There is much to admire in this article although, like centrist thought generally, there is a little too much comfort with the status quo. Of the seven principles that are outlined in this piece, I can only accept 2, 3, 4, and 5 wholeheartedly. While 1, 6, and 7 make valid points, they gloss over the crimes of liberal-capitalist nation-states.

Critics of Communism and Fascism correctly point out the body counts that have been generated by these ideologies. However, Capitalism’s body count is pretty high as well. Perhaps even higher given that Capitalism has existed on a much larger scale and over a longer period of time than either Fascism or Communism. The Third Reich only lasted for 12 years, the Mussolini regime for 23 years, and the Franco regime for 36 years. Communism’s entire history extends over a period of about 75 years even if it controlled half the world’s population at one point. But Capitalism extends back for centuries, and has dominated most of the world since, and continues to do so today.

The body count produced by the US regime alone over the past two centuries probably numbers in the tens of millions, and when we add up the body count produced by all of the capitalist empires and regimes combined extending back for 400 years it numbers well into the hundreds of millions, thereby rivaling the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century.

By Bo Winegard

Quillette.Com

Centrism. It’s a decidedly wimpy and unexciting word and it often inspires derision as a kind of pallid purgatory for those afraid to take bold action or propound creative political ideas. Worse, it is less a coherent philosophy than a potpourri of concerns, complaints, and anxieties about other philosophies. The center is where those who can’t quite commit to something better land. And the centrist is that staid friend who orders vanilla pudding for fear that anything unique might offend his delicate palette.

These common complaints might contain more than a kernel of truth, but centrism doesn’t need to be dull or incoherent. Understood properly, centrism is a consistent philosophical system that attempts to guide political and cultural systems through change without paroxysms of revolution and violence. The centrist, in this sense, believes that political and cultural progress is best achieved by caution, temperance, and compromise, not extremism, radicalism, or violence.

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