The Fallacy of Centrism

[El Lazaro]

This describes all wars

Not all wars are for ideological aims.

They are for political ones though

[The Pure Russia]

Why shouldn't they be put on trial.

Because terrorism is too vague of a term for the courts to deal with

In fact, the courts work with terrorists, at least in Russia this is the case, and we are not famous for our great judicial traditions.
I guess, it's just that sometimes catching a person alive and dragging him to court is simply stupid, it's obvious to everyone that it's better to kill him on the spot.

[Floofybit]

Why shouldn't they be put on trial.

Because terrorism is too vague of a term for the courts to deal with

If a court can't prove someone guilty, why should they be treated as such?

[Forsher]

That's not what centrism is.

Suppose, for example, you have a rightwing take "abortion should be universally banned" and a leftwing take "abortion should be a human right". There are a lot of positions between these two takes, but according to the OP, the centrist position is the rightwing take.

They's rather compromise a person's rights than to fight for their liberty.

Suppose, further, that abortion is already banned. It would be hardpressed to say that "some abortions should be banned but some abortions should be legal" is not a centrist position. It would also require a fundamental change to the status quo, i.e. movement from banned to not banned. Yet, the OP has:

Centrists oppose change.

Centrists aren't political centroids, but even if they were, the OP's argument is internally self-contradictory.

[El Lazaro]

Because terrorism is too vague of a term for the courts to deal with

If a court can't prove someone guilty, why should they be treated as such?

I’m not saying we should treat them as guilty. Terrorists are all terrorists. It’s a political question that’s up to the elected government to destroy.

[Floofybit]

If a court can't prove someone guilty, why should they be treated as such?

I’m not saying we should treat them as guilty. Terrorists are all terrorists. It’s a political question that’s up to the elected government to destroy.

Do terrorists not deserve rights. I mean, if it's so obvious that a person is a terrorist needing execution, what harm is doing a trial?

[El Lazaro]

I’m not saying we should treat them as guilty. Terrorists are all terrorists. It’s a political question that’s up to the elected government to destroy.

Do terrorists not deserve rights. I mean, if it's so obvious that a person is a terrorist needing execution, what harm is doing a trial?

Why don’t we have trials before shooting at enemy soldiers then?

[Portzania]

>Far right
>Republican
What.

[El Lazaro]

>Far right
>Republican
What.

Pro tip: in the US, Republican doesn’t mean anti-monarchy

[Floofybit]

Do terrorists not deserve rights. I mean, if it's so obvious that a person is a terrorist needing execution, what harm is doing a trial?

Why don’t we have trials before shooting at enemy soldiers then?

Self defense. If a group is attacked the group has the right to self defense. Trying to capture soldiers should be prioritized, but if they shoot back, self defense should be okay.

[El Lazaro]

Why don’t we have trials before shooting at enemy soldiers then?

Self defense. If a group is attacked the group has the right to self defense. Trying to capture soldiers should be prioritized, but if they shoot back, self defense should be okay.

Fewer of your soldiers die if your shoot first most of the time. Should officers sacrifice their own people out of courtesy for the enemy?

[Portzania]

>Far right
>Republican
What.

Pro tip: in the US, Republican doesn’t mean anti-monarchy

My bad, I didn't see context in the thread yet, whoops.

[El Lazaro]

Pro tip: in the US, Republican doesn’t mean anti-monarchy

My bad, I didn't see context in the thread yet, whoops.

The absolute state of American politics wins again

Although, suggesting the US is somehow the best metric for a measure of politics from the French Revolution is kind of funny

[North Korea Choson]

Why?

Did you look at it? What is being classified under any of those headings are pretty wild.

Who even thinks that the American Democrat Party are left wing?

Sometimes the damn Center Right Liberals are more left than the Democrats. Even the Christian Dems here support Universal Healthcare unlike the majority of the Democratic party in the US>

[Molither]

I'm a centrist. I take viewpoints from both the left and right.

I support some traditional left wing positions such as trade unions and collective bargaining within the workplace. Socially I support Gay rights. I also support traditionally right wing positions such harsher sentences for criminals. I oppose taxes that's goal is redistribution rather than revenue raising. I don't think we should have open borders or unrestricted abortion. I'm also against banning abortion altogether. I think that government welfare plans often trap people in poverty, to name a few.

No major party represents me

[Picairn]

Gotta say, claiming "Centrists oppose change and uphold oppressive institutions, therefore they are a conservative ideology" is one hell of a take. Centrists can and do support change, their support just doesn't extend to harebrained schemes or outlandish, unworkable utopian ideas. That is probably conservative to the extremists on the left, but you can't satisfy everyone.

Nevertheless, I dislike centrists taking pride in the left's and right's hatred as some sort of indication their stance is "enlightened", which it isn't. Centrists can prove to be supporting dumb or authoritarian policies as well.

[Floofybit]

Self defense. If a group is attacked the group has the right to self defense. Trying to capture soldiers should be prioritized, but if they shoot back, self defense should be okay.

Fewer of your soldiers die if your shoot first most of the time. Should officers sacrifice their own people out of courtesy for the enemy?

If an person is on a real-time attack, proper self defense can be carried out. If a person is not currently attacking, an attempt should be made to take them into custody and give them a fair trial until the person begins another attack.

[Forsher]

The "lynching" narrative is arguably one of the most dangerous myths that spreads about American race relations. There is zero statistical evidence whatsoever to suggest that black people are uniquely threatened by police brutality or interracial violence. Black people are overrepresented in police killings when it comes to their share of the population, but that assumes there is an equal probability of a white person coming into contact with the police as a black person coming into contact with the police. Black people are more likely to live in urban areas than white people, which have higher crime rates and more police. The research of Joseph Cesario tackles this and he has published a few papers which argue that when you control for crime rates and exposure to police, black people are not overrepresented in police killing.

So black people are not over represented in police killing because they're over policed.

That's a killer take.

The policy implication is radically different.

If black people are over represented in police killings because the police are racist, then you reform the police.

If black people are over represented in police killings because (racist) people direct the police to engage with black people too much, then you need to look at much broader structural change.

They are not overpoliced, they are policed adequately for how much crime they perpetrate.

Stupid reductionist takes 1.

Sensible, logic based inference 0.

MLK has such a mythologised presence in the popular conception of US history that you'd be hard-pressed to find someone that calls him an extremist.

Everyone knows that Professor X (the superhero) is Martin Luther King jr and Magneto (the supervillain) is Malcom X, right? The general consensus by people who care is that Xavier is more comparable to Booker T Washington (whose name, I admit, I always forget)... an assimilationist model minority type. In other words, MLK is transformed, through the act of memory (which is, among other things, sustained by this popular analogy*) into a quite different person, one whose politics he implicitly rejected.

*Which, to be clear, also fails on the comics side... describing Xavier and Magneto as superhero and supervillain, respectively, is extremely fraught. It is also generally agreed that the Xavier/MLK, Magneto/Malcom comparison was retrospective self-aggrandising marketing on Stan Lee's part rather than a genuinely intentional analogy.

[Sultanate of Turkey]

Conservatives support freedom of speech and expression? Just because you can’t parade in a dress

So, they don't support freedom of speech and expression.

doesn’t mean they are going for genocide.

Sure. Taking children from families, removing peoples' healthcare, burying research and slandering us all as pedophiles just like the Nazis almost a century ago... well...

And because they don’t support your precious abortion - genocide in all but name - doesn’t mean they are regressive and against human rights.

lol, that ol' canard.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1932_Prussian_coup_d%27état
Wikipedia works well enough for me. Use the sources at the bottom of the page.

Uh... gesundheit?

They Support freedom of speech. You being gender-fluid semibi demosexual should never be allowed. However, if you argue against us, you get ‘cancelled’ by the media and fired from your job.

[Sultanate of Turkey]

The Black Panthers were made up of violent career criminals and their crimes involved murdering police officers and torturing & murdering a teenager.


A religious extremist and terrorist who murdered innocent people.


It took me five seconds to google "flights US to Brazil" to find out that this is false.

John Brown didn't kill innocent people. He killed slavers. There's a difference. Also, gotta love calling him a religious extremis as if the people he was executing weren't southern plantation owners who used the Bible to subjugate black people and treat them as objects ALL the time. Also, the FBI murdered Fred Hampton in cold blood.

His men killed 3 freed slaves at Harper’s Ferry. West Virginia was also anti-slavery. Every man there was innocent.

[Untecna]

>They Support freedom of speech.

>You being gender-fluid semibi demosexual should never be allowed.

>pick one

[Random small European state]

This thread is peak Nationstates political literacy, then again, OP hasn’t set the bar really high. This thread has gone straight off the rails, and I don’t think anyone here has had their opinions changed. Nevertheless, it’s fun to engage in internet political discourse.

I mean, centrism is by definition support for upholding the status quo, but that would put them as more reactionary than conservatives, who want slow change to the status quo. This is obviously stupid, as centrists are supposed to be in-between of the mainstream left and right. So what is the true definition of centrism? I’d say that centrism is defined by maintaining the current progression of policy, culture, etc. at a constant and predictable rate, antiradicalism, and finding compromise between the political positions of the major parties. In that definition, centrists aren’t right or reactionaries, they are in the center like they should be. For example, Bill Clinton, who compromised between Republican and Democrat positions during his presidency. So no, I don’t think centrists are rightists, despite them supporting the right on many occasions because they go and support the left for many more. If anyone has any (constructive and polite) criticisms, I’m open to being corrected or debated. Still, I don’t think people really care and just want to have a good old fashioned internet argument, and you know what, that’s fun sometimes.

[Rary]

Why shouldn't they be put on trial.

Because terrorism is too vague of a term for the courts to deal with

Everyone, including terrorists, should be given a fair trial.

[Untecna]

This thread is peak Nationstates political literacy, then again, OP hasn’t set the bar really high. This thread has gone straight off the rails, and I don’t think anyone here has had their opinions changed. Nevertheless, it’s fun to engage in internet political discourse.

I mean, centrism is by definition support for upholding the status quo, but that would put them as more reactionary than conservatives, who want slow change to the status quo. This is obviously stupid, as centrists are supposed to be in-between of the mainstream left and right. So what is the true definition of centrism? I’d say that centrism is defined by maintaining the current progression of policy, culture, etc. at a constant and predictable rate, antiradicalism, and finding compromise between the political positions of the major parties. In that definition, centrists aren’t right or reactionaries, they are in the center like they should be. For example, Bill Clinton, who compromised between Republican and Democrat positions during his presidency. So no, I don’t think centrists are rightists, despite them supporting the right on many occasions because they go and support the left for many more. If anyone has any (constructive and polite) criticisms, I’m open to being corrected or debated. Still, I don’t think people really care and just want to have a good old fashioned internet argument, and you know what, that’s fun sometimes.

So to summarize, a cenrist is a neoliberal. Or, in other words, a right-winger.

[Floofybit]

So, they don't support freedom of speech and expression.

Sure. Taking children from families, removing peoples' healthcare, burying research and slandering us all as pedophiles just like the Nazis almost a century ago... well...

lol, that ol' canard.

Uh... gesundheit?

They Support freedom of speech. You being gender-fluid semibi demosexual should never be allowed. However, if you argue against us, you get ‘cancelled’ by the media and fired from your job.

I was always confused why being demisexual was such a bad thing to certain conservatives. Maybe there's a conservative value that I'm failing to see, but I thought getting to know a person before jumping in went along with traditional moral values.