I'm a centrist. And it has nothing to do with my political views

[struggle4progress]

When I say I'm a centrist I don't mean that we can find the truth by averaging various points-of-view: we can't find the truth that way

And I don't mean that I expect most Americans will necessarily agree with my beliefs or that I will change my beliefs to coincide with those of the majority: it's important to be principled

What I mean is that I believe the proper way forward in a democracy is to continually redefine the political center -- which is a set of objectives most people can agree on: this is a dynamic concept

This center has changed during my lifetime, and it can continue to change -- if we do what needs doing

When I was born, a lot of Americans still supported segregation, and racism was socially acceptable: those ugly views persist, of course, but they are not longer part of the political center

Changing the political center is hard, ongoing work; it requires both activist outsiders and establishment insiders; it requires constant pragmatic compromises; and it requires long-term dedication to the notions that the center is not static and that we have a continuing obligation to re-define the center

This sometimes means cooperating with people who don't agree with you on everything. Sometimes it means educating yourself and others. Sometimes it means listening and sometimes it means persuading.

Think of where you want us to be. Study the obstacles. Don't be an inflexible ideologue and don't let your ideas shift freely with the wind. Push or pull to move us a bit in that direction. It will be a bumpy road sometimes; and we don't always win immediately. Pick your battles intelligently. Cynicism and despair don't help. Neither does self-centered opportunism.

[BootinUp]

1. This is pretty much my philosophy.

In short I am not an ideologue. I hope.

[sweetloukillbot]

2. Very good way of putting it

I considered my self far left when I was younger, now my views seem to qualify as "the center."
So that kind of says that we've been successful in changing the center for the better.

[Hortensis]

3. Agree. I'm ideologically strongly liberal but became committed to

rebuilding the political center where differing factions meet. It's fallen to the enemies of democracy, but we must restore it if our democracy is to survive.

Our democratic republic is all about representative government, which requires cooperating and compromising as needed to achieve that as much as possible. The alliances who come together create majority consensuses always have to overwhelm the anti-democratic zealots who interpret compromise as corruption and incompetence.

[kurtcagle]

4. Centrism is actually what democracy is all about

In statistics theory, the center is that point where political beliefs are balanced - if you put people who espouse a particular belief somewhere on a line, the mean (or center) will be where you will satisfy the largest number of people for that belief. This is one of the reasons that majority rule works, while minority rule usually produces gross inequity in the system over a long enough period.

Minority-rule people do not like to admit that the center changes because they typically work on the notion of the elect: because they are part of an elect group of people, they have special privileges that others do not. They fear the majority because they know that once the majority takes control, their privileges are lost. A lot has been made about the fact that the GOP is a not a democratic institution. Of course it's not - it never has been.

[OnDoutside]

5. Centrists really need to be more strident in their centrism, there's nothing wrong with doing so.

[Blue_true]

6. When I see some people here on DU claim that we are a center-right country

that is turning more rightward, I have to struggle to keep from hurling. Yes, we still have problems, but we are miles better off than we were. Here are some examples.

-As a young Black professional in his early twenties, I was the most expendable during downturns and no “justification” was needed. I saw only one person with my training and when I went to big technical conferences, I saw no one like me, so much so that once I was stunned to meet another Black engineer at a conference, both of us admitted that we had been looking around for three days to see someone like us.

-In my early adulthood, boyfriends and husbands could beat their women friends or wives and nothing would be done by police. I saw women that had body wounds and on occasion, black eyes. There was no such thing as spousal abuse laws or restraining orders. The only protection that women had was to not hook up with jerks to begin with.

-Being LGBTQ opened people up to violence and death in some cases. And laws often protected the assaulters, just by staining victims with sexual innuendo, an attacker would stand a good chance of not being punished, even if they were arrested. When I was in college, the state of Florida executed a Gay man who had killed his abusive lover out of self-defense, I am convinced to this day that his being Gay caused courts to be tone-deaf to his argument that it was him or his abusive lover. It was not until Matthew Shepard was badly beaten and left to die tied up on a fence did the rights of LGBTQ people became a pressing national issue.

-Red-lining is still an issue, but nothing like it was during my early twenties. Then a Black person, regardless of education or wealth, was simply turned away from some places, with no recourse in court, or the court of public opinion.

-Child welfare laws? Pretty much didn’t exist. Children are much better protected under the law today.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

7. P.S. Beware of Dogma.