Moderates

Righty: I've reached the conclusion that a moderate is just a liberal without a backbone. Of course, we never know what moderates really believe because they're too jelly-legged to stand up and say anything worth remembering. At least Lefty knows the issues and can pack a good wallop. I suspect that the average moderate is just a namby-pamby quiche-eating yuppie who never thinks about anything more important than the newest trendy restaurant to open up in his neighborhood. You know why there are no political magazines for moderates? Because moderates don't care about anything. Most of them probably don't even know that they're moderates -- that's how pathetically apathetic they are.

Lefty: The world must be coming to an end, Righty: I actually agree with you on this one! I might detest your views, but I admire your willingness to take a stand and debate it. Moderates? They're bland, unenlightened political nonentities who are chronically oblivious to the world's problems. Someone needs to wake them up with a good spray from the garden hose of reality.

The New Moderate:

I have to concede that Righty and Lefty make some painfully valid points. We moderates do need to wake up -- fast. We need to rouse ourselves from indifference, come together and develop a coherent platform that can propel our ideas into the limelight. I'm tired of occupying a vacuum between the push and pull of extremist ideologies. I'm tired of getting no respect from the right or the left. If you're a moderate, you should be tired of it, too.

Moderate ideas are the most lucid, the fairest, the most practical, the most sensitively reasoned, and the most representative of society as a whole. (That's why I consider myself a moderate, and why I believe so fervently in our cause.) So why are we moderates, to this day, a vast and voiceless nothing between the two constantly flapping wings that dominate the public debate?

The majority of Americans characterize themselves as moderates. But where's the passion, the camaraderie, the inspired rhetoric? Where's the traffic on this site? Is anybody home?

Being a moderate means more than adding up the ideas of the right and left, and taking the average. It means being brave enough to stand up and shrug off the crossfire from the opposing trenches. It means being reckless and resolute enough to declare that, for example, the pro-life and pro-choice factions are both equally rigid and equally wrong... that the abortion issue will never be resolved until more nuanced and moderate minds prevail.

American culture has been dominated by dueling extremists since the McCarthy era, and the strife has grown nastier than ever under the polarizing reign of Bush II. The U.S. has essentially split into two nations, red and blue, implacable and apparently irreconcilable. Why do we stand around and twiddle our thumbs? Thinking moderates everywhere owe it to themselves and their country to wake up and forge a radical middle that can influence public debate, win votes and stitch a sundered nation into the strong and happy union it was always meant to be.

Summary: Moderates have the best and fairest ideas, but nobody will know it until we form a movement to thrust those ideas into the public consciousness. Let the movement begin NOW.

Political Parties

Righty: The Republican Party is far from perfect, but who else will defend our nation against Islamic terrorists, atheists, Communists, abortionists, antiwar traitors, militant minorities, gays and Hillary Clinton?

Lefty: The Democratic Party is far from perfect, but who else will defend our nation against greedy capitalists, warmongers, gun nuts, pro-lifers, despoilers of the environment, fundamentalist Christian fanatics and George W. Bush?

The New Moderate:

You might be surprised to learn (or maybe not) that our Constitution made no provision for political parties. George Washington was elected president twice without opposition -- not necessarily a good thing, though in his case The New Moderate will make an exception. The two-party system arose only when Alexander Hamilton's Federalist faction (favoring strong central government and urban middle-class interests) decided to duke it out with Jefferson's anti-Federalist faction (favoring the rights of the individual states and agrarian interests). The music went 'round and 'round, and it came out here: with two deeply entrenched, staunchly opposed factions that have pretty much forgotten what they disagree about. They just know that disagreement is essential to their existence, comparable to the eternal dispute over whether toilet paper should be installed so you pull it over or under the roll. Sometimes it seems that our two parties exist primarily to create legislative logjams in the halls of Congress.

Their roles, like just about everything in the past, used to be more clear-cut. Republicans were the party of the elite, representing private enterprise and minimal government; Democrats used to protect the rights of labor and the common man. Today your typical Democrat is a well-heeled, well-educated atheist snob from San Francisco, while the representative Republican is a corn-fed lower-middle class Christian who hails from the Bible Belt. Yet Democrats still embrace impoverished people of color, while bank presidents still vote Republican. Go figure.

Does anyone have a clear notion of what our two parties stand for these days? Righty and Lefty have given you some idea. But both parties are timid, mealy-mouthed, and beholden to the lobbyists who grab their ears and ply them with the promise of favors. Both parties still covet the vast, voiceless moderate vote that would propel them to power. Yet neither party represents the middle.

The New Moderate used to wonder if we'd be better off without political parties at all, since they've devolved into petty, disputatious factions without any underpinnings of real principle. Why not just vote for the best candidate and shun party politics altogether? But I've concluded that parties are a necessary evil: they offer rising political stars the financial and organizational support they need to conduct their campaigns, and they contribute to the ideological tug of war that keeps our political debates lively. Unity is nice when you can get it, but universal assent would be deadening. Even The New Moderate confesses that we need to hear extremist dogma from both sides, if only so we can sift through it, reject the rubbish and formulate our own beautifully reasoned centrist opinions. I just wish the debate were more intelligent and less informed by the expediencies of electoral politics. Oh, and one more thing...

This country is overdue for a new and powerful centrist alternative to dueling Democrats and Republicans. The United States desperately needs a moderate party to represent the vast and sensible middle, whose vote everyone covets but whose interests few have been willing to represent. The new party would operate without favoritism toward the rich or poor, without special-interest agendas, without connections to lobbying groups.

This moderate party (do we call ourselves the Purples?) would erode the Republican base by luring middle-class voters with traditional middle-of-the-road social and economic views... establishment voters who have grown disgusted with obscenely overpaid CEOs and their cronies secretly collaborating with the ruling class on our next national misadventure. It would eat into the Democratic base by grabbing moderate-liberal voters who can't identify with the sniffish sensibilities and shrill rhetoric of the typical Left Coast liberal. It would be a populist party without rabid demagogues... a middle-of-the-road party without complacency... and above all a party that strives to tell the truth, without euphemisms or political spin, because it has nothing to hide from its potential voter base. It would actually improve the Republican and Democratic parties by forcing them to be true to their roots rather than compromise their principles to win moderate votes. The new party would be winning those votes, of course. I think its success would be as desirable as a happy marriage, as essential as breathing and almost as inevitable as a white Christmas in Lapland. The red and the blue have dominated our politics long enough. It's time to march for Purple Power! Any volunteers?

Summary: Political parties are a necessary evil. We desperately need a new moderate party in the U.S. to combat the corruption and polarizing influence of the Republicans and Democrats.