Left? Right? Center?

What's a moderate? What's a liberal? What's a conservative?

I have decided to remove the phrase "liberalism" from the title of this blog because I found it ultimately self-defeating. All of my views could either be described as liberal, moderate, or conservative. Therefore, because each label is so stigmatized, I decided to toss them all in favor of something more universal. Also, "Yankee" and "Liberal" is somewhat redundant. So I redacted both words completely.

For starters, what is a conservative? One would think that a conservative would not run a budget deficit during a period of economic expansion. One would believe in conserving natural resources, and making wise investments for the future. In other words, balance the budget through reasonable taxation, use care and consideration with the extraction of fossil fuels, metals and minerals, and rebuild highways and bridges before they collapse and kill dozens of people.

Obviously, political "conservatives" jettisoned these principles eons ago. I could say that I am a "conservative" because I don't think I should be able to set my kitchen tap water ablaze, but apparently, in today's climate, that makes one a liberal. C'est la vie.

Is there a middle ground in all this? Good question.

Funny how the "center" leans towards the left.

What bothers me most about the term "moderate" is that it is a complete mental shortcut. To subrscribe to any of the "big three" political labels is a sin; none of them are sacred. Rather than explore all sides of an issue (because there are more than two sides to each issue), a "moderate" simply decides that between two arbitrary points is the answer. Between left and right, there is truth

Granted, that's sort of true. If one says that Karl Marx is left and Ayn Rand is right, then one could reasonably say that the truth lies exactly in between. Between an economy where the state owns everything and an economy where the state owns nothing lies "truth."

The inherent problem with this philosophy is that is assumes, without justification, that every ideological argument is between two equally spaced polar opposites.

The politics of guns in America is a shining example of this flawed ideological examination. The
media loves to portray the gun safety dialogue as a political battle between two opposite camps: Those who loves guns and those who hate them. While these factions do exist, it is a very small subset of a much broader spectrum. Universal Background checks is a fine example. Public polling showed somewhere between 85 and 90 percent support for a measure that would make it harder for criminals to get guns and give law enforcement a tool to apprehend wanted criminals. And ten percent of the country wants criminals to buy guns unencumbered because they need them to overthrow the government should they feel the need.

First of all, where would the "center" be in this equation? How can a person show up in a public place with an assault rifle strapped to his back, make vague threats about killing American soldiers, and wear a button that says "Another Responsible Gun Owner?" Nay. It should go without saying that a responsible gun owner is somebody who understands that a gun is dangerous in the hands of a criminal, and any American citizen who would make allusions to kill an American soldier is a treasonous fool. Period. Maybe it support for universal background checks isn't centrist, but, well universal, because support is virtually uniform across party lines.

So if you're one of those 85 to 90 percent of all Americans who thinks the government should actually do something, where do we fit in? Even though public polling shows that roughly one quarter of all Americans self-identify as "liberal," large majorities of Americans support issues that are identified with the political left, be it marriage equality, a progressive tax structure, or universal Medicare. Let's face it: what the right brands as "socialism" is just another word for organized compassion. And it goes without saying that organization and compassion are both very good things.

So if somebody asks me what I am, or what I believe in, I say I am an organized compassionist. Or a prairie populist. Or just a decent human being. What can I say? My parents taught me to help my neighbor, even if my neighbor lives a thousand miles away.