Centrist Quotes

Mao recalled: "Very many members of our family have given their lives, killed by the Kuomintang and the American imperialists. You grew up eating honey, and thus far you have never known suffering. In the future, if you do not become a rightist, but rather a centrist, I shall be satisfied. You have never suffered--how can you be a leftist?"

The binary nature of monogamy-centrist thinking tends, we think, to cause problems: you’re either the love of my life, or you’re out of here.

Political centrism ≠ neutrality. Being a centrist doesn't make you unbiased; it biases you in favour of the centre.

Transcending divisiveness is one of the dreams of centrists, as if disagreement were a bad habit rather than fundamental to politics.

Leftist, Rightist, Centrist - Let your mind be what it wants to be. Just don’t lose the awareness that you are a soul and you have the freewill to detach from this mind.

We instinctively feel an overwhelming desire to take sides: organic or conventional, fair or free trade, "pure" or genetically engineered food, wild or farm-raised fish. Like most things in life, though, the sensible answer lies somewhere between the extremes, somewhere in that dull but respectable placed called the pragmatic center. To be a centrist when it comes to food is, unfortunately, to be a radical.

The 1800 elections revealed, for the first time, the powerful centrist pull of American politics—the electorate’s tendency to rein in anything perceived as extreme.

Reagan and his growing right-wing "truth" machine had stirred public opinion to such a frothy head that Senate Minority Leader Howard Baker was warned that a vote for the treaty would cost him any chance at the GOP presidential nomination in 1980. On the way to the Senate floor to cast his aye vote, a popular centrist Democrat from New Hampshire asked his wife to "come on and watch me lose my seat

Nothing hard about politics Citizens control government right wing Government controls citizens left wing Balance the two constitutional centrist Of course it helps to observe what they do not what they say.

To get just an inkling of the fire we're playing with, consider how content-selection algorithms function on social media. They aren't particularly intelligent, but they are in a position to affect the entire world because they directly influence billions of people. Typically, such algorithms are designed to maximize click-through, that is, the probability that the user clicks on presented items. The solution is simply to present items that the user likes to click on, right? Wrong. The solution is to change the user's preferences so that they become more predictable. A more predictable user can be fed items that they are likely to click on, thereby generating more revenue. People with more extreme political views tend to be more predictable in which items they will click on. (Possibly there is a category of articles that die-hard centrists are likely to click on, but it’s not easy to imagine what this category consists of.) Like any rational entity, the algorithm learns how to modify its environment —in this case, the user’s mind—in order to maximize its own reward.

[Trump] is also the personification of the merger of humans and corporations—a one man megabrand, whose wife and children are spin-off brands, with all the pathologies and conflicts of interest inherent in that. He is the embodiment of the belief that money and power provide license to impose one's will on others, whether that entitlement is expressed by grabbing women or grabbing the finite resources from a planet on the cusp of catastrophic warming. He is the product of a business culture that fetishizes "disruptors" who make their fortunes by flagrantly ignoring both laws and regularity standards. Most of all, he is the incarnation of a still-powerful free-market ideological project—one embraced by centrist parties as well as conservative ones—that wages war on everything public and commonly held, and imagines corporate CEOs and superheroes who will save humanity.

In fact, in much the same way as the Centrists, Yogacaras like Asanga and Vasuhandhu introduce and employ expedient concepts, such as "mere mind," only for the sake of dissolving previous ones. Once these concepts on different levels have fulfilled their purpose of redressing specific misconceptions, they are replaced by more subtle ones, which are similarly removed later in the gradual process of letting go of all reference points.

Liberals have elections to contest and centrist working-class voters to win back. That is job number one. And nothing will turn voters off more surely than being hectored in this way. So a couple of reminders to the identity conscious: Elections are not prayer meetings, and no one is interested in your personal testimony. They are not therapy sessions or occasions to obtain recognition. They are not seminars or “teaching moments.” They are not about exposing degenerates and running them out of town. If you want to save America’s soul, consider becoming a minister. If you want to force people to confess their sins and convert, don a white robe and head to the River Jordan. If you are determined to bring the Last Judgment down on the United States of America, become a god. But if you want to win the country back from the right, and bring about lasting change for the people you care about, it’s time to descend from the pulpit.*

Commendably, the conversation on the emerging presence of Moslems in the West has focused on progressive thinking and encouraged women to reach their highest potential. But we cannot do that if we insist on honoring those who, however sympathetic their backgrounds and moving their personal stories, make the mistake of demonizing all Moslems and bashing Islam. Rather, we must clarify the distinctions between radical and fanatic versions of Islam and moderate and centrist versions. When entire populations are represented in the public imagination by their worst elements, the consequences are damaging.

The fall of the protecting class walls transformed the slumbering majorities behind all parties into one great unorganized, structureless mass of furious individuals who had nothing in common except their vague apprehension that the hopes of party members were doomed, that, consequently, the most respected, articulate and representative members of the community were fools and that all the powers that be were not so much evil as they were equally stupid and fraudulent. It was of no great consequence for the birth of this new terrifying negative solidarity that the unemployed worker hated the status quo and the powers that be in the form of the Social Democratic Party, the expropriated small property owner in the form of a centrist or rightist party, and the former members of the middle and upper classes in the form of the traditional extreme right. The number of this mass of generally dissatisfied and desperate men increased rapidly in Germany and Austria after the first World War, when inflation and unemployment added to the disrupting consequences of military defeat; they existed in great proportion in all the succession states, and they have supported the extreme movements in France and Italy since the second World War.

Even as the centrist vote coalesced around Biden, and the progressive and liberal vote was divided, our campaign still won California, Colorado, Utah, and Vermont on Super Tuesday. But Biden beat us in Texas by around sixty thousand votes. That narrow win, along with solid victories in Virginia, Massachusetts, and Minnesota, gave the former vice president a huge boost. Our campaign, which days earlier had been expected to win the most delegates on Super Tuesday, was suddenly trailing. Biden had the lead, and the momentum. Warren left the race a few days later, and with the exit of Bloomberg, what had been a twenty-three-candidate contest was down to a two-man race between Biden and me.

Faith is not a meritorious cause of election, but it is constantly attested as the sole condition of salvation. Faith merely receives the merit of atoning grace, instead of asserting its own merit. God places the life-death option before each person, requiring each to choose. The ekletos are those who by grace freely believe. God does not compel or necessitate their choosing. Even after the initial choice of faith is made, they may grieve and quench the Spirit (1 Thessalonians 5:19). Faith is the condition under which God primordially wills the reception of salvation by all. “He chooses us, not because we believe, but that we may believe; lest we should say that we first chose Him” (Augustine). Faith receives the electing love of God not as if it had already become efficacious without faith, but aware that God’s prescience foreknows faith like all else. In accord with ancient ecumenical consent, predestination was carefully defined in centrist Protestant orthodoxy as: 'The eternal, divine decree, by which God, from His immense mercy, determined to give His Son as Mediator, and through universal preaching , to offer Him for reception to all men who from eternity He foresaw would fall into sin; also through the Word and Sacraments to confer faith upon all who would not resist; to justify all believers, and besides to renew those using the means of grace; to preserve faith in them until the end of life, and in a word, to save those believing to the end' (Melanchthon).

He introduces me to his political friends from across the spectrum. Conservatives who oo and ah and nod, telling me I'm just what this country is about. And so articulate! Frowning liberals who put it simply: my immoral career is counterproductive to my own community. Can I see that? My primary issue is poverty, not race. Their earnest faces tilt to assess my comprehension, my understanding of my role in this society. They conjure metaphors of boats and tides and rising waves of fairness. Not reparations -no, even socialism doesn't stretch that far. Though some do propose a rather capitalistic trickle-down from Britain to her lagging Commonwealth friends. Through economic generosity: trade and strong relations! Global leadership. The centrists nod. The son nods, too. Now that, they can all agree to.

Consider almost any public issue. Today’s Democratic Party and its legislators, with a few notable individual exceptions, is well to the right of counterparts from the New Deal and Great Society eras. In the time of Lyndon Johnson, the average Democrat in Congress was for single-payer national health insurance. In 1971, Congress overwhelmingly passed the Comprehensive Child Development Act, for universal, public, tax-supported, high-quality day care and prekindergarten. Nixon vetoed the bill in 1972, but even Nixon was for a guaranteed annual income, and his version of health reform, “play or pay,” in which employers would have to provide good health insurance or pay a tax to purchase it, was well to the left of either Bill or Hillary Clinton’s version, or Barack Obama’s. The Medicare and Medicaid laws of 1965 were not byzantine mash-ups of public and private like Obamacare. They were public. Infrastructure investments were also public. There was no bipartisan drive for either privatization or deregulation. The late 1960s and early 1970s (with Nixon in the White House!) were the heyday of landmark health, safety, environmental, and financial regulation. To name just three out of several dozen, Nixon signed the 1970 Clean Air Act, the 1970 Occupational Safety and Health Act, and the 1973 Consumer Product Safety Act. Why did Democrats move toward the center and Republicans to the far right? Several things occurred. Money became more important in politics. The Democratic Leadership Council, formed by business-friendly and Southern Democrats after Walter Mondale’s epic 1984 defeat, believed that in order to be more competitive electorally, Democrats had to be more centrist on both economic and social issues.

We venerate centrists, moderates, independents. In a telling experiment, Samara Klara and Yanna Krupnikov cued subjects to think about political disagreements and then handed them photographs of strangers, some of whom were identified as independents and others of whom were said to be partisans. The independents were rated as more attractive, “even when, by objective standards, the partisans were actually more attractive.” In another test of the theory, Klar and Krupnikov found that Americans are nearly 60 percent more likely to call themselves “independents” when they’re told they need to make a good impression on a stranger. Being independent isn’t about whom you vote for. It’s about your personal brand. Our appreciation of independents reflects our denial of the substance of partisanship. We want to wish away the depths of our disagreements, and it is convenient to blame them instead on the maneuverings of misguided partisans. But partisans aren’t bad people perverting the political system through irrationality and self-interest. They’re normal people—you and me—reflecting the deep differences that define political systems the world over. And the more different the parties are, the more rational partisanship becomes. What has happened to American politics in recent decades is that the parties have become visibly, undeniably more different, and the country has rationally become more partisan in response.

In summary, prior to Bhavaviveka, the Yogacaras sought to assimilate rather than to oppose Centrism. A particularly striking example of this is Kambala's (early sixth century) Garland ofLight,1212 which displays a most remarkable early synthesis of Yogacara and Madhyamaka. After Bhavaviveka's critique, however, though never rejecting Nagarjuna and Aryadeva, on certain points the later Yogacaras seemed to be at odds with the later Centrists,"" mainly accusing each other of reification or nihilism respectively. However, what often happened in these controversies was the general problem of one philosophical system attacking the other with its own terminology and systemic framework and not on the grounds of the terminology and the context of that other system. In particular, Bhavaviveka's interpretation of Yogacara is a perfect example of an extremely literal reading without considering the meaning in terms of the Yogacara system's own grounds, instead exclusively treating it on Centrist grounds. Thus, when abstracted from the obvious polemical elements and out-of-context misinterpretations of what the opponents actually meant by certain terms, not much is left in terms of fundamental differences between the later Centrists and Yogacaras,'''" which basically boil down to two issues: (i) whether there is an ultimately real mind (no matter whether this is called other-dependent nature, self-awareness, ground consciousness, or nondual wisdom) and (2) whether any epistemology is possible at all.

To decide how great the danger was that this oldest civilized continent in the world would be overrun this winter will be left to later historical research. The unfading credit that this danger is over now goes to those soldiers whom we are commemorating today. Only a glance at Bolshevism’s gigantic preparations for the destruction of our world is sufficient to let us realize with horror what might have become of Germany and the rest of the Continent, had not the National Socialist movement taken power in this state ten years ago, and had it not begun the rebuilding of the German Wehrmacht with the determination that is so peculiar to it, following many fruitless efforts for disarmament. After all, the Germany of Weimar with its Centrist-Marxist democratic party politics would have been swept away by this Central Asian invasion as a straw would be by a hurricane. We realize with increasing clarity that the confrontation that has taken place in Europe since the First World War is slowly beginning to look like a struggle which can only be compared with the greatest historic events of the past. Eternal Jewry forced on us a pitiless and merciless war. Should we not be able to stop the elements of destruction at Europe’s borders, then this continent will be transformed into a single field of ruins. The gravest consequences of this war would then be not only the burned cities and destroyed cultural monuments, but also the bestially murdered multitudes, which would become the victim of this Central Asian flood, just as with the invasions by the Huns and Mongols. What the German and allied soldiers today protect in the east is not the stony face of this continent or its social and intellectual character, but its eternal human substance, whence all values originated ages and ages ago and which gave expression to all human civilizations today, not only to those in Europe and America. In addition to this world of barbarity threatening from the east, we are witnessing the satanic destructive frenzy of its ally, the so-called West. We know about our enemies’ war objectives from countless publications, speeches, and open demands. The babble of the Atlantic Charter is worth as much as Wilson’s Fourteen Points in contrast with the implemented actual design of the Diktat of Versailles. Just as in the English parliamentary democracy the warmonger Churchill pointed the way for later developments with his claim in 1936, when he was not yet the responsible leader of Great Britain, that Germany had to be destroyed again, so the elements behind the present demands for peace in the same democracies today are already planning the state to which they seek to reduce Europe after the war. And their objectives totally correspond with the manifestations of their Bolshevik allies, which we have not only known about but also witnessed: the extermination of all continental people proudly conscious of their nationality and, at their head, the extermination of our own German people. It makes no difference whether English or American papers, parliamentarians, stump orators, or men of letters demand the destruction of the Reich, the abduction of the children of our Volk, the sterilization of our male youth, and so on, as the primary war objective, or whether Bolshevism implements the slaughter of whole groups of people, men, women, and children, in practice. After all, the driving force behind this remains the eternal hatred of that cursed race which, as a true scourge of God, chastised the nations for many thousands of years, until they began to defend themselves against their tormentors in times of reflection. Speech in Lichthof of the Zeughaus for the Heroes’ Memorial Day Berlin, March 21, 1943

While some states led by Democrats are having budget problems, too, there are far more states where Republicans control both the legislature and the governor’s office: 23, compared with seven states controlled by Democrats. Some of the bitterest budget fights this year pit conservative Republicans against centrist Republicans over how to cut spending or raise taxes.

confounded the pollsters by winning a resounding election victory. His Likud party won 30 seats against 24 for the rival Zionist Union, led by Yitzhak Herzog, in the 120-seat Knesset. Mr Netanyahu’s fourth coalition government will take weeks to build. The question is whether he will try to construct a cabinet only with right-wing and religious parties, or seek a more centrist one by inviting Mr Herzog

African Americans (as well as other subaltern groups) are not essential Democrats, although in recent history many have tactically aligned themselves with this party. Critical theorists and others on the educational left should recognize that African American articulation to the Democratic Party and other powerful, liberal, progressive, and centrist groups has almost always been tactical. To theorize African Americans as “intelligent” when they show unquestioning loyalty to the Democratic Party and other liberal causes, even when these take their support for granted as they drift to the Right on significant issues, and “foolish” when they tactically participate in other, sometimes more conservative, alliances (such as that around vouchers) grossly misrepresents African American agency, and betrays what I feel is a racist essentialization of Black intelligence. Subaltern groups have always needed to tactically associate in seemingly contradictory ways with powerful groups and individuals, such as the Heritage Foundation, the Bradley Foundation, and the Democratic Leadership Council, in order to seek to protect their interests.

The next little thing about this vote-for-the-lesser-evil trick, of course—and this is no secret to anyone anymore—is that it drives all the “serious” candidates toward what is commonly referred to as the “moderate center,” even if these serious candidates aren’t, in fact, moderate or centrist in any meaningful sense and the so-called center moves further to the right with each election cycle. For nearly two decades now this process has been steadily advancing on the Democratic side, as liberals are trained to accept the idea that the national majority will never accept a true labor party, or any candidate perceived as “soft” on defense.

struggle. The problem was, most of the French loathed him. He had opposed Munich – which had cost him the support of the moderate conservatives. He was in favour of the war – which had cost him the support of the right. He was a centrist democrat, but he survived only by grace of the socialist opposition’s support. By means of all kinds of manoeuvres – one of which was to appoint Pétain to the post of vice-premier – he tried to broaden support for his cabinet. But he was inept enough to draw in more and more tired defeatists. ‘You have no army,’ Pétain sneered at the British minister of war, Anthony Eden. ‘What could you achieve where the French army has failed?’ During those weeks Churchill flew back and forth to France at least four times, desperately trying to convince the French to keep fighting. He

You can be sure that the elite want to promote the liberal position as much as possible – because they can never be toppled by liberals. Liberals have been bred by the elite to be bland, banal, comfortable Last Men and Ignavi. The elite fear only the radicals – because the radicals are prepared to get their hands dirty. Why are there no statues of Robespierre? Because the elite despise him above all others, and they have succeeded in making the world ashamed of and disgusted by radicals. Like everything else, there are good radicals and bad radicals, but without radicals nothing ever changes. Why are the elite still in charge after destroying the world’s economy? Because they themselves are radicals (bad radicals), and they can never be toppled by weak liberals who’d rather go shopping than protesting.

bothsidesism. It’s the insistence that whatever excesses of partisanship you may see on the right have an equivalent on the left, that the way forward to solving America’s problems is for good centrists of both parties to come together and work things out. All of this is willfully naïve.

There are, of course, leftist radicals in America, but they don’t control the Democratic Party; rightist radicals basically are the Republican Party. There are some politicians one might describe as centrists, in the sense that their policy views broadly match public opinion—although public opinion is actually much further to the left on economic issues than is widely acknowledged. In any case, however, at this point virtually every politician one might call a centrist is a Democrat; Republican centrists have been driven out of the G.O.P. And

In a time of crisis, the last thing that anyone needs is a centrist position ... a position of uncertainty, doubt, compromise, no clear direction, no conviction, no purpose. We are entering a revolutionary stage that requires a revolutionary response. Revolutions always come from the left or right, and never from the centre, which is the position of stasis, the status quo, business as usual. It’s the position for the fearful.

Real moderates need to offer counterweight to all types of overreach; including Centrist overreach.

Real moderates need to offer counterweight to all types of overreach. The turmoil during past years certainly prove - for those willing to see - that this includes Centrist overreach.

Rather than combating the irrationality of the charges of softness on Communism and subversion, the Truman Administration, sure that it was the lesser of two evils, moved to expropriate the issue, as in a more subtle way it was already doing in foreign affairs. So the issue was legitimized; rather than being the property of the far right, which the centrist Republicans tolerated for obvious political benefits, it had even been picked up by the incumbent Democratic party.

I have eyes that see through eternity. I see though the eyes of a Juggernaut in my midnight dreams. When I look towards the black vault that lies gaping overhead, it is impossible to tell if I am looking up or down, because, when you have given yourself over to the abyss, comfortable placeholders like gravity cease to have any meaning. Center of gravity becomes a heretical absolute. When existence will not acknowledge yours, you lose all notions of absolute center. Therefore, I am no centrist.

I mean, if I could choose between Democrat and Republican, I would choose Centrist.

So, you’re a Capacianist now?” Ken Lar asked. “Finally!” “No, I’m a Just-ificationist. Just-hyphen-icationist. I don’t want to pick sides anymore. I mean, if I could choose between Democrat and Republican, I would choose Centrist. Likewise, I wish Reformists and Capacianists could stop fighting and let each other mend the philosophical and academic flaws they have and acknowledge one another’s strengths, so that way, we could reform society by fusing both Capacianism and Reformation together. That’s why it’s called Just-ification. So we could use JUSTNESS as JUSTIFICATION for our movement, as Michael put it.

In the longer term, business itself will be harmed by shifting from R&D to financial manipulations. In earlier days, that might have been a concern. But managerial ethic has shifted from the time when viability of the firm was a serious concern to today’s focus on gain tomorrow. The long-term prospects for the firm become lesser considerations—or for human society generally. Nothing could reveal this shift with more brilliant clarity than a matter already discussed: the virtually reflexive decisions to race toward destruction, with eyes open, if it yields short-term gain. Right now profits are spectacular and CEO salaries have skyrocketed to the stratosphere, dragging other managerial rewards with them, while for the general population, real wages stagnate, social spending is meager, unions and other interferences with “sound economics” are dismantled. The best of all possible worlds. So why care if my firm will go under after I’ve moved to greener pastures, or for that matter, why care if I leave to my grandchildren a world in which they have some chance for decent survival? Capitalist mentality gone insane. There is, of course, the usual problem. The rascal multitude. They’re not too happy about the undermining of functioning democracy and basic rights. I should add the same is true in Europe. In fact, even more so. The attack on democracy in Europe is even sharper than here. Significant decisions about society and politics are out of the hands of the population. They’re made by unelected bureaucrats in Brussels: the IMF, the Central Bank, the European Commission. All of this, all over the world, is leading to anger, resentment, and bitterness. You see it right now in the Yellow Vest movement in France, but it’s everywhere. In election after election, the centrist parties are collapsing. It’s happening here, too. Parties happen to be keeping their names in our rigid two-party system, but the centrist elements are losing their grip.

The majority of people are not fully committed to either the right or the left. Nor either to censorship or to absolute freedom of speech. People are too caught up in the daily struggle for survival to pour a lot of energy into ideology.

WHAT THESE EXAMPLES show us is a generation of centrist liberals collectively despairing over democracy itself. After turning their backs on working-class issues, traditionally one of the core concerns of left parties, Democrats stood by while right-wing demagoguery took root and thrived. Then, after the people absorbed a fifty-year blizzard of fake populist propaganda, Democrats turned against the idea of “the people” altogether.17

George Mason professor Tim Groseclose argues that another effect [of a liberal media] is the “extremism-redefined principle,” in which “the terms ‘mainstream’ and ‘extreme’ take on new meaning within the group. When the group is, say, very liberal, mainstream Democratic positions begin to be considered centrist, and positions that would normally be considered extremely left-wing become common place.

Whenever anybody talks about unity, it's actually a surrender. And whenever anyone talks about ideology, they are always talking about Progressives. For some reason, the radical centrists do not have an ideology.

As Thucydides taught Aron so well, and as he knew from his own experience, revolutions—even psychodramas like this one—do not cause moderates and centrists to rush into the streets and clamor for reasonable and meaningful change (ER xvii, 10, 20–21, 34, 126, 164ff.).

A bland technocrat straight out of the consensus playbook, Jimmy Carter represented a new kind of Democrat—a post–New Deal centrist who campaigned with vague populist niceness but whose true affection was reserved for ultra-competent policy experts. This understanding of liberal leadership would far outlast Carter’s political career: we would see it again in the presidencies of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, two more true believers in meritocracy who also thought to present themselves as kindly reformers on the side of ordinary people.

This notion, that the citizen’s choice among determinedly centrist candidates makes a “difference,” is in fact the narrative’s most central element, and its most fictive.

Obama’s centrist solutions and utter lack of radicalism in the face of a recalcitrant and obstructionist Congress should have made him a hero to traditional Republicans. But just the opposite happened; by the end of his first term, the president had an 85.7 percent disapproval rating among the GOP.

To me, the issue is not are you centrist or are you liberal? The issue to me is, Is what you’re proposing going to work? Can you build a working coalition to make the lives of people better? And if it can work, you should support it whether it’s centrist, conservative, or liberal.

It would have been easier if Biden were dealing with just Manchin, but he wasn’t. He needed to bring Kyrsten Sinema along, and dealing with both of them was a maddening exercise. It was as if they were strategically out of sync. They kept pushing in opposite directions. Sinema didn’t want to raise taxes but was less skittish about spending money; Manchin was happy to raise taxes but didn’t want to spend too much. Pleasing one of the holdouts made it harder to cut a deal with the other. On September 22, Biden decided to confront the problem head on. Rather than conduct separate negotiations with Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema and six centrist House Democrats, he pulled them together for a meeting in the Oval Office. When senators entered the Oval Office to negotiate with Biden, they were surprised by his collegiality. He treated them as his equal. It was as if he were still Joe Biden (D-Del.), a legislative dealmaker, not a president imposing his will on them. Meetings with legislators were sometimes scheduled for two-and-a-half-hour blocks. And they were endless. Sinema came to the White House ten times over the summer and early fall. He was solicitous and patient, trying to edge them to consensus, for the most part. But Biden

The simple solution was for Manchin to concede. He could just give Sinema her win—and find another way to pay for the bill. But Manchin wasn’t in a yielding mood. “I’m not going to let her define this bill,” he told Steve Ricchetti. To dislodge the pair of obstinate senators, Schumer enlisted Mark Warner, one of their fellow centrists. Warner considered both of them friends and had a history of skillfully steering them in leadership’s favored direction. Warner’s first task was getting Manchin to relent, which meant a late-night visit to his houseboat. A summer storm soaked Warner’s suit, and he lounged around in a borrowed T-shirt and a pair of Manchin’s flip-flops. “Show generosity of spirit,” he urged. He had an ally in Manchin’s wife, Gayle, who had access to emotional weaponry that Warner didn’t. “You can’t be greedy on this,” she told her husband. Having worked through his anger, Manchin could see that he had little choice but to grant Sinema her win.

senator decided that he didn’t want to be the bad guy in the story. He spent Saturday huddling with West, sketching out a fresh offer for a climate bill, assembling a compromise he deemed worthy. When West passed along the document to Petrella and Deese, he told them that some fine-tuning might be required, but he thought it was a fair deal that Schumer and the White House could accept. As Petrella scanned the offer, he braced himself for the worst. But as he read, he absorbed the reality that Manchin had confounded his expectations. The plan was actually ambitious, not that far from the substance of their negotiations. Manchin had his demands, to be sure. They had covered most of this ground before. He wanted approval of the Mountain Valley Pipeline, which would transport natural gas from wells in north-central West Virginia, turning his state into a major player in that energy market. He asked for the Democratic leadership’s support for a separate bill reforming the process for permitting new energy infrastructure so that it could be built without having to surmount so many bureaucratic impediments. And he needed hundreds of millions of dollars set aside for deficit reduction, to assuage his centrist conscience. But that was just horse trading. The only thing that truly mattered was his proposing more than $300 billion in tax credits that would incentivize the nation to rapidly embrace clean energy. If Congress passed his proposal, carbon emissions would fall by 40 percent of the 2005 levels by 2030. Petrella, who felt at once elated and frustrated by Manchin’s wild swings, told West, “Lance, I’ve been sticking my neck out, defending you guys, saying that you were going to fucking do something here, for a year. I’m willing to do it one more time, but it’s got to be before the August recess, and this has got to be it. This is the deal. We’re locking arms.” West told Petrella that the document in his hands was the “flight plan.” They were going to finally land the plane. —

A more ambitious law, passed in 1994 by the then Culture minister Jacques Toubon (inevitably dubbed ‘Monsieur Allgood’ in the French popular press), proved equally controversial. Parties of the right and far left, for different reasons, approved the measure, but objections from centrists and the Socialist party were upheld by France’s Constitutional court, on the grounds that the constitutional right to free speech could not be maintained if the state dictated the words in which it could be expressed. This left an awkward legal limbo in which public sector employees were obliged to use the prescribed terms, but restrictions were not extended to the private sphere.

as a centrist/lefty Israeli, I keep looking for the Bashar Masris of the region. But so far the Arab nations and then the Palestinian people have refused each and every offer. From 1922, 1947, 1948, 1967, 1973, 1994, 2000, 2008, and 2019. It has just been one big fat “Nope.

If the great challenge to democracies today is the emotional pull of populism and the way in which it is amplified by sections of the media and the algorithms of social media, then centrists must find a way to break through with an emotional appeal of their own.

No one’s standard of living will change, nothing would fundamentally change.

Practical as ever, Clinton invited me to the White House a mere three weeks after the election. During the election campaign I had of course strongly criticized the Oslo agreements. This created an obvious dilemma for me. On the one hand, governments are guided by the continuity of international agreements. On the other, this agreement was seriously flawed and compromised Israel’s security. I resolved the issue by saying that despite my grave reservations, I would honor the agreements under two conditions: Palestinian reciprocity and Israeli security. As Oslo was to be carried out in stages, I would proceed to the next stage, known as the Hebron Agreement, only if the Palestinians kept their side of the bargain, foremost on matters relating to security. I insisted that the Palestinians live up to their pledge to rein in terrorism and to jail Hamas terrorists. If they did their part, I would do mine. “If they’ll give, they’ll get” was the way I put it, along with a corollary: “If they won’t give, they won’t get.”2 With the exception of the hard right who wanted me to tear up the Oslo agreement outright, most right-of-center and centrist opinion agreed with my policy. Israelis were tired of voluntarily ceding things to the Palestinians and receiving terror in return. I explained all this to Clinton when we met in the White House. He asked me if I would honor the Hebron Agreement. I said that under the twin principles of reciprocity and security I would.

If not for centrists consolidating behind Joe Biden in an extraordinary forty-eight-hour period between the South Carolina primary and Super Tuesday, Bernie Sanders would likely have won the Democratic nomination.

Although an act ceases as soon as it has been done, it will inevitably produce its effect, even after a hundred eons have passed. What is the factor that makes inevitable the causal process through which cause and result are connected? Some philosophers who have examined this subject assert that the supporting factor is something acquired or possessed. Others maintain that it is an inevitable phenomenon separate [from the cause or its result]. In either case, some sub-schools of the Analysts maintain that this supporting factor is substantially existent while others [maintain that it is] designatively existent. The Idealists assert that fundamental consciousness functions [as the support] upon which the instincts of evolutionary actions are imprinted, after which one experiences their ripening. Those who postulate the six groups of consciousness6 but not a fundamental consciousness state that [the support] is the continuum of mental consciousness, [itself only] a designation. Some Centrists assert that the supporting factor is designatively existent, [being the] designation of mere “I” or mere “person.” However many similar philosophical views on this subject there are, all are simply reifications based on partial understanding; they do not reflect the truth. At this point, however, we will not refute or confirm any of these theses.

His Heart of Centrism agrees: Its character is neither existent, nor nonexistent, Nor [both] existent and nonexistent, nor neither. Centrists should know true reality That is free from these four possibilities.

The crucial point here and in Centrism in general is that inherent existence is simply an incoherent notion altogether that does not withstand analysis. What is called emptiness is just the result of pointing out this fact. In other words, whether one conventionally speaks of "the thesis of emptiness" or says, "I have no thesis," both expressions just announce and highlight the Centrist procedure of demonstrating that all things lack inherent existence-that there are no reference points. Needless to say, such a "thesis of emptiness" is nothing to hold on to either.

The audience watching a magic show or a movie may experience one illusory being killing another. However, both the being that appears to be the killer and the one that is killed are empty; they are not really existent. Likewise, in the context of seeming reality, it is justified that the empty and illusory words of Nagarjuna's negations can negate or cancel out an illusory assumed nature of all things, thus arriving at the conclusion that all things are empty. Therefore, Centrists employ reasoning and such as expedient tools in their discourses only inasmuch as these tools have a certain effectiveness as illusory remedies against illusory fixed ideas. In other words, an illusionlike thesis may be deconstructed by an illusionlike refutation, since the latter has some conventional remedial power within the framework of seeming reality that appears due to fundamental ignorance.

Centrists use seeming reality in general and reasoning, words, and concepts in particular in a way that is completely noncommittal.

The name of the JPHS exemplified how the more politically acceptable term, “progressive,” came to replace the label radical. Whereas in the 1940s and 1950s the term progressive was used to connote someone associated with the Communist Party or its support organizations, by the 1980s it came to mean anyone with views to the left of center. Within this parlance, by 1992 a centrist politician like Bill Clinton could refer to himself as a progressive.

THE

In brief, it appears that most Centrists clearly distinguish between accepting a nonreifying notion of mere mind as a step in the more practical context of the progressive stages of meditation on emptiness and refuting any reifying interpretation of mind in the more theoretical context of philosophical analysis.

4.2.2.1.4. Teaching That the Cognition That Negates the Existence of Objects Is a Valid Cognition "If valid cognition is not valid cognition, Isn't what is validated by it delusive? In true reality, the emptiness of entities Is therefore unjustified." [138]'-" [903] This verse states the objection. The opponents might say, "If you assert in your Centrist system that even all valid cognition-which is the means of evaluation-is not valid cognition, isn't a phenomenon that is validated by it delusive too? If one analyzes in accord with true Centrist analysis, emptiness is not established, and, in consequence, meditation on emptiness is unjustified as well." Without referring to an imputed entity, One cannot apprehend the lack of this entity. Therefore, the lack of a delusive entity Is clearly delusive [too]. [139] This verse teaches that [everything] is mere delusion. Without referring to-that is, without relying on-a mere imputed entity, one is also not able to apprehend or present the lack of this entity, which is emptiness. The reason is that if one does not rely on the conventional term [or notion of] space, one is not able to present space as [referring to] the lack of any entities."" Therefore, since sentient beings cling to the reality of delusive entities that are mere appearances, they plunge into cyclic existence. If one understands that these very [appearances] are unreal and illusionlike, this [understanding] surely serves as the remedy for the [clinging to reality]. However, emptiness-which is this imputation in the sense of the lack of such delusive [appearances] that appear as entities-is clearly delusive too. In the same way as an illusory lion kills an illusory elephant, this is [nothing more than] engaging in the [particular] reification of understanding emptiness as the remedy for the reification that conceives of real [entities]. Thus, when one's son dies in a dream, The conception "He does not exist" Removes the thought that he does exist, But it is also delusive. [140] This verse teaches that the [cultivation of emptiness] is the remedy for reification. Thus, if one experiences in a dream that one's son has been born and then dies, inasmuch as this is a dream, there is definitely no difference between the [son]'s birth and his death. Still, due to one's seeing [in the dream] that he has been born, there arises the mental state that conceives, "My son exists." When there is the appearance that he has died, there emerges the conception "My son has died and now he does not exist," [904] which removes the thought that fancies, "My son does exist." However, since both-the existence and the nonexistence of this son too-are equal in being a dream, they are alike in being delusive.

On the one hand, using precise philosophical categories and analyses in scriptures such as the Centrist ones, whose primary aim is to provide the means for the transcendence of dualistic thinking altogether, in order to give way to unmediated direct insight into the nature of all phenomena is like attempting to apply a mathematical formula in order to capture the experience of being completely absorbed in a wonderful piece of music or watching a breathtaking sunset. So, "pure logic" is surely not the ultimate key to understanding Buddhist texts and views, and we should not expect to find the ultimately correct conceptual presentation of facts and experiences on the Buddhist path that by definition lie outside the realm of conceptual mind anyway. Even on the mundane plane, what would be the finally correct presentation of the taste of chocolate? And even if there were such a thing, what would its relevance be for the actual experience of tasting chocolate? After all that has been said here, it should be clear that I do not hold a brief for some kind of "mysticism" or even "irrationalism." At the same time, we must accept that "pure experience" per se does not lead to an understanding of treatises that are grounded in a rational format to speak about something that is beyond the confines of language and reason. In the realm of the actual experience that such texts point to, reason and language have lost all meaning and the work of the scholar has reached its end.

the Centrist approach of presenting mere conditionality without analysis is in clear opposition to any reifications of asserting arising from the four extremes. Hence, the Centrist way of presenting the two realities is highly superior to any such approach by realists, since it expresses the knowable objects of all persons from ordinary beings to Buddhas in a way that does not contradict common worldly consensus. As was said before, to abstain from reifying things such as karma, cause and effect, ethics, and the means to achieve liberation in no way makes these things lack their justification or functioning. To the contrary, it is precisely the fact of their emptiness-their lack of solid and independent existence-that allows for the unimpeded and dynamic flow of the dependent origination of conditioned phenomena.

the expression "illusionlike arising and ceasing without real existence" that is used by Centrists refers to passages that prove that, from the perspectives of analysis and the perception of noble ones, arising and ceasing in terms of dependent origination are free from arising and ceasing, just like the merely seeming arising and ceasing of an illusion. Centrists would never even dream of considering such an expression to prove any established existence of arising and ceasing.

In brief, if Centrism is explained as a consistent philosophical, ontological, or logical system, that may appeal to our wish for some well-organized, all-explanatory picture of the world and how we perceive it. Usually, we just want to have something that makes good sense, something on which we can build our belief systems or, in the case of Centrism, a belief system for why and how we should not have any belief system. However, all attempts to force Centrism into any kind of system at all must necessarily fail due to the very nature of what Centrism is: the radical deconstruction of any system and conceptualization whatsoever, including itself. Reintroducing into Centrism any notions of justification, validity, or making sense (with more subtle ones being more tricky here than gross ones) precisely reestablishes and fortifies the very traps that the Centrist approach wants us to let go of altogether. To this, Centrists could be tempted to say, "Talking heads, stop making sense!

It has also become clearer how the schemes of human expansion and fulfilment offered by the left, right, or ‘centrist’ liberals and technocrats rarely considered such constraining factors as finite geographical space, degradable natural resources and fragile ecosystems.

In brief, what Centrists refute is any notion of real or absolute existence or an intrinsic nature that is attributed to any phenomenon, whether it is material form, ordinary consciousness, omniscient wisdom, Buddhahood, the Dharma Body, or Buddha nature. Centrists make no difference in this respect between refuting the positions of Buddhists and non-Buddhists. They do not even hesitate to apply such a critique to anything that is-correctly or incorrectly-understood as "Centrism." Thus, if the teachings on the three natures are explained so as to even slightly suggest real existence, be it on the seeming or the ultimate level, be it by the Proponents of Cognizance, so-called Mere Mentalists, or Shen- tong-Madhyamikas, Centrists will speak up against this. However, when the presentation of the three natures is understood as the Karmapa explained it above, it is not something that has to be discarded by Centrists but comes down to the same essential point of ultimate non referential 1 ry that is explained in the Centrist teachings.

Centrists do not have to eliminate such flaws, because their pronouncement "Arising from itself does not exist" is merely meant as an invalidation of the assertion, "Arising from itself exists" as being something that is established through valid cognition in someone else's system. However, Centrists do not put forward a "nonexistence of arising from itself' that is in any way established through valid cognition in their own system.

For Centrists, it is inappropriate to make any autonomous inferences on their own account, because they do not accept any other theses either. In other words, Centrists do not posit any unmistaken consciousness that realizes something to be inferred that is established through some valid cognition in their own system. For they also do not accept any other thesis different from such unmistakenness, that is, something established as mistaken through some valid cognition in their own system. Centrists do not find anything that they feel could be presented as an inference that is thoroughly grounded in their own system. Rather, instead of seeing a need to present some-anyway nonexistent-thoroughly established inferences of the systems of others merely in order to find something that they could present as an established inference, Centrists always say that presenting such is categorically to be avoided. As Aryadeva's Four Hundred Verses explains: Against someone who has no thesis Of "existence, nonexistence, or [both] existence and nonexistence," It is not possible to level a charge, Even if [such is tried] for a long time."" Nagarjuna's Rebuttal of Objections says: If I had any position, I thereby would be at fault. Since I have no position, I am not at fault at all. If there were anything to be observed 'T'hrough direct perception and the other instances [of valid cognition], It would be something to be established or rejected. However, since no such thing exists, I cannot be criticized."'2 In other words, if Centrists had any position of the nature of an existing or nonexistent entity being established through valid cognition on either level of the two realities in their own system, they would thereby incur the two faults of (i) not formulating a reason and an example and (z) failing to eliminate the possible flaws that may be adduced by others against them. However, for Centrists, the ultimate means freedom from all discursiveness and the seeming means mere appearances that are presented in contingency. Apart from this, on any level of the two realities, they do not have any position that is established through valid cognition in their own system as such and such. Therefore they are not at fault in not formulating a reason and an example for entities not arising from themselves. If, through the four kinds of valid cognition, there were any phenomenal entity to be observed as being established, there would be something to be established or rejected in their own system. However, since no such thing exists, Centrists cannot be criticized for incurring the above flaws.

If Consequentialists do not formulate inferences that are established through valid cognition in their own system, they would not even in their dreams formulate any autonomous inferences that are established through valid cognition in common with anybody else's system, since the inferences of Consequentialists have the effect of merely negating the positions of others. This means that these inferences are invalidating consequences that cut through all kinds of superimpositions and denials in the minds of others, while the minds of true Centrists, when pronouncing such statements, remain throughout free from all discursiveness of wishing to express anything that is to be understood or causes understanding.

In brief, Centrists focus more on the objective side and dissolve all reference points within the mind, including mind itself. In this way, they attempt to let us awaken into an uncontrived experience of the ultimate nature of this very mind without any seeming obscurations or reference points. Yogacara focuses more on the subjective side-mind itself-and describes both its impure and pure aspects. The journey from the impure appearance to the pure nature of the mind leads through the provisional and seeming stages of "mere mind" and the nonduality of apprehender and apprehended to nonconceptual wisdom as the experiential dimension of ultimate reality.

Real existence" never appears for any kind of consciousness, since it is not a knowable object. Also, to identify and negate such an extrinsic, abstract notion as the Centrist object of negation openly contradicts both the sutras and the Indian Centrist treatises.

On the level of no analysis, the Karmapa says, when Centrists speak with people who do not like to talk in a manner consistent with the principle of dependent origination, for the purpose of removing such people's fear of this principle and on the level of the expedient meaning, Centrists speak about existence and nonexistence. When they speak with people who like to talk in a manner consistent with dependent origination, Centrists speak about the utter freedom from all discursiveness in terms of existence and nonexistence.

The sociopathic, social Darwinist bent that the modern Tea Party-dominated Republican Party has taken is frightening and potentially fatal to a free society, even to the survival of the species. The dysfunctional, sold-out centrist core of the Democratic Party is totally inadequate to the historical moment, not to mention even to the basic political task of fending off the aggressive Republican media attack machine.

It was little phrases that slipped out between the lines or at the microphone in private meetings, and the lineage of some of their supporters, that a watchful press seized upon to accuse Le Pen, Haider, and Fini of cryptofascism. Le Pen, who knew that his gruff manner formed part of his appeal, often made remarks readily interpreted as anti-Semitic. He was fined for belittling Hitler’s murder of the Jews as a “detail of history” in a September 1987 television interview and again in a speech in Germany in 1996, and lost his eligibility for a year in 1997 for striking a female candidate in an election rally. Haider openly praised the full-employment policies of the Nazis (though no other aspects of Nazism), and he appeared at private rallies of SS veterans and told them that they were models for the young and had nothing to be ashamed of. All of these radical Right parties were havens for veterans of Nazism and Fascism. The leader of the German Republikaner after 1983, Franz Schönhuber, was a former SS officer. He and his like did not want to reject potential recruits from among the old fascists and their sympathizers, but at the same time they wanted to extend their reach toward moderate conservatives, the formerly apolitical, or even fed-up socialists. Since the old fascist clientele had nowhere else to go, it could be satisfied by subliminal hints followed by the ritual public disavowals. For in order to move toward Stage Two in the France, Italy, or Austria of the 1990s, one must be firmly recentered on the moderate Right. (This had also been true in 1930s France, as shown by the success of La Rocque’s more centrist tactics after 1936.)

Liberals and social democrats have systematically suppressed reference to Luxemburg's close alliance with Bolshevism from the revolution of 1905 until 1912 and again from the outbreak of World War I until her assassination during the Spartacus uprising in 1919. They have, however, fully exploited her 1904 polemic in the service of anticommunism. Thus, the widely-circulated Ann Arbor Paperbacks for the Study of Communism and Marxism reprinted "Organizational Questions of Russian Social Democracy" under the slanderous title "Leninism or Marxism?" No less pernicious have been the efforts of many left-reformists and centrists to portray the Leninist democratic-centralist vanguard party as valid only for backward countries, while solidarizing with Luxemburg's 1904 anti-Bolshevik position for advanced capitalist countries. [...]

Isn't the dull pain of the centrists conformity delicious, edgelord?

If sane, pragmatic, moderate people ignore politics because they are disgusted with the outcomes, then it merely leaves a vacuum to be filled by more extreme and dishonest elements. Unlike baseball, democracy is not a spectator sport. Things won’t correct themselves if you ignore them out of disgust. They will get worse. Look around.

We urge you to regard with great skepticism any sentence that begins 'Everybody knows...' or 'Common sense tells us...' Often, these phrases are signposts for cultural belief systems that may be antisexual, monogamy-centrist, and/or codependent.

There appears to be a correlation between secure attachment and beliefs that are centrist.

Odysseus is the statesman of the Iliad, the man in the middle, keeping what balance he can among the parties. He shows himself at Troy, as later on Ithaca, as a firm conservative, in the sense that he props up the status quo—in this case, his insufficient chief. In his own poem a complementary side to his law-and-order propensity will show itself: a wide and deep imagination. The man of order, balance, and tradition, the centrist par excellence in public life, is a vividly imagining free spirit in his inner life.

This means that, having made it sufficiently clear that mere appearances have no reality, Centrists can still go on to discuss these appearances, in the same way in which non-Centrists can talk about all the aspects of what appears for them. In this way, believe it or not, the Centrist approach is in fact very much down to earth, for how could we ever pretend to meaningfully discuss all kinds of metaphysical speculations if we have not even properly analyzed the status of what is right before our eyes? Thus, any philosophical analysis must start with what directly appears to us and then enter the reasoning process from there.

However, during the whole process of employing such provisional levels of analysis that may include what looks like autonomous reasoning to others, for Centrists it is never a question that all of these are merely skillful, expedient means to address people individually on the levels of understanding that they can manage, but these means are applied without ever reifying the techniques or the resultant understanding.

The maximalist dreamers of this epoch, the Left Bolshevik (Vpered) group led by the philosopher of proletarian culture, Aleksandr Bogdanov, were effectively defeated by the hardheaded “centrist” Leninists by 1912.

In Living in Spanglish I posit the coming of existence of this forwars-looking race that obliterates all races, stripping away Vasaconelos's petty resentment of Anglo culture and patronizing Euro-centrist, and acknowledge a cultural-economic inevitability that is hemispheric in nature. Note: Jose Vasaconelos wrote 1925 essay "La Raza cosmica" [The Cosmic Race] asserting, "Por mi raza hablara mi espiritu [The Spirit will speak through my race.

Prajiuipararnitai sutras and Centrist texts can be epitomized by the following two points: (i) Motivated by the altruistic attitude of the mind of enlightenment for the sake of all beings, bodhisattvas make every effort to attain the omniscience of a Buddha that is accomplished through practicing the six perfections. (2) There are 110 such things as bodhisattvas, omniscience, Buddhas, beings, the six perfections, or any attainment. To integrate these two aspects in Buddhist practice is called the unity of means and knowledge,

The people had registered their dismay with a long litany of unpopular Federalist actions: the Jay Treaty, the Alien and Sedition Acts, the truculent policy toward France, the vast army being formed under Hamilton and the taxes levied to support it. The 1800 elections revealed, for the first time, the powerful centrist pull of American politics—the electorate’s tendency to rein in anything perceived as extreme.

If there was any politician in America who reflected the Cold War and what it did to the country, it was Richard Nixon—the man and the era were made for each other. The anger and resentment that were a critical part of his temperament were not unlike the tensions running through the nation as its new anxieties grew. He himself seized on the anti-Communist issue earlier and more tenaciously than any other centrist politician in the country. In fact that was why he had been put on the ticket in the first place. His first congressional race in 1946, against a pleasant liberal incumbent named Jerry Voorhis, was marked by red-baiting so savage that it took Voorhis completely by surprise. Upon getting elected, Nixon wasted no time in asking for membership in the House Un-American Activities Committee. He was the committee member who first spotted the contradictions in Hiss’s seemingly impeccable case; in later years he was inclined to think of the case as one of his greatest victories, in which he had challenged and defeated a man who was not what he seemed, and represented the hated Eastern establishment. His career, though, was riddled with contradictions. Like many of his conservative colleagues, he had few reservations about implying that some fellow Americans, including perhaps the highest officials in the opposition party, were loyal to a hostile foreign power and willing to betray their fellow citizens. Yet by the end of his career, he became the man who opened the door to normalized relations with China (perhaps, thought some critics, he was the only politician in America who could do that without being attacked by Richard Nixon), and he was a pal of both the Soviet and Chinese Communist leadership. If he later surprised many long-standing critics with his trips to Moscow and Peking, he had shown his genuine diplomatic skills much earlier in the way he balanced the demands of the warring factions within his own party. He never asked to be well liked or popular; he asked only to be accepted. There were many Republicans who hated him, particularly in California. Earl Warren feuded with him for years. Even Bill Knowland, the state’s senior senator and an old-fashioned reactionary, despised him. At the 1952 convention, Knowland had remained loyal to Warren despite Nixon’s attempts to help Eisenhower in the California delegation. When Knowland was asked to give a nominating speech for Nixon, he was not pleased: “I have to nominate the dirty son of a bitch,” he told friends. Nixon bridged the gap because his politics were never about ideology: They were the politics of self. Never popular with either wing, he managed to negotiate a delicate position acceptable to both. He did not bring warmth or friendship to the task; when he made attempts at these, he was, more often than not, stilted and artificial. Instead, he offered a stark choice: If you don’t like me, find someone who is closer to your position and who is also likely to win. If he tilted to either side, it was because that side seemed a little stronger at the moment or seemed to present a more formidable candidate with whom he had to deal. A classic example of this came early in 1960, when he told Barry Goldwater, the conservative Republican leader, that he would advocate a right-to-work plank at the convention; a few weeks later in a secret meeting with Nelson Rockefeller, the liberal Republican leader—then a more formidable national figure than Goldwater—Nixon not only reversed himself but agreed to call for its repeal under the Taft-Hartley act. “The man,” Goldwater noted of Nixon in his personal journal at the time, “is a two-fisted four-square liar.

All right,” Polly said. “Your assignment for today is to say nice things about Mitt Romney.” Everyone in the conference room for the daily intern orientation groaned. A couple of people booed. “I don’t like it any more than you do,” Polly said. “But the fact is that Romney’s come out for a minimum wage increase. That puts him at odds with the House Republicans. You know how the game works as well as I do. We’re united; they’re divided. We’re for principle; they’re for political expediency. We’re the centrists; they’re the extremists. Something like this is gold for us, and you don’t let gold pass through your hands.

In this sense, my proposal coincides with the posture of conservative Christians in that we affirm our specific identity. It coincides also with that of progressive Christians in its political commitment on behalf of the impoverished. I would like to urge the former to refrain from isolating themselves in their identity ghetto, and I urge the latter to avoid diluting themselves and letting themselves be swept away by currents that are culturally dominant and politically correct. Both sides need to go beyond the false conservative/progressive dichotomy, without falling into the error of a centrist theology that leads to naive idealism, mediocre praxis, and, implicitly, a defense of the status quo and the interests of the powerful. Indeed, mine is a radical theology. It does not water down the Christian position or renounce anything positive in that position. I affirm both extremes at the same time. I invite the one side to take seriously the church, the body of Christ, our most authentic root. I invite the other side to opt with radicality for the poor and to struggle for justice. My proposal may perhaps sound excessively radical to those who (consciously or unconsciously) maintain alliances with the powerful, and excessively Catholic to those whose affection for the church has been seriously eroded. However, we will be faithful to the tradition we have inherited and to the challenges of our world only if we live firmly rooted in Jesus Christ, giving fleshly substance to a radical alternative to the dominant world system.

Agricultural cooperation thrived during the 1930s, again due to New Deal initiatives. In 1933 the Farm Credit Administration set up Banks for Cooperatives, a program that created a central bank and twelve district banks; it “became a member-controlled system of financing farmer cooperatives, as well as telephone and electric cooperatives.”181 For the rest of the century, Banks for Cooperatives would prove an invaluable resource. Already by 1939 its financial assistance made it possible for half the farmers in the United States to belong to cooperatives. With World War II and the end of the New Deal, and especially in conservative postwar America, cooperation in all spheres but agriculture plummeted. The political left went off to fight Hitler as the center gained control of the government and many unions. After the war the CIO was purged of Communists, dealing a huge blow to the labor movement. Through reactionary legislation like the Taft-Hartley Act, military and police violence against unions, imperialist foreign policy, so-called “McCarthyite” fear-mongering, massive propaganda campaigns, and other such devices that created a center-right consensus in the 1950s, the labor and cooperative movements were severely damaged. It was essentially a war of big business and conservative Republicans against the social and political legacy of New Deal America, a war in which centrist politicians and even liberal Democrats were complicit, due in large part to the supposed exigencies of the Cold War.182

Ann and Abby, for the most part, remained aloof and practical. The position of the advice columnist, as they both defined it, was an inherently centrist one. It was their job to be dispassionate, to base their advice on social averages. 'Do not agree to engage in any practice you consider frightening, abnormal, or weird,' Abby once advised a reader. The Friedman sisters were not moral heroes. They lacked Dorothy Dix's empathy. 'I'm sorry' was not in their vocabulary. They could be intolerant and cruel and mocked people in distress-- Abby especially. But they never cast themselves as ethicists. They weren't interested in what was right; they were interested in what was normal. They saw themselves as keepers of the social curve. Their advice was a reminder of what was expected of their readers: to buck up, respect their commitments, not be weird. Abby preached acceptance... partly because forgiveness was more efficient than the alternative. She seemed to think that emotions were a waste of time. Eppie was similar. Her response to conflict was either to "dismiss it or rationalize it," as one friend told Carol Felsenthal.

The networks didn’t want to encourage constructive political activism, so the “fight” always involved a ferocious, deregulation-mad, race-baiting winger pounding the crap out of a spineless, backpedaling centrist masquerading as a “leftist.

That’s the essential function of a party convention—to show that the wounds of the primary season have healed and that the leaders of major factions fully support the nominee, whether those things are true or not. Of all the obstacles to Bernie’s most ardent backers coming around—the selection of centrist Tim Kaine, rather than Bernie or Elizabeth Warren, for the VP slot among them—the most visible and aggravating was the prospect of Wasserman Schultz presiding over Hillary’s nomination.

Predictions of Nazi decline ignore the very potent electoral advantages the party retained even after the November setback. To begin with, they had made themselves the most diverse, most wide-ranging political party in the country. The other right-wing parties were devoted to the past, enmeshed with the hated economic establishment or, worse from a popular point of view, yearning for a restoration of the monarchy. (They often referred to the Weimar years as the “Kaiserless time.”) Those positions would do nothing to enhance their electability in popular elections. The left-wing parties, on the other hand, preached a Marxism either in its hard version (Communism) or soft version (Socialism) that alienated more people than it attracted. And the centrist parties had simply evaporated as weak alternatives with no real ideas or solutions. Gregor Strasser explained the inherent strength of his party’s political thinking: “From the right we shall take nationalism, which has so disastrously allied itself with capitalism, and from the left we shall take socialism, which has made such an unhappy union with internationalism. Thus we shall form the National Socialism which will be the motive force of a new Germany and a new Europe.” Hitler was more succinct; no one summed up the political situation better than he did: “The nationalists on the right lacked social awareness,” he said, and “the socialists on the left lacked national awareness.” The political genius of the Nazis was to recognize an opening that once taken advantage of became so large that a Panzer division could drive through it.

Now at all hours, I could watch the conservative news network or the liberal news network or the centrist news network. They all told me we were doomed, but for different reasons. The news networks were run by billionaires, and the on-air talent were wealthy New Yorkers who ate at the same restaurants and pledged allegiance to their ratings. They looked the same and they represented no meaningful ideology. They aided and abetted the shooters by confusing the narrative. They didn’t know anything about the world but we trusted them because they dressed nicely and spoke with such certainty. I