Mr. Moderate

Mr. Moderate is old. In fact, I’m old enough to have supported Barry Goldwater for President back in 1964. In those days, you had to be 21 to vote, and I was younger than that. But I still supported Barry. I watched him give his 1964 acceptance speech live. There were things he might have said but didn’t, because it was only 1964, and the civil rights movement had not yet generated the violence which would force America to examine a whole host of issues centering around what “equality” really means. Barry was unfairly labeled a bigot because he voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In fact, he has a long and distinguished record of advocating for racial equality, including prompting the full and complete integration of the Arizona National Guard long before President Truman issued orders to integrate the regular military forces.

Goldwater’s brand of conservativism was a balance between libertarian ideals and a pragmatic recognition that order was necessary for a civil society, and the purpose of government was to establish the rules that created order and maintained or even enhanced civilization as we know it. The justification for a civil law was to remedy an obvious injustice. But for Barry, the limit of the federal government was established by the Constitution of the United States, and he would not vote for any law, necessary or not, if it would cross over the line of limited Constitutional government as he viewed it. That is why he voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964: he strongly felt that the law, however good it was in the abstract, stepped over the line limiting federal powers from interfering in the rights of the several states to manage their own affairs. In 1964, the view was that the federal government had no business messing in the affairs of local school districts. Since that is exactly what the Civil Rights Act of 1964 proposed to do, Barry wouldn’t vote for it.
Continue reading ‘Confessions of a Goldwater Republican’ »

One thing is already certain about the 2008 election results: there will be fewer moderates elected than either liberals or conservatives. The very nature of our two-party biarchy suppresses the middle and accentuates the extremes. Each extreme tolerates the other extreme as a place for incorrigibles who will never “see the light.” But any attempt at achieving power by moderate forces (such as Ross Perot in 1992) will be viciously attacked by both extremes, and this naturally serves to drive most people away from the political middle.

Accordingly, moderates are quite used to being forced to pick between “the lesser of two evils.” Moderates do not usually get to vote for a candidate or cause that they wholeheartedly support. Instead, moderates are usually forced to “hold their noses” and select the least-objectionable from two highly-objectionable extremes. Its no wonder that only about half the people of voting age will even bother to vote on Election Day even if the office of President of the United States is there for the choosing.

Is there any way to make moderates arise and gather in their destiny? I certainly wish there were, but after 15 years of hard work and moderate activism, I’m largely out of possible ideas. Largely, but not totally.
Continue reading ‘Moderates Arise!’ »

After roughly two months of experimentation and occasional blogging, I’ve decided to give this a shot at creating an actual conversation. So, I’ve enabled the ability to register to post comments on the site. I will eventually even entertain the idea of adding additional posters so that this can become a multi-party dialog.

Mind you, I’m afraid of the spammers, so I will be moderating comments. I don’t want this to become known as a place to post advertisments for the enhancement of male or female body parts or bettering their interaction with one another in some way, shape or form. And, if the spam gets to be too tough to handle with Wordpress, I may be forced to go back to not allowing random passers-by to register at this site.

I would really like to have an intellgent conversation with you folks out there in the blogosphere. I am horribly upset at the divide in American politics and I despise the policy offerings of the extreme left and extreme right who feel that they have the only possible options to offer to the voting public. Instead, I firmly believe in the power of the middle ground. So, somewhere between the “lock ‘em up” attitude of the far right and the “anything goes” attitude of the far left lies the middle ground where we need to try to lock up the really bad people and not waste our time and money persecuting the rest of us folks.

So, welcome to my world, where I’m still “stuck in the middle with you!”

The title of this blog post is taken from a piece written by David S. Broder for the Washington Post, which published it on December 1, 2005. That was before the voting public kicked the Republicans out of power in Congress and replaced them with a very thin Democrat majority. Broder ends his piece with one unanswered question:

When both parties have lost public confidence, where do voters turn?

The duopoly that controls American politics leaves voters no choice at all for many of the most important issues which confront us. Both parties depend on huge contributions from the people who run corporate America, so neither party is willing to take seriously the demand by voters to secure the southern border of the United States against an onrushing torrent of illegal immigration, certainly including numerous members of various terrorist cells.
Continue reading ‘A Pox on Both Parties’ »