The "political center" doesn't exist. [View All]

[ClassWarrior]

According to George Lakoff:

Understanding whom we are talking to — and whom we want to talk to — is crucial before progressives begin to articulate what it is they have to say and how best to say it. This is true for progressive candidates as well as activists and activist groups. The real challenge in this area is twofold: First, we want to activate our base while reaching swing voters at the same time; second, we want to do so without having to lie, distort, mislead, or pretend to be something we aren’t.

The pressure to dissemble comes from certain commonplace myths about swing voters and the “center.” So for starters, let’s put to rest the notion of the political or ideological “center” — it doesn’t exist. Instead, what we have are biconceptuals — of many kinds.

When it comes to progressive and conservative worldviews, we are all biconceptuals. You may live by progressive values in most areas of your life, but if you see Rambo movies and understand them, you have a passive conservative worldview allowing you to make sense of them. Or you may be a conservative, but if you appreciated The Cosby Show, you were using a passive progressive worldview. Movies and television aside, what we are really interested in are active biconceptuals — people who use one moral system in one area and the other moral system in another area of their political thinking.

Biconceptualism makes sense from the perspective of the brain and the mechanism of neural computation. The progressive and conservative worldviews are mutually exclusive. But in a human brain, both can exist side by side, each neurally inhibiting the other and structuring different areas of experience. It is hardly unnatural — or unusual — to be fiscally conservative and socially progressive, or to support a liberal domestic policy and a conservative foreign policy, or to have a conservative view of the market and a progressive view of civil liberties...

http://www.rockridgeinstitute.org/thinkingpoints/ThinkingPoints_Chapter2.pdf/view?searchterm=myth%20of%20the%20center
(Sorry it's a PDF...)

Therefore, anyone who attempts to appeal to "the center" is chasing phantoms.

NGU.