Friday, June 22, 2007

The Micro-Pundit:  The Ever-Shifting “Center” Moves Left

According to E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post, the oft-discussed political center of the country has shifted “away from the right”. The occupation of Iraq has gone poorly, large corporations are now starting to talk universal healthcare (so they can compete more effectively with corporations in nations where universal healthcare is provided), and the immense and growing divides between the obscenely wealthy and the poor are being discussed far and wide, both within Democratic and Republican circles.

This makes me wonder about something that one of my fellow Scholars and Rogues bloggers wrote yesterday, that wherever you’re standing, that’s the center. The more I think about it, the more I think he’s wrong. In this case, where I stand on any particular issue isn’t necessarily “in the center,” but is definitely what I consider to be correct. After all, if I thought my position was wrong, I’d change it, even if my new “correct” position was less “centrist” than the old position was.

I have to agree with two sentiments expressed in the comments, though - the political center can be roughly defined through the use of statistics and polling, and that we need to get away from defining ourselves as left/right/libertarian/authoritarian/centrist, and start defining ourselves by the positions we actually take on particular issues. It’s the issues that matter, not the semantic and political shorthand we use to pigeonhole each other.