Comments on: “‘Alarmist moderate’ is an oxymoron.”

By: Mikkel

Mikkel — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 17:14:47 +0000

Now “fighting moderate” should not be an oxymoron at all (haha I actually didn’t notice that Alan just used that phrase). My problem is that even so called “moderate” polticians are just an amalgamation of extreme positions. Support the war? Offset that by being pro-choice. Support keeping the estate tax but maintain your credentials by being for gay marriage. A jumble of absolutist positions is not a moderate either. Lieberman and Hatch are two moderates under the current definition and they are making completely outlandish sound bites that don’t show any attempt to actually grasp the situation or explain how they will work to help create a more realistic plan than “when they stand up we stand down.”

In my view compromise has shifted from “let’s find a mutually agreeable solution (or agree to not try)” to “you vote for something you think is wrong but don’t care about that much and I’ll vote for your thing I think is wrong but don’t care about as much.” I think the real thing moderates need to do is cultivate their own candidates from the ground up and try to create an entirely new political movement where rhetoric is replaced by factual reasoning. Instead of creating a binary choice representing extremes and then polling to find out which one more Americans support, you craft laws around the middle…or if the middle is incorrect and it is obvious because it is about empiricial questions then you try to educate people. Of course the primary challenge to this is to get rid of the “relavistic truth” that is quickly spreading, where the defition of “balanced” has come to mean you let both sides sit there and make stuff up.

By: Alan Stewart Carl

Alan Stewart Carl — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 15:48:13 +0000

Whelan’s argument is effectively moronic. I am tired of people on all sides saying “the only reason you don’t agree with me is because you’re being fooled.”

The right blames the media for fooling us all. And the left blames the right wing for using political tirckery to fool us all. Neither side wants to admit that maybe, just MAYBE, their opponents have valid points.

Now, I’ll admit that there are a lot of moderates who simply want to slink by and keep the boat steady–more concerned with stability than doing the right thing.

But to suggest the only recourse for us fighting moderate/centrists is to just shut up and join the the left is — well, I find it offensive. And cynical.

By: Kevin

Kevin — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 13:25:23 +0000

I normally find Jack Whelan to be fairly As insightful even when I don’t agree with him. So this is suprising. If his party is so bankrupt of ideas that the only thing he can say to me, a thinking moderate, is “vote for the left because the other side is really evil” then he shouldn’t waste his time. If we’re sitting around in 2008 and the presidential debate is “A vote for you is a vote for Al Qaeda” vs “Bush lied and people died” I may have to emmigrate.

Plus he used the word Moderate something like twice per sentence. It made my brain hurt.