Radical Centrism

"Morality binds and blinds. It binds us into ideological teams that fight each other as though the fate of the world depended on our side winning each battle. It blinds us to the fact that each team is composed of good people who have something important to say."
File:Haidt.png Jonathan Haidt

Radical Centrism, shortened to RadCent is a term used to describe an ideology that advocates for radical change and measures, with an emphasis on pragmatism over ideology.

The essence of Radical Centrism can be described as something along the lines of “ideological grocery shopping”. It uses policy positions from any ideology across the political spectrum in a non-partisan pragmatic way to solve individual issues with the fundamental goal of reforming institutions.

History

Lindism

Michael Lind (born April 23, 1962) is an American writer and academic. He has explained and defended the tradition of American democratic nationalism in a number of books, beginning with The Next American Nation: The New Nationalism and the Fourth American Revolution (1995). He is currently a professor at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin.

Lind has examined and defended the tradition of American democratic nationalism associated with File:Hamiltonianism.pngAlexander Hamilton in a series of books, including The Next American Nation (1995), Hamilton's Republic (1997), What Lincoln Believed (2004) and Land of Promise: An Economic History of the United States (2012). Lind has also written two books on American foreign policy, The American Way of Strategy (2006) and Vietnam: The Necessary War (1999). A former neoconservative in the tradition of File:FDRismF.pngNew Deal liberalism, with the original neoconservatives being anti-Soviet liberals who drifted to the right, Lind criticized the American right in Up From Conservatism: Why the Right is Wrong for America (1996) and Made in Texas: George W. Bush and the Southern Takeover of American Politics (2004). According to an article published in The New York Times in 1995, Lind "defies the usual political categories of left and right, liberal and conservative."

In 1995, Lind criticized the systems of jury trials and common law, arguing that civil law trials are superior to common law trials, and that the civil law model of a mixed panel of professional and lay judges is preferable to juries. On the history of trial by jury in the United States, he wrote that "from independence until the civil rights revolution, the jury was a means by which white bigots legally lynched Indians, blacks and Asians (or acquitted their white murderers). Today urban black juries all too often put race above justice in the same manner." He argued that among other things, the process of discovery was much fairer in a civil law system.

In May 2015, Lind argued for the adoption of "enlightened nationalism", also called "File:LibNat.pngliberal nationalism", in which the United States "would combine its security strategy of offshore balancing with intelligent File:EconNat.pngeconomic nationalism". Regarding NATO and other American allies, a liberal nationalist foreign policy, Lind continued, "would shift much of the burden of the defense of its allies and protectorates to those countries themselves". He has argued for "an immigration policy in the national interest would shift the emphasis from family reunification to skills ... [and] enable long-term population growth ... compatible with the economic File:Intercult.pngintegration and cultural assimilation of newcomers to the United States".

Lind is an outspoken critic of libertarianism. He had observed that of the 195 countries in the world today, none is fully a libertarian society:

If libertarianism was a good idea, wouldn't at least one country have tried it? Wouldn't there be at least one country, out of nearly two hundred, with minimal government, free trade, open borders, decriminalized drugs, no welfare state and no public education system?

Foundations and Beliefs

Radical centrism is a concept that arose in Western nations in the late 20th century. Despite being conflated with ideologies such as syncretism, dead centrism, moderatism, radical liberalism or anti-extremism, it is actually a “meta ideology” that may incorporate elements of these frameworks. Radical centrism, instead of actively searching for a compromise between extremist ideologies like a dead or moderate centrist, is willing to use radical solutions. It uses individual policy proposals from across the political spectrum in a pragmatic way that does not fall upon partisan lines. There are no clearly defined policies for radical centrists but the ideology places a heavy emphasis on pragmatism over ideology, going so far as to call themselves “unideological” or “anti-ideological” due to their willingness to break through party lines to solve systems. Radical centrists borrow ideas from the left and the right, often melding them together and incorporating aspects that are complementary.

Personality

RadCent when in contact with other ideologies will try to get them to "peacefully talk it out" and often incorporate their policies into their own framework. He can be quite commanding in the presence of other ideologies when he needs to be due to being more coherent and radical (get it?) than other centrist ideologies. He can get hypnotized by File:Centrist-yellow.png the four quadrants, tricking him into accepting policies from all around the compass.

How to Draw

File:Radcent flag.svg

Flag of Radical Centrism

Draw a ball with eyes.
Fill it in grey.
"Carve out" 4 arrows from the 4 cardinal directions of the ball pointing towards the centre of the ball.
Separate each arrow into 2 parts around the center of each arrow.
Fill the sections of the ball with the color of each of the political compass that corresponds to the relative area on the political compass.

	HEX	RGB
Grey	#778899	rgb(119, 136, 153)
Pale red	#FF6262	rgb(255, 98, 98)
Pale blue	#00B1FF	rgb(0, 177, 255)
Pale yellow	#FFFF80	rgb(255, 255, 128)
Pale green	#00FF88	rgb(0, 255, 136)

Relationships