#310: Dare to be Centrist, Aka, Why Centrism Is Necessary

Are you now or have you ever been a centrist? What does this mean? Let’s talk about it.

In the old days of McCarthyism, as cultural mythology goes, the question was always: “Are you now or have you ever been a communist?” I can say I have never been that—not that this matters, because I believe in a diversity of thought. I believe in a diversity of being human.

But right now, the question seems to be: “Are you now or have you ever been a centrist, a moderate?” That is the cause that is most urgent now everywhere, and most endangered, as we have seen with the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

There we had a person that, although he was safely situated within what can be called the political right, he was willing to talk to others. He may not have been a centrist in his positions—not even in how he spoke—but he assumed a position similar to centrism in being willing to listen, willing to debate, willing to discuss, and willing to sit there with people that he knew disagreed with him.

This positionality, whether or not it agrees with your opinions, is part of what makes centrism so important. There needs to be someone who is willing to talk to others and who others are willing to talk to, no matter what.

The Challenge of Changing Opinions

I personally have my opinions on things, but I know that they are just opinions. They change over time. I have been throughout my life annoying people who wanted me to tell them what my opinion is and then expect me to keep that opinion over time. I can’t do that because facts change, things change.

I may be having an opinion on something here and then things change. I may like a political party in the here and now, and then things change. But this is a problematic attitude. This is not what politics is based on sometimes.

Why Is Centrism Such a Hated Position?

First: Ideology

It feels safe to many people to have a strict core that tells them what to think and what to do. It’s the same as with religion. There are some people who are very comfortable being given the rules and then having an expectation—if you follow the rules—to come to a result.

And then there needs to be a mechanism, because we’re all human and we never follow the rules, or only selectively. There needs to be a compensatory mechanism for forgiving us as long as we still commit to the cause.

If we see ideology like that, then people do see maybe salvation as an expectation from adhering to certain ideologies.

Ideologies are also interested in purity—checking people out. Have you been curious about the other side? Don’t let that distract you from staying close. What television channels are you watching? What newspapers are you reading? Are you watching the evil channel? Are you reading the evil news? You shouldn’t. Don’t let yourself be confused by different people’s opinions. That’s how ideology talks.

I read news widely. I watch news and commentary widely. All it has done to me is widen my horizons and make me more familiar with how other people think than not.

The worst thing you can do if you talk with other people is be completely unprepared for how they’re thinking and then react in a way that is completely putting them off.

I’ve had a learning curve, as probably have we all. I have encountered opinions that I wasn’t sure could exist, and every time it was an invitation for me to know more. Now I teach at a university, and I have to know where my students are in order to somehow be part of their world—even though time and lack of hair and more grayness demarcate me more and more as not living in their world physically anymore. Well, that’s okay. They’ll get there too, and then they’ll see how it feels. Hopefully.

Ideology and Purity Tests

So ideology has purity tests, but then there are other components: greed and self-interest.

You can make more money, especially on YouTube or in the news, if you say outrageous things. If you wonder why some people are always on the news, it’s because they know how to say the thing that gets attention. But they also don’t position themselves in this niche, and they become caricatures of themselves.

We all know people like that. You see their face pop on the screen and you say, “Ah, there’s that person again. I already know what they’re thinking.” And then they’re being all paraded against each other, and everybody makes their money because people are basically wanting to watch a gladiator match.

Is that what it’s about? And if you don’t make money, maybe you get fame or recognition out of it.

The Complexity Problem

There’s another element of anti-centrism: it’s too complicated to be a centrist. As a centrist, you actually have to know something. As a partisan, you only have to know the talking points.

So being anti-centrist gives you a certain cushion. You know you have your people. If you only say the right things, maybe you’re safe, and you don’t have to invest too much reading-wise, listening-wise, time-wise, whatever.

And we’re living in a world where that seems to be more and more easy. I mean, everybody doing YouTube probably—or maybe it’s just me, I don’t think it’s just me—looks at the YouTube studio and sees how long people are watching, and you can lose your faith in humanity. “Okay, tuned out after 10 seconds. What did I say? I lost them at hello, maybe.” Whatever. But you know how this is.

Do you pay attention all the time? Do we live in a time where we’re so easily distracted? TikTok and shorts have done their work too.

The Lost Art of Deep Reading

I remember—I’m old enough to be able to say this—being able to read long, complicated theoretical texts much more easily. And I remember what the old left and the old right did. They would do a lot of reading, and then they would do a lot of—well, for lack of a better word—exegesis. They would try to understand the text together.

Then they would compare what’s in there with other texts, and they read different authors, and they would critique it all. And that happened on the left amongst old-style Marxists and on the right amongst basically Jesuits.

And the most heated debates would happen within the room where everybody was supposed to think alike. There’s no such thing as complete agreement of Marxist thought. Now, whenever you see where Marxism was enacted politically, the worst thing you can be is a Marxist that thinks a little bit differently than another Marxist.

For the religious or conservative side—you know, let’s use the religious side as an example—you know how many times religions have split away from each other even though they were supposed to all be believers. We always squabble with our own.

The Confusion of Modern Political Labels

On the conservative side, I don’t even know what conservatism is anymore. George Will, Donald Trump, Marjorie Taylor Greene—what is conservatism?

On the left, what is left? Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden, Gavin Newsom. I don’t even know what any of those people stand for really, but they all assume a positionality. And it’s not a positionality necessarily of conviction—with the exception maybe of George Will and I would reckon Bernie Sanders—but it’s a positionality of effect, of seeming to be that. And that tells me also there’s a certain amount of less of something genuine there.

The Problem of Performative Politics

If you’re American, you may not know this that much, but in Europe, there used to be these Fridays for Future demonstrations by young people who went out on the street every Friday instead of school and demonstrated for the climate and for saving the planet. That went on for a few years. It even caught on a little bit in the US, and it’s gone now.

There will be a handful of steadfast people who still uphold the cause, but it’s not like the planet is suddenly doing better. It’s not like they’ve solved climate change, but it’s not cool anymore. We’re not doing that anymore. And so, where was the conviction really? Or was this just about affect and demonstrating where you are? I suspect it wasn’t that genuine originally.

So when you see movements like that one fizzle out, it’s clear that they may have spoken to many people. They may have spoken to an issue that captivated people, but there’s no long game. And maybe the motivations for joining were different.

Why Centrism Is Necessary

After that detour into ideological partisan thinking, why is centrism necessary?

I believe we need to open spaces for everybody. Keep them open. Holding the middle ground allows people to come together.

We can’t treat people like caricatures. We can’t see people like caricatures. We need to see people as complex human beings that are also allowed to change their mind over time.

Many people are very quick in eternal judgment of others. Charlie Kirk was in his early thirties when he was killed. He said a lot of things I don’t agree with. But I assume as he would have gotten older, had he been allowed to, he probably would have clarified some of his thinking because that’s what all of us are supposed to do when we grow up.

Our voices are just so much louder now if we choose to speak in public or online. And so we always have to live with the perceptions of others.

The Need for Grace and Growth

We need to give people grace to change their mind. We need to give people the chance to be seen as complex and to also allow themselves to be everything they can be in their complexity.

Many people were shocked at the suspension of Jimmy Kimmel. Well, he spread something that wasn’t true, and technically ABC had the right to do what they did. Looks fishy. Doesn’t look good. What should we do?

What was the reaction? Someone like Ted Cruz spoke out against its treatment. When Pam Bondi said something about hate speech, she was criticized from her own side and the other side. This is what we want.

If somebody on our side—our so-called side—misspeaks or veers off into weird and dangerous territory, it’s on us to police our own first, to tell them this was not okay.

So we had statements last week after all these things that happened on both sides that tried to reign it back to, “Well, let’s just keep sanity.” That’s what we need.

Creating Space for Dialogue

And we need a stronger space than that. We need a space where we can keep the peace so that people also can keep their options open, that they question their ideologies.

Carl Marx wrote a piece advocating for the ruthless criticism of everything existing—criticism of everything existing. If you think that to its logical conclusion, also Marxism needs to be criticized. You need to examine yourself.

If you are Christian—and I grew up Catholic—you’re familiar with the subject of confession, of introspection, of asking yourself at the end of the day, “How was I? Was I good? Are there things I need to improve?”

That’s what we need to do. At the end of the day is not a time to say, “Oh, you were so good. Yeah, everything perfect. Yeah, just do them even more next.” No. Ask yourself, could I have done better? If you did the best you could, okay, you can be satisfied a little bit, but tomorrow is another day, and the same battle begins.

And if we do that with ourselves, we can also suggest it to others. We need to be authentic. We need to show up as a full human being. Only then can we achieve needed change. And there are always things that need to change for the better.

Politics as Problem-Solving

So politics should in the end be about solving problems—not about ideology, but about how can we make the lives of everybody better. And there will always be compromises because we’re all different.

But because we’re all different, we need to hear from everyone. We need to talk to people, and they’re not going away. And they always have their own opinions. They may change over time, but they will always be giving us a different story because their histories are different, their lives are different, their futures are different.

And you cannot get rid of others unless you use unspeakable means, which we shouldn’t. And if people do, they should be chastised for doing that. And if they support that, they also shouldn’t be saying that.

We need to give people space to grow, and we need to allow people also to apologize and move on. Grace, humility.

The Value of Diversity

We all benefit from a diversity of people, of thoughts, and of perspectives because we are all stuck in these weird bodies—we’re all stuck in our space, in our time, and what kind of technology we can use, how much we can travel and meet others. We are all limited. We’re also limited as human beings. We are limited as people on this planet.

We need to hear from others. Only then will we be able to grow and develop a better picture, a bigger picture. And for that to be possible, we need a framework that makes it possible. We need common ground. We need shared freedoms.

We need a form of governance that institutionalizes all that. And this is what eventually is what democracy is about—allowing for every voice to be heard, ideally, without fear of retribution. Not uncritically, not absolutely, because in the end, it’s always a compromise.

Making Peace with Compromise

So another thing that being in the center means is you make your peace with compromise. And I remember when there became a trend in politics to say, “I don’t like compromise because I don’t want to compromise my values.”

And this was a dangerous path to go down, and we need to come back from that.

Compromise means we recognize that we are not perfect. They are not perfect. We share a world. We share a space, and we need to figure out how to live with each other so that we can all benefit and all grow together.

If that sounds boring to you, if that sounds primitive to you, then you may find out eventually that actually, that’s the most precious thing you can aim for as a country, as a family, as a person.