Tyranny of the Center

I read the tweetstream of a guy claiming to be a centrist (RiseOfTheCenter). The stream is page after page of labeling the groups the author dislikes as extremists.

The tweetstream is little more than a long string of posts that projects hatred on groups that hold a position ... each having the hastag #NOLABELS.

The tweetstream feeds a web site where the author claims his dictates are magically the center.

This tweetstream is the perfect example of Hegelian dialectics in action.

In dialectics, the intelligentsia creates dichotomies then plays the dictomoies to centralize power.

Centrism and centralized power go hand-in-hand.

The author of this tweetstream is dedicating himself to a NOLABELS movement.

The NOLABELS movement is something that magically appears whenever the left is descending. I fell for it when Reagan was president. I aspired to be a balanced, rational centrist standing against those horrible conservatives and naive liberals.

The NOLABELS movement labels the Tea Party as far right ... despite the fact that the movement was primarily attended by independents.

The reason for the appearance of a coordinated centrist campaign after a progressive leap toward socialism is to hinder any steps back to a free society.

Progressivism is, of course, is a dialectical movement closely linked to centrism. The goal of the progressive is to systematically redefine the center.

The game is working.

Remember how Reagan said he never left the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party left him. Today, we see a president who was essentially a fifties style Democrat defined as the far right.

Reagan was on the left in the 50s. He was a centrist in the 60s and far right in the 80s ... without any fundamental changes in his views.

This trick was accomplished by people redefining the center.

Many people try the centrist game. For example, Bill O'Reilly presents people he calls left, then people he calls the right then claims to be the fair and balanced centrist.

Anyway, I wasted several hours reading posts from this hypocritical NOLABELS movement to simply discover that the NOLABLES movement (with its partisan version of centrism) is more dependent on labels than the groups it dismisses as ideologies.

Ideologies, after all, are attempts to find a working set of ideas on which to base society. The US Founders did a great job finding ideas on which to base society. True ideologies are interested in ideas, not labels.

The term "ideology" came from the French Revolution. Hatred of ideology was core to Napolean's drive to re-establish the empire. Napolean's game was to play left off right to cease totalitarian power. Napolean created a centrist empire! Whoopie!

Hatred of ideology was also core to Hegel. I contend it was also central to Marx. Note, Marx never defined Communism beyond vague terms. He defined a conflict between bourgeoisie and proletariat with the aim of inciting revolution. The revolution would resolve in a new center.

Progressivism seeks to redefine society by being to the left of a constantly changing center.

There is no center to the political universe and the self proclaimed centrists are usually among the biggest rogues on the politcal stage.