Jim Hightower is famous for having said that :"there ain't nothing in the middle of the road but yellow lines and dead armadillos." (Here in New Hampshire we'd be more apt to follow Loudon Wainright's lead and talk about "Dead Skunks in the Middle of the Road"). Hightower was taking a shot at the folks known as centrists or moderates and suggesting that they have nothing substantive to add to the conversation.
I write my column because I believe that folks like me - centrists - have a whole lot to add to the conversations and that the fix we are in right now is largely because the centrists have been purged from both the Republican and Democratic parties.
I don't buy the idea that being a centrist just means being "squishy" or a little less extreme than the other guy. To me it means being open to new ideas that reject the tired old left/right dogmas. I try, through my bi-weekly column to demonstrate that centrists can be every bit as innovative and sometimes radical in their thinking as someone from the left or the right but they are coming from a place that has appeal to the broadest possible spectrum of political beliefs.
When I write, my goal is to have the conservative blue collar worker down the road and the liberal academic from the local college both saying to themselves, "hmmmm that's an interesting idea!" If I can, just once in a while, set off that lightbulb, then I have the chance to convince the reader that there is real value in talking to one another and, more important,listening to one another.
If we listen, really listen, to one another, we can find a way to express our American Voice. The one that celebrates our common ideals and respects our differences. If we find our American Voice, then maybe, just maybe, we can sing together too.
What a joyous sound that would be.
wdk