans, who overwhelmingly vote Democrat, have a similar split to Republicans when it comes to same-sex marriage and whether belief in God is a necessary prerequisite to morality.
The political parties are a compromise amongst groups of people with heterodox views. They’re not something that ideologically must be bundled together.
That's probably more true of the Democratic party, which is in fact a coalition of several large and somewhat disparate blocks (in particular, the black vote, which strategically prefers the concentrated vote over the most ideologically representative one --- Ismail White's book on this is pretty interesting). I don't think there are comparable forces in the Republican party --- though there were before the "ideological sort".
Thanks for the book recommendation! Within the Republican Party, there is less in the way of groups with diametrically opposed views. But Republicans also have fairly heterodox positions on individual issues. The party contains nearly everyone that has a broad view of the second amendment, but a third want stricter gun laws. The party contains nearly everyone that wants to overturn Roe but the majority do not. Republicans contain nearly all the super anti-tax people, but half want to raise taxes on those making above $10 million. About half of republicans support same sex marriage (while 1:6 Democrats oppose it).
In terms of larger ideology, a schism is brewing between social conservatives, nationalists, and pro-business conservatives, with Trumpism versus anti-Trumpism cutting across all those groups. (As you recall, while Republicans supported him, most wanted someone else in the primaries initially.) The differences are less extreme than in the Democratic Party—where you have Marxists and 2/3 of Wall Street under the same tent—but they divisions are growing.
Both parties are mostly groups of "single issue voters".
How do you think a gay man is able to talk at RNC and them having "gay cure" support in their platform? Because when you put all of the different positions in one document - they tend to contradict the majority's views. (Outright ban on abortion is supported only by a third of republicans! SSM ban is also supported by a third.)
Independents are more liberal on the topic of abortion than democrats...
There are at least two significant and distinct forces in the Republican Party: pro-business and free enterprise people, and (mostly religious) social conservatives. You can find more if you look carefully — by no means Republican Party is a monolith.
And I tire of Twitter - the agent of that chaos - insisting I must always be "on," having a political position on everything all the time, and always ready to rally around wrong-doing.
This is inhuman. I cannot always be on - I am not a machine. I cannot be useful to anyone when I am torn into anxious shreds by knowing about everything that is wrong in the world all at once. Our brains were built for knowing what's "bad" on a local level - not on a global, ~7.8 billion people level. It is inhuman for you to insist that I jump at the bit every time "bad things happen."
I can only choose to pick certain hills which are most important to me, and I will die on them. You choose your things - you are welcome to die on them, too. Do not shame people for trying to survive this chaos that is bad enough with the world's population's problems, and amplified through social network's outrage machines that benefit from any (but especially psychologically traumatic) "engagement."
What I do for joy on Twitter, when a mind-reader has (yet again) ascribed strange opinions or motives to me, is sincerely forgive them for their behavior.
It's 100% okay to not be completely informed on an issue! If anyone is accosting you for that, then that's not okay or constructive. I'm not asking any more than that you be understanding that when our freedoms are under attack, ie currently, you are willing to make a choice and not complain because a lot is at stake.
So, "silence is complicity"? That's pretty accusatory and offputting.
But of course this debate has been going on a long time. And maybe yours are the more recent words echoing a past hero's opinion.
In the words of MLK:
"First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection...."
I suppose it depends on whether you see current ills of society as at the level of segregation and outright violence against peoples (and need street-level action and peaceful revolution immediately), or more subtle things that affect everyone, like rich-vs-poor class differences growing (and are things to be solved through our deliberative political process).
But back to the point, the problem with shouting down anyone who doesn't agree with you and/or labeling people who are not 100% on board with you as the hidden "enemy", is that you will later find out you weren't winning as much as you thought based on the silence. And some of that silent segment will find they can only express themselves when standing alone, safe in the voting booth, and you get a result like we have had for the last couple years. Worse, those that could've joined your side are put off by the aggression and withhold their vote for you.
> So, "silence is complicity"? That's pretty accusatory and offputting.
Yeah people don't like facing their complicity with the horror of the world, especially since it's not at all obvious how to fix it. It can feel like (and can actually be) pointless self-flagellation.
A centrist isn't always someone who's avoiding working on problems or avoiding decisions. A centrist can be someone who believes that different people see different parts of various problems and that solutions can come from people who aren't subscribed to a set political party.
Centrists see themselves as imminently reasonable, sure. But virtually everyone believes "that different people see different parts of various problems and that solutions can come from people who aren't subscribed to a set political party." It's not a defining characteristic of centrists, it's a a defining characteristic of people who think of themselves as reasonable. IMO, the defining characteristic of centrists is that they think that they're the only reasonable ones and that everyone else is an ideologue.
At their worst, sure. At their best, it's someone who aspires to remain "centered" in their analysis, without letting it lead to arrogance over others.
The point is that choices should be made about singular policy items.
Random example: I should be able to argue for second amendment rights with out buying into isolationist trade policies. The way things are right now the two come bundled together and legislative votes are based on partisanship, not policy.
You've just summed up why being a moderate is such a miserable experience for most of us. These days, being a moderate isn't being in the middle on everything. Instead, being a moderate means that someone can't infer my position on gun control based on my position on universal health care. Because I'm not enough of an ideologue to have a consistently predictable menu of choices based on the tribe I find more affinity with, I'm always the bad guy for different reasons depending on the tribe I'm around.
I don’t understand why is it so unusual to simply judge each issue according to your individual reason, morals and the best data you can find, but I also lack a lot of group joining instinct. Apparently both sides prefer loyalty to being right. I’ve been wearing masks since February and have at various times run afoul of both sides as they politicized the issue differently as time went by.
Nowadays I define my moderation as "somewhere between the libertarians and the democratic socialists", which of course would make me completely unacceptable to either of those groups.
Centrists tend to be more pragmatic and prefer approaches that work, while those on the left and right are more ideological, and wish to conform the world to their ideas, regardless of the cost or feasibility. And anyone who disagrees is treated as a heretic, as if one side has the truth concerning the messy complexity of social reality.
As a centrist I'm not completely apathetic to all politics and I have some strongly held viewpoints, even if they are moderate. So I'm not sure why you're tired of centrists. Centrists understand there's nuance in everything, and leaning too heavily in either direction can be unhealthy.
I will say I also don't care for the daily discourse and politicization of everything.
Or perhaps, I just hate both sides? I can't stand the crazy right wingers who think climate change is a hoax, that masks oppress people, etc. I can't stand left wingers who virtue signal constantly and call me x-phobic or x-ist for not agreeing with something. So yes, I'm apolitical because I truly hate both sides anymore. I think of it as polarization to the point of pushing people like me aside.
Honestly, I think some people just want a break. And I can both respect that AND firmly believe that if a musician, for example, wants to make a comment on current events as part of their performance, they absolutely should.
I've been told that "taking a neutral position, when privileged, is unethical."
(I understand the postmodern thrust here, and I actually to some degree agree with it, but at the limit this completely obliterates any pretense of objectivity - even within science.)
Centrists agree that choices need to be made. Centrists think that some of those choices should go in one direction, some in the other, and most in a direction not presented by either side. Centrists believe in logic, discourse, and evidence to get to choices, over ideology. Centrists believe in looking for solutions which work for everyone when possible. Etc.
Everyone hates centrists, since if you disagree on charters OR abortion OR charters OR race OR police OR .... with someone on the left or on the right, they think you're a horrible person. You'll always disagree on at least one axis.