As you may have noticed already, my use of the term “moderate” is a bit different than what you’ll hear in ordinary political discourse. When someone is called a moderate that usually just means “less dedicated to liberal or conservative principles than other members of the person’s party.” It’s a policy scale that imagines U.S. politics as a one-dimensional spectrum along which some people fall closer to the center than others.
As far as that goes, it’s not too bad. There are ways in which a one-dimensional representation fits our politics just fine. But I have two major problems with it.
- Definitional. If we imagine the political center as some average of all political opinion, how do we accurately measure that? Sure, there are ways to quantify where individuals fall relative to one another, but these are necessarily artificial. If we instead imagine that there’s some hypothetically constant “center” position, how do we know where that “center” is? How one defines the center of the spectrum has a great deal to do with where one stands personally.
- Historical. The range of political opinion shifts over time. So any hypothetical mean will vary wildly from moment to moment. And there’s no historical mechanism for ensuring an equal number of individuals fall to the left or right (or far left and far right) of any imagined center.
Instead, here I use the term “moderate” to denote a set of political commitments that transcend individual policy preferences. That means they can be held and practiced without hypocrisy by both liberals and conservatives. Of course,sometimes it’s useful to talk about those committed to policy positions that blend liberal and conservative principles. I’ll call such people “centrists” and their political preferences “centrism.” Not because I think others are using the terms incorrectly, but because clear language helps us communicate more effectively. It is, after all, largely about semantics.
The above was prompted in part by this Washington Post column and this Time blog followup. Notice how they use the term “moderate” to mean what I will call “centrist” and how those policy preferences have shifted between the parties. Same policies, very different political reading as conservatives try to label them as liberal and vice versa.
“If we imagine the political center as some average of all political opinion, how do we accurately measure that?”
Polling averages… top of the bell curve.
“Sure, there are ways to quantify where individuals fall relative to one another, but these are necessarily artificial.”
Not really… they’re relational. And that’s all that centrist is, someone who is closer to the center than the left or right. There is no centrism ideology. Centrist equates to left and right, since it is a place on a spectrum, not liberal or conservative, which are connected systems of political opinions.
“How one defines the center of the spectrum has a great deal to do with where one stands personally.”
Only if your definition has something to do with your opinion. My definition doesn’t, it is based on polling. I call myself a centrist because my views average out where the center is, that bell curve, most of the time. I don’t pretend my ideas that don’t fall within that range are centrist, as they do on some issues.
“The range of political opinion shifts over time. So any hypothetical mean will vary wildly from moment to moment.”
No… political opinions very rarely take more than a generation to shift wildly. The only major issue that is moving much now, for instance, is gay marriage, and even that will take a generation or so (unless it speeds up a lot, or turns back around unexpectedly) to shift.
The term moderate is a modifier… ala “moderate _____”. In the political sense one is a moderate _____ when you aren’t a stalwart version of that. Sometimes people use the word centrist in this same way, but it doesn’t make as much sense.
Solomon Kleinsmith
Rise of the Center
Thanks for your comments. I’ve replied in a new post and also updated my About page to clarify what I mean by “moderate” and what my mission is with this project. I look forward to reading more on Rise of the Center.
-Jason
You should install a plugin so people can subscribe to threads, so they know people respond. Only reason I came back is because I have you on my RSS feeds.
Always happy to see another centrist or moderate jump into the field.
I’m work on that. And thanks for the welcome.