Centerfield

My Stance as a Centrist

In a comment to my last post, Brian Keegan invited me to "expound some more" on what it means to ME to be a fiscal conservative. I went away and thought a lot about not just about my fiscal stance but what it means to me to be a centrist in general. An interesting exercise that led to my most recent post on my own blog. I would like to reply to Brian's request by repeating a portion of that post here. If you are really interested, you are welcome to click through and read the rest of my post.

We are all products of our upbringing and environment; and, in the beginning, our beliefs are broadly based on what our parents and other significant authority figures believe in. As we grow older and interact more independently with our social and political environment, those initial beliefs are often subject to change. So it was with me. My parents were staunchly conservative, evangelical Christians who related most comfortably with the Religious Right. Maybe it is because I have interacted with my world on a more secular level, but over the years I have found myself drifting further and further towards the center without quite crossing the line to the more liberal side. If I do tend towards the liberal side on a particular issue, I will still be so close to center I would never be considered anything more than moderate.

I find I can't discuss economical issues separate from social issues because they are so dependent on each other. Your stance on the one to a great degree will determine your stance on the other. I'm not sure I can accurately describe myself, as many centrists do, as "an economical conservative and a social liberal." I think I would have to describe myself as squarely moderate on both. I am a firm believer in balanced budgets and "pay as you go." This is the main reason why I can't separate economics from social services. If we feel that we truly need a government program to address a particular social issue, we had better be prepared to pay for it! I do realize that there are always exceptions to any given rule. During economic downturns like our recent recession or during times of war, by necessity the government will run with a deficit. But there should always be a clear plan for how that deficit will eventually be eliminated -- sooner rather than later. Bottom line: government spending should always be tied to revenues. Exceptions should always provide as clear a plan as possible for the elimination of any deficits caused by that exception. (Can you visualize Congress not being able to dip so liberally into the proverbial pork barrel?)

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and he can feed himself for life. And once he's learned how to fish, you don't take his fish away from him. I am clearly not a socialist, but I do believe in being socially responsible. Obviously, I also believe education is important and perhaps the one area where the government should not stint in its spending. All other programs... The biggest problem with government sponsored social programs is that in order to run the program you need a bureaucracy to run it. Unfortunately, bureaucracies, once created, tend to be self-perpetuating. For that reason alone, I truly believe that all government programs should have some kind of sunset provisions built into them. In some cases, the programs will need to continue, perhaps indefinitely, but at the very least, they will come up for review. This is especially true for programs that involve subsidies. I suspect that there are a number of subsidies still available today that haven't been needed in a long time and that isn't wise use of our tax dollars. Bottom line: the best social programs, in my opinion, would be designed in such a way that they would actually solve a problem and then end. Too many programs tend to only treat the symptoms of the problem, leading to their self-perpetuation.

I am being rather deliberately general with these concepts. I find that I am more inclined to consider specific issues and determine how I feel about them on their individual merits. Perhaps that is what most defines me as a centrist -- my unwillingness to adhere to any particular platform.