posted 20 years ago
Who are these "centrists" who want less govenrnment control of morality than either democrats or republicans? Can you give an example, maybe a person representative of this group?
Joe Liberman falls somewhere between a conservative democrat and a compassionate republican, although probably closer to the former. This is what I was defining as a "centrist", -- just a point in between. However, I misplaced the location of the centrist on the scatter chart. In the control of morality, the centrists should be to the right of the democrats and to the left of the republicans. I will make adjustments.
What are some examples of ways in which democrats support stronger government control of morality than conservative democrats? For that matter, I'm not sure I know what sort of government morality control you're referring to with respect to socialists and communists, either. Can you elaborate a bit?
Control of morality involves regulation and legistation of drug use, abortion, war on terror, war on sexual orientation, etc. For example, both nazis and communists took a strong anti-drug, anti-gay, anti-dissedend positions, which places them about the same on the X-axis. Comparing the democrats with the conservative democrats, the former advocate a less restrictive moral control. For example, the democrats will argue for the woman absolute right of abortion, while the conservative democrats will say that right doesn't applies when pregnancy is in the third trimester. The chart is wrong here, again, -- the conservative democrats should be to the right of the democrats on the X-axis.
Similarly on the other end of the curve, what are some ways that compassionate republicans support less econonomic control than regular republicans?
That should be the other way around, I already fixed that on the chart. The true republicans will argue for more or less flat tax system, while the compassionate republicans will advocate a slight progression in the tax rates, so they should be placed higher on the Y-axis.
Wouldn't centrists tend to be more towards, well, the center?
Yes, they would be in the center on a one dimentional line between the far left (communists) and the far right (fascists). But the center of the scatter plot doesn't fit the traditional definition of the centrist (such as Joe Liberman).
Thanks for your comments, Jim, -- I will rethink it over.