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We are, absolutely!
Just for fun, I usually self-identify as a Libertarian because it confuses both my right and left leaning friends. In truth I'm all over the map when in comes to issues and basically I refuse to take politics seriously.
Election nights are the equivalent of professional sports playoff games: lots of fun and a good excuse to put out munchies and drinks and cheer for my favorite players, but the outcome seldom has any meaningful effect on my life.
It's a dirty little secret that a lot of us "conservatives" are actually centrists who realize that in order for "centrism" to exist there must be a counterbalance to the never-ending Leftward drift towards centralized authoritarianism.
It's like shooting a gun and accounting for wind velocity.
Basically we realize that (like so many other things in life) if you simply aim for "centrism" you'll end up with Leftism, so we aim to the Right and hopefully end up landing somewhere around the middle.
You know authoritarianism isn't just a left-wing idea, Hitler was as far to the right as you can get, and I don't think anyone would say he wasn't authoritarian.
I think your post, Fabian, is a symptom of what I'm talking about. A lot of the "leftist" idealism the conservatives always claim is causing the sky to fall, didn't start until the conservatives started the fanatical nationalist ideas, oh about October of 2001. So what did that do? Cause the left to dig in. Which guess what? caused the right to dig in even harder. We've dug ourselves in so deep now, it doesn't matter who started it, or who needs to end it, it's simply going to take breaking the cycle, by anyone, and for the two sides to start compromising. The right gets all gun permits shall-issue, the left adds a tax to them; the right allows a path to citizenship for some illegals, while the left agrees to better immigration enforcement. Maybe not those exact terms, or those exact issues, but something!
You know authoritarianism isn't just a left-wing idea, Hitler was as far to the right as you can get, and I don't think anyone would say he wasn't authoritarian.
Maybe what we need is a common sense party? My stance on issues varies across various thoughts from Libertarian to Liberal to Conservative. If I was forced to choose one of the two parties, I would go with Democrats. Republicans get a little too vicious on their attacks on moderates within their own party. I find that my Democrat friends are more flexible with moderates than my Republican friends.
Why does every position on issues have to be liberal or conservative? Why aren't we allowed any middle ground? If you're against gun control, you're automatically a gun-toting conservative.
{snip}
Why the severe split? Why does everything have to be left or right now? and more importantly, why can't a person be somewhere in the middle? It's not just here of course, I see this from places like the comments on my local newspaper, all the way up to Congress. There's no middle ground anymore!
You seem to think you need to be an ideologue, but you don't.
You need to find some core, guiding principles to stand on. Why not stand for the rights and freedoms within our US Constitution, and the concept of federalism, i.e states rights, with a less intrusive, less abusive, less tyrannical federal government.
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