Would anyone be interested in joining a "far center" political party?

Nope, I’m an unrepentant Liberal. Note the capital L.

The offer would be considered if the beliefs aligned up with those of my own and stayed on track. I have yet to find a group that does so.

no hippo, and maybe, but then again maybe i just shouldn’t register to vote period so i can avoid something lame like jury duty. lol

I’m also an unrepentant and unapologetic, significantly left of center, liberal/progressive commie, pinko, peace freakin’, fuzzy-headed fruitcake. Radicals on the left and radicals on the right make a lot noise, they are extreme, yes they are, but that’s what radicals do. The Hegelian pendulum swings back and forth but we usually end up in the center somewhere. That’s how things generally play out. There’s a lot of noise but public policy generally ends up somewhere in the middle, in the center, it’s just that, depending on where you fall on the spectrum the “center” means different things to different people, I think. What would your “Centrist” platform be? What would your centrist policies and agenda look like? Compromise is good, compromise is inevitable but without the radicals how do we know where the center is?

i don’t think there can really be a functional center party. Even with good intentions it would eventualy be over run by extremists and there you go.

@woodcutter at one time the Republicans were pretty close to the center, then Regan took over. The democrats probably average to the center because there seems to be as many right wing democrats as there are liberal ones. Of course that’s why they can’t get anything done.

Good idea. Will it be in favor of gay marriage, abortion, single payer health care (ugh, that probably moves me too left) separation of church and state, a balanced federal budget, and getting off foreign oil? Then I am in.

I am from the SF Bay Area, so many people here consider me mainstream, but everywhere east of where I live considers me an ultra leftist Liberal. I am not a centrist; too often the center does not have the courage of its convictions. That doesn’t mean I don’t recognize the need for compromise and negotiation. But being in the center is too timid for me.

I prefer the name full circle.

no i’m not quite ready for the pipe and slippers yet, i hate the centre more than i hate the extreme right, in fact the extreme left and the extreme right are pretty much the same, they just don’t realise it.

@mammal I have always believed that the truth is always in the middle. Of course with out the extremes, how would we know? You are right the extreme left is almost as bad as the extreme right but they usually don’t want to kill you for not agreeing. Please notice I said “usually”. The extreme right, however always reserves their right to bear and use arms and there likely target is a centrist. So a centrist party become the bulls eye.

I’m game!

Can we print up some extra-medium T-shirts with our party slogan?

Isn’t it similar to being an independent?

Still, I like the idea of a slogan and a new movement. Hmmm?

@Ron_C actually if we are talking in terms of American politics, where they have a whole different political compass to the rest of world, the centre, so to speak, kill hundreds of thousands, if not millions, by comparison the extreme left, by the way Obama isn’t even a socialist, not even a crypto socialist, and extreme right kill virtually no-one.

Yes a centrist party. The party of the lukewarm, the flaccid. I’ve never held a position I wouldn’t be willing to compromise. Nah, that’s not for me.

@Jaxk Interesting answer. I was not thinking about it that way. You see it as a party of compromise. I saw it more as a party that has some conservative views, and some liberal views depending on the topic at hand.

I did join the Coffee Party. I like coffee way better than tea, and while I salute the fervor of the Tea Party, and I share their concern that America is running off the rails, I think much of their anti government rhetoric is totally unpatriotic, making a mockery of the original patriots who they took their name from. I think they are mostly honest people being played like a cheap jukebox by big money interests who want to ensure that they keep their tax breaks for off-shoring jobs and that they can carry on Casino Capitalism just as they did before the Great Recession it caused in 2007.

I just wrote a rant about that here.

Nope. Partly because according to those political compass tests, I’m actually pretty libral/progressive (or everyone else is insanely conservative….?) but mostly because the political position isn’t the problem, isn’t the insanity and the screaming and the yelling and the hyperbolic comparisons to Hitler and the fear-mongering and the illogical logic. It really doesn’t matter if you’re screaming about repealing all taxes or simply reducing some, raising others, and adjusting spending, the problem is the screaming.

@ETpro Are you flirting with me?

@JLeslie Some people honestly feel that you are a spineless weakling unless you are an extremist, and that you are either a Conservative or a Liberal on all issues with no mixing and matching.
I’m not sure if @Jaxk is one of those people, but if he is then he is far from alone, and it’s sad that that “all or nothing” mindset is growing in popularity.

@JLeslie If that works, yes. :-)

@jerv I don’t know that it’s growing in popularity. I think it’s more that we don’t put an emphasis on getting beyond our cognitive distortions, so then it’s just inevitable that our mindsets will become highly dualistic instead of pushing for a more nuanced, balanced approach. So growing because it’s a byproduct, not because it’s “cool” (like the Fonz).

it is all about perspective, we currently have a situation, a status quo, that already is extreme, it is unremittingly consumerist, it is unrestrained in it’s mass production of fetishistic consumables. Genuine cultural practices are discouraged in favour of pure materialist indulgence, inflated with fatuous notions of freedom, liberty and Christian fundamentalism, enforced and exported at gun point where necessary see middle East.

Extremism begets extremism.

The most viable centrist type of political party here would be the Whig Party whose symbol is an owl. The Whig party was originally the opposition to the Democratic Party (which at one time was very conservative).

Ironically when the Republican Party first formed they were actually more “liberal” on many current issues over the Democrats. The Republicans were more Libertarian in their earlier days. Now the Republicans have become somewhat extremists to the far-right over the last 50 years except for Goldwater type Republicans.

@JLeslie That’s exactly what I was thinking. A party for people who have views that are on both sides of the aisle. Can you not be both gay and fiscally conservative? Is your stance on the estate tax directly proportionate to your stance on gun control?

@papayalily I couldn’t agree more than it’s the venom that poisons our political climate and it doesn’t matter if it’s coming from the left fang or the right.

The idea is not to promote a particular platform, but rather to promote centrists solutions to the divisive issues. I’m just sick of hearing one person say “Cut taxes!” while the other screams “Tax the rich!” and nobody is saying “I think the optimum upper tax rate is 38.75%!”

Compromise isn’t sexy. It doesn’t make for good rhetoric. It is, however, the only way anything has ever been accomplished by a government ever anywhere ever… ever. Unless you count tyrranical oppression…

@jerv I love the extra medium T-shirt idea, by the way…

After Bush I heard so much shit about people being independents . I don’t really buy it. It is like when people preface things by saying “I’m not a racist” and then then spout, “I hate niggers.”

@johnpowell Kind of like the conspiracy theory who keeps saying “I’m not saying that the space alien/shape shifting/ interdimensional Nazis are controlling the government, I’m just asking the question…”

So with you.

@paradox it’s the religion. The Republicans decided to attract the religious right, mush it altogether, that being Republican is what God would want, and it was very effective. Religion has been used throughout history to control people. Brilliant actually. Now they cater to these people, and the old school Republicans havempretty much lost control pf the party. Things like individual rights, which you touched on with the Republicans formerly being more Libertarian on many issues, has been twisted around, and selectively applied. So many examples of this. The Republicans can take their old identity back, this is the time, let the Tea Party break off, and ride the tide of people possibly wanting change from some of what Obama has done or not done.

Slogan suggestion (to chant at Far-Center rallies): “Hell Maybe!”

@JLeslie

I seem to hear all the time that people should be more ‘Centrist’. Yet everyone holds some conservative views and some liberal views. When people scream that everyone is too extreme, what they mean is ‘on the issues where they disagree with me’.

It seems like a ‘Centrist’ is something we all want everyone else to be.

@Jaxk I really have to think about that. I guess it matters how we define centrist. What I want is for people to treat others as they would want to be treated at minimum. Some issues I can understand have many points of view, many different ways to look at a problem and try to fix it, like the economy, helping the poor, fixing education, immigration, etc. But, some issues are more golden rule to me: do you want to be able to marry the person you love, do you want a public school teacher to be able to teach a particular religion, even of it is not yours, or lead a prayer? These latter issues are basic America to me, I don’t see how they are up for debate.

@Jaxk My experience is different. While I know some Liberals who have a few Conservative views, I’ve run across quite a few Conservatives who don’t have a Liberal bone in their body. I haven’t run into many straight Liberals; not many, but just enough to know they exist. But @JLeslie is correct that it depends on how you define Centrist.

But regardless of your opinion it doesn’t get anywhere until you suggest a means to compromise with the vehement opposition. We need extremists, don’t get me wrong, but in a world of extremists nothing will ever get done.

The thing is there is no compromise when it is about God’s law, so many of the people who are posing, or who think they are conservative, really are simply religious and narrow-minded. Conservatives are supposed to lean towards doing what has been tried and true, and many of these right wingers don’t care if something works well if their minister says it is not ok by the bible. I think of a true Conservative as wanting to gather information, pensive, studied, well read; that doesn’t describe many of the people identifying as Conservative right now.

If it makes you feel better, I think the majority of conservatives are just paying lip service to the religious. Somehow, I don’t think that will comfort many people…

@JLeslie

I think you listen to too much of the democratic hype. I don’t have a religious bone in my body but can argue any one of your basic issues. The left likes to paint a picture that religion is the cause for the disagreement.

I’ll give you the most obvious example, Gay Marriage. Why would the government be involved in marriage in any way. They give tax advantages (joint returns) inheritance rights, all sorts of things to married couples. Do you think it is because they want to encourage ‘Love’ or ‘Finding your Soul Mate’? It is not a function of government to do any of these things. But they have an interest in encouraging a stable family. The children become more productive, better educated, less likely to go bad. Also population growth is a long term benefit to the country. So the government encourages that environment that is more productive to society. Government support of marriage is merely an easy way to determine who is likely to have a family and who is not. If you take the family issue out of it, there is no reason to have joint tax returns or inheritance rights or community property, or most of the other hoopla that goes with marriage. In fact the government should care less if your married or not, married to a man, woman, or goat (animal activists would have a problem with this one). The ‘Soul Mate’ argument just doesn’t cut it whether gay or straight. IMHO.

I would think a true liberal would want to gather information, study, be pensive and well read, that doesn’t seem to describe most liberals these days either. Maybe it’s just your point of view.

@Jaxk Thank you for proving my point. Not to single you out because there’s plenty of this on this thread already, but you start by faulting someone for making a broad generalization about conservatives and then spend most of the rest of the post making broad generalizations about liberals.

(And I think we need another thread to debate your notion on gay marriage. Inappropriate in this thread, but I’d like to rebutt)

@crazyivan

I’m not sure you’re reading me right since I was responding to @JLeslie and she (assuming she) said : “posing, or who think they are conservative, really are simply religious and narrow-minded” The generalization seems appropriate.

@JLeslie Yes this is why politics and religion should never mix. Even as a theist I would be willing to vote for an atheist president. In fact I would never vote for a candidate that even brings up religion.

I was shocked during a debate during the 2008 Republican primary where Huckabee (an Evangelical) made a statement to Mitt Romney (a Mormon) suggesting Mormon’s believe God and the Satan were actually friends.

Politics + Religion = Greed & Corruption

@Jaxk So, are you saying that couples that are either infertile or childless by choice should be discriminated against by law? And what of couples that adopt, especially same-sex couples? I see too many holes in that argument and I’m only half-awake right now.
I agree that many Liberals also go off half-cocked, so I chalk that up to people being lazy and/or ignorant regardless of which side of the fence they’re on.

@jerv

No, that’s a knee-jerk reaction. Marriage is simply an easy way for the government to provide compensation for people likely to have a family. Otherwise the determination becomes very complex and hap-hazard. When the income tax first started, there was no joint tax return or child exemptions which discouraged having a family. Hell we still argue about the marriage tax which penalizes those with both partners working at similar salaries.
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As for parents that adopt, even single, there is the ‘head of household’ category. Before you discount the whole family issue, ask yourself why government would care if you found you soul mate. And why there would be a tax break for doing so.

@Jaxk Society has changed too much since then for that argument to hold much water. You are correct that doing it in a more realistic manner that reflects the current state of society would be more complex and haphazard, but so is life nowadays. Hell, I know of very few couples that have both children and wedding rings and too many single parents. In this case, the government screwed up by assuming traditional family structures that are increasingly rare these days.

@jerv

Sounds like an argument for doing away with marriage altogether.

@Jaxk A number of libertarians (I have a strong streak of that in me) have suggested that the Government should not be in the business of sanctioning marriage, but instead domestic partnerships. Give all couples of whatever gender that apply equal footing under the law, and leave marriage to churches to sanction as they see fit. I’d support that.

@ETpro

Actually, I’ve made that same argument myself. But it was more of a compromise than a solution. As with most compromise positions, it doesn’t really address the issue and leaves both side dissatisfied. Rather than a win-win, it is more of a lose-lose.

@Jaxk you are not part of the far right by my definition. The far right is just fine with government being involved and sactioning marriage. And, I am not sure if I was clear in my previous statement, I am just fine discussing issues and policy with a conservative, I am conservative on some issues myself. But, if someone is against gay marriage because God meant to be between a man and a woman, and cannot understand that a civil marriage simply is a legal contract between two people, nothing to do with the church or God, in fact I am very willing to consider some points you made about why government is pro marriage. But, since we can’t really force gay people to get married and make babies, it doesn’t seem to me we can exclude them from mafriage, that is applying the law differently to differently citizens. There is no guarantee when people get married they will have kids. If it truly is the main reason government supports marriage, then childless couples are the cost of doing business. Just like stores have some theft, and some shipments don’t make to the retailer fully intact.

@JLeslie

I like your description as a cost of doing business. It fits my take on the issue. But I might add that cost of doing business is quite often more geared on the likelihood of an event. The likelihood of pregnancy is simply reduced with gay couples. If you look at it as benefit for the family rather than a benefit for the couple, there is no discrimination in the law.

@Jaxk I don’t accept your argument, because we still, as Americans, need to be careful to treat all people equally. I know some straight people argue gay people have the right to marry a woman also, but that does not hold water for me. I really think a legal contract is a legal contract period, the goverment does not get to say which gender can enter into the contract.

It seems to me, if I understand correctly, that many western European countries that have legalized gay marriage, do a tremendous amout to encourage people to make babies also. Many of these countries are more socialized than us, so I assume they are concerned about the population having negative growth for fiscal reasons at minimum, so they give a tremendous amount of rights and perks to new parents. 6 months to a year off from work with pay, emphasis on family including reasonable working hours, all sorts of stuff. This seems to me more logical, if you want people to have babies, put the incentive on having a baby. Meanwhile, I don’t think we have this problem in America. People still seem to be having babies in America.

I’m really glad this question morphed into something so interesting.

And @Jaxk I didn’t mean to single you out. Like I said, there was plenty of that in the thread and yours was just the most recent.

@JLeslie

It’s not just about making babies. If that was the issue they’d stop handing out condoms and outlaw abortion. That would pretty much fix that. It’s about a stable family. Truth is we started losing that when women stopped taking the same name or created the hyphenated name. The family identity was lost. Maybe marriage has lost it’s usefulness, kind of like the dowry. Regardless I’m not thrilled by the prospect of becoming Europe. They have their own problems.

@crazyivan

No Problem, I dn’t mind being singled out. We’ll see if the latest post grabs the ire of the opinion police

@Jaxk Regarding Europe, remember that they are generally older than the US and have had a lot of strife over the centuries that we never had to deal with. They are going to be as different from us as the average parent is different from their child.

I am not arguing for becoming Europe here, I am only holding it as an example of encouraging the behavior we are actually after. Marriage seems to be breaking down, I don’t think it has to do with taking a last name, but maybe taking the name was symbolic of women being more independent. In my husbands country they do not feel they take their husbands name, they add it to their name as de lastname. So I would be Jleslie maidenname de husbandsname. My sister-in-law when she married moved immediately to the US and made her legal name the US way of taking on her husband’s name and she was always pissed about it. I know it might seem like adding de husbandsname is taking on the family name of the husband, but psychologically they feel they keep their name. I hate hyphenating, people in the US have no idea how to handle a hyphen.

But, more on the family. I think the breakdown of the family is a major problem in the US. But more of a problem is single parents who are young, and financially insecure. Some of the people on this thread have already heard me site that it seems Ann Coulter fairly recently wrote a book which partly talks about how damaging single parenting has been (I saw her in a couple of interveiws). She found that children of single parents don’t seem to do as well as children born in wedlock by several measure. But here is the catch single parent means born out of wedlock, it does not mean divorced or widowed. Children of divorce or a parent dies do pretty much as well as children of married couples. what I don’t know, because I did not read the book, is if these kids are more likely to be born to young parents, she said her research showed it did not matter much across economic lines.

@JLeslie

I would agree that adding de husbandsname would serve the same purpose of providing the family identity. Actually even the husband taking the wife’s name would do so as well. It just doesn’t feel as comfortable to me. Probably some chauvinistic part of me that wouldn’t stand to any critical debate.

It’s interesting to hear someone quoting Ann Coulter. She generally evokes such an emotional reaction that I avoid doing that. She is very provocative, but smart. It would be interesting to know how the age of the parents plays into all this. I do think she’s right in that even if the parents get divorced the family groundwork is set. Or maybe it’s just that if the parent is married, they more likely want the child than if they are single.

I’m not sure we are even after the maximum possibnle rate of childbirth any more. We are fast approaching 7 billion people on earth. If gay couples tend to have fewer children, that was a problem back when childhood disease and deaths in childbirth claimed so many lives. It’s probably a bonus to society today.

Thanks to the Massachusetts Supreme Court, we have had legal same-sex marriage here in our Commonwealth now for over 6 years. It really hasn’t changed much aside from the suffering the previous inequity imposed on homosexuals. Straight couples didn’t suddenly catch “the gay”. Men didn’t start marrying horses. Virtually all the wild lies the Religious Right warned us about in attack ads _ad nauseam- never came to pass.

Actually, I also don’t really think our government is after promoting marriage to make babies. I think that may have been something in the past that was considered, but in modern day I doubt it. In fact, I wonder what the history is behind civil marriage. How far back did the government get involved in marriage? When did laws start to evolve to give married people different taxation than single people? Were married peopled taxed less, because traditionally it was one salary in the home at the time the laws were created so the wife was perceived as a dependent, and so a tax break was seen as more fair? Certainly laws concerning a spouses rights to property, specifically concerning the homestead, were to protect women when property was not in their name.

@JLeslie @ETpro

I think we got side tracked on this making babies thing. The issue is a stable family rather than the number of kids. Although early in our history, big families were a plus.

It was 1949 I believe when the government created a tax break for married couples. If married you were able to cut your total income in half to determine the tax bracket. income tax history

@Jaxk well, I think since women were paid much less, and roles were more clearly defined back in history, the family structure was more practical. I would guess 100 years ago single women with children were in an impossible situation.

Actualy, thinking about history, marriage used to be more of a practical thing, more like a business deal. Now that it is about love and romance it is odd in a way that the goverment is involved, but I do think civil marriage should stay around.

Actually if you go way back in history and how marriage was handled it is very interesting. In old Roman days, if you got married and the woman didn’t bear any children, you could give her back. Of course you had to return the wedding gifts as well.

In ancient Japan, the man would move in with the woman and her parents until they had a child. Then they would get married. The whole history of marriage is based on having a family.

Nonetheless, I would hate to see it go away. And as much as we complain about the divorce rate and single parenthood, there are still a lot of traditional families out there. And to be honest, most of this is an academic argument to me. I have no strong feelings about gay marriage either way. Nor polygamy for that matter.

Just wanted to add this to the marriage=government trying to make babies theory. Should China not be heavily promoting gay marriage at this point?

@crazyivan

Interesting political jab but whether gay couples are married or not will have no impact on the birth rate.

Well then you have to throw out 99.9999% of the arguments against gay marriage, which all seem to hinge on the notion that it would set a social standard that endorses homosexuality.

To be honest, I’m willing to throw all of them out to begin with, but it does seem like a case of trying to have your cake and eat it to. Heterosexual marriage will also have no effect on birth rate, after all…

Working Families. Their policies and philosophies are smack in the middle of the road. The real one… with people on it.