http://www.guardian.co.uk/france/story/0,,2017596,00.html
This isn’t about french politics, but a statement in the article. What the hell is “the extreme center” ?!
It’s more hardcore than just regular center.
You can’t handle it. It’s too much for you.
True Neutral?
No, I don’t get it either.
I’m the extreme center, woo!
It’s a term referring to female anatomy.
Wilf’s link aside, if you think of the political spectrum as being a 2 dimensional object like a diamond instead of a line, radical libertarians or authoritarians could probably be called the extreme center.
984: that means nothing to me.
He means something like this:
http://www.politicalcompass.org/
Or this:
http://www.theadvocates.org/quiz.html (this one is VERY skewed towards libertarianism)
Maybe he doesn’t want to change anything. The ultimate conservative.
In both of these links there is a question in the vein of “There should be no laws regarding sex for consenting adults”. Pray they don’t discover the internet.
edit:Hm, in their “political leaders” section they’ve got Aznar instead of Zapatero.
GAP: that doesn’t tell me anything. The term “extreme center” is an oxymoron.
“Che Guevara of the extreme centre"… “a dead end”.
This reminds me of how Bernie Sanderswas tagged as “an ineffective extremist” by Republicans a while ago.
We have how many people into political science on this forum and no one can answer my question?
From what I can understand from the Wikipedia article, radical centrism rides on a principle that is based on creating a hybrid from what they consider the “best” of the conservative and liberal ideologies and advocating this new ideology with equal aggressiveness and self-righteousness. It seems to be rather conservative in the areas of promoting morality and empowering individual rights, but takes a liberal approach in community building and promotion of political referenda. The environmental stance seems to be a true compromise, and the foreign relations stance seems to be an altruistic one, claiming a desire to be of concrete help to those in the developing world.
This differs from your average run-of-the-mill centrism by the fact that it is claiming that all the main politicies of the two political ideological schools - liberalism and conservativism - do not necessarily all follow some underlying principle of that particular ideology, and are not necessarily relevant to the party’s stance. By advocating different aspects of two ideologies that are seemingly incompatible because we are so used to the dichotomy of a two-party system that rally under the flag of an extreme of some supposed political “spectrum,” they seem to seek fusion rather than compromise, and claim this resolves false dilemmas.
Who we call conservatives, at least in America, are generally people who want to turn back the clock, while liberals want to pursue some “progressive” goal. Perhaps he just doesn’t want to change anything.
The author was just trying to be original.
The author of that quote was probabaly a buffoon. “The Che Guevara of the extreme center”? I don’t think anyone knows what that means.
I don’t see why “extreme centrist” is such a confusing description. It’s a politician who sets centrist goals – stances on taxation, social and military spending, and morality that are as moderate as possible by current standards – and goes to extreme means to pass them and shut down the opposition, particularly that which seems radical or reactionary.
I suppose the problem is that this is the ultimate “anti-change” platform. Conservatives want one set of changes and liberals want another, and society votes for the party whose changes seem to best address the demands of a constantly changing world. What makes extreme centrism ineffective, even a bit disgusting, is that it refuses to acknowledge the fact that what is “moderate” can and must change to meet the needs of the time, and that the only way to do so is by acting in a way that seems immoderate.
I think the idea is that “radical centrists” see moderates as mere pragmatists, and aggressively articulate a centrist stance as a separate ideology itself, rather than just a realpolitik compromise-making. I am not vouching for radical centrism, btw. It might make more sense in a country like France, who has a sizeable number of hardcore socialists/communists as well as a group of hardcore conservative types; as opposed to America where our two main parties don’t differ very much at all.
It’s best summed up by: “Abortions for some, tiny American flags for the rest!”