About Unity

Centrism in political thought is not often discussed in today’s world, which is odd considering over 60% of Americans would put themselves in that category. Unfortunately, people tend to categorize themselves based on left or right dogmas and forget the power of the balance that these two sides can create when they come together.

Centrism is deeply about unifying opposing viewpoints so that the majority of people are adequately represented. This doesn’t necessarily mean that everyone gets exactly what they want. That would be impossible. Instead, it balances the needs of the largest cross-section of society through common sense to create solutions that work and actually move us forward.

Let’s take guns for example. Hard left voters would like you to think that guns themselves are the problem. That if we push to eliminate guns we can save lives and even one life lost by a gun is too much. The cause of that life lost is because we allow guns to be bought and sold in the US. The hard right voter may believe that guns are their last defense against a tyrannical government and any attempt at all to restrict their movement or track who owns them is tantamount to undermining our ability to protect ourselves from tyranny or other abuses of power. For them, even basing the acquisition of guns on clean mental health is a pathway to a tyrannical government choosing who is allowed to own a gun because they are on a list somewhere.

Both of these extremes are what is currently informing the gun debate. At its base, you’ll notice that the left view tends to focus on a forced protection of everyone BY the government (an extreme) while the right has an underlying bias in favor of protecting everyone FROM the government (also an extreme). These two things will always be at odds with each other if we get stuck in a one-size-fits-all belief system.

Centrism is the art of balancing opposing social and economic forces as well as community and individual needs. When you bring these together, you can create a situation that is more conducive for everyone. In a more simplistic approach, how can we bring the two sides together to create a solution that provides protection of the community and protection of individual rights. This isn’t compromise, it’s harnessing the forces at play for the maximum benefit for all people while accepting that we can’t always control or prevent everything, especially if we want to be free people.

Sticking with our gun rights example, a centrist point of view would include that we need to make sure that high risk individuals aren’t able to get a gun just anywhere, and that the ownership of guns is treated with care, acceptance and training so that people can protect their families. It would prevent people who  weren’t cleared to buy a gun from getting one and ensure that those approved weren’t tracked to listed anywhere. 

For example, what if you had to see a psychological professional before buying a gun and be cleared and issued a private approval card that was only kept as a part of your private medical data and undergo a separate third-party background check alongside gun safety training? If we could maximize the number of people who treated a gun with the respect it requires and had medical data that wasn’t on a government list somewhere (even if the government did get ahold of it, it’s people approved for owning guns, not people who actually own them) perhaps we could create a situation that included both accountability and freedom. This kind of world is absolutely possible.

We are not saying the above be the totality of gun laws or even that is the perfect path, but we are suggesting that it is possible to find a Common Sense solution that balances the needs of the community with the needs of the individual. We can apply this using a framework of…

Social Forces – What community needs are there to ensure a level of protection that maximizes the quality of life for individual people throughout our communities?

Economic Forces – What forces are at work to maintain equal opportunities across the board while incentivizing people to participate in the economy at their best?

Community Forces – What social and economic policies create wealth, health, and resources for our communities?

Individual Forces – What social and economic policies allow someone to operate with freedom and sovereignty over their own life?

We need to balance all sides of these, not choosing one question over the others. Each of these are important to create great policy, even if you believe one is more important than the others, it doesn’t work to force that on to the whole community because that might not be what is actually best for everyone. 

This whole process reminds me of a book I recently read called Radical Alignment, which is about having game-changing conversations. In this book, they describe what is called the AIM Method. In it, you grab 4 things from each side of the conversation: Intentions, Concerns, Boundaries, and Dreams. If we use this, combined with the point of views of social, economic, community, and individual forces, we can create Common Sense Centrist viewpoints that pull us together rather than rip us apart.