Kruse Kronicle

One Definition of Centrist

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by

mwkruse
in , ,

More than three years ago Beau Weston gave the following description of centrism in a post at his blog, What I think Principled Centrism Means.

… Let me put this in a too-strong way at first in order to be clear:

A centrist wants to promote what is best for society, tolerate what is good enough, and prevent what is harmful.

Conservatives want to promote what is best for society, and prevent everything else.

Liberals want to promote all options (except the truly dangerous ones) as equally good.

If your first reaction to this is, “Who is to say what is best?” you are a probably a liberal.

If your first reaction to this is, “Why settle for mediocrity?” you are probably a conservative.

If this bell-curve picture of the social options seems reasonable to you, and you have no principled objection to making discriminating judgments – welcome to the Gruntled Center. …

What do you think?

Comments

3 responses to “One Definition of Centrist”

  1. Clay Allard Avatar
    Clay Allard

    Amen and Amen. Why are there so few centrists? Too much ambiguity seems to scare too many people. Centrists have a lot of communicating they have to do; one has to embrace the fact that life is a moving target, and that change is the only constant. I don’t know if I’m Gruntled or not, but somehow or other the conversation has to begin. You’re on the GAMC– how can we nurture the conversation along?

    Reply
  2. ZZMike Avatar
    ZZMike

    That’s probably a good start – but labels are really hard to define, mainly because it’s hard to get a lot of people to agree on what the label means.
    There are some so far left (or right) that to them, anyone in the center seems far right (or left).
    In the Conservative definition, “… and prevent everything else” seems a bit loaded.
    We want to promote what’s best, and we say that what’s best is what’s been tried and true, and not what’s been tried and failed. We oppose Communism and Socialism because they’ve failed.
    As I see things evolving under this new administration, they simply don’t think they’ve been tried often enough.
    Today, Obama was quoted as saying that he figures that the problem with FDR’s policies is that they didn’t go far enough. From an interview with Congressman Frank Lucas (R-OK):
    “The president offered a comment in the conference the other day. He said that the spending program that President Roosevelt used in the beginning of the depression – the real problem was that Roosevelt slowed down on public spending in the first two years. If he’d just kept on spending that money, we’d have gotten out of the depression quicker…”
    Another link:
    New Deal
    “The New Deal never solved the unemployment crisis”
    Still, I can’t think of a better alternative than labels. Maybe we just need better ones – or at least, words that aren’t weighed down with years of associations.

    Reply
  3. vanskaamper Avatar
    vanskaamper

    Not centrist enough to be convinced.

    Reply

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