I was not overly surprised by Zach Calef’s remarks in Thursday’s paper. As a “dead skunk” myself, I’m used to the mindless responses that come from those on the political extremes. I will grant Calef some slack, though; much of his confusion comes from confusing the moderate position with that held by nearly any politician.

Politicians, with very few exceptions, read opinion polls and try to fit their message to those polls.

What I found most humorous though, was his declaration that the moderate position is the uninformed one. To be truly liberal or conservative, one has to ignore at least half the arguments on any issue.

Coming from an extremist stance, there is no thought necessary; your decision is made before you even approach the table.

A moderate, if they are truly moderate, is actually forced to look at both sides of an issue and decide what they believe is the right thing to do; campaign finance reform is the classic example.

Liberals shout that big money is buying elections, conservatives shout infringement of constitutional rights. Only the moderate looks at the issue and weighs both sides.

Calef was right on another point also, liberal and conservative positions are normally opposites and cannot mix. His error was in assuming that the moderate response is somehow a bastard breed of these two separate ideologies.

Rather, it would be correct to say that the moderate position is what you find when you turn your back on both of the extreme positions. A politician who votes an extremist liberal position one day and an extremist conservative position the next is not a moderate; he’s an American politician working in the machine.

Moderates do not “mix” liberal and conservative positions, they find a workable, real world pathway in-between. That is, of course, the biggest problem that both the liberal and conservative positions have – they are not founded on reality.

Moderates are used to taking abuse; we always look like the enemy because we always stand between two opposites.

Today, Calef lumps us in with the liberals; in Kennedy’s time we were grouped with the conservatives. We are the ultimate opposition, the lone voice for reason in the madness that is American politics.

Calef would claim that moderates get nothing done, that we just let things slide. In reality, we are the only ones doing the things that really need to be done, and we are the only ones trying to do them in a way that helps everybody, rich or poor.

The reason that the moderate position is so popular now (outside Washington DC) is that the general electorate is not as polarized as the politicians we elect. Most people are moderate to some degree.

They’re Christian, but they think that abortion should be a woman’s choice. They’re black, but they see that some racial quotas cause more harm than good. They’re straight, but they think that gays should have the same rights they do.

Get used to the moderate position, it better reflects the opinion of America as a whole than any extremist position.

As more of America’s middle-class and upper middle-class get college degrees, the moderate position will become even more attractive to politicians. For the country’s sake, I hope so.

Ray Jasinski

graduate student

undeclared