What is a moderate? What is a centrist?

[white_wolf]

I've heard some people on this board and a lot of people in politics say they are moderates or they are sensible centrists, but what does that mean? We know where the Left and Right stands on issues like taxes. healthcare, wars, and other issues, but where do moderates and centrists stand? To me that seems like a label used by people who don't want to pick a side.

[jschurchin]

1. Good question

I believe in a persons right to own guns, a persons right to do with their body as they wish, replacement of the income tax with a national sales tax, a single payer healthcare system, coal and natural gas fired power generation.

I don't know, some Democrats call me a Republican and some Republicans call me a Democrat. Me? I call myself a Moderate.

[ZombieHorde]

2. Thank you. Recommended. These are terms which need to be well defined. nt

[Skidmore]

3. I'm pretty sure that it has nothing to do with "sides" other than that

is a tired argument used by those who would have everyone at each others throats all the time. There is not one of us who lives our lives entirely in "extremes" (term loosely applied, but I can't think of another at the moment). We all at sometime or another find a way to give and take with our fellows on many issues. I think that the political polarization, one upmanship, and brinksmanship of the past 12 years has gotten us to a point where we have lost sight of that fact. I remember a time when there were issues on which people did have opposing views but there was range of issues that were viewed as a ground on which we met for the common good. This vitriol can be pretty counterproductive.

I don't have shouting matches with my neighbors or family members and I have some with which I have more than a few political differences. There is no need for us to get ugly with one another and we usually can arrive at place in which we can agree on the need to keep something, change it, or include parts of either set of ideas to arrive at a solution. Now if that makes me some sort of traitor, then label away--and I'm sure there will be several who line up to do so. Political discourse must have a component of consensus at its heart for it to be effective as a tool.

[TBF]

8. It has everything to do with sides -

you are either for capital (accumulation of wealth at the expense of others) or you're against it. There is no way to be "in the middle" about it.

[Skidmore]

9. I believe there should be rules in exercising capitalism.

I recall that there used to be laws against usury, against combining too many types of services in one financial institution, etc. I don't have a problem with someone earning wealth fairly within the constraints of the law. I do have a problem with cheating and stealing, which is what I consider to be accumulation of wealth at the expense of others.

[TBF]

24. What kind of rules are you gonna make to "exercise" capitalism?

The system is inherently unequal - are you going to take away all the money at death and make every generation start over? How will you equalize their experiences? Even if you were able to do that, how do you police it along the way? The system rewards those who hide their profits, bribe others - anything to make a profit. Also, in order to make a profit, you must produce massive amounts of items. Where do those resources come from? Where does the labor come from? Who decides which folks will be doing the labor if we've equalized them by taking away their inheritances? How will you reward them?

"Constraints of the law" ... who makes the law? Is it not those who can pay for the best lawyers? How do we change that inequity? "Cheating and stealing" are very subjective terms - isn't it stealing when we bomb a country to make sure we can get their oil at an optimal price (which we have to do so we can keep over-producing)?

There are a million problems with a system that is inherently unequal and rewards greed. We see how well the policing works - just look at BP in the gulf area and the nuclear plant in Japan. By the time anyone starts thinking about policing the damage is already done.

[Skidmore]

25. I don't know how old you are but there was a time, and I remember it,

when there was more equality built into the system and the average citizen's input mattered. And guess what--it all occurred within capitalism.

[TBF]

26. When was that time? Can you give examples please?

I'm not especially old but no spring chicken. No matter, history can be understood by any age. When was this time when capitalism had "equality built into the system"? "The average citizen's input mattered" - to whom?

[mmonk]

4. Today, it means a Democrat who is conservative and wants similar

policies to Republicans but won't admit it.

[Paradoxical]

5. Centrists tend to hold opinions characteristic of both the left and right.

For instance, they may support Medicare, medicaid and welfare benefits.

But they may also support keeping general health care privatized.

They generally are isolationists like the left.

And they tend to be socially liberal on many topics. But they may hold right wing beliefs on others.

[mmonk]

6. Isolationists?

They seem imperial to me. They supported GW Bush's illegal invasion of Iraq for example.

[Paradoxical]

7. Moderates do?

[mmonk]

14. That's what many of the pro war Democrats called themselves.

The Progressive Policy Institute, a wing of the "New Democrat" "Third Way" movement was pro Iraq war.

[Paradoxical]

20. That doesn't mean that moderates are pro-war.

That's what I'm saying. Moderates tend to be the kind of people who are mostly hands-off.

They don't care what others do unless it bothers them. But they wouldn't seem to support war.

[leftstreet]

10. Just more bullshit terms to avoid acknowledging class struggle

Try pinning the definition down from self-described 'moderates' or 'centrists' and you get complicated, confusing mumbo-jumbo better suited to a scifi novel.

[Terry in Austin]

36. Thank you

Definitely gotta cut through the verbiage to stay focused.

To borrow from Jim Hightower, it ain't about "left" and "right" so much as "above" and "below."

[notesdev]

11. A moderate

is a person with no principles. Like roadkill, is often found in the middle of the road.

A centrist is someone who sold you out to the banking cartel seventy-eight times last year, but only because business was very slow due to the recession depression recovery.

[patrice]

12. Labels are filters. I don't know about a "moderate", but it would stand to reason that

you would not be able to authentically identify "the center" unless you were able to also authentically identify/understand what validity there is in BOTH of the true "extremes", not just exclusively what people are saying about those polar positions, not just exclusively what has been overtly observed as manifestations of those positions, but as much as possible of the probable rhetoric and probable manifestations of what is actually authentic in BOTH sets of principles, all of the different ways that X, or Y, (Left or Right) can be communicated and all of the different ways that X, or Y, (Left or Right, or any other polarity) can manifest itself. The brain does this kind of generalization all of the time; that's why, once you learn what "hot" is, you are capable of predicting that phenomenon in NEW settings; especially in a social context, a "centrist" would have to take an active role in that generalization. This means that "the center" is not static; it is dynamic.

This kind of freedom is also what Noam Chomsky, whom so many seem to have forgotten was a LINGUIST, a linguist who developed a marvelous tool called Transformational Grammar, tries to tell us about in describing how ALL language/labels are used against us rhetorically in the chaotic milieu known as politics, unless we become authentically aware of the ongoing/evolving processes involved.

[TheKentuckian]

13. "Centrists" are corporate enablers that cooperate with Republicans to stripmine the poor and working

folks for the benefit of the wealthy and the empowerment of multinationals. They tend to be authoritarians and imperialists as well as huge proponents of the police state and the weakening of civil liberties.

Moderates are folks that either avoid stances in order not be seen or thinking of themselves as extreme or are biconceptuals that have buffet style opinions on policy.

Of course that is today. Yesterday's moderates are now moonbeam, pony wanting, firebagging professional leftists since actual leftists have been deleted from the political spectrum that included communists, socialists of many stripes, and ideological liberals.

[patrice]

15. Re leftists: True in some cases, in other cases they delete themselves

because, as George Lakoff, and I think Chris Hedges, mention, they accept the frames they are given, rather than creating (out of WHATEVER possibilities are at hand) and using their own.

[bluestate10]

29. I am a moderate and a pro worker, capitalist business person that believe in profit sharing.

How do you label that? I am pro government regulation of business because not having regulation causes inefficiency.

[TheKentuckian]

41. You describe yourself as a moderate was the rest of the post describing a moderate to you, or is

moderate supposed to mean something on its own?

You sound like a traditional Center-center/left type guy on the issues in the post.

[socialist_n_TN]

16. Moderates and centrists are relativists politically........

They try to take the "middle" position in an political argument because they think that the middle position is always the correct one. IOW, it's not "extreme".

Because the spectrum slides to the right or left (mostly right for the last 50 years or so), they're political relativists because their positions aren't fixed in any sort of coherent system. It all depends on WHERE the ends of the spectrum is delineated. IF the middle in 1970 is the position of Hubert Humphrey, they they'll take the positions of Humphrey. Fast forward to 2011, they'll take the "middle" position of Mitt Romney because Obama is the extreme left (:rofl:) and the teabaggers are the extreme right. So Romney MUST be the correct position because he's in the "middle". In short, they HAVE no real positions. Relativists.

[bluestate10]

32. You are wrong.

Moderates spend time thinking about and analyzing information, as opposed to pulling something out of one's ass. I doubt that many moderates would side with Romney over Obama, Obama is more balanced and willing to take a position whereas Romney is multiple choice, as Ted Kennedy said. Moderates examine then pin down a position, the complete opposite of the Left and the Right, sides that are emotion driven.

[xchrom]

17. Recommend

[kenny blankenship]

18. Someone who loves the status quo - someone who's afraid of being called a DEMOCRAT.

[Skidmore]

19. That is utter BS.

I've noticed plenty of people here forsaking being called Democrats or liberals and who insist on being called "progressives."

[bluestate10]

28. I am a centrist and am a loyal and proud democrat. nt

[Peacetrain]

21. Depends on who you are talking to.. One persons Socialist can be

a Marxists centrist.

All I want is the job done.. a person can call themselves left right or middle .. because they are to someone somewhere

[BoWanZi]

22. You CANNOT define the term moderate conclusively.

The problem is that one moderate might be socially liberal but fiscally conservative but on the other hand, another moderate might be more fiscally liberal yet socially conservative.

Someone might not care for guns, sort of love jesus, want privatized social security with government backup, supports pro-choice but with catches, and wants a huge strong military but not used aggressively. That person might define themselves as a moderate but another one might like gun, be agnostic, thinks that social security should not be privatized, has no opinion about abortion, and might want a reasonable sized military.

The problem is that people who don't fit either the hard left or the hard right and who carries opinions representative of both sides could be considered moderates but its different for each moderate.

[Shandris]

23. Scrolling through this thread is abhorrent.

You do realize this OP -- and in NO WAY am I saying that the OP is a 'troll' or any of that horsecrap -- but the original post itself could be cribbed straight off of any of a thousand conservative sites.

On to separate points...

Skidmore, I agree with you. TBF, there most certainly is a middle ground -- fair acquisition versus capital theft. I am reflecting on a few recent events in China that I find interesting, but generically speaking I prefer worker-owned. Barring that, fair acquisition. mmonk...ironically, that's exactly how a conservative answers the same question stated from a con slant.

Paradoxical, I'm pretty much with you, although I don't think 'hold RW views' is as accurate as 'hold views that aren't entirely identical to standard Left'. For instance, a couple posts refer to Iraq and war. I was against Iraq, Pro-Libya (for air power ONLY, which was forgotten), and I'm not against JUST use of the military. I'm not Pro-war, but I'm not ANTI-war either. I'm pro-DEFENSE. I'm not in favor of spending obscene amounts of money for that defense, and I think the Defense Budget needs to be slashed painfully as well as the subsidies of the DOD removed from Defense Companies. There is no reason to pay them to develop something then pay them to purchase it.

leftstreet, I don't doubt the class war at all. I consider that a fundamental point of being anything to the left side of the spectrum, more than just about any other factor. The same with recognizing the social issues war against women, against the poor, against LGBT, against education...

I don't know...I'm not going to do this list all day, but the point is this: it's not a finite term. I like the 'relativist' explanation, except that I'm not a relativist. Still, I've known some self-proclaimed moderates who fit that description ~completely~. I've been made aware that many on DU consider me a RW shill, or a moderate, a centrist, and so on but I define myself as a liberal with a couple minor quibbles. To them, nothing I say will ever be correct.

This is why labels beyond a gross generalization are, for the most part, pointless and DIVISIVE.

Edit: Clarity

[bluestate10]

27. This moderate.

I've heard some people on this board and a lot of people in politics say they are moderates or they are sensible centrists, but what does that mean? Means that I contemplate the consequences of actions before taking them.

We know where the Left and Right stands on issues like taxes - this moderate favors a fair tax structure where everyone pay their fail share. Wealthier people should have higher tax rates, the super rich the highest, up to marginal rates of 80%.

healthcare - This moderate supports access to affordable healthcare. Support responsible use of healthcare and preventative medicine and a ban on smoking where-ever legal.

wars - wars are sometime necessary. To go to war without just cause is counterproductive.

other issues, but where do moderates and centrists stand?

To me that seems like a label used by people who don't want to pick a side. Aren't you being a bit presumptuous?

[Bluenorthwest]

30. Presumptuous?

You define moderate as 'I contemplate the consequences of actions' which of course implies that those to your left do not do so. You claim your tax stance is 'fair share' which is sort of what anyone would say, no one advocates for 'unfair taxes'.
Your self definitions are actually passive aggressive definitions of others. You are fair and contemplate circumstances. That is your comparison to define 'moderate'. That is like saying a liberal is a person who is correct.
This, to me, makes that 'don't want to pick a side' thing sound correct. Sorry about that.

[bluestate10]

34. Did you read?

I defined what fair tax means. It means that a person like me should pay thousands of dollars more into the tax system than less fortunate people. I should have a higher tax rate. I did not say that I was fair, what I did say and say again is that I examine information before coming to a conclusion. I am an extreme Libya hawk, likely one of the most extreme on DU. I took a side and I took it hard. I arrived at my position after examining what Qaddafi has meant to the world versus what the alternative to him may mean. Is my position fair or right, maybe, maybe not, only time will tell.

[Zorra]

31. What do you think about corporate influence in government? Nt

[bluestate10]

35. Corporations should have a voice in government, BUT, their voices should be

no larger or more powerful than the average citizen. I view the Citizens United decision as a big threat to democracy and want it overturned.

[bluestate10]

37. Corporations should have a voice, but the voice should be no larger

or powerful than that of the average citizen. I see the Citizens United decision as a gross threat to democracy.

[Terry in Austin]

33. Center of what? It depends, doesn't it.

At a convention of Trotskyites, I'd be pretty centrist -- definitely the dude of moderation.

At a teabagger party, well... I think you know where this is going.

Because the term is so relative, most everybody can get away with thinking that they are the center of the spectrum, because they can see just about as far either to their left or their right -- and more than a few think they're the center of the world anyway.

Who wouldn't want to think they're at the top of the bell curve and get to speak for the majority?

[bluestate10]

38. On DU, I am a centrist. But my social activities and proven societal actions

tag me as liberal. So what I am? I view myself as a pragmatist. The last term is not stated to strike at others, it is simply a statement that when presented with a choice, I will examine options and take the path that to me seems to be the one that will produce tangible results.

[hardcover]

39. Don’t know where I fit in.

I want marijuana legalized, it’s not my thing, but it’s wrong to criminalize people for it and waste law enforcement on it.
I want socialized medicine.
I like capitalism for nonessential goods but not for utilities, education or medicine.
I believe in recycling, conserving and taking care of the earth, but I don’t believe global warming is man made.
I defend the right to carry guns because they are a fact of life. Gun laws will never stop criminals from having them.
I hate war.
I am religious and think religious fanatics are nuts.
I don’t like abortion but I won’t project myself into the decision of others.
I defend the right to free speech even when it is politically incorrect.

[JoeyT]

40. In the very center.

Doesn't matter where the center is. Doesn't matter if both sides move. They'll move to adjust so they can keep claiming to be sensible.

I used to be in the center. Then I was center left. Then I was far left. Now I'm a fringe extremist. All without ever moving an inch.

Edited to add: It's a bullshit phrase anyway. If you're going to define it as having views that encompass both the left and the right, then you've just defined every single libertarian in existence as a moderate. They're not.

If we're defining it as having moderated positions on issues, then I'd argue that isn't even possible for most issues. Most issues are binary. Either you agree with them or you don't. Either you think abortion should be legal or you think it shouldn't. Either we should educate kids or we shouldn't. etc.

[Robb]

42. "Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot...."

"... And anyone going faster than you is a maniac?" -- George Carlin

[Zorra]

44. And someone that is parked right in the middle of the road is

an obstruction?

[blondeatlast]

45. Perfect example of why I don't label myself.

:rofl:

[Hawkowl]

43. A person without principle

Someone who goes along to get along. At least that is what it appears to mean to Obama.

[upi402]

46. Goldwater would be a Democrat today

and he WAS too conservative to have a chance at the Presidency.
kick
rec if I still could...